Some news stories make you smile or laugh, others make you cry or rage. Then there are the elite few that make you go “WTF?” Put this firmly in the latter category.

When Democracy 3 – the latest title in Positech Games’ series of PC-based Political Strategy games – was preparing for its US launch, not one person broke a sweat. The game, self-dubbed “the ultimate political strategy game,” was launched on Steam on October 14, 2013 – as well as a retail game for PC, Mac and Linux – with nobody raising an eyelid to its game-play simulating the career as president or prime minister of a democratic government, the very theme of the series’ eight-year history. So why, in all seriousness, is a “major U.S. advertising agency” refusing to run banner ads promoting the game due to its “political content”?

Cliff Harris, the founder of Positech Games, reported on his blog yesterday that an ad for the recently-released Democracy 3 was deemed by a “BIG game-advertising agency” to be inappropriate to run on a particular website. When Harris asked why, he was told, “We can not promote any politics as this is a sensitive topic.”

Harris was noticeably unimpressed with the response, believing politics is a MUCH less sensitive subject than some of the OTHER things commonly featured in today’s games that go without criticism – as evidenced by the next statement on his blog:

“I bet ads for games like Hitman, or GTA, or games where you get slow-mo closeups of people’s skulls being blasted apart by high-caliber bullets are just fine. But discuss income tax? OH NOES THE WORLD WILL END! It’s stuff like this that sometimes makes me ashamed to be in this industry. Half of the industry wants to be grown up and accepted as art, the other half have the mentality of seven year olds. I’m pretty cynical, but I never expected my ads for a game about government-simulation to be too controversial to be shown (for money no less…).”

True enough. What’s more, the whole controversy smacks to me as discriminating against Democracy 3 rather than a genuine concern. After all, politics in video games is not exactly unheard of – there have been games as far back as the NES era where you played as a president of the United States or leader of some fictionalised land. For example, how about Civilization? A real-time strategy series inviting players to “Build an empire to stand the test of time”, Civilization has a much longer history than Democracy, beginning in 1991 in the DOS computer era and still going 20 years later. The games involve you making decisions on places to build; wars to fight; and even setting diplomatic rules – which makes them also political in nature even if it’s not as obviously signposted. If political content is really as big a problem as this unidentified agency is implying, why has Civilization had a free pass for so long? Here’s hoping common sense prevails – though sadly, it seems to do so less often these days…

We’ve known that Blizzard has been working on its own MOBA for a while, though the name has changed several times between each discussion. Originally announced as Blizzard DOTA – causing much of a stir with players of the Warcraft 3 mod of the same name – it was later given the code-name “Blizzard All-Stars“. Now it’s officially known as Heroes Of The Storm.

Now, before we go on, let me take some time to criticise Blizzard’s naming policy. It’s quite obvious to me people will start abbreviating the new name for Blizzard’s new MOBA; however, HOTS is already used to refer to another Blizzard game, the Starcraft II expansion fully titled “StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm” – and sometimes, by extension, StarCraft II itself. So should we call the new game “Heroes” for short? But then, what about Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft? It starts to feel like Blizzard don’t want people to call their games anything OTHER than their full, long titles…

Anyway, Heroes Of The Storm will feature characters from all three of Blizzard’s main franchises – characters so far revealed have been Starcraft‘s Kerrigan and Jim Ranyor; Illidan and The Lich King from the Warcraft series; and the titular Diablo of the games of the same name – in team-on-team battles to destroy an opposing base while protecting your own. But if that sounds too much like your standard MOBA game (if actually there IS such a thing as a “standard” MOBA since the term has been applied to a number of completely different games), it’s Blizzard’s attempts to switch up the genre that make this one stand out.

For a start, unlike most similar games, you will not be buying items and accruing currency to get more over the course of the game. Instead, gold chests will periodically spawn on the map to collect or steal (depending on which side of the map you’re on), which can then be used to purchase powerful map-specific upgrades. Items themselves have been replaced by unlockable character-specific skill choices, allowing you to customise the skills offered by your characters beyond the typical four initial choices and keeping you always in the thick of the action. As for those map-specific upgrades, one map sees a character able to transform into a powerful dragon; while another sees a ghostly pirate fire cannons at your enemy’s base to deal huge damage.

Blizzard’s main goal with Heroes Of The Storm is seemingly to speed up the time taken to play full MOBA matches, but still keep all the action. The previously mentioned maps shown off so far are small in comparison to genre tradition; and with mounts available to increase the speed at which players can move, crossing the map is likely to be a very quick process even in the most demanding battles. Slowing players down however are the use of gates, which must be destroyed before certain parts of a map can be accessed; bringing a new level of crowd control beyond towers and lanes. Forts will be nearby, too, to enable health and mana regeneration.

Heroes Of The Storm will be free-to-play with microtransactions, but it’s not clear if that means purchasing heroes to play as or just skins and mounts.

You can sign up to the Heroes Of The Storm beta now, or do so through your Battle.net account page.

Blizzard developers suggest that the original Warcraft games are coming to modern operating systems.

During the World of Warcraft Ask Anything panel, a question was asked about the original Warcraft games (meaning Warcraft I, Warcraft II, and the expansions). The BlizzCon goer asked if, because of the setting and theme of Warlords of Draenor, would we be seeing a port of the original Warcraft games to modern machines (I presume she meant modern operating systems). The devs gave an intriguing response by saying that they have a group at Blizzard working on something that may be able to do “something like that.”

