Epic kicked off the Paragon early access period today, but to get in you’ll need two things. One, a willingness to pony up for a Founder’s Pack, which come in three flavors ranging from $20 to $100; and two, a PC capable of actually playing the thing. I can’t help you with the first part,...
I haven’t been deep into the League of Legends scene for a while now, but this clip left even me dumbfounded. LoL player Delogrand—who either prays to RNGesus twice a day or is truly one level above ‘next-level’—managed to get both a Baron steal and a pentakill with no help from his team and after being the first person to...
This week, things ramp back up for Dota 2 with Pit League Season 4, Hearthstone’s Winter Championship crosses the ocean, the LCS marches onward like an unstoppable army, and Heroes of the Storm sees its biggest tournament since the Spring Championship. There’s a whole bunch of great tournaments happening this weekend, and here’s how you can...
Roshpit Champions, the headline game mode in Valve’s Custom Game Pass initiative through which creators can charge $1 for in-game extras, has been found to use assets from other mods and games without their creators’ permission. Icons and art from other Workshop projects, like the Adamantine Samurai Helmet from the FrozenYoroi Warrior set and Admiral’s Boots taken from Resolute Seafarer,...
A new Gosu Gamers report paints a rather bleak picture of the pro Hearthstone scene in China, which it says is wracked by cheating, primarily in the form of win-trading and pay-to-legend. The problem isn’t unique to China—the report makes note of a couple of high-profile incidents involving Western players—but it’s particularly endemic in China because...
Blizzard is adding a new map to Heroes of the Storm called Lost Cavern, and it’s a little bit different than what we’ve seen before. It’s a single-lane map with no Map Objectives, Hearthstones, or Starting Area heals, designed to keep players “laser-focused on one constant, single-lane teamfight.” “We’ve seen that players have been creating...
Epic’s third person lane-pusher Paragon enters early access tomorrow, although servers are already live for alpha testers and select invitees. I really like the game so far: it looks great, the fully three-dimensional map shakes up the genre in a meaningful way, and there’s enough DotA in its DNA to make me feel at home....
There’s been a lot of disgruntled murmurs about the current state of professional League of Legends. The laneswaps, the tower pushes, the decided lack of fighting… it all adds up to a fairly dismal viewing experience for the long-term fan. Esports’ selling points are, after all, intrinsically tied to action: ace players styling on others,...
“My goal is to get rid of these female tournaments altogether,” says Stephanie Harvey, a five-time world champion in Counter-Strike. “The goal is to compete against each other and be one of the first competitive environments that doesn’t care about gender.” During a talk at GDC, Harvey and Morgan Romine, an anthropologist specializing in diversifying...
The Shanghai Major is behind us, and as the whirlwind of emotion finally settles it’s time to look back at what made it such a great tournament. Among all the production drama, an incredibly competitive event unfolded that showed just how dynamic competitive Dota has become. While many games were decided by early aggressive action,...
