Warner Bros’ crossover platform-fighter/marketing orgy MultiVersus is still technically in open beta, but that hasn’t stopped it from going hard on seasonal content and battle passes. MultiVersus Season 2 has just begun, and among the updates coming at an unannounced date over its course are Marvin the Martian as a playable fighter, and a map based on Game of Thrones.
In MultiVersus, Marvin will be doing battle with characters like Superman, Arya Stark, the Iron Giant, and Velma from Scooby-Doo “with his Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator explosive device, powerful blaster and spaceship summoning abilities.”
You’ll know Marvin as the guy who gets foiled by Bugs Bunny when he tries to blow up the Earth (which obstructs his view of Venus) using that Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator, which sure looks like a cartoon stick of dynamite. He wears the armor of an ancient hoplite in reference to the Roman war god Mars, a fact I only learned today and pass on to you now.
The Game of Thrones map is based on the throne room in King’s Landing, which apparently means it will let players “hurl opponents away from the Iron Throne” and feature a variety of “Westeros based hazards”. Whether that’s more likely to mean dragon attacks or wedding-related betrayals I leave as an exercise for the reader. It’ll also come with a remix of the TV show’s theme music, which I’m hoping will sound like the wonderful version sung by the actors playing the Stark children over the credits of the DVD commentary (opens in new tab).
MultiVersus Season 2 brings more free items players can earn like a Sherlock Holmes-themed Tom & Jerry skin, Pixel Finn profile icon, and a Tea Time skin for Reindog, the original character created for MultiVersus who nobody cares about. Premium unlockables that can be earned by those who pay for the battle pass include Astronaut Velma and Maestro Bugs skins, and a yawn taunt for Arya Stark. Meanwhile, the in-game store is now selling Samurai Batman, Evil Morty, and Fern Finn skins.
We’ve known Marvin was likely to be added to MultiVersus based on early datamined leaks that also included characters who have yet to be announced, like Godzilla, Gandalf and Legolas from The Lord of the Rings, and the Joker, as voiced by Mark Hamill.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1668585629_MultiVersus-season-2-is-live-will-be-adding-Marvin-the.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2022-11-16 01:53:142022-11-16 01:53:14MultiVersus season 2 is live, will be adding Marvin the Martian
Quick, picture a battle pass in your head. You’re probably conjuring the image of a clean, straight timeline with goodies evenly distributed at specific XP increments. Well if you plan on picking up Call of Duty: Warzone 2’s battle pass when it launches tomorrow (opens in new tab), you’re in for a surprise.
Activision is trying something new, weird, and a little confusing with its Modern Warfare 2/Warzone 2 battle pass. It’s not so much a battle pass as it is a battle map. Players will unlock cosmetics and blueprints by completing “sectors” on the map with multiple unlocks within them. Here’s what it looks like:
(Image credit: Activision Blizzard)
How does the Warzone 2 battle pass work?
What this really means is that you choose which order you unlock Warzone 2’s 100 battle pass tiers. Each sector contains five rewards (be they weapon blueprints, operators, etc). Everyone starts at sector A1 and branches out from there. Completing a sector will grant you a token to unlock any adjacent sector so, for example, you can pursue the left side of the map before the right side if you like those rewards more.
Every individual item is unlocked by spending a Battle Token Tier Skip. It’s a confusing name for a token, because “tier skips” in other games are typically a thing you exclusively buy with real money, but in Warzone 2 you earn them by playing and they’re the default way to unlock things. 🤷♂️ Of course, you’ll also have the option to purchase more Battle Tokens to actually skip forward in the battle pass.
How much does the Warzone 2 battle pass cost?
The Warzone 2 battle pass has a free track and a paid track. The free track includes 20 free items, and the paid track (expected to cost around $9.99 or 1,000 COD Points) has over 100 items if completed in full. Among those 100 unlocks are bundles of COD Points totaling 1,400, so you can theoretically earn back what you paid for the battle pass and then some.
What’s in the Warzone 2 battle pass?
