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Vessel of Hatred : ce qu’il faut retenir de la première extension de Diablo IV

news.movim.eu / Numerama · Saturday, 15 June - 14:02

diablo 4 extension

Vessel of Hatred, la première extension de Diablo IV, va transporter les joueurs et les joueuses dans une nouvelle région -- celle-ci ne sera pas tout à fait étrangère pour celles et ceux qui ont déjà joué à Diablo II. Il y aura également une nouvelle classe jouable : le sacresprit.

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Are Diablo fans getting too old for the old-school item grind?

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 14 June - 15:54 · 1 minute

Do you have a few hundred hours to hear the good news about our lord and savior, <em>Diablo</em>?

Enlarge / Do you have a few hundred hours to hear the good news about our lord and savior, Diablo ? (credit: Blizzard)

Longtime fans of Diablo II are deeply familiar with the extreme timesink that is the late-game grind for the very best loot . But when the creators of Diablo IV tried to re-create that style of grinding for the latest game in the series, they found that their players' tastes had changed quite a bit in the intervening years.

In a wide-ranging interview with Windows Central , Blizzard's general manager of Diablo , Rod Fergusson, said that they launched Diablo IV under "the assumption that D4 was meant to be more D2 -like." That meant, in part, increasing the length of time required to discover the game's most valuable items after post-Auction-House Diablo 3 made rare item drops much more common .

"One of the assumptions was that people were going to be okay with the long grind for the Unique or an Uber Unique in particular, because in Diablo II , it can go years," Fergusson said. "You can go three years before you find the Uber you're looking for... and so we were like, okay, this is what people love about the progression of D2 , that idea of that very long chase."

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Judge sides with Microsoft in FTC injunction, unlocking final Activision battles

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 11 July, 2023 - 16:29

Attorneys carrying boxes arrive to court in San Francisco, California, US, on Tuesday, June 27, 2023. A judge has ruled that the FTC's reliance on the PlayStation chief's testimony was unpersuasive, while Microsoft and Activision's efforts will help avoid market concentration.

Enlarge / Attorneys carrying boxes arrive to court in San Francisco, California, US, on Tuesday, June 27, 2023. A judge has ruled that the FTC's reliance on the PlayStation chief's testimony was unpersuasive, while Microsoft and Activision's efforts will help avoid market concentration. (credit: Getty Images)

A federal judge in San Francisco today denied the Federal Trade Commission's motion to halt Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, ruling that the FTC was unlikely to prove that the merger would "substantially lessen competition."

Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley's decision (PDF) is heavily redacted in sections covering the company's assets and performance in "AAA Content," "Exclusive Content," and "Cloud Gaming Subscription Services," among others. Segments of those redactions were likely seen in earlier filings, which were poorly redacted with a marker and revealed key financial figures.

The FTC's motion for a temporary restraining order and injunction was filed in an attempt to disrupt the deal before its purported July 18 deadline . The FTC had already initiated an administrative action to investigate the deal's effect on gaming markets, but it petitioned the US District Court for Northern California that Microsoft and Activision "may consummate the Proposed Acquisition at any time."

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Diablo 4 review: Off to a hell of a good start

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 30 May, 2023 - 16:00

Diablo 4 review: Off to a hell of a good start

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When Diablo 3 released 11 years ago, it was a mess.

Put aside the action role-playing game’s infamous server problems at launch—a product of the series going online-only for the first time—the game itself had fundamental issues. At core was its ill-conceived and universally reviled real-money auction house , which changed the thrust of the series’ loot hunt from “look at this badass helm I got from killing an elite demon” to “look at these practical pants I bought from an in-game spreadsheet for $2.99 USD.” Difficulty and balance were all over the place, and, perhaps worst of all to long-time Diablo fans, the previous games’ dark horror aesthetic was replaced with a more colorful, cartoony vibe.

Two years and a management shakeup later, we got the Reaper of Souls expansion, which completely revamped Diablo 3 ’s loot and endgame, giving us the game we should have had from the beginning . Art direction notwithstanding, Diablo 3 ended up in a good place, and I played a ton of it, largely due to its genre-leading combat. (Lest we forget, Diablo 2 also had a game-changing expansion in Lord of Destruction .)

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Blizzard will rename Overwatch cowboy named after fired designer

Matt Paprocki · news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 27 August, 2021 - 11:15

Video game image of a grizzled Old West gunfighter.

Enlarge / The cowboy formerly known as McCree is currently the "Man with No Name." (credit: Blizzard )

Overwatch's cowboy is getting a new name.

