Hopping on the Black Friday Sale bandwagon, Blizzard Entertainment has announced discounts for all of its major titles. This includes Overwatch which is also free to play until December 4th. New players can try out all of the heroes, maps and modes without any restriction in that time frame.

If you want to continue playing, then the full game will be on sale. The Standard Edition is 20 percent off while the Legendary Edition is 50 percent off. Any progress made in the current trial will carry over, allowing you to retain any cosmetics and in-game achievements earned.

Other titles that are currently discounted include Diablo 3: Eternal Collection (26 percent off), StarCraft 2: Campaign Collection (50 percent off) and World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth (50 percent off). You can even pick up Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare for 16 percent off. As for Overwatch, stay tuned for more details on its next big patch which should be out in the coming days.

Activision Blizzard has been fairly busy today, with the announcement of 800 employees being laid off even while achieving record income. However, it also revealed in its post-quarterly earnings call that there wouldn’t be any “major frontline release” from Blizzard Entertainment in 2019. The publisher stated, “Turning to Blizzard, we expect materially lower financial performance this year.”

“2018 benefited from the release of World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth, whereas we are not planning a major frontline release for 2019.” Overall in-game revenues for Blizzard in the last quarter of 2018 were also nothing to shout about. The company finished the year with “softness for its in-game revenues that will take time to stabilize and return to growth.”

The good news is that Activision believes the pipeline across all platforms for Blizzard to be “richer than ever”. “While these factors will weigh on Blizzard’s financials this year, looking further ahead, Blizzard’s pipeline of PC, console, and mobile content is richer than ever, and we expect the significant addition of development resources to accelerate the pace of delivery over time,” said Activision. That last part likely reflects Activision Blizzard investing more into its own internal IPs with a 20 percent increase in development resources planned.

Blizzard Entertainment does have Warcraft 3: Reforged, a remake of the classic real-time strategy game, coming to PC players later this year. Diablo Immortal is currently without a release date, but the developer has confirmed that multiple projects for the franchise will be revealed this year. As always, stay tuned for more details.

Feeding/Throwing

One-tricking, raging because the team isn’t working together or just for fun – whatever the case may be, players intentionally sabotaging their team is annoying. The worst part is, you never know what could cause someone to start feeding. You could die once, pick a bad hero, choose some “non-meta” weapons and effectively trigger someone into losing the game for everyone.

Blizzard Entertainment’s hotly anticipated update for World of Warcraft: Battle of Azeroth is now live. Tides of Vengeance seeks to address a number of complaints that fans have had since the expansion launched, along with introducing heaps of new content, including story quests, a new Warfront, and so on. Check out the trailer and survival guide below for a quick rundown.

Tides of Vengeance is essentially the next chapter in Battle for Azeroth’s story. As such, players in both the Alliance and Horde factions will engage in quests to investigate characters like Tyrande, Malfurion, and Saurfang. New War Campaign quests are also live, so you’ll be heading into the opposite faction’s territory as well. For Island Expeditions, dynamic events like fending off enemies from Azerite Extractors and new rewards will shake up the experience.

Those interested in Warfronts can head to Darkshore for something new. In an interesting new feature, players can use the Altar of Storms to become nightmarish new beings that can unleash havoc. New armour appearances, Faction Assaults, class changes (including some abilities no longer being tied to global cooldowns) and much more are also included. Check out the full patch notes here for more information.

Blizzard arguably makes the best CG visuals in the industry. While their actual dialog and storytelling leaves a lot to be desired, their CG visuals are so hype inducing and fantastic, they’ve become iconic over the years (we all remember, I am sure, “Hell, it’s about time”).

Today, during Blizzcon, the company showed off a brand new cinematic for World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth, the newest expansion for the long running MMORPG that only came out recently, which develops the story of the saga further.

Among other things, it includes what I am sure Blizzard hopes is a shock for a lot of people, but which I think is a plot twist a lot of fans totally called. I won’t get into exactly what it is, but it deals with someone being not quite as good and/or evil as you may have thought they were.

