Tag: Blizzard

WoW Vanilla Server Demands Resurface Ahead of Blizzcon


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Blizzcon is right around the corner, and while eyes may be directed on upcoming content for Blizzard’s many titles, whether or not Diablo IV will be a thing, and if Blizzard realizes that everyone already knows about Sombra, others are looking to the past. More specifically, a new petition has surfaced asking Blizzard to give consideration to vanilla servers for World of Warcraft. The petition was started by Mark Kern, a controversial figure, ex-World of Warcraft developer, and founder of Red 5 Studios.

Kern’s petition has drawn some criticism over asking players to bring up Legacy at panels during the convention, despite Blizzard’s previous statement that vanilla servers would not be part of the convention schedule. Blizzard’s past statements have offered a glimmer of hope into the prospect of “pristine” servers (not legacy), however the company has been silent about any concrete plans. Whether or not the company will reveal anything more detailed will need to be seen.

(Source: Change.org)

Sacramento Man Arrested For Death Threats Toward Blizzard


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It goes without saying that sending death threats for any reason is generally a bad idea. You don’t accomplish anything, you waste everyone’s time, and as one Sacramento man found out, it can get you arrested.

Stephen Cebula, 28, is facing criminal charges over death threats that he allegedly sent to Blizzard’s offices, threatening to show up with an AK47 and “cause a disturbance.”

According to court documents, between July 2, 2016, and July 3, 2016, Cebula transmitted messages over the internet to Blizzard Entertainment, in which he stated that he “may or may not pay [Blizzard] a visit with an AK47 amongst some other ‘fun’ tools,” and “might be inclined to ‘cause a disturbance’ at [Blizzard’s] headquarters in California with an AK47 and a few other ‘opportunistic tools.’”

If convicted, Cebula faces up to five years in prison and a fine of $250,000. The defendant is, naturally, presumed innocent until proven guilty.

(Source: US Attorney’s Office)

Overwatch Introduces Ana, Healing Sniper


Following Blizzard’s recent reveal of a sniper rifle with healing capabilities, gamers are finally being introduced to the latest playable member of Overwatch: Ana. The mother of Phariah, Ana’s biotic rifle is capable of healing friendlies and inflicting damage over time to enemies.

Her sidearm, a sleep dart, is capable of putting enemies to sleep (naturally) and interrupting several ultimate abilities. A biotic grenade heals allies while damaging enemies, and her nano boost allows allies to move faster, deal more damage, and take less damage.

Check out Ana’s origin story below:

Blizzard Silencing Abusive World of Warcraft Players


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Blizzard has unveiled new policies surrounding players using abusive language in World of Warcraft chat, primarily in how the game will deal with people who receive numerous reports.

Under Blizzard’s new system, players who are reported multiple times will receive an account-wide penalty. Silenced players will be unable to speak in most chat channels, cannot send mail, send party invitations, create calendar events, or send war game invitations and duel invitations.

Silenced players will still have access to whisper chat with friends/raids, create parties/raids, share quests, and talk in global chat when a moderator is present. Chat is restricted for 24 hours on first offense, with each subsequent action doubling that time with no maximum. The tenth silence on an account, for example, will last 12,288 hours or 512 days.

Silenced players are restricted on an account-wide basis.

(Source: World of Warcraft)

Overwatch Teases Healing Sniper Rifle


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If a recent tweet by the official Overwatch account is anything to go by, the ability to headshot your teamates back to health may soon be on its way. Posted on the @PlayOverwatch Twitter account, the image shows blueprints for a sniper rifle with healing abilities.

Commentary from Overwatch heroes in the image adds a bit to the lore, showing Mercy’s opposition to what she sees as a slippery slope toward a weaponized gun. Torbjorn, meanwhile, insists that it will only be used as a healing item.

The Prototype Biotic Rifle may or may not be related to Sombra, a possible hero whose teasers can be found in multiple locations within Overwatch.

