Those currently in quarantine are largely turning to streaming movie services and video games to stay entertained. One persistently popular game with a number of players who will sign in this weekend is World of Warcraft, which just added a special perk for players who are staying indoors. As of Friday and lasting through late April, Blizzard is giving players a big experience buff.
In recent days, Overwatch League announced that it had rescheduled certain matches that had originally been set to take place in China, but that had to be canceled due to the coronavirus outbreak. The makeup matches were rescheduled to take place in South Korea, but now the league has been forced to cancel those matches, too, as the virus spreads into the nation.
Around two years since we last heard rumors about the show, it has been all but confirmed that an anime based on Diablo is heading to Netflix. This project has been in the pipeline for years, at least based on when the rumors first started surfacing. Joining the new details is a small teaser about an animated Overwatch series, as well, though it's unclear whether it, too, will end up on Netflix.
Blizzard may have been getting a lot of flak lately for its failure to reinvigorate the classic WarCraft III through its Reforged remaster but that is just one of the recent high-profile flops the game developer has made. More than a decade ago, it called quits on what could have been a major milestone for Blizzard's entry into the console space but, after years of delays, StarCraft: Ghost was eventually canceled. Now thanks to the magic of the Internet and some brave source, the public is getting a taste of what the game on the Xbox could have been.
Overwatch League, the professional esports league that was forced to cancel a number of matches in China over the novel coronavirus outbreak, has announced that it will hold makeup matches for those events in South Korea. The decision to hold these matches in Seoul was made 'in order to protect the health and safety of our fans, players, and staff,' according to the league.
It was only a week ago that GeForce Now launched to the masses, but at a time when momentum is crucial, the service is suffering a big blow. NVIDIA has revealed that Activision Blizzard will be pulling all of its games from the service. We're not sure why the company has decided to drop support for GeForce Now, but we do know that players aren't happy about it.
Remasters both excitement and dread for fans. There's the anticipation of updated content for modern sensibilities coupled with the dread that things will never be the same again. That was what WarCraft III fans may have felt with the announcement of the Reforged remaster and, unfortunately for both fans and Blizzard, the release delivered mostly the latter. Now the studio is addressing some of the concerns raised while not so openly giving disillusioned buyers a chance to get their money back.
There's no pleasing everyone and that's particularly true in the entertainment industry. It's true for movies and TV shows and definitely for games. Sometimes, however, a game bombs so spectacularly that there are not enough words for it. So, instead, it gets the lowest possible user rating on Metacritic, despite WarCraft III: Reforged pedigree of being "remastered" from one of the most popular Blizzard games of all time.
Blizzard is planning to address feedback about its hit game Overwatch with a new test that will prevent competitive games from getting repetitive (for viewers). Starting with this competitive season, Blizzard will disable some characters during competitions, forcing teams to shake up which characters they play with and keep things interesting. Similar methods are used by other popular games, though Blizzard has been criticized for moving slowly in this regard.
For more than a year, Blizzard has been building up to the release of Warcraft 3: Reforged. Blizzard has been tapping its classic games a lot in recent years, releasing both StarCraft Remastered and WoW Classic ahead of Warcraft 3: Reforged, so expectations were certainly high for this game. Unfortunately, it seems that Blizzard has failed to meet those expectations, as there's a lot of unrest in the Warcraft community at the moment.
Google and Activision Blizzard have announced a major new multi-year esports deal that will, among other things, make YouTube the exclusive global streaming partner for live esports broadcasts involving games like Call of Duty, Hearthstone, and Overwatch. The only exception is in China, according to the companies, which refer to this deal as a 'strategic relationship.'
It's that time of the year again: Blizzard has launched the Overwatch Lunar New Year 2020 event, offering a large number of new skins that are unlockable by completing challenges. The game is celebrating the Year of the Rat with a new brawl mode called 'Capture the Flag Blitz,' which is a version of the regular Capture the Flag mode that moves the flags much closer to each other.