You can check out the cinematic for yourself below.

GETTING STARTED WITH BATTLE FOR AZEROTH

Let’s start with the basics: you need to be at least Level 110 to be able to access the new content in the game, and you have to have completed the War of Thorns. Once this is done, go to Silithus to speak to Magni and collect your first quest.

If you are a new player to the game, you don’t actually have to level all the way up to 110- that’s stupidly daunting, and would make anyone quit long before they got there. No, you get one boost with the World of Warcraft bundle that you can use to level up one character to 110- use that to catch up (unless you actually want to play through the lower levels…)

LEVELING GUIDE

But what if you do want to play through those lower levels? Well, there are still ways to speed up the leveling process. Here are some handy tips you can use:

• Get the Insightful Rubellite. This gem gives you a 5% EXP boost, which can come in handy. You will either need to pick this up from the Auction House, or have a friend make it for you. Speaking of friends…
• Use the Recruit-A-Friend program. What is it? The recruit-a-friend program basically grants a 50% EXP bonus, as long as you and your friend are in the same party, and within 100 in game yards of each other. This works up to Level 90.
• Pick Demon Hunter or Death Knight Classes. These start at Level 98 and 55 respectively, so you’re already way ahead of the pack with these.
• Try getting Heirlooms. They can offer a 5% EXP bonus, and you can stack that for up to a 45% bonus.

Getting to Level 120

Battle for Azeroth increases the level cap in the game to a dizzying 120- which, you may think, is a struggle to get there, but it’s really not that bad. You can basically knock out a healthy chunk by just completing the campaign, and engaging in quests after that will be able to get you to 120 reasonably quickly. Make sure you do get to Level 120, though, because you need to be that to access the end game activities.

UNLOCKING WORLD QUESTS

World Quests, originally introduced in Legion, are basically rotating quests that are scattered all across the map; you want to do these because doing so gets you better gold, resources, loot, and artifact power, which means it’s a way to kit your character out in the strongest possible available gear.

Unlocking them can be a bit of a pain, however:

• Reach Level 120. I already warned you, you need to be Level 120 to access the end game content, that includes the World Quests.
• Reach “Friendly” Status With Your Faction’s Allies: Your rep needs to be “Friendly” with all three factions associated with the new areas you explore in Battle for Azeroth. If you are playing as an Alliance faction, that means you need to focus on Proudmoore Admiralty, Storm’s Wake, and the Order of Embers; for the Horde? Zandalari Empire, Talanji’s Expedition, and the Voldunai. The good news is that reaching “Friendly” doesn’t take too long- a few quests in each zone should be enough.
• Play through the War Campaign. The War Campaign is a secondary campaign you get, and you need to go through this to establish a foothold in each of the three new zones- which, in turn, is something you need to do to be able to unlock World Quests.

UNLOCK THE ALLIED RACES

Unlike in the past, where you got entirely new races, Battle for Azeroth introduces Allied Races, which are like existing races, but off-shoots. It’s easier for Blizzard to handle too, and I guess saves them from having to come up with entirely new quests and areas for entirely new races like they otherwise would have to.

Alliance

• Kul Tiras Humans
• Lightforged Draenei
• Dark Iron Dwarves
• Void Elves

Horde

• Nightborne
• Highmountain Tauren
• Zandalari Trolls
• Mag’har Orcs

To unlock an Allied Race, you need to keep an eye on three things:

• Reputation: Goes without saying, but you want your Rep to be as high as possible with the tribe representing Allied Race you want to play as
• Story: Complete these Race’s stories so you can recruit them
• Recruitment Quests: … I shouldn’t have to explain this one

END GAME CONTENT

Okay, so apart from unlocking the Allied Races, and the World Quests, what else is there to do? As it turns out, quite a bit…

Uldir Raid

• There are four Difficulty Levels for Uldir- LFR, Normal, Heroic, and Mythic. LFR is for anyone who just wants to see the Raid and the story- you don’t need to be well prepared for this, though it’s still harder than all the other content in the game so far, and the rewards you get aren’t as good
• Your average item level for Normal or higher difficulties should be at least 340.
• Completing the Raid on LFR difficulty is actually a very easy (and valid) way of getting gear that can take you up to average item level 340.

