Blizzard announced at Blizzcon 2018 that it will include World of Warcraft Classic, the highly anticipated reboot of the original 2004 World of Warcraft experience, as part of a standard subscription. The news confirms that Blizzard won’t sell Classic separately or charge an extra fee for playing it.
Better yet, fans now have a release window. Blizzard says fans can expect Classic to arrive in summer 2019. A specific date wasn’t announced.
Some players won’t have to wait to play, however. Classic will be playable on the Blizzcon show floor and will also be available to players at home who own the virtual ticket. Unfortunately, players will only be able to play 60 minutes at a time, and there will be a 90-minute “cooldown” to keep server demand to a minimum.
The announcements related to Classic were the only new information to come from Blizzcon, but the company reiterated some other World of Warcraft news. A focus was placed on patch 8.1, known as Tides of Vengeance, which should be arriving to the game soon.
A new raid, The Battle of Dazar’alor, will be a major burst of new content. It’s set to include two different raids, one for the Alliance and one for the Horde, as the two sides attempt to attack or defend the Horde-held city. This will mark the first time a raid has two different experiences for each side of the conflict. There will also be a new war front, The Battle for Darkshore, which will focus on resolving the fight there in the wake of events that happened just before the current expansion’s release.
Finally, in one last bit of news, Blizzard showed a new cinematic. It was on the short side, but (spoiler alert) showed the Horde general, Saurfang, being released from prison by King Anduin Wrynn, ruler of the Alliance. It’s clear the two will be joining forces again Sylvannas, the current leader of the Horde.
We’re sure we’ll hear more about World of Warcraft as Blizzcon 2018 continues. Several panels will focus on the game and will flesh out both the upcoming features in the Battle for Azeorth patches and also World of Warcraft Classic.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.