Author: Admin

Conan Exiles Enters Early Access In September


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Conan Exiles is now available to add to your wishlist on Steam, however the game itself won’t be available for another few months. In a press release published today, Funcom has revealed that its multiplayer survival game Conan Exiles will be heading to Steam Early Access in September.

Accompanying the announcement is a brand new trailer showing off some early gameplay, with players laying siege to castles, building, destroying, and generally slaughtering each other in massive numbers.

“We’re very excited (and a bit nervous) about launching our first Early Access title,” said Funcom CEO Rui Casais. “The team wants to give the players the best possible experience, and while we are used to working on a game for several years before letting players in, this time around we will let players in just nine months after development started!”

As with any early access game, Age of Conan will not be feature complete upon its initial launch. Customers should keep that fact in mind before they make their purchase.

[NM] ZombieRush Is Definitely Buying Reviews


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I have no idea if ZombieRush is a good game, its Steam page would definitely seem to imply so despite the top two most helpful reviews being overwhelmingly negative.

The most recent review (as of this publishing) is by user tyXYDelcatQU, who I will call Ty for the foreseeable future. I looked into Ty’s account and he appears to be playing Electric Zombies. Ty has three reviews for the 44 products in his account, two of which are exactly the same: “Very simple, straightforward gameplay but highly entertaining. 9/10.” All three games have 3.9-4.1 hours invested in them.

But whoever said lacking creativity was a crime? Let’s go down to #2, user yXSSkittJH, who I will be referring to as Skitt. Now Skitt has three reviews out of 44 games in their library and has reviewed ZombieRush, BaseSquad 49, and The Culling of the Cows, the same three games as Ty above with identical reviews on two games. Skitt was also playing Electric Zombies at the time of this publishing.

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Alright, two could still be a coincidence. Let’s look at the following set of reviews to see if there is a correlation.

There appear to be around 200 fake reviews in a row, and I know because I counted all of them, all by accounts with the same three games, same review structure, same comments in many cases (reviewing two games exactly the same and then reviewing Culling of the Cows as ‘gg’). Like every instance of mass production, the reviews come in blocks. Thirty reviews in a row from accounts with 44 games and 3 reviews, followed by another fifty of accounts with 50 games and 4 reviews.

So it’s obvious that Zombie Rush is buying reviews in bulk, thinking that the average consumer is too stupid to notice hundreds of positive, one line reviews written by accounts with generated names and the same number of games/reviews, all playing the same games.

ZombieRush was developed by Arthur Kariev.

The Division Hops On Board The Perma-Ban Train


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With Ubisoft announcing just a few days ago that it would be banning permanently banning cheaters in Rainbow Six Siege, the idea that The Division would follow suit was merely an inevitability. In no surprising motion, the developer has announced that the zero-tolerance policy will indeed be making its way to the streets of Manhattan to weed out unruly players.

Just how serious is Ubisoft? Enough to punish more than 30,000 accounts with around 10% of those receiving permanent bans over the past month. Due to a perceived likelihood of recidivism by cheaters, these bans will now be permanent on the first offense.

Following this campaign of suspensions and bans, it also became clear that while huge progress has been made in terms of cheat detection, our 14 days suspension on first offense policy has not been dissuasive enough. Judging from your feedback, and based on what we witnessed when cheaters came back to the game, we have now decided to push our policy one step further: we will now start applying permanent bans on first offense when players are caught using cheat engines and we will communicate clearly when new ban waves are taking place.

It is unlikely that Ubisoft will go as far as Blizzard has with Overwatch cheaters, banning them on subsequent accounts. Cheating has been a major problem on the PC version of The Division going as far back as the beta, with players using programs that modify client-side data to give themselves unlimited health and ammo, among other unfair advantages.

(Source: Ubisoft)

McCree Is Getting Nerfed In Overwatch’s Next Patch


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It might be high noon somewhere, but McCree is about to see his anti-tank capabilities heavily reduced. In an interview with Eurogamer, Blizzard’s own Jeff Kaplan got in touch to discuss issues like server tick, competitive, matchmaking, and more. He also discusses two heroes about to get a once over thwack with the balance board.

As Kaplan explains in his response, McCree is supposed to be a counter to fast-moving characters like Tracer, Genji, and Reaper. His moves allow him to flashbang an enemy to stun them, then quickly ‘fan the hammer’ to unload his entire clip in a split second. Make no mistake, McCree’s counter works great as designed, too great. What the design team didn’t want was for McCree’s combo to be an instant win button against tanks.

So McCree’s fan the hammer move will have its damaged lessened, making it still lethal against small to mid tier enemies while being less lethal against tanks. In the hands of the right player, McCree will still be a threat against tanks, just not as much as he is now.

D.Va, on the other hand, is proving to be more of a difficult character to balance. Heroes in Overwatch are generally defined either by their damage output or survivability, and D.Va right now isn’t very good at either. As she stands right now, D.Va needs to be very close in order to pile on any damage, but has neither the maneuverability of an offense hero (say Tracer or Soldier: 76) or the survivability of a tank (Roadhog, Bastion) to survive those encounters.

