The Summer Split is over, and the SMITE Pro League Season 2 Summer Finals are upon us. Eight teams from North America and eight from Europe have battled it out since May, and now the top 3 from each division have assembled in Alpharetta, Georgia for their shot a portion of the $171,500 prize pool. In addition, all teams who qualify for the Summer LAN will be invited to the Fall Split. Fall Split will undoubtedly be the most important of the year, getting teams closer to the SMITE World Championships.

The tournament will follow a best of 5 format with quarterfinals, semifinals and a finals set. Teams Titan and AFK Gaming have secured seminfinals slots already based on performance in the Summer Split. The other teams will need to play through all sets to make it to the finals, and the losers of the Semifinals will compete for third place in a best of 3.

Everything kicks off at 1PM EST on July 24 and runs through till July26. The Summer Finals will be broadcast on the official Smite twitch HERE.

Last night brought us the answer to what the new Hearthstone thing Blizzard had been teasing actually was. The Grand Tournament aims to add over 130 new cards to the game and we saw at least 15 during that hour and a half of announcement livestream. Now 3 more have been revealed, and one is quite the card.

Firstly we have Silver Hand Regent which makes use of the new Inspire effect that triggers when you use your Hero Power. She summons a Silver Hand Recruit at 1/1 and what makes her interesting is that it seems she is a Neutral card so now any class could possibly have access to the Silver Hand Recruits.

Next we have Garrison Commander who is one of the new cards introduced to work with your Hero Power, allowing you to use it twice on your turn. Again this is a Neutral card and decent mana cost and Attack/Life means that it certainly looks like a valuable addition to a deck.

And finally we have the most interesting reveal of all, a new Legendary – Justicar Trueheart. With a Battlecry effect that changes your Hero Power to a slightly more powerful version of itself, this card could really liven up play. It’s uncertain whether the upgraded Hero Power is a match-permanent effect or if it reverts back to normal when Justicar Trueheart is removed from play. It also won’t have any effect on Hero Powers that have already been altered in some way (I assume they mean made cheaper or powered up in some way).

Stay tuned to Sanitarium.FM for more card reveals as they are made public!

For about a month now, Blizzard have been teasing that something big was coming to Hearthstone. It started with a set of scrolls being delivered to a number of different places, inviting them to a special ‘challenge’. The Hearthstone Twitter also began tweeting out references to ‘Champions’, which led people to begin guessing what the new thing was going to be.

Well, the announcement happened during a livestream from Blizzard’s Hearthstone Twitch, live from a Fireside Gathering in San Francisco and just as many guessed it’s a proper expansion akin to Goblins vs Gnomes. Called The Grand Tournament, it is themed around the successor to the WoW lore’s Argent Tournament with noble knights and whacky warriors of all shapes, sizes and species gathering for a friendly and fun filled tournament to prove they are the best at their fighting craft.

The expansion will introduce over 130 new cards, around fifteen which were described in the announcement presentation or we got to see in action through playtests between top Hearthstone players Trump, Amaz and world champion Firebat. Those cards are as follows:

Looking over those cards you’ll see a new keyword effect in the vein of Battlecry or Taunt that some cards can have – Inspire. Inspire’s effect triggers when the player of that card uses their Hero Power, and in fact a lot of cards for The Grand Tournament aim to play with your Hero Power making it more useful in different situations.

As with previous expansions, it also comes with a new playing board themed to it and new packs, with a pre-purchase running now to purchase 50 packs before the big release at a discounted rate to obtain a new exclusive cardback for pre-purchasing. You won’t be able to open those packs until the expansion actually releases of course, but it’ll give you quite the starting point.

When is this big release though? Blizzard didn’t give us an actual date during the stream, but they did say that it was to be released next month. So prepare yourselves for a tournament unlike any other, because it’s coming soon!

Ex-Cloud9 player of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Kory Friesen admitted to competing under the influence of Adderall during tournaments, which has forced ESL to make some changes to their policies and adject the rules of their e-sports tournaments.

Talking to Wired Anna Rozwandowicz, head of communications at ESL said “The integrity of our sport is and always will be our biggest concern… We have worked on changes in our rules, reached out to authorities for support, and will be ready to announce our next steps in a couple of days. When that comes out, you can treat that as our full statement on the issue.”

While the incident in question with Friesen took place long enough ago that it’s impossible for the ESL to prove it, it was not the cause of his removal from the team having been let go down to poor performance.

“We have no way of knowing whether he is telling the truth, or just being upset about being removed from the team and trying to annoy them,” Rozwandowicz said. “We’ve had cases of players admitting to cheating, but then denying everything once they found out they can get disqualified and banned for it. Upon investigating, it became clear that the games were played according to the requirements and were protected by anti-cheat software, so no cheating was possible.”

Truth or not, the confession has made the ESL sit up and take notice of their policies regarding drug use (while it is banned there is currently no list of repercussions). A process is now being set up with a governing body and an appeal system – just like a regular sport would have. Drug testing is still a long way off Rozwandowicz says, but they hope that this is a step in the right direction.

Seems that Electronic Arts is going through a rebrand of their Origin accounts program. Some users of the service are reporting that they’ve received e-mails about an account branding change.

The e-mail says that “in the coming weeks your Origin Account will be renamed to an EA Account” but otherwise nothing else is expected to be changed – just the branding and the design. Account owners are reassured that “Your Account identity, preferences, and order history will remain unchanged.
You will continue to use this account and the same login credentials to access all EA games, web sites, and services, including Origin.”

No reasons have been given for the change of account naming, but it’s possible that EA are seeking to try and brand things under one umbrella to improve association between all the parts of their business. The changes will happen automatically without any users needing to do anything, and EA hope that the transition will go smoothly.