Activision hasn’t released a full list of what’s in the battle pass yet, but it has shown off some of the highlights in a recent blog post (opens in new tab). There’s no set order to unlock them in, so Activision has numbered the sectors by how early you could access them. It takes around the same time to unlock sector A4 as sector A5, but both can be accessed a lot earlier than sector A16.
Here are the big-ticket items we know about:
(Image credit: Activision Blizzard)
Guns
BAS-P SMG (Sector A6, Free)
Victus XMR Sniper Rifle (Sector A7, Free)
Operator skins
Zeus Operator (Unlocked immediately with premium pass)
“The Unseen” KorTac Mil-Sim Operator Skin (Sector A9)
“Ursidae” Zero Operator Skin (Sector A11)
“Blackout” Roze Operator Skin (Sector A18)
“Olympus King” Zeus Operator Skin (Unlocked at 100% battle pass completion)
The next era of Call of Duty is upon us. Call of Duty: Warzone 2, the standalone sequel to the free-to-play battle royale, is leading the charge in the next several years of Call of Duty, and it’s out this week (opens in new tab). Led by Infinity Ward and built on the bones of recently-released Modern Warfare 2, Warzone 2 is shedding its 2020 skeleton with a brand new map, improved shooting and vehicles, expanded looting, and an intriguing new mode that’s coming for the extraction shooter crown.
Activision is calling it Warzone “2.0”, but this is a brand new game. When Warzone 2 arrives, original Warzone will be shut down for 10 days, to be reborn under a new name—Call of Duty: Warzone Caldera will live on with a single mode and map while its newer, shinier offspring takes the spotlight.
While the basics are the same between the two games, this is much more than an update. Here are the biggest changes you should know about going into Warzone 2.
Al Mazrah, the new map
Warzone 2 is a clean break from the first game, and that means a completely new map. There is no Verdansk, there is no Caldera, there is only Al Mazrah: a new Middle East-inspired region that Activision says is its largest Call of Duty map yet.
Judging by overhead views of the map, it does look pretty massive. In fact, Modern Warfare 2 players will already be acquainted with several of its compounds. Several multiplayer maps, including Sariff Bay, Embassy, and Zarqa Hydroelectric also exist on the Al Mazrah map. The same goes for the first three co-op missions that shipped with Modern Warfare 2. We also know at least two other Call of Duty classics will be represented on Al Mazrah: streamers who got an early look at Warzone 2 noticed recreations of Terminal and Highrise (opens in new tab) on the new map.
(Image credit: Infinity Ward)
Battle royale 2.0
Warzone’s marquee mode will, of course, return in Warzone 2, but not without some changes. Al Mazrah battle royale will support solos, duos, and trios, and will once again cap out at 150 players. The key change here concerns the circle. There is no longer just one circle shrinking over time: There’s a chance in every match that the circle will split into two or three smaller zones on different regions of the map before eventually converging into one.
I thought this change sounded a little pointless at first, but Activision expects split circles to have a significant impact on Warzone’s sniper-dominated meta. As players are forced into smaller battle zones earlier in the match, players outfitted with medium range rifles and SMGs theoretically have a leg up on squads who planned to dominate from a distance. This is further complicated by the massive changes made to loadouts in Warzone 2 (more on that below).
(Image credit: Activision Blizzard)
New Gulag, new rules
Warzone’s most unique twist on the battle royale format is getting even weirder in Warzone 2. First, the Gulag is now a 2v2 showdown instead of a 1v1. That means one for face to shoot before earning a ticket back into Al Mazrah, but that also means one more teammate to back you up or clutch the win. All players start with the same pistols or shotgun. More powerful guns can now be found in the center of the map, a change that should encourage more aggressive (and quicker) Gulag resolutions.
Most interestingly, you don’t actually have to fight your Gulag opponents to get back into the game. If both teams are still alive after a certain amount of time passes, an AI-controlled Jailer enemy will appear with stacks of armor and a minigun. All four players can choose to team up against the Jailer and, if he’s defeated, all four earn their way back into the game.
