The WoW Classic breaks viewership records on Twitch, and streamers barely get into the game

The World of Warcraft Classic has already proven to be a successful project for Blizzard, and I can thank part of the success for platforms that didn't exist 15 years ago.

When the original World of Warcraft launched about 15 years ago, there were no streamers, influencers, and no HCL in the gaming scene. Today, the situation is much different, best exemplified by the example of the WoW Classic, which launched at midnight last night and breathed new life into the lungs of the old MMORPG king.

It is not known exactly how many players flocked back to Azeroth, but it is known that on Twitch the game was watched at the same time by 1.1 million viewers. It is not an absolute platform record as some esports tournaments have been watched even more, but it is a record for launching one game - moreover 15 years old. To make things more interesting, the WoW Classic was able to attract so many viewers despite the fact that streamers waited a long time to get into the game itself, because the official servers were, of course, overcrowded.

It is also interesting that streamers who do not play the type of games have now switched to playing WoW Classic. It is clear that they are turning as the wind blows, but it will be even more interesting to see how long they will last with the game. At the moment everyone in Classic is starting from scratch and streamers therefore have to invest a lot of time in order to stand out from the crowd. This is not borne out by the fact that the great onslaught of players has caused the game to not be able to quickly create the required amount of enemies for all players.

Blizzard, however, said it would add more servers during the day so that the intrusion wait would not exceed an hour. Until then, treat yourself to a convenient musical:

Fortnite has now become a big advertisement for the second game

It is said that imagination does everything. But money also does a lot of things, and if there is enough of it, it's no stranger to promote the game through another game.

Fortnite has so far featured a variety of products, characters and motifs based on crossovers or collaborations. The game was visited by Thanos, the Avengers and John Wick, the NFL, Nike and Marshmello were promoted, among others. But now Fortnite has become the promotional space for another game. So at Fortnite x Mayhem event we have a huge promotion of Borderlands 3. With the word Borderlands not mentioned anywhere.

From today until September 10, you will find Pandora Rift Zone with challenges and rewards in Fortnite, and you can buy a Psycho Bundle with Claptrap as a helper in the store.

Of course, the crossover of Fornite and Borderlands 3 is not entirely coincidental. Epic Games and the Gearbox development team already have one collaboration in place - Borderlands 3 being temporarily exclusive to the Epic Games Store. All the same, this is the first time Fortnite is promoting another game - indirectly. It will be interesting to see how successful this promotion will be and whether we will see more ads like this in the future.

NEW GAMES: A summer drought is ending this week - a bunch of games are coming

We can finally say that the summer drought in the video game world is officially over. Near the end of the eighth month, several sound games will be fighting for our attention.

There was plenty of kicking and sunbathing, and it was finally time for some serious gaming. Unlike the last few weeks when players have been able to take a collective vacation, some anticipated games are coming out in the coming days, and the good news is that parties will be on all platforms. Here is what is on offer towards the end of this dry month:

CONTROL

From creators Max Payne and Alan Wake, we always expect games with a great cracking model and beautiful graphics. The same is true of their new title called Control, in which we will seek to exterminate the paranormal Hiss force from the oldest house in the world. For extermination we have the so-called arsenal. service weapons - which is converted from a pistol to a rifle at the player's request. In addition, protagonist Jess Fayden will be able to use supernatural powers suc as telekinesis, levitation and the like.

It looks to us like Control combines all the best from Finnish Remedy Entertainment's games to date. It has a science fiction plot like Alan Wake, flexibility in gameplay like Quantum Break, and story structure and missions like Alan Wake.

Control comes out on August 27 for PC (Epic Games Store), PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

ANCESTORS: THE HUMANKIND ODYSSEY

Several games have already tried to show us what the "dawn of humanity" looked like, and there were successes and failures. The most ambitious attempt so far comes in the form of Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, for which the creative director of the first two games of the Assassin's Creed series is credited. At Ancestors, we will lead a tribe of monkeys through their life trials, with the ultimate goal of species survival. The game does not do much to help the monkey player, so it's up to him to orient himself in the rainforest and learn how to extend the species. This part will be especially interesting, but I ask Igor to record it.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey will be released on PC on August 27th (Epic Games Store), with console versions due in late 2019.

