After an up and down first year of existence, the Pokémon Go Fest was supposed to be a triumphant event where players could work together in news ways and earn unique awards. The event unfortunately suffered as cell networks and the game's servers couldn't keep up with the strain, preventing many attendees who had traveled from around the world from participating. Niantic Labs CEO John Hanke was actually booed when he appeared at the event, and later in the day the company announced it would refund attendees for their ticket costs, add $100 in PokéCoins to their accounts and give them the Legendary Pokémon Lugia.
The issues, and Niantic's inability to deal with them before they derailed the event, recalled many of the problems Pokémon Go has dealt with since its launch. Incredibly popular right out of the gate, the game suffered with significant instability for months, and still occasionally has problems preventing players for logging in now. It's the first augmented reality game with participation and appeal on a massive scale, but putting its most hardcore players through a day like yesterday is just another strike against it, even as the money continues to roll in.
For those who are still trying to catch them all, however, there are some new updates. If you're in the Chicago area, special areas from the Fest have been expanded across a two mile area around Grant Park through Monday morning. For players everywhere, there are a number of bonuses that will be available through Monday evening at 8PM ET:
Double Stardust
Double Candy
Double XP
Increased Pokémon encounters
Reduced hatching distance
Reduced buddy distance
Also, beginning today, Legendary raids have been unlocked, featuring Lugia as well as Articuno monsters. They will be joined “soon” by Zapdos and Moltres.
After no shortage of hype, Warner Bros. is finally ready to show what Steven Spielberg's take on Ready Player One is all about. The studio has released the first trailer for the adaptation of Ernest Cline's novel, and it's clear that the flick is playing up not just the book's disjunction between a dystopic real world and VR, but the endless references to pop culture of decades gone by. Some of them are patently obvious in the clip — you'll see a famous time-traveling car and a certain giant robot — but some are of the blink-and-you'll-miss-it variety. Take Duke Nukem in the epic battle above, for example.
The preview is a whirlwind tour that focuses more on the spectacle of the OASIS' virtual world than the story, which isn't surprising when the movie isn't slated to premiere until March 2018. It's big on slam-bang action scenes (such as a gigantic virtual race) more than anything else. As such, we have some unanswered questions: how closely does it hew to the tale of Wade Watts and his quest to win James Halliday's final game? How much will it lean on spectacle versus tackling the broader concepts of the novel? It could take months before we have a better sense of that, but it's apparent that the visual style is at least on point — it's easy to see why people would flock to the spectacle of the OASIS given a real world devoid of adventure.
Ever wonder how the statistic cards shown at the end of an Overwatch match are generated? You're not alone. That's why Overwatch principal designer Scott Mercer stepped in on the game's forum to explain the process.
Earning a card on the Overwatch endgame screen means you earned the most of that statistic across all players. “Even if you have gold medals for eliminations on your team, if a player on the enemy team has more eliminations then they are eligible for the card and not you,” Mercer wrote. “This rule is in place because if someone else ever got a card and you had more of the stat in question, the system was considered to be broken.”
So that explains what the original poster complained about—always getting a card for assists, yet never for kills or healing. Likely, someone else had earned that statistic, but the player in question still did well enough to be commended in another way.
“The display of statistic cards are not tuned differently based on the hero you are playing,” Mercer added. “If I was to tune eliminations to show up more, I can't do it just for Zenyatta. It would also affect Soldier: 76 or any of the other heroes.”
Likewise, tuning defensive and offensive assists to show up less for Zenyatta would also impact Mercy, he added.
Assists for Zenyatta work in two ways: Players get a defensive assist when the Orb of Harmony or Transcendence heals a teammate when they eliminate an enemy. An offensive assist is counted when the enemy eliminated had the Orb of Discord on them. “The statistic has nothing to do at all with whether you are on offense or defense during your game,” Mercer said.
Both have “nearly identical” weighting, however. If a player is never seeing a defensive assist card, it's probably because there's another support hero—on the player's team or the enemy team—that has an easier time getting defensive assists. An Overwatch hero like Mercy is a good example: She's always got her beam on someone.