Loadouts are changing
If you loved the way loadouts worked in Warzone 1, I have some good news and bad news. Let’s rip off the band-aid: the days of running up to a Buy Station and dropping $10K on a full loadout are over. In Warzone 2, only your custom primary weapons can be purchased from an in-match store. If you want the rest of your loadout, including secondaries, throwables, and perks, there are two methods:
Capture a Stronghold OR
Retrieve a loadout drop
Strongholds are a new concept for Warzone 2, and they might actually be the easier way to get a loadout quickly. These are compounds housing AI enemies that have to be unlocked with keys found through normal looting. Clear out a compound of AI and the entire squad is rewarded with a loadout of their choice. If you arrive at a Stronghold that’s already been cleared, subsequent squads get the chance to kill a certain number of AI to earn loadouts as well.
The other way is a bit more random. Like Warzone 1, crates containing loadouts will drop from the sky randomly through the match, specifically during the second and sixth rounds of the circle collapse. The first team to gobble up the crate gets a loadout for free, but holding F on a box while your location is broadcasted to everyone on the map is a big risk (assuming you’re even the first one there).
(Image credit: Activision Blizzard)
Proximity chat
One of the smaller features of Warzone 2 that’s likely to have a major effect is proximity chat, or the ability to hear the mic chatter of allies and enemies based on distance. The closer or further away a player is, the louder or quieter their voice is to the ear.
Anyone who plays a shooter with proximity chat on by default (like Escape From Tarkov, Hunt: Showdown, or PUBG) already knows its benefits. Opening up comms to all players in the match adds a new layer of social interaction to Warzone 2, and simulating the volume by distance makes for immersive (if sometimes difficult to parse) exchanges with players.
Yes, open comms can be abused to spew trash talk, but it has also been the catalyst for some of my favorite gaming moments of recent memory. My friends and I have used proximity chat in Hunt: Showdown to make friends out of enemies, turn a stalemate into a formal “pistols at dawn” duel, and learn about our playstyles from opponents. Perhaps the competitive thrust of battle royale will make friendly exchanges unlikely, but I see potential in Warzone 2’s other big mode, DMZ (more on that below).
(Image credit: Activision Blizzard)
Backpacks
I once celebrated Warzone’s simplified loot system and its distinct lack of backpacks (opens in new tab), but Warzone 2 is taking a different path. Warzone 2 will have a lot more loot and players will need backpacks to put it all in. It’s not entirely clear what can and can’t be stored in a backpack yet (Activision says some items, like throwables, are “on-soldier” items that aren’t stored in the backpack), but we do know that in the new DMZ mode, backpacks will be be handy for storing additional equipment, guns, ammo, and valuables looted from buildings.
The backpack is seemingly part of a larger initiative to give players more reasons to rummage around rooms for loot. Unlike Warzone 1, where all pickups are scattered on the ground, Warzone 2 loot can also be found in duffel bags, cash registers, and weapon lockers. How much fiddling the backpack requires depends on the mode you’re playing: in battle royale, Activision says the backpack is a more “passive” tool for storing extra armor plates and other small items. DMZ is where inventory management gets more granular with a point-and-click loot interface similar to Apex Legends or PUBG.
(Image credit: Activision Blizzard)
DMZ
Activision is describing DMZ as an “open-world, narrative-focused extraction mode.” Think Escape From Tarkov (opens in new tab), but without the brutal milsim sensibilities and having to unzip individual backpacks over several seconds. Instead of deploying from a heli and reacting to a shrinking play zone, DMZ drops players on random corners of Al Mazrah and lets them go wherever they want.
Activision says the majority of fighting in DMZ will be against the AI soldiers littered throughout every compound. There’s always a chance of running into actual players, but eliminating them is not the goal. Your only stated goal is to loot valuables and extract from the map with whatever you can carry. It’s a bit like Warzone 1’s more casual Plunder Mode, but there are a lot more objectives to tackle and no respawns. Here are the contracts available in DMZ at launch:
Secure Intel / Geiger Search (Magnifying Glass): Find intel on hard drives; then go to the nearest radio tower to upload its data. Alternatively, it may task you to collect uranium rods found with a Geiger counter.
Elimination (Crosshair): Assassinate an AI target guarded by multiple combatants, or at least confirm their death.
