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After nearly 20 years, Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan has announced that he is leaving Blizzard Entertainment. As soon as this news broke, many from around the internet began sharing their appreciation for his work at Blizzard and how, in some cases, his positivity and passion helped inspire and change the lives of the people he met.

Overwatch League Lead Observer Maikol Brito said they were in “pure disbelief” over the departure, and that those who used the phrase “Don’t meet you heroes” have never met Jeff Kaplan.

Principal Designer Craig Morrison, who worked on the cancelled Project Titan with Jeff, shared a story about how, even though he hadn’t been at Blizzard for very long, Jeff had his back.

 

Jeff Kaplan joined Blizzard in 2002 as a designer on World of Warcraft, developing quests for the MMORPG that had yet to be released. He was eventually credited as a game director on World of Warcraft and, in 2009, he was put in charge of the now-cancelled first-person shooter known as Project Titan.

Even though Project Titan never saw the light of day, Jeff and many of the team members took the ideas they had for that game, redesigned them, and turned them into the team-based hero shooter we all know now as Overwatch.

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“The Overwatch Community Won’t Be the Same Without Him”

Not only did those who worked with Jeff have great things to say about him, but members of the over 50 million strong Overwatch community also took the time to share how important and meaningful his tenure at Blizzard was.

While some are a bit worried as to the future of Overwatch, its sequel, and Blizzard without Jeff, none of that stopped them from also saying how much of an impact Jeff had on the game and its players.

IGN’s Armando Torres shared a video of Jeff Kaplan giving him tips on playing Reinhardt, while saying the Overwatch community won’t be the same without him.

figured it’s a good time to re-float this video of Jeff Kaplan giving me tips on playing Reinhardt.

the ow community won’t be the same without him pic.twitter.com/HE9H5wDhFk

— mellon collie and the infinite dadness (@_mandotorres) April 20, 2021

The Reddit Overwatch community also shared their appreciation for Jeff Kaplan using an iconic Wolverine meme.

Another Reddit user named /Investandhopefordub said that, without Jeff and the Overwatch team, they wouldn’t know who they would be.

@timthetatman said that it will be hard to imagine Blizzard without the “absolute legend” that is Jeff Kaplan.

The Game Awards’ Geoff Keighley wished the best to Jeff Kaplan, who he called “one of our industry’s most gifted and passionate designers.”

@PharaohOW on Twitter praised Jeff’s track record, saying, “20 years and the guy hasn’t missed once.”

@Jaymcastello shared a story that when they interviewed Jeff Kaplan, they felt that they were “Doing The Damn Thing which led to me having a lot more confidence in my career & shooting for cooler stuff.”

@SamitoFPS stated that, while “Jeff Kaplan will go down a Blizzard Legend,” the new leadership for Overwatch “will need to make up for the poor direction the game has taken.”

@PhilReyes_11 said Overwatch will never be the same following Jeff’s departure.

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Jeff Kaplan leaves Blizzard while Overwatch 2 development is still underway. For more on the much anticipated sequel, check out Jeff’s answers to questions about Overwatch 2 and 55 new details revealed about that game at BlizzCon 2021.

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Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Best Deals And Sales This Week

When the Guardian Games kicked off for the first time in Destiny 2 last year, it came with Heir Apparent, an Exotic machine gun that provides you with a protective shield when you fire it. Heir Apparent is available to earn again in the newly launched Guardian Games this year, but if you already have the gun, you can empower it with its new Exotic catalyst.

Triggering the quest to earn the Heir Apparent Exotic catalyst is pretty simple–it’s completing it that’s going to take some more effort. But in fact, if you’re participating in the Guardian Games anyway, the steps don’t seem too trying. The trick is the complete them while knocking out other requirements and helping your subclass advance in the Guardian Games ranks. You’ll need to rack up machine gun kills, Guardian Games medals, and something called Competitive Spirit, in order to complete the quest. Here’s everything you need to know to find the Heir Apparent Exotic catalyst quest and unlock it before the Guardian Games end on May 9.

If you haven’t earned Heir Apparent yet, you’ll need to complete its associated quest. Once you do that, you’ll be eligible to trigger the catalyst quest.

How To Get The Heir Apparent Exotic Catalyst Quest

First and foremost, you’re going to need to start earning medals. These are what score you points for your class in the Guardian Games, and while lower-level medals like Bronze and Silver can be earned by completing playlist activities such as Strikes, Crucible matches, and Gambit matches, you’ll have to work harder for the better Gold and Platinum medals.

Advance through the opening Guardian Games quests by visiting Zavala and picking up a class item, then completing the quest “The Games Being” and getting the Medal Case from Eva Levante. After that, knock out your first Contender Card to get access to the full slate of Guardian Games bounties and Contender Cards. Completing Nightfall Strike Contender Cards and Trials of Osiris Contender Cards get you Platinum medals, while the rest of the cards for playlist Strikes, Crucible matches, and Gambit matches will earn you Gold medals.