Though the statistics cards listed at the end of an Overwatch match don't really add up to anything—it's just a display of how well you did—it's still nice to understand the process behind how cards are generated.
As strange as it sounds, Minecraft got the novelization treatment, and the final product is now out for purchase. The good news is that the Mojang team put Microsoft's millions to good use by commissioning Max Brooks, author of the apocalyptic zombie novel World War Z.Minecraft: The Island apparently tells the story of a hero who got stranded on a mysterious island and ends up unraveling its secrets.
When the book was first announced, Mojang's Marsh Davies described it as a “cuboid Robinson Crusoe, but madder: a hero stranded in an unfamiliar land, with unfamiliar rules, learning to survive against tremendous odds.” In the book, the cuboid hero will face hunger, the elements and, yes, zombies that roam the island at night.
Del Rey, the publishing house in charge of the project, called the book the launch of a series when the partnership with Brooks was revealed, so this might be the first of many. If you're curious and looking for something to read for the weekend, you can get a copy right now from Microsoft's Books store.
Before new Overwatch hero Doomfist even arrived in the live game—he arrives on July 27—he's already got a cosplay on display at San Diego Comic Con. For the convention, which runs all weekend, Blizzard worked with costume designer Henchmen Studios to create the whole look.
The costume took six weeks to construct, and that's working with a team of 14 people, according to Kotaku. The pieces include leatherwork and 3D printing. And the gauntlet itself? It weighs 15 pounds. Henchmen Studios worked hard to get every detail just right, but there's one true test—is cosplay Doomfist able to shoot bullets out of his knuckles?
Blizzard hired a model from Toronto, “caviar_bleu“, to don the costume. And he's got a hard job ahead of him for the rest of the weekend, carrying about 15 pounds of mechanical fist.
The developer is going all out for SDCC 2017, releasing new merchandise and participating in a wealth of panels. For Hearthstone, Blizzard even opened up an ice cream shop right outside the convention. SDCC runs until July 23.
Don't make Winston angry, or he'll knock you out of the space station and into the depths of low gravity on Overwatch's new map, Horizon Lunar Colony.
That's exactly what Australian national Overwatch team tank Ashley “Trill” Powell, playing Winston, tried to do to Italy's Tracer player in the map's low gravity area during their Overwatch World Cup group stage match. But in space—as the commentator jokes—no one can hear you scream: And that worked in Italy's advantage. Trill managed to knock Italy's Tracer out the space colony's doors and into the edges of the low gravity area, but her Blink ability was enough to pull her back to safety.
From there, all Winston could do was wave.
While most of Italy and Australia's Overwatch players were fighting on the point, Winston got caught outside when backup—Italy's Solider: 76—came in to relieve Tracer. By then, Trill accepted his fate and tumbled into the abyss.
It's not the first time we've seen the low gravity area in a professional Overwatch tournament, though. In June, LuxuryWatch Red used the low gravity area to get closer to the capture point without taking fire from Meta Bellum during OGN Overwatch Apex's Challenger Series.
And it worked. Using the unconventional flank, LW Red was able to capture the first point on Horizon Lunar Colony within seconds.
But moving back to the Overwatch World Cup, it wasn't all bad for Australia. The Horizon Lunar Colony space mishap was not indicative of Australia's overall play in Group C. Even without Trill, Australia managed to hold Italy on Horizon Lunar Colony's first point to secure another point. Australia kicked off its home turf Overwatch World Cup debut with a massive showing, taking all four points on the first day of group play. Australia now leads Group C, followed by Sweden, Portugal, and Italy.
Over in Group D, Finland leads with a 4-0 record, followed by Japan, who upset Spain in a 3-1 series. A team full of players mostly unknown to an international scene, many expected Spain—which is packed with professional and former professional players—to perform better. Spain sits in third, with Vietnam rounding out Group D in fourth.
Overwatch World Cup Sydney begins again at 8pm ET on July 21. (That's 10am AEST on July 22 for those local to Australia.) Sweden will take on Italy first, followed by Australia versus Portugal, Finland versus Spain, and Japan versus Vietnam. You'll be able to catch all the action on the Overwatch Twitch stream.