Hostage (Handcuffs): Rescue a hostage within a locked building; then carry them to the nearest helicopter exfil location.
Cargo Delivery / Shipment (Briefcase): Depending on the specific Contract, find a vehicle or boat with precious cargo for a drop-off at a marked location. Feel free to keep the vehicle after the drop-off!
Hunt (Skull): Hunt an enemy Operator team marked as high-value targets (HVTs), due to their activity within the DMZ match.
Destroy Supplies (Bomb): Locate and destroy two supply sites with planted bombs.
One distinct element of DMZ is that you can build a loadout from purchased “contraband” gears and weapons before deploying into the map. Whatever stuff you find out in Al Mazrah is yours to keep, but only if you safely extract from the map via chopper.
(Image credit: Activision Blizzard)
Cosmetics aren’t carrying over
This is a bummer. The last 2.5 years of cosmetics shared between Warzone, Modern Warfare 2019, Cold War, and Vanguard won’t carry over to Warzone 2. Players are starting fresh with the new game, which is bad news if you just unlocked Warzone 1’s latest battle pass goodies and want to show them off, but possibly good news if you think Warzone’s cosmetics were getting a bit garish.
One thing that will carry over from past CoD games into Warzone 2: paid currency. If you still have a few hundred COD Points burning a hole in your wallet, you can use them in Warzone 2.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1668589323_Every-big-change-coming-to-Warzone-2-this-week.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2022-11-15 23:51:292022-11-15 23:51:29Every big change coming to Warzone 2 this week
Amazon Studios’ Fallout TV series is in production, but with the release date currently unknown and probably set for the oh-so-distant future of next year, you might be wondering how to get a live action Fallout fix in the meantime. After all, we’ve only gotten a single official screenshot of the series so far, plus an on-set video showing director Jonathan Nolan being handed a Nuka-Cola by a power armor-clad assistant.
That’s not nearly enough for eager fans who are looking at a long wait for Fallout 5, which could be as much as a decade. There’s always Nuka-Break, the multi-season fan-made Fallout series on YouTube that you should definitely check out if you haven’t yet: It’s a lot of fun and there’s three seasons worth to enjoy.
But for a quicker hit of live action Fallout, you should watch the Fallout 76 “concept trailer” above (via GameRant (opens in new tab)), directed by Brian Curtin, aka Infectious Designer (opens in new tab) on YouTube.
The trailer shows the idyllic world of Fallout before the bombs drop, with American flags waving, a Nuka-Cola delivery man smiling, and a kid playing with a Mr. Handy in the yard. Then, as you’d expect, it all goes kablooie. After the apocalypse, we see survivors donning power armor, exploring Appalachia, customizing gear in a workshop, and eventually coming face-to-face with a flippin’ deathclaw in a cave. It’s Fallout 76 all right. And it looks great in live action.
Don’t take my word for it: Bethesda expressed no small dose of admiration for the trailer. “This fan-created video capturing #Fallout76 in live action left us SPEECHLESS!” the studio said via the official Fallout Twitter account. An emoji with a shocked expression and the top of its head exploding followed.
This fan-created video capturing #Fallout76 in live-action left us SPEECHLESS! 🤯Brian Curtin (@infectious_designer on IG and YouTube) did an incredible job directing this!https://t.co/m8VofkMHzwNovember 14, 2022
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Curtain is no greenhorn when it comes to impressive-looking videos, having done several other live action trailer adaptations for games like Watch Dogs (opens in new tab) and Half-Life (opens in new tab). It sounds like Curtain really enjoys the game, too:
“Fallout 76 had a rough launch, but it doesn’t discount the memorable experience of stepping out of Vault 76 for the first time and exploring the Appalachian wasteland with friends,” says Curtain. “Exploring, building and pausing to take an epic photo amongst the chaos was fun. The world was beautiful and the adventures were abundant if you were willing to look for it. There’s definitely something s.p.e.c.i.a.l about this game. This video is the manifestation of the inspiration I found.”