This is Blizzard's latest attempt to salvage its image. The studio is dealing with a lawsuit filed by the State of California in July over employee claims of sexual discrimination and harassment, and its recent public defense was ill-received . The cowboy's namesake was Diablo 4 's former lead designer Jesse McCree, who was fired after images showed him inside " the Cosby suite ," where female employees reported they were harassed. The announcement comes a day after the Golden State accused the company of shredding HR documents in an amended complaint.

The cowboy McCree is a gun-for-hire loner in Overwatch lore. In-game, one interaction jokingly casts doubt about McCree's first name being Joel , but it was officially Jesse.

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Blizzard annonce Diablo II Resurrected

Julien Lausson · news.movim.eu / Numerama · Friday, 19 February, 2021 - 23:31

Diablo II

Blizzard a profité de la BlizzConline pour annoncer une version remastérisée de son célèbre hack'n'slash, Diablo II. [Lire la suite]

Abonnez-vous à notre chaîne YouTube pour ne manquer aucune vidéo !

L'article Blizzard annonce Diablo II Resurrected est apparu en premier sur Numerama .

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Le Voleur rejoint le casting de Diablo 4

Maxime Claudel · news.movim.eu / Numerama · Friday, 19 February, 2021 - 23:22

Blizzard Entertainment avait une information de taille à partager sur Diablo 4 durant sa conférence BlizzCon diffusée en ligne. Une nouvelle classe rejoint le casting : le Voleur, qui sera une femme. [Lire la suite]

Voitures, vélos, scooters... : la mobilité de demain se lit sur Vroom ! https://www.numerama.com/vroom/vroom//

L'article Le Voleur rejoint le casting de Diablo 4 est apparu en premier sur Numerama .

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Diablo II Resurrected tops BlizzCon announcement flurry

Sam Machkovech · news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 19 February, 2021 - 22:59 · 1 minute

Enlarge / Long rumored, finally confirmed. (credit: Blizzard)

Blizzard's latest BlizzCon event sees the longtime PC game maker at perhaps its most beleaguered yet. Game delays , notable departures , botched remakes , smartphone-gaming backlash , and an anti-protester reputation have weighed down what was once a sterling RTS/RPG reputation. That led us to wonder: Can today's streaming-only BlizzCon showcase of games and plans show that the company's recent hires and behind-the-scenes reshuffling are paying off?

In at least one respect, the outlook is optimistic, thanks to an impressive reveal of Diablo II: Resurrected . This long-rumored remake includes everything from both the base 2000 game and its 2001 expansion, Lord of Destruction . At first glimpse, this top-to-bottom remake seems to get everything right that WarCraft III: Reforged got so very, very wrong—and we won't have to wait very long to come up with our own impressions. Sign-ups for D2:R 's technical alpha are now live ahead of the game's launch on PC and consoles "in 2021."

The right balance between preservation and polish?

Long rumored, finally confirmed. [credit: Blizzard ]

We've grown increasingly skeptical of Blizzard's sales pitches in recent years, but everything about D2:R strikes us as the right kind of " Blizzard Classic " approach, including the following sales pitches:

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Blizzard absorbs acclaimed Activision studio as a dedicated “support” team

Sam Machkovech · news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 22 January, 2021 - 21:33 · 1 minute

Enlarge (credit: Blizzard Entertainment)

The corporate-behemoth organism that is Blizzard Entertainment, which exists in a symbiotic state next to megaton game publisher Activision, became blurrier on Friday with a surprise announcement: It has absorbed a game studio within the Activision family, effective immediately.

Vicarious Visions, a longtime game studio that was acquired by Activision in 2005, has been shuffled out of the Activision ecosystem and pumped directly into Blizzard's veins. In a statement offered to GamesIndustry.biz , Blizzard confirmed that the 200+ staff at Vicarious Vision has been shifted to a "long-term support" team focused entirely on "existing Blizzard games and initiatives." The news also includes a mild shuffle of leadership, sending current Vicarious studio head Jen Oneal to the Blizzard leadership board as executive vice president of development.

The statement did not clarify exactly when this arrangement began, nor which of Blizzard's "existing" projects would receive Vicarious staff support in particular. (Blizzard representatives did not immediately respond to Ars Technica's questions about the deal.) As of press time, neither Blizzard nor Vicarious have published details or terms about the deal on their respective blogs or social media channels. In fact, Vicarious Visions' website is currently offline altogether.

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