The Heir Apparent Exotic catalyst quest, “Competitive Catalyst,” drops randomly when you turn in Gold or Platinum medals to the Guardian Games podium. Therefore, you’re going to want to start completing Contender Cards in order to trigger the quest. There’s no telling how many it’ll take to get the catalyst quest to appear, but the drop rate seems fairly high–we got the catalyst quest upon turning in our very first Gold medal.

How To Unlock The Heir Apparent Exotic Catalyst

Once you’ve got “Competitive Catalyst,” you’ll have some grinding to do. The quest requires you to participate in the Guardian Games and to start turning in medals to increase your team’s score, then to rack up machine gun kills, among other requirements. Here’s what you can expect.

Step 1: Earn 50 Guardian Games Points

The first portion of the quest has you just participating in the Guardian Games. To do that, you’ll want to score points for your chosen subclass, which you can do by earning medals. Medals are rewarded for playlist activity completions, but the best way to get the highest-scoring medals is by completing Eva Levante’s Contender Cards. Here’s the rundown of how many points you’ll earn for each medal:

• Bronze: 1 Point
• Silver: 2 Points
• Gold: 5 Points
• Platinum: 15 Points

You’re notching a total of 50 points, so Platinum medals for completing Nightfalls and playing in the Trials of Osiris will get you there quickest. However, there are several Triumphs associated with the Guardian Games that award medals as well, so you might want to vary your play here a bit to take advantage of them to speed your progress. Points are awarded when you earn the medals, not when you turn them in, so you can knock out the activities quickly.

Step 2: Complete 3 Contender Cards

This step is basically just a continuation of the one you were just working on, but with the stakes lowered a bit. You’ll need to knock out any three Contender Cards–and if you were trying to speed your progress through the first step, you’ll be familiar with these already. The good news is that you can do quicker cards like Strikes or Crucible matches to knock out this requirement, but note that you can only hold one Contender Card at a time.

Step 3: Earn 90 Competitive Spirit

The third step is a little more nebulous, requiring you to earn something called “Competitive Spirit.” You can earn Competitive Spirit by participating in the Daily Focus playlist for that day, and by earning machine gun kills while you’re on it. The Daily Focus switches between Strikes, Crucible matches, and Gambit matches–you can tell what’s currently on top by checking the Medal Case in the Quests tab.

It’s worth nothing that it doesn’t seem like you’ll get the benefits of the Daily Focus for very long–after knocking out a few Strikes, the focus marker disappeared. So you might be working on Competitive Spirit for more than one day; we’ll update this section as we progress the quest and learn more about it.

Step 4: Get 700 Kills With Heir Apparent

Your final step is just to use Heir Apparent, but you’ll need to do so kind of a lot. The quest requires you to notch some 700 kills with it. A good way to handle that is just to pack it along as you continue through the Guardian Games, but if you want to knock out this step more quickly, head to the Moon and complete a few Altar of Sorrow activities. You may want to equip a Heavy Finisher mod to make sure you can keep ammo in your Heir Apparent, but a few rounds should give you plenty of enemies and make completing this step fairly simple.

What The Heir Apparent Catalyst Does

Heir Apparent’s claim to fame is the big Arc shield it gives you when you spin up and fire the gun–much like some of the toucher Cabal enemies. The Heir Apparent catalyst amps up the shield, making it a lot more powerful. What’s more, when the shield inevitably shatters as you take damage, the catalyst will reload part of Heir Apparent’s magazine, so you can hopefully kill whatever’s threatening you.

You can pick up a full-size arcade cabinet for a relatively cheap price right now at Walmart. The X-Men vs. Street Fighter arcade cabinet from Arcade1Up is on sale now for $350, a savings of $150.

The arcade cabinet includes free delivery from Walmart, which as of the time of writing will arrive near the end of the month. On top of its original X-Men vs Street Fighter namesake, it includes three other Capcom fighters.

Arcade1Up has made a name for itself building similar classic cabinets for home use. It recently released several new classic cabinets, include cabinets featuring the X-Men four-player beat-em-up, Killer Instinct, an array of legacy Capcom games including Street Fighter 2 and its variants, Midway games, Pac-Man Legacy, and more. If you’re in the market for another arcade game at a discount, Walmart is also selling the Ms. Pac-Man cabinet from Arcade1Up for $320.

After 13 months, Call of Duty’s free-to-play battle royale has reached a huge player milestone. Activision announced today that 100 million players have dropped into Verdansk, which is a major feat in the battle royale realm with competition like Fortnite and Apex Legends.

