Z1 Battle Royale, the PC shooter by Daybreak Game Company, is coming to an end on season 3 and bringing big changes with it. Chief among today’s announcements includes the reveal that Daybreak is shutting down Z1’s South America servers on April 30 to coincide with the end of season 3. This move will consolidate American players into the North American servers, hopefully speeding up queue times and ensuring the servers are populated going into season 4. Z1’s traffic has been on a steady decline over the past couple of years, with Daybreak making changes in response to the smaller population. Source: Steam Advertisements … [Read more...] about Z1 Battle Royale Will Shut Down South American Servers
Heroes of the Storm player arrested for making terrorism threats in chat
On today’s episode of Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes, a Heroes of the Storm player has been arrested and charged with making terrorist threats in the in-game chat of Blizzard’s somewhat-ailing MOBA. The culprit, 26-year-old Michael Mickowski of Las Vegas, Nevada, was arrested earlier this month after making a series of threatening remarks in HotS’s chat, which were reported by players and subsequently relayed by Blizzard to the Las Vegas police, who were able to track down Mickowski using the IP address from which he had been playing the game. According to the arrest report, the messages that led Blizzard to report Mickowski included, “Someday, when I have enough money to buy a gun and some ammunition I will shoot up a school where I live,” and “Imagine if I decided to go to an elementary school too. Instead of a high school or middle school imagine. I’ll buy a gun and shoot everyone I can. I’ll stream it on twitch.” Although … [Read more...] about Heroes of the Storm player arrested for making terrorism threats in chat
South Korean Newspaper Reports Disney Was Pitched For Nexon Acquisition
According to the South Korean newspaper The Korea Herald, NXC's (Nexon's parent company) chairman, Kim Jung-ju, personally approached high level Disney executives about purchasing his company. NXC owns 47.02% of Nexon, but maintains business control of the company. NXC is basically a holding company that owns a large stake in Nexon and ownership of a few other smaller entities, such as 2 cryptocurrency exchanges. NXC is expected to fetch a cool $13.2B. The shortlist of other buyers include Kakao, MBK Partners, Netmarble, Tencent, and Bain Capital, but Disney holds a special place in Kim's heart: “What I envy the most about Disney is that they do not force money out of kids ... (consumers) gladly pay Disney. Nexon has a long way to go. Some people hate Nexon to death,” Kim Jung-ju was quoted as saying in an anecdote in Nexon’s foundation story, “Play,” published in 2015. He was referring to the common practice of effectively requiring players to make … [Read more...] about South Korean Newspaper Reports Disney Was Pitched For Nexon Acquisition
Celebrate spring with an array of egg-filled events in ArcheAge, Trove, and other MMOs
How do you feel about holiday events and egg-based puns? If your answer was “eggstatic,” then you’ve come to the right post, as it’s all about the Easter goings-ons coming to the MMOsphere this month. ARK: Survival Evolved is celebrating with the return of its Eggcellent Adventure event, a two-week eggstravaganza featuring Easter egg hunts, new Easter-themed skins and items, and absolutely terrifying gigantic bunnies. Gamigo is also bringing Easter festivities to its games. ArcheAge players will be able to partake in the eggciting Spring Race to earn tokens that can be exchanged for various seasonal rewards, while Trove players can celebrate at the eggstraordinary Mount Parades and gather bonus Mount Talismans in the process. Meanwhile, Echo of Soul and Last Chaos are hosting their own variations of the classic egg hunt, and Aura Kingdom is doling out special Easter coins that can be eggschanged for precious eggs containing an array of endearing Eidolons. And … [Read more...] about Celebrate spring with an array of egg-filled events in ArcheAge, Trove, and other MMOs
Guild Wars 2 is heavily overhauling some class’ elite specs in next week’s balance patch
Guild Wars 2 fans, are you ready for your favorite thing ever: a balance patch? Because that’s coming next week along with the map tweaks, and ArenaNet dished on what all is changing in today’s dev blog. Specifically, this round is all about elite specs and the studio’s attempt to create more “meaningful choice” when it comes to those classes with major trade-offs in swapping to those elites. “To use the example of necromancer, by choosing an elite specialization, you lose access to your core Death Shroud abilities, but you gain different abilities,” ArenaNet says. “This is a clear trade-off. In the case of elite specializations like druid, herald, chronomancer, berserker, or scrapper, this type of trade-off isn’t possible because the specialization adds a completely new ability. With this update, we’re targeting a few elite specializations to receive trade-offs, and we expect to continue doing this in future updates. As for … [Read more...] about Guild Wars 2 is heavily overhauling some class’ elite specs in next week’s balance patch