November 4, 2016

Heroes of the Storm: New Recruit a Friend & 2 New Heroes Announced

Posted on November 4, 2016 by Rae Michelle Richards

Blizzard’s competitive Massive Online Battle Arena Heroes of the Storm has a ton of new content coming in the remainder of 2016 and throughout 2017. During the opening ceremonies for Blizzcon 2016 developers announced two new characters that will be coming in the following months – Varian & Ragnaros as well as a brand new arcade mode map Blackheart’s Revenge and all new recruit a friend campaign that has the potential to unlock 5 free heroes and a 30 day stim-pack.

Varian

The former High King of the Alliance Varian will be the game’s first dual class hero – allowing players to customize their game play experience depending on which style of play they prefer – either tanking or becoming a nimble assassin. Varian will either wield his sword in one hand if playing a tank or split it into two for the assassin role.

Ragnaros

Hailing from the classic World of Warcraft Molton Core raid Ragnaros comes into the nexus in a future update. One of his unique abilities allows Ragnaros to take over a keep or fort and become a giant version of himself for a limited amount of time with a second set of abilities. It looks like this former raid boss will be a force to reckoned with once he hits the lanes.

New Recruit a Friend Event

Running on November 15^th until January 4^th invite your friends to play with you in the nexus and unlock rewards in both Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch for both of you.

Completed 15 Games (Ranked, Unranked Draft, Quick Match or Co-op) and unlock the Oni Genji skin in Overwatch, a spray + player icon in Overwatch as well. For Heroes of the Storm playing 15 games will unlock Zarya as a hero and a Genji portrait for use in-game.

Complete 30 Games (Ranked, Unranked Draft, Quick Match or Co-op) and unlock Greymane, Karagin and Li-Ming in HOTS as well as the Orochi Hovercycle mount and a 30-day stim pack granting double experience and gold.

More information on this new Recruit a Friend campaign is available on the Heroes of the Storm Developer Blog.

Blizzard Entertainment BlizzCon 2016 Heroes of the Storm

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Meet Overwatch’s Sombra In The ‘Infiltrator’ Short

Posted on November 4, 2016 by Rae Michelle Richards

Overwatch’s stealthy hacker has been teased, hinted at and hidden in the shadows since her first mention several months ago. After a lengthy Alternate Reality game involving fictional corporations, hidden voice lines and out of game mysteries – Sombra is now in plain sight for all to see,

In true Blizzard style she interrupted a documentary outlining the global launch of Blizzard’s competitive online shooter. The brand new animated short showcases Sombra, Reaper and Widowmaker taking on an assignment to assassinate the head of a Russian weapon development corporation.

In terms of personality it seems that Sombra is a fun loving and not so serious hero. She ends her interaction with the head of the Russian weapons corporation by “booping” her nose. Sombra’s personality certainly matches her colourful aesthetic, it is a shame her design was leaked so early but this new short certainly makes up for it.

According the official Overwatch site here are all of her abilities:

Machine Pistol – Sombra’s fully-automatic machine pistol fires in a short-range spread.

Hack – Sombra hacks enemies to temporarily stop them from using their abilities, or hacks first aid kits to make them useless to her opponents.

Theromoptic Camo – Sombra becomes invisible for a short period of time, during which her speed is boosted considerably. Attacking, using offensive abilities, or taking damage disables her camouflage.

Translocator – Sombra tosses out a translocator beacon. She can instantly return to the beacon’s location while it is active (including when it’s in mid-flight).

EMP – Sombra discharges electromagnetic energy in a wide radius, destroying enemy barriers and shields and hacking all opponents caught in the blast.

Watch the new short below. Sombra is playable on the Blizzcon show-floor and will be on the Public Test Realm next week.

Animated Short ARG Blizzard Entertainment Blizzcon BlizzCon 2016 OverWatch Sombra

News

Latest Titanfall 2 Patch Brings Dynamic Resolution Scaling To PC

Posted on November 4, 2016 by Rae Michelle Richards

Respawn Entertainment has released a major patch for the PC version of their recently released shooter Titanfall 2. This patch brings a feature usually reserved for the console iteration of games – dynamic resolution – which will down-sample and scale the game’s resolution in-order to maintain a 60 frames per second cap while playing depending on the load placed upon the system. In order to take advantage of this feature pilots must have TSAA enabled under their video settings, in their official blog post Respawn noted this should help players who either are using lower spec’d machines or those trying to push the game @ 4K.

Other changes outlined in the patch notes include Aim Down Sight improvements for Archer and Thunderbolt while wall-running, improvements with streaming in-game assets in-engine so that players should experience less stuttering and several resolution related bugs.

Here are the complete notes:

– Stability and GPU performance improvements
– Titan weakspot highlighting respects colorblind settings
– Reduced stuttering and playback issues with voice chat
– Improved speed of allocating Private Match dedicated servers
– Adjusted Recommended settings for lower end GPUs
– Reduced hitching when changing between no antialiasing and TSAA
– Increased performance of streaming textures, reducing stalls and hitches
– Archer and Thunderbolt now go to Aim-Down-Sights when wallhanging (oops!)
– Better Network chatroom moderation tools
– Fixed various grapple gameplay issues
– Fixed Kraber shots going through Bubble Shield
– Fixed certain combinations of weapon mods and menu selection resulting in no weapon model showing in customization menus
– Fixed spawning halfway underground after playing third person animations in Kill Replay
– Fixed tracker lock-on HUD elements not reliably showing up during Kill Replay
– Fixed Titan executions not triggering reliably
– Fixed mantling up stairs
– Fixed incorrect aspect ratio when switching from fullscreen 1920×1080 to windowed 1600×900
– Fixed some rare hardlocks and crashes
– Fixed subtitles being stretched in 21:9 ratios
– Fixed race condition when accepting Origin game invite with application closed
– Fixed some display issues in Networks lobbies
– Fixed disappearing grapple rope with TSAA enabled
– Fixed NVIDIA Surround crash

Game Update Respawn Entertainment Titanfall 2

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