Premier league matchday 4 highlights

Hi-Rez has never shied away from the fact that it is based on competitive games and believes esports is an integral part of the company. And over the last five years the studio has been building its esports scene by leaps and bounds, moving from that first SMITE tourney to multiple tournaments and world championships for more of its games and paying its league members a salary. (Over 10 million has been paid out to date between prizes and salaries.) This weekend’s expo at Dreamhack Atlanta crowned two new world champions (Team Envy for Paladins and Splyce for SMITE) and two world console champions (Astral Authority for SMITE and Elevate for Paladins). Even Realm Royale crowned champions Ausrhino and Kronicx in its first founders tournament. With that background, it is makes sense that Hi-Rez would want to build out its esports program. And that’s exactly what the studio is doing in 2019 on many fronts. COO Todd Harris, also the president of Skillshot Media, shared … [Read more...] about Hi-Rez Expo: Esports adds college varsity national championships and high school leagues

While the joke about Riot Games actually just makes 1 game has been around for some time, rumors of a new IP has been swirling around since Greg Street joined the company from Blizzard’s World of Warcraft team. Recently, a new tweet giving the biggest hint of a new project surfaced, with Riot Games looking to fill up several art positions. The tweet came from Katie Chironis, a Senior Narrative Designer at the League of Legends developer. Some interesting facts from the positions highlighted from the tweet include: • The 3 positions are Senior Lighting Artist (R&D), Lead Concept Artist (R&D), and Senior VFX Artist (R&D). • Some eye-catching preferred experience include “working with popular game engines”, “shipped a new IP”, and “Unity, Unreal, or equivalent game engine VFX tools”. • It also seems that this new game is still in its early stages as another preferred experiences stated “worked on a project from … [Read more...] about – League of Legends studio is hiring for new “cool game”

There’s probably not a lot of lines to read in-between here, but then again, the commissioner and founder of Overwatch’s premier esports league leaving to go to an entirely different venture is certainly intriguing food for thought, at least. Yes, Nate Nanzer officially announced last week that he’ll be leaving the Overwatch League for what has been confirmed to be a position to help with competitive Fortnite according to a statement from Epic Games. Pete Vlastelica, President and CEO of Activision Blizzard Esports Leagues, has stepped in as Nanzer’s replacement. The move tracks with Epic Games’ continued inroads in the esports scene: The company snatched up Rocket League developer Psyonix earlier in the month, and both Rocket League and Fortnite are due to hold arena-sized esports events in NYC in June and July. Epic has also been juicing up its prize pools for Fortnite, with a total of $100M set aside for 2019. This development could also certainly add … [Read more...] about Overwatch League commissioner jumps ship for Fortnite esports

League of Legends is getting ready to drop it’s 8.11 Patch, and with it comes an absolute slew of changes. 8.11 is a part of an on-going multi-patch pass at adjusting role tweaks and game pacing. Mages were dealt with 8.9, jungle in 8.10, and 8.11’s focus is marksman and jungle changes. Later in the 8.11 cycle we’ll also see Pyke, the Bloodharbor Ripper (who is totally a support, honest. He has an execute and everything) and with him will come a temporary return to Butcher’s Bridge in ARAM. However, before we get into the meat and potatoes of some of these important changes, let’s take a look at some ARAM updates. There are permanent, quality-of-life changes and temporary gameplay changes coming to the Howling Abyss. A huge one is the “Available Champions Pool”. It will smooth out, perhaps, the Champion Select Experience, by letting players put those champs in the potential selection pool, without having to wait to the last second and re-roll … [Read more...] about League of Legends: 8.11 Patch Notes Highlights

Despite this being a mostly “cleanup” patch, in the wake of the mid-season update, a fair amount of champions still got buffed and nerfed in League of Legends. There are quite a few that stood out perhaps a bit more than they should, and tanks (shock! awe! wonderment!) received buffs! A nice chunk of tanks got some love, which makes me absolutely delighted. I also learned that a four-week alpha for the Nexus Blitz (a new experimental game mode), which is coming soon after this patch. It apparently was very popular on the PBE, and so there should be a link in the official patch notes to more information on the Nexus Blitz mode. As per usual, I’m not going to highlight every single iteration of these patch notes, just the stuff that I personally find most fascinating. I want to start with the most important part of the team, Tanks, but before that, some minor adjustments to be aware of. Heal is getting a cooldown decrease, which I think is a wonderful idea! I … [Read more...] about League of Legends – 8.16 Patch Notes Discussion