(Source: Overwatch)

Blizzard Is Suing Bossland Cheat Maker…Again


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Blizzard has filed suit against World of Warcraft bot maker and Diablo gold farmer Bossland GmbH at a federal court in California. In addition to its antics in World of Warcraft and Diablo, German-based Bossland also sells cheats for other Blizzard titles including Heroes of the Storm.

The lawsuit is quite standard for companies going up against cheat developers, utilizing copyright infringement, unfair competition, and DMCA allegations of tampering with the game’s DRM. The lawsuit also alleges that the cheat makers are causing damage to Blizzard’s business by harming their goodwill and reputation with customers forced to deal with cheaters.

“Defendants not only know that their conduct is unlawful, but they engage in that conduct with the deliberate intent to harm Blizzard and its business. Blizzard is entitled to monetary damages, injunctive and other equitable relief, and punitive damages against Defendants.”

Blizzard is claiming jurisdiction in the United States as Bossland does business in the country. The game developer previously sued Bossland in German court over Diablo III gold farming and was forced to withdraw their case.

(Source: Complaint)

Overwatch “Avoid This Player” Removed Due To Abuse


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Blizzard has announced the removal of Overwatch’s “avoid this player” feature after, perhaps unsurprisingly, the function was abused to avoid playing against highly skilled players. Meant to allow players an opportunity to avoid toxic players, Jeff Kaplan explained on the forums that the function was abused to avoid professional-tier players.

One of the best Widowmaker players in the world complained to us about long queue times. We looked into it and found that hundreds of other players had avoided him (he’s a nice guy – they avoided him because they did not want to play against him, not because of misbehavior). The end result was that it took him an extremely long time to find a match.

On the other hand, players can still make use of the ‘prefer this player’ feature. Widowmaker is the sniper class of Overwatch, allowing skilled shots to take out enemies from far away. Blizzard recently nerfed Widowmaker’s abilities in order to better balance out her abilities.

(Source: Blizzard)

Check Out Overwatch’s Golden Guns


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In his previous talk, Jeff Kaplan announced that competitive mode would bring golden gun skins as a reward for players, with the most skilled among the player base getting their hands on the (presumably) beautiful weapons much sooner than the rest. According to screenshots revealed on the Korean public test server, those guns may be coming sooner than thought.

These guns have not been confirmed by Blizzard, so they may just be high quality fakes. The odds of that seem unlikely.

(Source: Forum)

Nerf The Hammer: McCree/Widowmaker Downgraded In Today’s Patch


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It was nice of Blizzard to provide us with this PR snapshot of McCree and Widowmaker side by side, because the two are the focal point of the first big balance patch for Overwatch. Launched on PC today and coming to consoles as part of a larger patch on a later date, players will either be crying foul or rubbing their hands in glee at the knowledge that two of Overwatch’s more problematic characters have been chained back a bit.

McCree’s balance brings his pistol damage from 70 to 45, while reducing the wait before he reloads by more than half (.75 seconds to .3 seconds).

McCree was performing too well against all targets, making him feel like a must-pick in many situations. By reducing the damage of his alternate fire, McCree is now significantly weaker against tanks like Roadhog and Reinhardt, but still maintains his lethality against smaller targets like Tracer and Genji.

Widowmaker, on the other hand, has been equally buffed/debuffed in various areas. While the base damage of her scoped shot has been reduced by a fifth (15 to 12), the damage multiplier on headshots has been boosted from 2x to 2.5x. Additionally, players must now wait for the unscoping animation to finish before scoping again. Finally, her ultimate now costs 10% more.

In the right hands, Widowmaker can often feel unstoppable—even when just landing body shots instead of critical heads shots. The changes to her alternate fire weaken body shot damage while leaving her headshot damage unchanged. Additionally, we felt her Ultimate ability, Infra-Sight, was coming up a little too frequently, especially considering its impact on the game.

In short: McCree can’t take down tanks as easily and Widowmaker can no longer one-shot even characters like Tracer with a hit to the body, preventing her from dominating the battlefield as she was before. Also on the block for a balance is D.Va, although she will be made more powerful. Unlike McCree or Widowmaker, D.Va’s balancing patch is going to take a bit more time to iron out the specifics.

(Source: Blizzard)

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)