Warzone’s accomplishment comes at an exciting time for players, as the ongoing zombies containment action is likely coming to a close, leading in to the Operation Rapid Sunder event on Wednesday, April 21, starting at 12 PM PT / 3 PM ET. This upcoming event remains quite a mystery, but with zombies spreading and nukes inbound, the rumored 1980s-themed map is likely on the horizon.

Call of Duty’s Season 3 will follow on April 22, so there’s a lot of content coming for Black Ops: Cold War and Warzone. Players can also expect a narrative-based “Hunt for Adler” limited-time event coming with the launch of Season 3. Completing challenges for this special event will be rewarded with items like weapon charms, calling cards, and a new operator skin.

If you’re planning on joining the millions of players dropping into Warzone for the events, be prepared for another beefy update, which will be more than 25 GB.

Ever since her reveal, Resident Evil Village‘s Lady Dimitrescu has dominated the internet thanks in part to her large stature, standing at 9 feet 6 inches tall. If there’s ever been a question fans might have wanted answered about the vampire misses, it’s just what it would feel like to get stepped on by her. The results? A YouTuber estimated what might happen and let’s just say it ends in instant death.

YouTuber Kyle Hill posted a 14-minute video detailing the possible aftermath of Lady Dimitrescu stepping on someone. Hill did this by assuming her body mass index (BMI) and working backward to get her mass, which is the real determining aspect for what would happen as it factors in force used and pressured exerted.

Hill assumed Lady Dimitrescu’s BMI is between 24 and 26. He plugs this number (it’s unclear what number he uses exactly) into a BMI equation to estimate that she weighs 450 pounds. This weight is increased because it’s assumed she will wear heels. After a few more calculations, Hill approximated that Lady Dimitrescu stepping on someone would emit 48 million psi (pounds per square inch). For reference, the Hadal Zone, the deepest region of the ocean, has a pressure level estimated at 15,000 psi.

But what would that actually feel like?

Hill performed a few more calculations and estimations, revealing that a single stomp from Lady Dimitrescu has more than enough pressure to puncture structural steel. To prove this, Hill improvised a Lady Dimitrescu-esque high heel (roughly 500 pounds attached to a workout rig suspended by a pulley system with a steel bolt slapped onto the bottom of a wood block) to step on a simulated head made of ballistic gel and a coconut.

You can imagine the results. Her heel glides through simulated flesh like butter, resulting in instant death. And even without heels, her weight cracks a coconut wide open, also resulting in instant death. Not a good time.

In other Resident Evil Village news, Capcom art director Tomonori Takano talked more about what went into Lady Dimitrescu’s design. We also had a look at about an hour of gameplay and walked away intrigued by how it melds Resident Evil 7’s first-person intensity with the claustrophobic frantic action of Resident Evil 4.

Resident Evil Village launches on May 7 for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. Check out our Resident Evil Village preorder guide to learn about the various bonuses and editions available.

Google added AR characters from well-known Japanese pop culture franchises in its search function on mobile. You can now find Hello Kitty, Pac-Man, Gundam, Ultraman, Evangelion, and much more represented in their 3D form. A few of the characters, including Cogimyun, Hello Kitty, and Pompompurin, come with their own audio and can “talk.”

You’ll need to be on mobile to use Google AR and view the 14 new characters. While in Google, search for a character’s name and then tap on View in 3D. Android devices can access the AR search function in Google search and iOS devices need to go through the Google app. Android 7 Plus with ARCore enabled and iOS 11.0+ devices can view 3D and AR content.

Full list of characters added:

• Ultraman
• Ultraman Zero
• Ultraman Belial
• Gomora
• Evangelion (EVA Unit 1)
• Gundam (Odysseus Gundam, Xi Gundam, Penelope)
• Cogimyun
• Taiko Master (drums from the rhythm game Taiko no Tatsujin)
• Pac-Man
• Hello Kitty
• Pompompurin
• Little Twin Stars

According to Google, Pac-Man is the most searched for character on the list. Previously, Google added a menagerie of animals to its AR search function, including cows, cats, and humongous dogs. Google’s been experimenting with AR in other places too, such as adding walking AR directions in Maps. It’s limited to specific malls and airports currently, but the idea is that digital directions are overlaid over the user’s real-word images in the Live View feature.

The latest Pac-Man game, Pac-Man 99, is a battle royale for Switch. Players will compete to be the last Pac-Man standing with a new twist on ghosts: Defeated ghosts will be sent to the other players’ games as a ghost than can slow them down. If you’re a Nintendo Switch Online subscriber, you can download Pac-Man 99 for free. Individual subscriptions cost $4 for one month, $8 for three months, and $20 for one year. An annual family plan costs $35 and covers up to eight different Nintendo Accounts.