Arathi Highlands Warfront

The Arathi Highlands alternate between being under the Alliance or the Horde’s control. If your faction happens to have control of them, completing the 20-man Battle for Stromgarde and the other faction’s Azerite drop gives you Item Level 370 gear drops. Meanwhile,  the World Quest to kill 20 of the opposing faction’s NPCs grants an Item Level 340 drop, as do (sometimes) random NPC spawns of the opposing factions.

Other Things To Do

• Do Heroic Dungeons- this helps you get better gear and some Azerite Power as Daily Rewards
• Do all available Follower Missions, for Rep and AP
• Do any available World Quests, especially since you went to the effort of unlocking the damn things
• Continue grinding to increase your Item Level
• Continue grinding for Rep with all factions
• Complete weekly island expeditions- these give you major AP. AP is Azerite Power, and this can be used to…
• Unlock all the traits in your Azerite Armor

It’s finally time, raiders. Blizzard has announced that World of Warcraft’s Battle for Azeroth raid, Uldir, is finally live. It’s available on both Normal and Heroic difficulty, and comprises of eight bosses in total. So head to this facility, find out what’s gone wrong, and try not to die (even though you will. A lot).

For Warfront players, Stromgarde is also available, bringing 20 player co-op action to the field. Horde players in Europe can begin their supply runs, and once that’s complete, the Warfront will be available to the faction for a limited time. As for Alliance players, they get a special event in the Arathi Highlands, which also brings a new world boss.

Rated PvP season 1 with two new arenas – Hook Point and Mugambala – are both available along with new rewards. Mythic Keystone dungeons are also live, and bring the first seasonal affix “Infested”. This infects certain enemies in the dungeon with corruption, and will show up on Keystones that are level 10 or higher.

What are your thoughts on all the new content? Let us know in the comments below.

Every time a major new expansion for Blizzard’s MMO World of Warcraft rolls around, the game’s community becomes even more active than it usually is. For the most part, they’re discussing the merits and demerits of whatever new piece of content they’re playing through, and a lot of the times, that includes the topic of mob scaling- which is also the issue with Battle for Azeroth, the latest in the game’s long line of expansions.

Apparently, according to game director Ion Hazzikostas, mob scaling in Battle for Azeroth works the way it did in Legion as well, and, in fact, the way it has worked since the days of The Burning Crusade, which was World of Warcraft’s first ever expansion. “The way the outdoor world functions in Battle for Azeroth is exactly how Legion worked, in virtually every regard,” Hazzikostas said during a live Q&A. “But looking farther back, an endgame-geared character from the prior expansion having a harder and harder time killing things as they level is how WoW has worked since its very first expansion, The Burning Crusade. As you move into new content, you face progressively stronger foes.”

He then went on to explain that someone who’s moving into Azeroth off of Legion with a level 110 build with high level items, earlier enemies in the former are designed to be fairer fights, but that difficulty then keeps ramping up to require higher levels in order to maintain a proper curve. “Level 110 enemies are tuned to be a fair fight for someone who just quested through Legion and hit 110 wearing items along the way (average item level of, say, 160 or so),” he said. “That’s essential, or fresh 110s moving into Battle for Azeroth content would run into a frustrating brick wall of difficulty. But it means that if you are level 110 wearing Argus gear and legendaries (average item level of, say, 230 or even higher), you’re massively overpowered in relative terms. Easily twice as strong as someone who just quested through Legion and did nothing else. And that’s nothing new – that’s power progression.”

“But moving on, level 117 enemies are tuned to be a fair fight for someone who is wearing quest rewards from level 117 quests,” he continued. “The same player above in Argus gear will only recently have started to find upgrades from quests, and is actually now wearing nearly the exact same gear as the player who leveled straight through without doing Legion endgame content. This is exactly how it worked 4 years ago when someone wearing Siege of Orgrimmar gear was wrecking level 90 enemies in Frostfire or Shadowmoon at 90, and then started to have a tough time against level 97 mobs in Spires of Arak at level 97. Higher-level enemies are tougher.”

