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Blizzard games like 'World of Warcraft' will go offline in China next year
Blizzard Entertainment will be suspending key games like World of Warcraft in China because it failed to reach an agreement with partner NetEase.
Blizzard will reveal the next 'World of Warcraft' expansion on April 19th
The Warcraft mobile game will be unveiled in May.
'Hearthstone' is getting a classic format that takes the game back to 2014
World of Warcraft's Burning Crusade expansion isn't the only Blizzard property getting the classic treatment.
Activision Blizzard pulls its games from GeForce Now
GeForce Now, NVIDIA's game streaming service, went live for everyone last week. It allows you to play hundreds of games from dozens of publishers in the cloud, but Activision Blizzard's titles are no longer among the options after the publisher asked NVIDIA to remove its titles from the service. "While unfortunate, we hope to work together with Activision Blizzard to reenable these games and more in the future," an NVIDIA staff member wrote on the GeForce Now forums.
YouTube will stream the CoD and Overwatch leagues in 2020
Activision Blizzard's next big esports bet, Call of Duty League, gets underway today. While the company worked with Twitch in the past on Overwatch League, that's not where you'll be able to watch its latest foray into top-level competitive gaming. YouTube will be Activision Blizzard's exclusive worldwide streaming partner (except for China) for both leagues this year, along with Hearthstone events and other esports endeavors.
Blizzard's 2019 event opened with an apology for its response to protests
Along with announcements of new games and expansions, the opening remarks from Blizzcon 2019 included a reference to how the company handled a Hearthstone pro who voiced support for Hong Kong protesters in a post-match interview. Blizzard banned the player, "Blitzchung," for a year, stripped him of his winnings and cut ties with the casters who were interviewing him, initiating protests from others who saw the company's moves as violations of free speech, and favoring the Chinese government. On the event stage, president J. Allen Brack said "Blizzard had an opportunity to bring the world together..We moved too quickly in our decision, and then, to make matters worse, we were too slow to talk with all of you. When I think about what I'm most unhappy about, it's really two things: We didn't live up to the high standards we set for ourselves. And second, we failed in our purpose."
Blizzard halves 'Hearthstone' pro's suspension over Hong Kong protest
Three days after Blizzard handed down a year-long ban to pro Hearthstone player 'Blitzchung,' aka Ng Wai Chung, the company has walked back its decision. In a letter to fans Blizzard president J. Allen Brack stated that they decided since he played fairly, he is entitled to his winnings, which had been stripped after he called for the liberation of Hong Kong during a postgame interview. The suspension for Blitzchung and the Taiwanese shoutcasters who were interviewing him is now six months, as "a consequence for taking the conversation away from the purpose of the event and disrupting or derailing the broadcast." According to Brack, this is the company not trying to take sides and that its relationships in China -- namely Tencent's ownership stake in the company -- had no impact on the decision. It remains to be seen how this move will go over in China, where a response to the NBA's statement regarding a Hong Kong support tweet by Daryl Morey saw the league's games pulled from TV and signage taken down. Meanwhile, for the many gamers angered by Blizzard taking action against one of its esports players, claiming that "Every Voice Matters" while also insisting that its games "are not a platform for divisive social or political views" will be difficult to take seriously.
Blizzard is 'assessing the situation' after Hong Kong protest ban
Blizzard is considering its options as fans around the globe react to its decision to ban Hearthstone esports player Ng Wai Chung, known professionally as Blitzchung, after he voiced support for the protests in Hong Kong during a live post-match interview. Two days after pulling down his gas mask and calling to "liberate Hong Kong" on the livestream, Chung's winnings from the Grandmasters tournament were rescinded, he was banned from pro play for a year, and ties were cut with the two Taiwanese casters who happened to be on-camera at the time. "It's a violation of free speech," Chung told Engadget. "I am pretty sure I won't get that kind of punishment if my speech was pro-China-government."
Blizzard bans 'Hearthstone' pro for Hong Kong protest support
The esports world is finding itself embroiled in a political dispute. Blizzard has banned pro Hearthstone player Ng Wai Chung (aka Blitzchung) for a year after he voiced support for Hong Kong protesters in a post-match interview. The statement allegedly violated rules forbidding players from saying something that "offends a portion or group of the public" or "otherwise damages" Blizzard's image. The developer is also kicking Chung out of the Grandmasters, eliminating his winnings from the tournament and halting work with the casters who conducted the interview despite their attempts to distance themselves from the statement.
Hearthstone's new expansion brings back Quests and the League of Explorers
Grab a camel and don't forget your sunscreen, because the next expansion of Blizzard's Hearthstone will be desert themed.