I’ve been away from Fallout 76 for ages now, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t feeling the urge to jump into some power armor and clomp around Appalachia again.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1668556589_Bethesda-speechless-after-watching-this-Fallout-76-fan-made-live-action.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2022-11-15 23:05:092022-11-15 23:05:09Bethesda ‘speechless’ after watching this Fallout 76 fan-made live action trailer
If Starfield had hit its original release date we’d be playing it right now. Bethesda’s space-is-the-place RPG was scheduled to release on November 11, exactly 11 years after Skyrim came out. While Arkane’s co-op vampire shooter Redfall didn’t have a firm release date, it was also scheduled for a summer 2022 launch before Bethesda announced both Starfield and Redfall were being delayed into 2023. How did Microsoft, which spent $7.5 billion acquiring Bethesda’s parent company Zenimax, feel about those two big upcoming games being delayed? According to Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, pretty good actually.
Talking to The Verge (opens in new tab) for its Decoder podcast, Spencer said, “We have experience shipping games too early, but in hindsight when you look at a game like Starfield, which has taken so long and so much investment in new IP from the team, the decision to give the team the time to build the game that they feel they should be building is just the right thing to do.”
Spencer explained that, while the financial impact of those decisions was obviously taken into consideration, “Starfield and Redfall, which are our first big Xbox games with ZeniMax coming into the team, I just wanted to make sure those teams felt that they had the support they could get from Xbox. Maybe feel some of the benefit of being part of a larger organization that has other revenue streams and other things going on that could be helpful.”
The announcement of Starfield’s delay wasn’t a huge surprise. As Rich Stanton pointed out at the time, “The game is apparently an expansive and huge new IP that supposedly marks a huge technological leap, but six months away from release we hadn’t seen anything.” That said, Chris Livingston wasn’t expecting the news and said he would have bet money on Starfield making its announced date, though admittedly, “Not a lot of money. Some money. Like, $28.” Spencer, who has been at Microsoft for 34 years now with credits going back to the fondly CD-ROM encyclopedia Encarta before he became the official Xbox guy, suggested he wasn’t shocked by the need for a delay.
“I, as somebody who has seen a few county fairs here, might get some gut instinct about where we are,” Spencer said, “just in the way the teams are talking about their game, where we are in playing builds. But you want teams to feel like they own their dates. It’s one of the things that, when teams feel like they own their own destiny with their games, they deliver better. So you wait for the real signal from the creative teams and production teams.”
Right now, Starfield and Redfall both have releases scheduled for the first half of 2023. Xbox studio head Matt Booty would very much like people to know Starfield isn’t just a “reskin” of Skyrim, while Arkane’s Harvey Smith would like to assure people that his studio’s game actually does resemble a previous hit, making it plain that Redfall does have Dishonored in its DNA.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1668552935_Starfield-delay-was-the-right-thing-to-do-says-Phil.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2022-11-15 22:45:042022-11-15 22:45:04Starfield delay was ‘the right thing to do’ says Phil Spencer
There are close to 50 total dragons in the World of Warcraft: Dragonflight (opens in new tab) launch cinematic—I gave up counting the moment it cut to the populated halls of the Dracthyr.
WoW has had a lot of dragons over the years, including one that broke Azeroth over its knee for a whole expansion, but Dragonflight takes you to the Dragon Isles, the home of all dragons. It’s like a convention hall for dragons that was locked until now, so all the dragons are lining up to get in.
Compared to the past few WoW expansion launch cinematics, this Dragonflight short is pretty chill. There are no vampiric lords tossing souls into the abyss or horde and alliance soldiers rampaging through a battlefield. There’s just a dwarf and a troll who have to dodge one nasty looking dragon before continuing their flight through the isles—a nod to the upcoming Dragonriding (opens in new tab) feature. You also get to see a Dracthyr, the playable dragon race that comes out today, whip up some Evoker magic. Alexstrasza, the big red dragon, shows up to restore life to the corrupted forests below her.