The question, then, might be this- why didn’t Blizzard choose to go with the design they’d employed prior to Legion, which was also applied to Battle for Azeroth’s horde content? Well, essentially, Hazzikostas explains that that would have come at the cost of having a much more linear level progression, where earlier areas would essentially become irrelevant during endgame content. “That would likely have felt better in terms of rationalizing increasing world difficulty as you level,” he said, “but it would have come at the expense of a more linear leveling experience, after which those zones would be largely irrelevant at endgame. We feel that the upsides of having the outdoor world continue to be relevant, and be a place where we can tell ongoing War Campaign stories and stage other content, for the months to come, are worth that increased awkwardness while leveling.”

Whether or not this satisfies fans remains to be seen, though chances are that those who’ve felt scaling remains an issue with World of Warcraft expansions will likely continue to think so. In our own review, we mentioned level scaling as one of the problems in Battle for Azeroth. Regardless, just like most (if not all) would have predicted, the expansion has been wildly successful, selling 3.4 million units within its first day, and overtaking Legion as the fastest selling World of Warcraft expansion.

Things start when Sylvanas Windrunner, the current Horde WarChief, decides that a depleted Alliance is ripe for the pickings and attacks Darnassus. the Night Elf capital city. She hopes to take the city, kill the Night Elf leaders, and splinter the Alliance so she can defeat the individual nations more easily. When that doesn’t work, she decides to burn Teldrassil, the sacred NIght Elf World Tree, and the entire city to the ground. With Night Elf civilians inside.

"At the beginning, you’ll spend more time recruiting other races to your cause than fighting the other faction. The Alliance head to the human nation of Kul Tiras, while the Horde attempt to bring the Zandalari trolls into the fold."

In retaliation, the Alliance attacks Lordaeron, the Undead city. They manage to take it, but Sylvanas drops Blight on it once they do, rendering the city uninhabitable. After that, the battle for Azeroth is on. This is where the expansion proper picks up.

At the beginning, you’ll spend more time recruiting other races to your cause than fighting the other faction. The Alliance head to the human nation of Kul Tiras, while the Horde attempt to bring the Zandalari trolls into the fold. Unfortunately, however, both nations have their own problems, so you’ll have to solve those before they’ll lend you their aid. I largely played an Alliance character for this review, so that’s the perspective I’ll be approaching things from.

In Kul Tiras’s case, the country is controlled by four noble houses. House Proudmoore, which is run by Admiral Katherine Proudmoore, runs the capital city of Boralus, so the plan is to send her daughter, Jaina, to petition her for aid. The issue is that Jaina is considered one of the worst traitors in the history of her country, as she sided with the Horde against Kul Tiras years before, a decision that ultimately led to her father’s death. So… this goes about as well as you’d think, leaving you to win the favor of the individual houses.

"Each area feels like a real place, with different flora and fauna that gradually shift into one another. In Tirisgarde Sound, you naturally transition from noble estate to port town, while Drustvar becomes more and more ominous as you venture into the magical corruption overtaking it."

There are three zones in Kul Tiras, one for each noble house: Stormsong Valley, Tirisgarde Sound, and Drustvar. The game’s leveling system lets you tackle these in any order you’d like and each zone in the game, whether Horde or Alliance, is great. Each area feels like a real place, with different flora and fauna that gradually shift into one another. In Tirisgarde Sound, you naturally transition from noble estate to port town, while Drustvar becomes more and more ominous as you venture into the magical corruption overtaking it.

At a certain point, you’ll also gain access to the War Campaign, which replaces Legion’s Class Halls. The War Campaign allows you to recruit Followers who can be sent on quests to acquire rewards, research updates that will aid you in Battle for Azeroth’s zones, and opens up new questlines. It starts by sending you to the different zones on the opposition’s island to establish a foothold by completing a small quest chain. Once finished, this allows you to quest in the other faction’s zones, though you may want to do in it the new War Mode.