ESPN's college esports show debuts tonight at 9 PM ET
The line between esports and other competitions continues to blur, and the latest sign is a new show from ESPN that's about to air. College Esports Championship: Countdown will run every week, starting tonight at 9 PM ET. It's all leading up to the very first ESPN Collegiate Esports Championship (CEC) in May, as various schools compete in Overwatch, Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition, Hearthstone, StarCraft II and Heroes of the Storm. Viewers can watch on ESPN3, as well as Twitch, YouTube and Twitter. The show will be hosted by Alex "Goldenboy" Mendez and LeTigress, as they cover the week's collegiate esports action and its growing presence on campuses. It's not quite the March Madness you're used to, but who knows, maybe one day students will be standing behind esports commentators holding weird signs supporting their university. A YouTube stream for the show is embedded below.
Baidu taps Unity's game engine to test its self-driving cars
Unity, the same company whose 3D gaming engine brought you Cuphead and Hearthstone is now helping Chinese internet giant Baidu develop the next generation of autonomous vehicles, the two companies announced on Tuesday.
Blizzard esports app keeps you on top of league matches
BlizzCon is right around the corner, which means big tournaments are imminent -- and Blizzard unsurprisingly wants to be sure you can follow along. It just launched a Blizzard Esports app for Android and iOS that provides news, schedules, score and live viewing (including alerts) for competitive events in the developer's various franchises, such as the impending finale for the Overwatch World Cup. If you're stuck at work when the US team is taking on South Korea, you won't have to dig through news sites to get scores or tune in.
Hearthstone’s ‘Boomsday’ expansion brings mad science to the card game
The second expansion of the year for Blizzard's digital card game Hearthstone, called The Boomsday Project, is coming on August 7th. Expect explosions and lab experiments gone awry as the title's next 135-card set brings the usual goodies: New keywords, an empowered card type and a couple twists on familiar elements.
'Hearthstone’s first big expansion of 2018, ‘Witchwood,’ is live
With the release of the Witchwood expansion just now, Blizzard's card game Hearthstone has officially ticked over into a new year. That means all of the cards from 2016 have rotated out of the competitive Standard mode -- good riddance, Yogg Saron and Barnes -- to make room for new ones. As was the case in previous years, this first new set of cards for the year is the best time for interested players to get in the game.
First 'Hearthstone' expansion of 2018 delves into ‘The Witchwood’
Weeks after laying out this year's plan for Hearthstone, Blizzard has announced the first expansion of 2018: The Witchwood. Once it lands, the Year of the Raven will begin -- and all of 2016's cards will be retired from the main Standard format. The haunted forest-themed set will introduce 135 cards and several card types that introduce new styles of play. And like the last two content additions, players will get solo content for free. The announcement didn't give a release date, but if the last two years are any indication, The Witchwood will likely drop next month.
'StarCraft' 20th anniversary brings freebies and a short film
Blizzard is keeping up its habit of marking the anniversaries of major games. The original StarCraft is turning 20 on March 31st, and the studio is promising a slew of extras across its games to mark the occasion, including the classic real-time strategy title itself. You can log in to StarCraft: Remastered and StarCraft II after March 6th to get commemorative interface skins, plus portraits and decals if you sign into SCII by April 6th. And if you're not particularly big on those titles, there are plenty of other ways to obtain perks -- you might even prefer them to the ones you get with StarCraft proper.
Some 'Hearthstone' cards will be phased out with April's expansion
Blizzard has solidified Hearthstone's annual flow of retiring old cards and welcoming new ones: For the third year in a row, a new expansion will come in April that signals a sea change in the digital card game. While we don't know the title or flavor of Hearthstone's next set, we do have a list of changes and new features that will arrive when 2017's Year of the Mammoth gives way to 2018's Year of the Raven.
The next ‘Hearthstone’ expansion is a dungeon-delving adventure
Blizzard's free-to-play card game Hearthstone just released its third and final expansion of 2017, Kobolds and Catacombs. Like the other two content releases earlier this year, K&C adds 135 new cards and a few new concepts to shake up play. But most exciting is the new single-player mode that riffs on classic dungeon-delving tabletop adventures. Dive in now: Players get three free card packs plus a random legendary weapon to celebrate the expansion's launch.
Twitch can filter streamers by their 'Overwatch' hero of choice
Overwatch and Hearthstone fans will now find it easier to discover livestreams most relevant to them after Twitch introduced new channel filtering options for the popular Blizzard titles. From today, viewers can open a new menu that appears at the top of each directory, which allows them to select channels based on what hero a streamer is playing, as well as the opportunity to filter by game mode, player rank, number of wins in Hearthstone games.