As an expansion, Dragonflight appears to be a return to what WoW was originally about (opens in new tab) before it got caught up in a maelstrom of cosmic villains and flimsy story reveals that made lore-heads cry. Dragonflight is the sort of high fantasy that WoW started on and you can see it in the way the launch cinematic is structured. It’s not as character-focused as the classic (opens in new tab) WoW cinematic trailer, but it has a similar vibe as the camera zooms through the glowing environments to an uplifting score and only a few seconds of tension. It’s explicitly about high adventure instead of the looming threat of some big bad.
Dragonflight will launch on November 28, but the game’s pre-expansion patch (opens in new tab) is already out. There are tons of class ability and balance changes and the new talent trees to play with. And later today (opens in new tab)—if you pre-ordered the expansion—you can start to level up your own Dracthyr and try out the new Evoker class.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1668549273_Good-luck-counting-how-many-dragons-are-in-the-WoW.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2022-11-15 21:34:522022-11-15 21:34:52Good luck counting how many dragons are in the WoW: Dragonflight trailer
More than a year after the Civilization 6 Anthology (opens in new tab) delivered what was billed as “the complete Civ 6 experience, all in one bundle,” 2K Games has announced a new season pass that will add a dozen new leaders and six “new takes” on existing ones.
“The Leader Pass encourages you to break out of your comfort zone with new approaches to diplomacy, war, expansion, and more,” 2K said. “Each leader arrives with a suite of surprising new or updated abilities alongside inventive new agendas that’ll change the way you play over five exciting months of world domination.”
As with previous Civ 6 season passes, this one will be doled out across six individual DLC packs, beginning with the Great Negotiators Pack, which will add Abraham Lincoln (United States), Queen Nzinga Mbande (Kongo), and Sultan Saladin (Arabia) to the game on November 21.
That’ll be followed by:
Great Commanders Pack (Pack #2): Lead your troops to victory with the Great Commanders Pack, including Tokugawa (Japan), Nader Shah (Persia) (3), and Suleiman the Magnificent (Ottoman Empire) (4);
Rulers of China Pack (Pack #3): Establish some new dynasties with the Rulers of China Pack, including Yongle, Qin Shi Huang the Unifier, and Wu Zetian;
Rulers of the Sahara Pack (Pack #4): Revisit the cradle of humanity with the Rulers of the Sahara Pack, including Ramses (Egypt), Ptolemaic Cleopatra (Egypt), King Sundiata Keita (Mali) (4);
Great Builders Pack (Pack #5): Rebuild the world better than ever with the Great Builders Pack, including Theodora (Byzantines) (5), Sejong (Korea) (6), and Ludwig II (Germany);
Ruler of England Pack (Pack #6): Fill out your growing collection of monarchs with the Rulers of England Pack, including Elizabeth I (England), Varangian Harald Hardrada (Norway), and Victoria – Age of Steam (England).
The price of the Leaders Pass and launch dates for each DLC pack haven’t been announced, but 2K said they’re all scheduled to arrive between November and March 2023. Importantly, all owners of the Civilization 6 Anthology will be given all the DLC content, automatically and for free.
As for why 2K decided to drop a new Civilization 6 season pass more than a year after it said it was finished with the game, the short answer is that people wanted it.
“Similar to New Frontier Pass (opens in new tab), Leader Pass wasn’t part of the original scope for Civilization 6,” a 2K spokesperson said in a statement sent to PC Gamer. “We decided to create the Leader Pass after we saw the incredible response fans had for New Frontier Pass and their wishes for more Leaders to be added to Civilization 6.”
There’s no mention of possible plans for new Civilization 6 content beyond the Leaders Pass, but clearly we should never say never—if this is a big enough success, I wouldn’t be surprised to see even more historical figures brought to the game in future updates. Of course, we also expect (or at least hope) that Firaxis is also working on Civilization 7 (opens in new tab): We assume that it’s still a long way out, but even so we have some thoughts on how it could reinvigorate the series (opens in new tab).
Earth broke its own concurrent user record today with a peak of 8 billion human users, according to a UN Report (via NPR). That figure blows away Earth’s last concurrent user milestone of 7 billion human users back in October of 2011, and is double the amount recorded in 1974.