Now, this is interesting and unexpected. Most players of World of Warcraft probably haven’t even played Warcraft III, much less Warcraft I and II. By releasing the games on modern operating systems, that would definitely introduce an expansive audience to the Warcraft universe’s roots. This is especially poignant when considering that it was just announced that the Warcraft movie would focus on Lothar and Durotan. Not only would they be bringing their newer players into the loop, but they would be introducing general movie goers to the back story, as well.

But, what did the developers mean by saying “something like that?” That seems to suggest that the games might be coming to us in a nontraditional way. What first comes to my mind is a system similar to the Starcraft II arcade. That would be pretty interesting and a cool addition to World of Warcraft. I would definitely play it even if it was within WoW.

So, what do you think? Do you think they’ll port the games to modern operating systems or not? What form do you think they could be distributed? What do you think the developers meant with their answer? Have you played the original Warcraft games? Would you play them again? Let us know in the comments section below!

Before World of Warcraft there was plain Warcraft, the award-winning, genre-defining real-time strategy trilogy. Many players of the MMO have never experienced those classic stories. The next World of Warcraft expansion, Warlords of Draenor, is going to fix that.

“What if those dark days could come again?” asked Blizzard’s Chris Metzen on stage at BlizzCon 2013’s opening ceremonies. “To forge a brighter future, sometimes you must confront the ghosts of the past” he continued, whipping the crowd into a frenzy before announcing the next expansion set for World of Warcraft, Warlords of Draenor.

We’re going time-traveling, folks. Old heroes, old villains, and settings familiar to the players of the original Warcraft: Orcs and Humans and the two games and expansion that followed.

The new expansion feature a new world in Draenor, upgradeable player garrisons, new character models, a level cap increased to 100 and much more. Also worth noting from the trailer, the ability to boost to level 90 and play from there.

The Story

At the end of the current World of Warcraft storyline, former Horde Warchief Garrosh Hellscream is taken away in chains, to be put on trial. That trick never works. He escapes trial and meets up with a new friend with the ability to bend time.

Garrosh travels back to when the world made sense of him, his intent is to redeem the Orcish ideal. He wants the Orcs to be proud conquerors again. His most critical mission is to stop the moment when the Orcs of old drank demon blood and fall under the sway of The Burning Legion. He will build an Iron Horde with the Chieftans of Old, empowered with the tech of the present. He will lead his Iron Horde through a time-spanning Dark Portal to conquer the present day.

Orc Clans

Old Draenor was a much more savage place than the Outlands World of Warcraft players are familiar with.

The only real civilization is a number of famous Orc clans.

Frostwolf Clan of Frostfire Ridge — Chieftain is Durotan, the Father of Thrall. Thrall gets to see where he came from, hang with his family. Will Durotan join the Iron Horde?

Entering Old Draenor

Players are sent on a suicide mission through the Dark Portal to stop the Iron Horde invasion. They’re dropped right into the action, much like Mists of Panderia.

The Horde start in Frostfire Ridge, a frozen area with towering volcanoes. They’ll get wrapped up in a conflict between two competing Orc clans, the Frostwolf and Thunderlord. They’ll also battle Ogres to claim the Bladespire Fortress as the Horde’s expansion base.

The Alliance begin in Shadowmoon Valley, changed (or unchanged) drastically from the way it looked in the Burning Crusade expansion. It’s an area always bathed in darkness, filled with rolling, moonlit hills. It’s the home of Karabor (eventually the Black Temple), the holy temple of the Draenei. The Alliance battle the Iron Horde to free the city to use as their base.

The Plot Thickens, Spills Over

From these first steps into old Draenor, players will embark on a quest that culminate in a battle with a big bad. During the panel Chris Metzen stressed that that big bad wasn’t Garrosh. “He’s the guy behind the guy.” That battle will spill over into the next, unannounced expansion, the first of many Blizzard has lined up as World of Warcraft encroaches on ten years of operation.

Where to start? That must be the big question facing DICE right now as they try and wrangle Battlefield 4 into a stable state. Players have been reporting disconnection errors, freezes, crashes and a smattering of bugs. DICE have tabled a list of fixes they’re working on on the Battlefield 4 forums, which includes a bug that stops server queues from working and various client instability problems.

Players have also been finding some odd errors, YouTubers TeamTooHeavy have posted a video that apparently shows the silencer on the QBU88 muting sound on a server. More worryingly, many players have been reporting netcode issues, which cause a discrepancy between the game logic that denotes where shots are going and when they hit, and what you’re actually seeing on-screen. If netcode’s laggy the game might tell you that you’ve just git a soldier seven times in the chest and been suddenly killed, while from your killer’s perspective he’s rounded the corner and shot you fair and square. Redditor Hickery123 has rounded up some pretty blatant video examples of this happening here.

DICE are patching speedily, thankfully, which marks a change from Battlefield 3 when every patch had to go through Microsoft and Sony bureaucracy. A lot of Battlefield 4’s multiplayer component operates server-side, so they no longer have to deploy updates and downloads to every player’s PC to deal with issues. Battlefield 3 also had some major problems on release, and ended up okay, but it’s a particularly frustrating situation when a big open beta event happened just weeks ago.

The connection issues seem to be affecting 64 player servers more frequently, so you might want to steer clear of those for a while. If the server runs into an error, all of the levelling progress you made during the match will be lost, but reportedly this will suck up XP boost time regardless, so it’s best to save those until the server issues are fixed.