As a result, the team is going to take longer than McCree to roll out D.Va’s balance. Current ideas revolve around buffing one of those two factors of damage output or survivability.

You can read the entire interview at Eurogamer.

Cryptic Founder Now CEO Of Daybreak Game Company


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Daybreak Game Company is now being headed by a founder of Cryptic Studios, and it isn’t Bill Roper. In a press release posted yesterday, we learned that Jack Emmert is joining the former Sony Online Entertainment studio as chief executive officer stationed at the studio’s San Diego headquarters.

“I’m very proud of what we accomplished at Cryptic Studios, and I’m ready for a new set of challenges,” said Emmert. “As a lifelong comic book fan, I’m thrilled to become part of the DCUO team and eager to engage and play alongside new communities of players. I look forward to being a part of the future of DCUO, as well as guiding our roster of new titles out of Daybreak Austin.”

Emmert founded Cryptic Studios in 2000, leading his studio in creating much beloved MMOs like City of Heroes.

(Source: Daybreak Game Company press release)

Black Desert Online Is Also Banning Cheaters


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Cheaters in Black Desert Online beware, Daum is following in the footsteps of other developers in reaffirming that players who break the rules will be dealt with swiftly and without prejudice. With complaints regularly being lobbied against the developer for failing to act on bots and hackers, Daum has announced that bans will now be conducted in waves, and will be permanent.

Greetings Adventurers,
While the vast majority of the community consists of honest players, some users did resort to cheating by using bots and hacking tools. This kind of behavior is a violation of our Terms of Use and not tolerated by us. After an investigation phase, where we made sure to collect all required details, we will now start banning those individuals on a bigger scale.
Starting today we will ban bot and cheating tool users in waves.
Banning waves will take place in regular intervals and we will continue banning as long as we find cheaters.
There is no coming back for convicted cheaters. Bans are permanent.

(Source: Black Desert Online)

Rainbow Six Siege: Ubisoft Now Bans On First Offense


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Ubisoft is following in the line of Blizzard and taking a hard line stance against cheating in Rainbow Six Siege. In a code of conduct update, players have been warned that cheating is now a permanent ban on the first offense. In addition, the team is considering use of third party anti-cheat options like Fairfight that will be implemented at some point in the near future.

“The presence of cheating in the game is something we take very seriously, and is a priority on the development team. This update is one step among many that we are working on to better engage with the community on this issue.”

Not all instances of cheating will result in permanent bans, although the FAQ does not specify exactly where the two divide. The move follows recent revelations that Blizzard is banning cheaters in Overwatch across multiple accounts, and after The Division launched to heavy criticism over cheaters running rampant.

(Source: Ubisoft)

Neverwinter: Guild Alliances Launches On PC


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Guilds in Neverwinter will finally be able to form alliances this week, as Perfect World Entertainment has launched The Maze Engine: Guild Alliances on PC. With this update, guilds of all sizes will be able to form up into alliances, allowing smaller guilds to level up faster and providing rewards for everyone involved. Members from different guilds are able to travel to each other’s strongholds, make purchases from their stores, and even make deposits in their coffers.

The Guild Alliance update comes alongside the Sword Coast Chronicle, an attempt to make the leveling process more straightforward, with campaigns and missions arranged by difficulty. Players who have already seen much of what Neverwinter has to offer should check their Chronicle, as they likely have many rewards to claim.

New content awaits players of all stripes in the Guild Alliance update. You can check out all of the details on the official website below. Guild Alliance is live on PC with Xbox and Playstation coming later this year.

(Source: Neverwinter)

Fandango Drops Two Behind The Scenes Warcraft Videos


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The Warcraft movie opens this Friday, June 10th with many movie-goers picking up their tickets (or ordering them online) for Thursday night. Those who opt to see Warcraft in theaters will be able to pick up a copy of World of Warcraft with their movie ticket absolutely free, and Box Office Mojo reports that the film has brought in $70 million internationally ahead of the American release.

If you’re a fan of the behind the scenes fun, Fandango has created a couple of short videos along with a few of the film’s stars. Watch Rob Kazinsky (Orgrim) show Krisitan Harloff how to walk like an Orc. Alternative, Travis Fimmel (Anduin Lothar), Paula Patton (Garona), Toby Kebbell (Durotan), and Rob Kazinsky team up to see who can answer the most Warcraft trivia.

Are you planning on seeing the Warcraft movie this week? For our viewers outside of America, have you seen it yet? Drop a comment in the box below and let us know.

(Source: Fandango #1, Fandango #2)

PSA: Battlefield Beta Phishing


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Battlefield 1 is making big headlines and with E3 just days away, it only makes sense that some unscrupulous individuals are piggybacking on the hype to defraud users. According to reports popping up, the URL http://www.battlefieldbeta.com has popped up, among others, with fake signup links that steal your EA username and password.

MMO Fallout traced the domain back to Whoisguard, a service in Panama that allows for anonymous domain registration and, unsurprisingly, is used to hide the identity of people engaged in fraudulent and criminal activity. As always, users should remain vigilant when browsing the net and pay attention to the domain when deciding where to enter your credentials.