WORLD OF WARCRAFT CLASSIC

When we were discussing in the newsroom who would like to download the WoW Classic review, one of our members (not to name which one) expressed that he would gladly take on this task, provided that they send him a pound of cocaine from Blizzard with a game subscription. I believe that his heart has softened in the meantime and that his nostalgia has caught him so much that he will be pleased with his return to Azeroth. Because I don't think there is a World of Warcraft fan who has never considered returning to vanilla servers. While this brings with it some trade-offs and side effects, such as a slow progression, the Classic will be some last attempt to bring back that old feeling of playing WoW until the late hours of the morning that many lost after fifteen years.

Whether it's worth the nostalgia or if the memories are left behind in the past, we'll find out on August 27 on PC (Battle.net). The game will be available to anyone who has an active subscription to standard WoW and will not have to buy separately.

THE DARK PICTURES: MAN OF MEDAN

We eagerly awaiting the next one because then Man of Medan, the first game in an anthology horror series directed by the creators of Until Dawn, comes out. This is one of those games where we play the destinies of a group of characters so we make key decisions for them. In the Man of Medan, this is a group of friends who decide to explore a sunken ship from World War II, and there they discover that it was not sunk because of war or some natural force.

The game will be playable in several ways - solo, in online and local multiplayer for 2-4 players. The first turn of the story, which should take about four hours, also unlocks an additional mode in which, when re-crossing, we get different perspectives on all events.

We play Man of Medan on August 30th on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One platforms.

BLAIR WITCH

Another horror comes on the same Friday. Fans of the genre will recognize that this is the first official game of the Blair Witch movie series. The game draws its inspiration from the original movie, but has a separate story and takes us to explore a haunted forest accompanied by a dog called Bullet. We will experience all the fears with a first-person look, and it seems that this will be another one of those games where we cannot fight evil but have to run from it.

Blair Witch will release on August 30th on PC and Xbox One. The game will be available as part of an Xbox Game Pass subscription.

ASTRAL CHAIN

On the Nintendo Switch console, the summer drought will last a little longer, but at the end of the month Switch owners get a big exclusive called the Astral Chain. Behind this futuristic action is the Japanese studio PlatinumGames, which occasionally delivers real spectacles to us (Bayonetta, Nier: Automata, Vanquish), so hopefully this game will continue that streak. At Astral Chain, we play as a member of the Neuron Special Police Unit, and in dealing with the case we use the unusual ability to enter an interdimensional passage where we can summon an animal helper and fight various threats.

REST OF THE GAMES

As they would say on those irritating commercials - but that's not all! This week, the full-length shooter of Hunt: Showdown (27. 8. for PC, Xbox One), aRPG titled Pagan Online (27. 8. for PC), and the Wreckfest hit the consoles (27. 8.) there's also a new release of MXGP for PC, PS4 and XBO (8/27).

Also pay attention to the cute 2D Knights and Bikes game where we track the growing up of two friends during the 1980s - on bikes.

Spyro is flying towards new platforms soon

Spyro Reignited Trilogy arrives on PC and Nintendo Switch platforms early in the ninth month.

Spyro Reignited Trilogy was one of my best games of 2018, so much so that I plan to play it again this fall in PC version. The purple dragon will appear on PC and Nintendo's (Switch) platform for the first time on September 9, and each of these versions brings some specifics. On PC, the game will spin at 60 frames per second, while the Switch version will allow it to play in portable mode.

The creators of Sims games are working on a brand new project

The creative director's job ad indicates that the Maxis studio is preparing a brand new project.