That’s right, despite the planet’s last few unpopular patches (COVID, global warming, murder hornets) and a persistent “Mixed” review score, Earth continues to grow in popularity among humans who are born and exist there more than on any other celestial object in the known universe. So far, Earth’s servers are holding up to the strain, though there do seem to be a few recent obvious glitches like increased UFO sightings and the inexplicable popularity of Pete Davidson.
Not everyone is excited about the milestone: Some claim Earth has an unfair monopoly on human life, especially compared with other planets in our solar system. Mars, for example, has so far failed to attract even a single user after multiple delays pushed back colonization until an estimated 2033. The Moon, meanwhile, drew only a dozen users back in the ’60s and early ’70s but none since due to reduced interest and extreme hardware costs.
Currently, there are also 10 people in outer space, but a lack of a season pass (there are no seasons) or major features (air, water, stuff to stand on) discourages most from giving it a try.
On average most users logged out after only about 30 years.
The acceptance of Earth as a client for humans was slow going for a while. Despite being formed for 4.5 billion years, the first human user logged in only 2 million years ago. The population wouldn’t reach a paltry 4 million until about 10,000 BCE, and on average most users logged out after only about 30 years. There were some big setbacks along the way, like the Black Plague update in the 1300s which resulted in a big dropoff of users, but other features like the New World expansion in the 16th century saw the planet’s overall userbase continue to rise.
It took all the way until 1804 for the Earth to break the 1 billion user mark, and since then the planet’s CCU has been growing exponentially and users are staying logged in for much longer, an average of 73 years. Common complaints are the long-running money glitch that allows a very small percentage of users to grow richer despite contributing nothing meaningful to the planet, and while the level of simulation is impressive we’re still waiting for the HD remake—no meaningful graphics upgrade has been released since the introduction of the eye.
The UN estimates that the growth of Earth’s human userbase will slow considerably in the coming decades: The planet isn’t expected to reach 9 billion users for another 15 years, with a peak CCU of 10.4 billion sometime in the 2080s, provided the whole damn thing doesn’t completely fall apart by then.
We’ve reached out to Gaia, primordial deity of our planet, for comment on this milestone and will update if we receive a reply or premonition.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1668545596_Earth-passes-8-billion-concurrent-users-to-set-new-record.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2022-11-15 20:26:202022-11-15 20:26:20Earth passes 8 billion concurrent users to set new record
CD Projekt has confirmed that Phantom Liberty, the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 expansion featuring Keanu Reeves (opens in new tab) and Sasha Grey (opens in new tab) that will open up an all-new district of Night City, will not be free.
That Cyberpunk 2077 players will have to fork over some cash for Phantom Liberty might seem obvious—I certainly thought so—but to be fair, CD Projekt muddied the waters a good bit with The Witcher 3, a morass of DLC, expansions, and content, some of it free and much of it not. I mean, just look at this:
(Image credit: Steam)
The studio promised similar things (opens in new tab) for Cyberpunk 2077, saying in August 2020 that it would get free DLC as well. It didn’t get into specifics about how the post-launch content would break down, but it didn’t really matter because the plan quickly went off the rails (opens in new tab) as CD Projekt was forced to focus on fixing the game rather than expanding it. The first free DLC showed up in August 2021 and it did not impress (opens in new tab), even though, you know, it was free.
CD Projekt has previously differentiated between free DLC and paid expansions for Cyberpunk 2077, albeit in the relatively low-profile forum of a 2021 investors call (opens in new tab).
“There is a distinction—for us at least—between DLCs and expansions,” CD Projekt’s Michał Nowakowski said at the time. “I’d like to remind about that: A DLC is a smaller piece of content which we have been giving away for free in the past with The Witcher 3, and that’s still the plan for Cyberpunk.
“When it comes to expansions, such as Blood and Wine and Hearts of Stone, that is a bigger thing. These are paid, and once we announce something like that for Cyberpunk, it will definitely be paid.”