Servers in previous eras were divided into PVE (Player vs. Environment) and PVP (Player vs. Player), allowing players who didn’t want to engage in PVP throughout the world of WarCraft to focus on other things. Battle for Azeroth ditches that system entirely, opting to for War Mode, which lets you turn World PVP off and on at will, provided you’re in your faction’s major city. There are benefits to keeping War Mode on: you’ll gain more experience and gold, and you’ll also be able to use your PVP talents. The downside is that you’re always at risk of being killed.

"Island Expeditions are essentially Scenarios from Mists of Pandaria, just expanded into a repeatable mode. You’re teamed up with two other players and dropped off at an island to hunt Azerite, the main cause of the Horde/Alliance conflict."

Progressing in the War Campaign also allows you you to unlock World Quests – which operate more or less the same way they did in Legion, offering timed quests that appear randomly on the different zones and provide rewards for accomplishing them – and the new Island Expeditions. Island Expeditions are essentially Scenarios from Mists of Pandaria, just expanded into a repeatable mode. You’re teamed up with two other players and dropped off at an island to hunt Azerite, the main cause of the Horde/Alliance conflict. How you get Azerite is up to you: you can kill enemies, mine it from ore nodes, and hunt for chests. The wrinkle here is that you’re not alone; there’s a team from another faction hunting for the stuff, too, and you have to get a certain amount before they do.

It’s a fun addition. The fact that it’s a race adds tension and strategy and there’s a lot of ways to win. You could repeatedly kill the enemy team to slow their progress, or just leave them alone in the hopes of beating them honestly. You might also try to kill a big monster or pull a bunch of mobs at once to speed things up. The best part is you can choose to do them in either PVE or PVP. It’s a nice touch that respects the story while allowing players to play how they like.

While I’m positive on much of what Battle for Azeroth offers, there are serious negatives to the game. Artifacts were a positive addition to Legion, and it doesn’t seem like Azerite Armor will be able to properly replace them, though they operate in much the same way. You’ll earn Azerite as you play, which operates a neckpiece you acquire at the start of the expansion. Acquiring enough Azerite levels up that piece, increasing its stats, but it also levels up your Azerite Armor. Azerite Armor consists of a head, shoulder, and chestpiece, each of which can be upgraded as you increase you Azerite level. When you level up, you can choose an upgrade for the armor. 3 of your options are dependant on you class specialization, and the fourth is a generic that can be used no matter what spec you are. The issue is that, unlike upgrading your Artifact, upgrading your Azerite Armor feels limiting. Each piece can only be upgraded three times, and since most of your options are locked behind your class spec, you’re largely limited to two choices once you level up. Worse still, you can’t change your decision once you’ve changed it, meaning you’re out of luck if you decide to play a different specialization and didn’t choose the generic upgrade, at least until you get a new piece. There are also no new talents in BFA, so no matter what you choose, leveling feels less rewarding than it did in Legion. You simply don’t have as many decisions to make and the ones you do have also don’t seem to matter as much.

" While I like the zones and their overall questlines, the fact that there are largely three zones per faction means that those zones are big and filled with quests. Because of this, completing an individual zone takes a very long time and some zones start to drag."

Another major flaw is the way questing is handled. While I like the zones and their overall questlines, the fact that there are largely three zones per faction means that those zones are big and filled with quests. Because of this, completing an individual zone takes a very long time and some zones start to drag. Tirisgarde Sound doesn’t suffer from this as much since the zone is quite varied, often taking you to different-looking areas and having you fight new enemies, but by the end Drustvar can be a slog since the entire storyline revolves around destroying a coven of witches. Drustvar’s questlines are excellent, but you can only fight the same few enemies so many times before it starts to get boring.