The Maxis development studio has not launched a new game for a very long time. It has been speculated that they might be launching The Sims 5 soon, but it seems safer to throw out a bunch of expansions for an existing game. They have virtually retired SimCity and their Spores have been in vegetation for over eight years. But it seems that the crew will not become a studio that deals exclusively with the Sims series.

According to the open competition for the job of creative director at Maxis, it can be concluded that the studio is preparing a new IP. From a little bit of information, we learn that the game is designed as a service that would be active for a long time, and job candidates are required to experience playing games for PC and mobile devices. Plus there is the experience of working with licensed content, which may indicate that the game could be licensed, that is, to follow something else - a movie, series, etc.


He also mentions that the creative director would be working from a studio in Austin, Texas, where he is not otherwise headquartered in Maxis.

Check out 25 minutes of gameplay in zombies filled with Dying Light 2

The Techland development studio shared a gameplay clip from Dying Light 2 that it showed at the E3 show this year, but behind closed doors.

We tried the new Avengers game at Gamescom and it was good

If you made your conclusion about Marvel's Avengers as soon as you watched that first gameplay video, you probably got it all wrong. The game is much bigger and different than that first video shows - here's what I found out at Gamescom after playing it.

The internet is not happy with the look of the Joker coming to Mortal Kombat

Although the Joker is one of the most beloved villains to many fans of movies about superheroes, its latest version has not sat down for anyone. Will she remain the black sheep in the family or will she win us over with her moves? Here's what the internet thinks about it.

This week is full of surprises, and one of them has been taken care of by Warner Bros. and the NetherRealm development studio, which are credited with the popular Mortal Kombat 11. Specifically, as part of the latest Kombat Pack DLC, two new characters have been revealed that are coming soon. This is the Terminator, more specifically the model from the T-800 series, which will be portrayed in the upcoming Dark Fate movie by Arnold Schwarzenegger and the "super villain" Joker.

And while the internet agrees that the Terminator really does seem like it came from the cult classics of our childhoods (my bar), the Joker doesn't work that way. Young, gentle, inevitable, shaved, with a slightly goofy look on his face - the Joker definitely does not act as someone who can parry a squad out of the box, let alone the Knight of Darkness.

As is usually the case with the Joker, the internet remembers all the past versions of our favorite villain. Most mentioned was the relationship with the Joker embodied by Heath Ledger, primarily because of his younger age, but there are no similarities except for years of age. Disturbed, brilliant, crazy, but intelligent, Heath Ledger's Joker is miles away from this one from Mortal Kombat that seems to scare the kids off in the parks in their spare time.

However, stories have emerged suggesting that the Joker should not initially have been part of the Kombat Pack 1 DLC, but that another cult classic of cinema should have appeared instead - Ash “Boomstick” Williams of The Evil Dead trilogy.

Ash's name was mentioned back in April after the information obtained from mining the game's data was released, and although the Joker appeared in the same data, everything indicated that Ash would join us first. Moreover, Boomstick also appears in an official video announcement that was made at the end of May this year.

Well, maybe a "strong" word is appearing, because at the end of the announcement, only the sound of a chainsaw and blood spatter can be heard without any additional clues. This would seem to the untrained passerby as irrelevant information, but bearing in mind so far, this clearly indicates that Ash should have been a new reinforcer in the Mortal Kombat 11 squad.

And now the question arises: “So what happened? Why the motorcycle? Why the Joker, not Ash? ”. These questions were answered via Twitter by NetherRealm's chief of development, Ed Boon, who said the schedule for revealing the characters was beyond his control. Not much, but it is enough to raise discussions and theories about how Mortal Kombat manages Warner Bros.

Some say the arrival of the Joker is related to the release of a movie about this villain, which premiered in October this year, and will be embodied by the outspoken Joaquin Phoenix. This seems like a stretch for us, because the DLC comes only early next year, a few months after the movie's release, but when it comes to playing big houses, nothing is certain, as the fate of our favorite Spider-Man clearly shows.


Either way, the Joker is coming to us. He is not the hero we deserve, nor is he the hero we need. At least not in this form.