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So far the only competitive mode in Hearthstone that could cost you real-world money was Arena. However, random choice card deck making doesn’t appeal to everyone, so Blizzard have announced that they’re planning to introduce a high-stakes version of the Tavern Brawl – the Heroic Brawl.
Costing around $9.99 or 1000 gold a go, the Heroic Brawl will let you use constructed decks (although restricted to Standard only) and once you’ve made a deck will stick you with your choice until you either win 12 matches or lose 3 – after which you will receive your prize. A straight 3 loss without a win will net you just one pack, while the other extreme could net you gold, dust, Legendaries and many card packs. There are either levels of prize two between these two extremes, but you can bet with the high price point the people who do take part will be very, very good at the game.
Like the Tavern Brawl, a Heroic Brawl lasts only for a week and for the weeks they take part they will replace the Tavern Brawl. There will also be a limit on how many times you can enter per week, presumably to stop people going overboard and spending a load of money – especially since children also play this game and there’s been a big storm about gambling in video games recently.
Will I take part in one? At some point in the future yes, I will probably give it a go. The idea is sound will be give time for the Tavern Brawls to rest to stop the same repeats becoming stale. I do see the cost being a bit of a barrier for people taking part too often, which again I suppose is to make sure that we don’t get the gambling problem or overspending taking place.
Last thing we heard on possible Diablo projects was a listing from Blizzard, in which they were advertising for a new Game Director for the franchise. This of course led to rumours of a Diablo 4 being in the works. That listing’s gone now and a look at the Twitters of some Blizzard developers have given a few hints about who could be involved and maybe some vague clue as to a possible theme for the new Diablo game/project?
Both David Brevik, who was lead programmer on the first Diablo and then project lead on Diablo II, and the former president of Blizzard North, Bill Roper met up this last week. They’ve tweeted out pictures of themselves next to the wolf-mounted Orc statue that is at Blizzard HQ in Irvine, CA. That alone wouldn’t connect it to Diablo, if it wasn’t for this further tweet from Brevik which also contains the (possible?) cryptic hint about the next Diablo project:
For 20 years, Diablo-like games have evolved & surprised us. I’m proud to be the adviser for the game that pushes this genre to new heights. pic.twitter.com/LIT3i0UwJv
It’s fair to say that while it’s nothing concrete, it is worth potentially getting a bit excited about. First the job listing, now this confirmed meetup of developers and the tweet from Brevik – something’s happening with Diablo. As for the Libra constellation photo, it seems an odd one to use if it’s got nothing to do with said mysterious project.
Well Blizzcon is coming up on the weekend of November 4-5, so it’s possible that we’ll find out a lot more during it.
About a month and a half to two months ago roughly, a few prominent Youtubers got into trouble for actually having a stake in a CSGO gambling site they were promoting (namely that they owned it and hadn’t even hinted at that). That led to a lot of questions being asked and a lot more content creators being scrutinized for their own promotional videos. It wasn’t pretty.
One of the results of this was that two Youtubers known for their FIFA and FIFA Ultimate Team card videos were arrested with the charges brought against them of promotion of a lottery and advertising unlawful gambling. The charges related to the ages of the audiences watching these videos and concerns about whether this could be seen as promoting gambling to children.
The case was brought before Birmingham Magistrate’s Court in the UK where the Gambling Commission is based and the pair of defendants entered their pleas. Both Craig Douglas, AKA Nepenthez, and co-defendant Dylan Rigby have entered pleas of “not guilty” to the charges brought against them. The case is now adjourned until February 6th next year when the hearing will take place, expected to last a week.
The case is the first of its kind, and it and incidents surrounding it have led to a great many people wondering if tighter regulations need to be put into place to stop the involvement of minors in illegal gambling through gaming.
One of the many successfully funded Kickstarter campaigns was a horror game based off the well-known Friday the 13th series. One player plays as the killer, while the others play as the counselor victims. The only problem is that a lot of people who backed the game voiced concerns that the game only had a multiplayer, meaning that they would need to wait for a full party of eight in order to play a game.
The developer behind the game, Gun Media, has listened though and has announced that they will be adding a singleplayer mode to the game. However, it comes at a price – it means a delay for the game as well as a minor price hike for people who haven’t pre-ordered the game already. There are other bonuses though, they’re using the delay to add a third map (Packanack Lodge) to the game as well as another playable character, Tommy Jarvis.
The revised release schedule for the game now looks like this:
Fall 2016: Beta release including four beta keys for friends when pre-ordered (KS Backers get four additional beta keys for their friends as well)
Spring 2017: Multiplayer release with Tommy Jarvis and Packanack Lodge
Summer 2017: Single-player release and offline AI bots
As for that price increase, the digital release is the only one affected with the price going from around $30 to $40. The physical copies are still priced at $60 though, in case you’re the sort of person who likes to see your games lined up on the shelf. And is also into playing games based on a series of slasher-movies.
Titanfall 2 will include a singleplayer element, this is something that is well known by now. A singleplayer component was one of the things people wanted to see in Titanfall, so the inclusion of it makes sense really. Of course, Titanfall was built to be multiplayer so could it really work out?
Respawn have unveiled more details about the single-player campaign, building on the one pilot and his robot we saw in trailers at Gamecom earlier this year. The singleplayer campaign will contain puzzles to solve, boss fights and most importantly for them, decision making and an AI companion on your titan robot. Your titan will have a mind of their own and part of the singleplayer experience will be that bond you build with the robot. Sounds cool.
Respawn have also said that there will be secrets to find, so I look forward to seeing all the videos on Youtube showing me where they are within a week of the game’s release. Speaking of which, October 29th. Mark the day down in your calendar.
Here’s hoping that the singleplayer will let Titanfall 2 stick around a bit longer in the consciousness of the gamers than its predecessor did.