To make matters worse, the zones are often overstuffed with side quests that add nothing to the main story and it can be difficult to tell which is which. You spend most of Drustvar liberating areas from the witches, so when you run into a couple of Druids helping liberate a farm from witches, it seems like a main quest. It isn’t. This wouldn’t be so bad if the zones themselves weren’t so long or if these side questlines were clearly marked, but they aren’t.

There’s also the issue of level scaling. Battle For Azeroth’s pre-patch was an absolute mess; when Blizzard squished the game’s stats to make the numbers more reasonable – I was regularly hitting things for millions of damage in Legion – it caused balance issues in earlier portions of the game. Mobs that had once been fairly easy were far too overtuned, which makes leveling difficult. These problems still persist and while Battle for Azeroth’s new content avoids it for the most part – set bonuses and legendaries from Legion stop working at 116, which can leave you noticeably weaker when you hit that level – it can make leveling harder for low level characters.

"It isn’t uncommon for classes to undergo significant changes with a new expansion and for new classes to rise to the top of the totem pole, but when an expansion is as focused on PVP as Battle For Azeroth is, it stands out more than it normally would. It’s impossible to say how this issue will turn out given how new the expansion is, but it’s something to keep an eye on."

Similar problems exist with class balance. Removing Artifacts, and the spells and abilities they offered, required Blizzard to rebalance every class in the same, and some classes did better than others. It isn’t uncommon for classes to undergo significant changes with a new expansion and for new classes to rise to the top of the totem pole, but when an expansion is as focused on PVP as Battle For Azeroth is, it stands out more than it normally would. It’s impossible to say how this issue will turn out given how new the expansion is, but it’s something to keep an eye on.

I also have to mention the story. While I think Battle for Azeroth‘s story beats are largely handed well once things get going, the premise once again makes the Horde the bad guys. Blizzard has often spoken about the fact that both factions do bad things, but the Horde are clearly the bad guys in Battle for Azeroth. Sylvanas burns down a tree full of civilians because Night Elf told her she was a jerk. Normally, this would be fine. Characters are allowed to do bad things and make poor decisions. Thing is, Sylvanas is supposed to be pragmatic and controlled, and this goes against her character. More damning is that we’ve seen this before, in Mists of Pandaria. How Horde players feel about their faction being the unequivocal bad guys is up to them, but it’s sad to see a story that looks very much like Mists of Pandaria so close to that expansion, especially when you disregard a character’s previous characterization to get it there. There’s room for Battle for Azeroth‘s story to fix this issue, but as it stands, the expansion’s setup is a bit disappointing.

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: reviewing an MMO is very difficult. Battle for Azeroth will be a very different game in a couple weeks when the first major content patch drops and it will continue to change over time. Trying to determine what the game might be in the future is a moot point. We can only look at what it is now. As it stands, it’s hard to see Battle for Azeroth as anything less than a step down from Legion. It’s not a bad expansion. In fact, it has a lot going for it. The environment design is among the best in the game, the questlines are largely very good, and Island Expeditions are a welcome addition. But Azerite Armor seems undercooked, the zone pacing is hit and miss, and there are a number of lingering issues with class balance. Battle for Azeroth is a solid expansion so far and Blizzard has made it clear that they’re in it for the long haul. They’ll just need to do a little more if they want to win the war.

This game was reviewed on the PC.

Blizzard Entertainment’s latest expansion for World of Warcraft, Battle for Azeroth, had its share of problems before launch. However, on launch day, it sold over 3.4 million units, thus making it the fastest selling expansion ever for the MMORPG. Legion set the previous record with 3.3 million units on the day it launched.

Battle for Azeroth adds tons of new content to the base game, with a max level cap of 120, new allied races to recruit for both the Horde and Alliance, 20 player PvE Warfronts, Island Expeditions where three players journey to an island to engage in PvP or PvE for resources, and so on. Even more content will be coming once the raid launches in September.

Of course, Battle for Azeroth also launched at a time when Blizzard condensed all of its past content into one monthly subscription. It’s easier now more than ever for new players to get into World of Warcraft (at least price-wise). What are your thoughts on the new expansion? Let us know below.