Blizzcon just finished and it’s been quite a crazy week not just for the Blizzard fans but Smash fans as well with their final Super Smash Brothers Ultimate Nintendo Direct episode that aired on November 1st, earlier this week on Thursday. So with that being said, let’s go over the biggest news off the week starting with Blizzard Entertainment.
Diablo Immortal – was announced earlier this week on Friday at Blizzcon. For those who don’t know many fans have been eagerly awaiting for the next Diablo game but it turned to be nothing more than a mobile exclusive only title for iOS/Android phones and tablets. Diablo Immortal is going to be MMOARPG (Massievely Multiplayer Online Action Role Playing Game) on phones and tablets that will have 8 public shared zones at launch, instanced dungeons and an open world hub city called Westmarch where players can meet up with each, chat, check out each others gear, craft items and go on an adventure. The game does not have any resource managing mechanics as far as mana or rage goes as off today and the whole combat system is cooldown based. The game is also being developed in partnership with a mobile Chinese company called Netease, when the game started development is unknown and questions like that have also been dodged.
The Diablo community is extremely upset, the likes and dislikes ratios on the cinematic trailer and gameplay trailer of Diablo Immortal are on some crazily embarassing levels and the Diablo reddit is full of rage. While I’d love to talk more about this drama and the mess that Blizzard has created in greater detail please stay tuned to Gaming Instincts for another article and video on discussing what’s actually happening to the Diablo community, what Diablo Immortal is all about and what’s happening to Blizzard as a company going into future later this week.
Warcraft III Reforged – One of the biggest and argurably the best surprises of this week’s news is the simple fact that Blizzard is actually reforging an instance classic old-school RTS game – Warcraft III. It’s been a very long time since I actually written or said that name outloud, but now it feels fantastic to talk about it once again. Everything in Warcraft III Reforged is made from the ground up as far as the textures and brand new models go. Blizzard stated that they’re using the original scaleable Warcraft III engine but with a much more modern code and hardware. Custome games will also carry over to Warcraft III reforged which is another big technical achivement for Blizzard Entertainment. We’re looking forward to Warcraft III Reforged and will be covering it extensively.
Rastakhan’s Rumble – Hearthstone’s next expansion is finally unveiled and it goes by the name of Rastakhan’s Rumble. The expansion will be releasing on December 4th, 2018 and will be focused around the Troll race from World of Warcraft and their Loa gods who are basically spirits of different animals. The expansion also has a new keyword titled “Overkill” that triggers when you deal more damage than you need to kill an enemy, you get a bonus to attack once again. The fans seem to be pretty happy and excited to see where Rastakhan’s Rumble will take Hearthstone next in terms of the competetive meta and the game as a whole going in into the future.
Overwatch Next Hero – Overwatch’s next upcoming Hero has also been announced and she goes by the name of Ashe. Ashe is an offensive/damage hero who uses her weapon called the Viper to dispatch her enemies. She also uses a coach gun as one of her abilities that knocks people backwards and does a signifiact amount of damage. Her other unique ability is the dynamite throw that can be denoated in mid if shot at. Her ultimate calls down upon her robotic friend B.O.B. who comes crashing down to upper cut the enemy team and start gunning them down. BOB counts as a 7th character in the game for the team and can actually stay on objectives to continue overtime and help your team. Majority of the Overwatch community were quiet happy and are looking forward to trying out Ashe once she releases in the near future.
Heroes of the Storm – Heroes of the Storm is receieving a completely brand new original hero that’s not from any of the Blizzard’s universes such as Diablo, Warcraft or Starcraft, but instead it’s from the actual Heroes of the Storm universe itself – the Nexus. Orphea is a brand new mid-range Assassin character. However, the bigger news for the Heroes of the Storm community are the big major changes to the role reworks and ranked play in both hero/team league that will be rolling out sometime in 2019 going forward.
World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth – Blizzard unvield their release plans for the upcoming 8.1 patch which will be arriving on December 11th. It will feature a new troll raid, azerite improvements, new island expeditions, a warfront set in Darkshore and a couple of other changes. Blizzard also showcase a bit of 8.2 which will be coming further down the road after sometime next year. 8.2 features 2 new explorative zones Nazjatar and Mechagon, replayable world content, remastered Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch battleground, a new raid and much more. World of Warcraft right now is in a tough weird spot due to the mixed critisim of Battle for Azeroth’s launch. However, it seems that Blizzard is working hard to improve their endgame systems and make the content of the game much more engaging and fun in the long run.
The final direct for Super Smash Brother Ultimate aired earlier this week on November 1st on Thursday and it featured the final roster of the game, with one future surprise character Pirahna Plant, confirmed story mode titled World of Light and a Fighter Pass that will contain 5 DLC characters that will be release throughout whole of 2019. You may also pay for each character set $5’99 or $25 for the whole Fighter Pass. Each character set will include a playable new character, a new stage and several music tracks. The final 2 revealed characters were Ken as an Echo fighter and Incineroar from Pokemon. While there was a huge rumor earlier this week that Banjo and a few other characters like Geno were gonna be in the final roster of Super Smash Brothers Ultimate unforunately that was no the case at all and the leak turned to be fake for the most part. Super Smash Brothers Ultimate will be releasing on December 7th, 2018 so stay tuned to our review and coverage of the game going forward.
A Nintendo Switch trailer was also released.
According to SteamDB.
An announcement trailer was also released.