It’s hard to imagine that a whole new story featuring two notable names and a previously-unseen part of the city could be considered “a smaller piece of content,” but just in case there was any doubt, CD Projekt’s global PR director Radek Grabowski confirmed with GamesRadar (opens in new tab) that Phantom Liberty “will be a paid one.” Pricing hasn’t been announced, but Grabowski added that CD Projekt’s expansions “are traditionally cheaper than full-price games,” so it’ll probably be somewhere under $60.
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty promises “a spy-thriller expansion” with “a new style of plot” that centers around the New United States of America, the nation that arose in the wake of the Collapse. A release date hasn’t been set, but it’s expected to be out sometime in 2023. CD Projekt is also currently working on a full Cyberpunk 2077 sequel (opens in new tab).
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Cyberpunk-2077s-upcoming-expansion-wont-be-free-confirms-CD-Projekt.jpg6731200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2022-11-15 20:15:522022-11-15 20:15:52Cyberpunk 2077’s upcoming expansion won’t be free, confirms CD Projekt
A video (opens in new tab) of someone walking around what looked like a weird sci-fi set while using a VR headset made the rounds on TikTok recently as new evidence of our inching progress toward the Star Trek holodeck fantasy. A follow-up video (opens in new tab) explained that it was a staffer testing out an upcoming attraction for a gaming bar and cafe named Aaru in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
If anyone pukes on my nice equipment, I will cry.
Shai Kaiser
Aaru (opens in new tab) is a VR bar, cafe, and development studio with tabletop lounges and private VR rooms. It houses the only commercial version of the Omnideck made for public use for VR gaming. The Omnideck (opens in new tab) is a massive 360-degree motorized treadmill that lets a user safely walk, run, or crawl around in VR without slamming into a wall. (The reason the guy in the video isn’t running is that they were waiting for a safety harness to be installed.)
The Omnideck is made by W5 Solutions, a Swedish company that has designed “high-level military training and simulation” hardware for over 10 years. This is the first time I recall seeing it outside a trade show or tech demo (opens in new tab) setting. The headset used in the VR room is the wireless Vive Focus 3 (opens in new tab), which has been paired with wireless hand controllers that run through a mishmash of custom software for each game.
“We chose the Omnideck because it’s the best VR locomotion hardware out there right now,” Aaru Games CEO Shai Kaiser tells me. He explained that they’d tried things like the KATwalk (opens in new tab), a concave slidemill, but it didn’t offer the full motion VR experience they wanted, because it required users to shuffle their feet more than walk.
The Omnideck does just enough to “trick the inner ear and avoid the incongruence between what you see and what you feel that contributes to virtual motion sickness/cybersickness,” according to Kaiser.
There’s a bit of an adjustment period as a player steps onto the Omnideck. Kaiser says it takes about five minutes before someone feels comfortable enough to play. They’ve recently added a harness system which “is a huge benefit to mental comfort and significantly cuts down the time it takes to get out of your own head and start moving naturally.”
If a patron drinks too much, the staff won’t allow them to use the system. “If anyone pukes on my nice equipment, I will cry,” says Kaiser.
The games available to play in VR are rhythm-based shooter Pistol Whip and one of my favorite games, Superhot VR. If you don’t feel like shooting anything, you can create some 3D art with Tiltbrush. Aaru expects to offer at least 10 games in standard VR rooms. The Onmideck room will be reserved for games that take advantage of room-scale experiences with as few menus as possible.
“What we’re trying to do isn’t about what VR is, but what it could be,” says Kaiser. He thinks VRcades are an “important part of the journey” into VR’s future, even if they’ll have less utility “when people have accessible options and enough content to drive a market.”
“Our long-term focus is on content generation and VR esports venues built for that future,” Kaiser says, “and my ideal scenario is that we can bring that in line with a solid and fair franchise model so that quality VR gaming centers can shoot up like Pop-Tarts all over the place.”
Aaru had its grand opening on October 21, so the combination of booze, tabletop games, and fully immersive VR shenanigans is open for business now. The Onmideck is still waiting for safety certification, however, so it’s yet to be available to the public.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1668541964_The-worlds-coolest-VR-room-is-in-a-bar-in.png435772Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2022-11-15 19:07:562022-11-15 19:07:56The world’s coolest VR room is in a bar in Tulsa
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