Category: Games

For nearly two decades now (and long before that if you count its Warcraft predecessors), World of Warcraft has centered around a conflict between two factions: the Alliance and Horde. Never have the twain been able to meet to do content together cooperatively in the MMORPG…but Blizzard says that may one day change.

In today’s World of Warcraft Q&A at BlizzCon 2021, panel moderator Scott Johnson asked a number of questions regarding the recent announcements of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Classic and World of Warcraft: Shadowlands’ upcoming 9.1 patch to a panel of Blizzard developers including game director Ion Hazzikostas, touching on topics such as the recent cinematics and lore, character availability and transfer for The Burning Crusade Classic, and game balance.

The discussion turned to the fact that some of the “realms,” or servers in World of Warcraft have an exceedingly low population of either Alliance or Horde. And since players can only do raids, dungeons, quests, and most other content with their same faction, this can often lead to players either changing to higher population servers or switching factions, effectively either ensuring some servers become even more skewed, or are abandoned entirely. Hazzikostas cited features like cross-server gameplay and connected realms as having alleviated much of that issue, but acknowledged that it was still a problem due to the need for guilds to be made up of characters all on one server, among other issues.

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Johnson then asked the panel a question that he acknowledged comes up seemingly on a yearly basis, with a negative answer each time: would Blizzard ever let the Horde and Alliance raid, or do Mythic dungeons together?

Hazzikostas bucked the trend with his response:

“I honestly would not say never…There are a ton of reasons why it is essential to retain faction identity, but for the sake of rated arena, from day one, Alliance could fight Alliance and Horde could fight Horde. When Burning Crusade Classic comes out later this year, that will be a thing and that will be a competitive activity, and that was one of those areas where the gameplay and the need for matchmaking was the top priority and had to be. In an ideal world, all of these priorities would co-exist, but at the end of the day an MMO like World of Warcraft is about being able to play with your friends, being able to play where you want to be and arguably, there’s greater stretch in the faction identity if you feel you can truly choose the faction you identify with, that you feel most a part of, and not have to sacrifice that because you need to be with your group or you want to join a higher-rated guild.

“I have coworkers who are lifelong Alliance players who now play Horde, who really wish they could be Alliance, who are doing it for guild reasons, and I know there are tens of thousands, maybe more, in that exact same boat around the world. We’d love to do something for them.”

Whatever this change ends up looking like, it’s clear that the potential unification Hazzikostas suggests isn’t coming anytime soon. While Patch 9.1 Chains of Domination includes a number of new features including a new raid, a mega-dungeon, and a new outdoor area, it doesn’t look like the Alliance and Horde will get to play together for now.

But Blizzard does seem open to further big leaps that it may not have considered in the past, with developers telling IGN in a pre-BlizzCon interview that they are open to the idea of one day releasing a Wrath of the Lich King Classic version — if enough players are interested.

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Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Diablo 2: Resurrected was announced during BlizzCon 2021’s opening ceremony, and the updated version of the classic dungeon-crawler makes significant improvements to the visuals–to the point that it almost looks like a brand-new game. However, Blizzard’s track record with remastered games is spotty, particularly after Warcraft III: Reforged released to a negative reception due to missing features and few meaningful improvements. Blizzard is looking to avoid a similar fate for Diablo 2: Resurrected.

Speaking to GameSpot’s Alessandro Fillari during BlizzCon, designer Andre Abrahamian said the team knew it needed to maintain the core gameplay of the original Diablo 2 when it started on the project. It isn’t designed to replace that game, either, as both will still be available through Battle.net. If players prefer the older version, they’re still able to play it, instead.

Producer Matthew Cederquist added that there will also be a technical alpha test happening shortly that will allow players to provide feedback on the game so far, which Blizzard will then do its best to implement. If the developers felt something was straying too far from the original formula while designing the new version, however, it wasn’t implemented, so it should still feel like Diablo 2 for veterans.

Diablo 2: Resurrected is coming to PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, and PS5 later this year. The game’s development team includes Vicarious Visions, which was folded into Blizzard recently. It previously created the excellent Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 remake, so it has experience with giving older games a makeover.

CD Projekt had game code stolen and allegedly sold off as part a hack earlier this month, and the company is doing everything in its power to prevent the code for games like Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 from spreading online. That includes issuing DMCA takedowns to Twitter users trying to share it.

According to Vice, on Thursday, February 18, two different Twitter users were notified of a DMCA takedown related to sharing code for the card game Gwent. At least one of the tweets in question contained a link to the game’s source code.

The hackers left a ransom note after committing the attack against CD Projekt, but the company said it wasn’t going to give in to these demands when it initially shared the news, knowing the data could be released if it didn’t agree.

The note itself said four different projects’ source code was stolen, including the aforementioned three games as well as an unreleased version of The Witcher 3. Other administrative data was stolen, as well. Plenty were quick to jump in with jokes about how the interface for hacking in Cyberpunk 2077 made this all possible.

CD Projekt Red continues working on updates to improve Cyberpunk 2077, as its public image took a huge hit in December when the game released in a borderline-broken state. The game was even pulled from sale on PlayStation Store, and refund programs were enacted for unhappy customers. True next-gen versions are planned for later this year, and there is also a multiplayer experience on the way.

343 Industries has opted to delay the public flighting of its latest Halo: The Master Chief Collection update by a week in order to fix bugs. Fans can expect a lot of new content in this flight, which will be available to those in Halo Insider’s Ring 3. To help make the wait a little easier, we also have some images of the two new maps coming to Halo 3’s multiplayer.

“If all goes well in Rings 1 and 2, we plan to roll out our next public flight as early as next Thursday, February 25,” 343 Industries said in an update post. “Then we are planning in rough a week or so, an update to the flight to bring more content and features online that we are working hard on.”

The update will feature Season 6 content and some other customization options that we’ve discussed previously, such as keyboard support on Xbox systems. The biggest additions are the maps Edge and Waterfall, which both originally appeared in the Russian game Halo Online. That game is no longer available, but the maps live on.

They look like they’ll fit with the rest of Halo 3’s offerings, with one taking place in a frozen outdoor environment while the other is an indoor installation that looks like it was built by the Forerunners.

It should help to make the wait for Halo Infinite a little more bearable, as the game was delayed roughly a year in order to give the development team more time to polish it. A showcase over the summer received a mixed response, with particular criticism aimed at the lack of detail and fidelity in characters and the environments.

Rare’s canceled game Dinosaur Planet, which would eventually be overhauled and released as Star Fox Adventures for GameCube, has leaked in its original state online. The game was planned for the Nintendo 64, and much of its DNA still exists in Star Fox Adventures–hence that game’s major differences from the rest of the series.

Shared by the Nintendo historian Forest of Illusion on Twitter and spotted by VGC, Dinosaur Planet is fully playable via this leaked version, though the account said it won’t run perfectly on emulators. The build appears to be from after Nintendo had already decided to mix in elements of Star Fox, as you can see Fox McCloud himself in one of the screenshots. The game was still called Dinosaur Planet at this point, however.

It’s peculiar to see how Fox had been seemingly shoehorned into the game at this point, wearing his usual outfit but with a sword on his back. He ended up using a staff as his main weapon in Star Fox Adventures but went back to his blaster and other sci-fi technology for Star Fox Assault a few years later.

Forest of Illusion went on to say in the Twitter thread that they purchased a disc containing this build from a collector in Sweden, and the build is from the very end of 2000. Star Fox Adventures would ultimately release in 2002, suggesting it was a relatively quick turnaround to shift it into a Star Fox game. There are still space combat sections in Star Fox Adventures, but the vast majority of the game is Zelda-esque exploration and dungeons.

Rare has been mostly developing games for Microsoft’s systems ever since. In fact, Microsoft purchased the developer just a day after Star Fox Adventures released in North America. Though very different from the rest of the series, it’s arguably one of the best Star Fox games.