Nintendo‘s recently released Wii U shooter Splatoon sold over a million units worldwide in its first month, becoming one of the console’s most popular games. The game has received several patches and new content additions, and is now running an in-game event called Splatfest. Online survival game Rust is in the news again for randomising players’ penis sizes based on their Steam ID, and developers confirmed that a female model is in the works. Heroes of the Storm‘s upcoming Eternal Conflict patch is now available on the public test realm, and one player caught an incredibly close match on camera that literally came down to a fraction of a second.
Path of Exile revealed a few more legendary items and confirmed that its upcoming expansion, The Awakening, is still on schedule for its July 10th release date. Diablo III‘s next patch hit the public test realm this week, adding a whole new zone and an item based on Diablo II‘s Horadric Cube. And League of Legends revealed new support tank champion and River King Tahm Kench, who can swallow allies to keep them out of harms way and even eat enemy players on the battlefield.
Read on for detailed breakdowns of the stories above and other news from the wider world of online gaming in this week’s Not So Massively, and don’t forget to subscribe to the RSS feed for weekly updates!
Nintendo’s new third-person shooter Splatoon has now been released for one month, and it’s already sold over a million copies worldwide. The Wii U-exclusive online game pits two teams of inklings against each other in a battle to paint a map in their team’s colour with a variety of ink-shooting guns. Killing the other team is little more than an inconvenience, as the team with the highest percentage of the map painted in its colour at the end of the match wins. Nintendo has been regularly unlocking new maps and items over time in an effort to keep the game fresh and plans to continue this for the foreseeable future.
This week’s patch added Carbon Roller and Dual Squelcher weapons, and tomorrow’s balance patch will buff the inkstrike special weapon and increases the amount of knockback the Kraken takes from enemy fire. The abilities Ninja Squid, Stealth Jump, and Ink Resistance Up will also be brought down in power to make the other abilities competitive.
The first ever Splatfest event happened last night in the European version of the game and is scheduled to run on July 4th in the US. The EU event asked players whether they prefer rock or pop music, while the US event’s theme will be cats versus dogs. This is more than just a childish popularity contest, though, as the game’s matchmaking algorithm will begin sorting players into teams based on their choice. Any matches you win during the event will add points to your side of the argument, and you’ll even get a free in-game t-shirt during the event that shows what choice you made.
Most online games pride themselves on giving players control over the look of their characters, but online survival game Rust takes a different approach. Your character’s appearance in Rust is procedurally generated based on your Steam ID, and you simply have to put up with whatever way he comes out. When the feature was first introduced, some players complained that they were being forced to play an ethnicity that wasn’t their own, while others saw it as a kind of social experiment in empathy.
Players discovered recently that your character’s penis size is also procedurally generated, and also that longer penises are actually a hindrance as you take more damage when shot in the crotch. The developers are currently working on adding a female character model to the game that will have similarly randomised proportions and have promised not to over-sexualise the character model.
Heroes of the Storm‘s massive Eternal Conflict update hit the public test realm this week, adding new content from the world of Diablo III into the mix. The new Battlefield of Eternity battleground has been added to the map rotation and treasure goblins will now spawn at the start of matches. The patch also comes with a variety of balance changes from the game’s existing heroes, including a significant talent rework for The Lost Vikings and major updates to Brightwing, Malfurion, and Rehgar.
If you’ve ever wondered just how close a match of Heroes of the Storm could be, check out the video below courtesy of Reddit user Nakki2. This game came down to both teams rushing each other’s base at the same time, ending with the winning team’s core on just 1% health as the other’s hit 0%. Kotaku explains that the entire game rested on the losing team killing an enemy in the final seconds, triggering a passive ability he had that stuns all nearby enemies on death. The stun caught the entire losing team just as they were about to finish off the enemy core, stalling them long enough for the enemy team to steal the win.
Grinding Gear Games has published an updated timeline for the Path of Exile‘s upcoming expansion, The Awakening. Development is continuing and on-track for the previously announced July 10th release date, and there’s still a lot to add to the beta before release. Parts of the Act Four zones that have been excluded from the expansion beta thus far will be added soon, and there are still additional skills and unique items to reveal.
Developers also revealed that over 100 new unique items and jewels will be added to the game in The Awakening, and balance changes will land for 50 existing uniques. The latest two new uniques revealed are a low-level ring that synergises with lightning and cold damage based builds and a high-level piece of body armour that regenerates health when you use endurance charges.
Last week’s League of Legends teaser video generated quite a bit of speculation, and this week we finally found out that it was for the monstrous new champion Tahm Kench, The River King. When he’s not conning gamblers out of their lives, Tahm Kench is a disruptive support tank who can literally eat players to remove them from the fight. Using his Devour ability, he can eat allies to protect them temporarily in his belly or eat minions and then spit them up at enemies.
If Tahm applies three stacks of his basic attack to an enemy champion, he can then eat them to take them out of the fight for several seconds and deal a large amount of damage. His ultimate ability lets him eat an ally and then teleport to another location on the map, transporting both players behind enemy lines for a surprise attack. Riot has put together a surprising amount of information on the new champion, including suggestions of other champions that will synergise well with him and strategies for solo laning, skirmishing, and what to do in teamfights.
Patch 5.12 also went live this week with several really big changes. The base turrets in Summoner’s Rift no longer slow opponents, the skillshot code has been overhauled to improve collision detection, and the Magus jungle enchantment is being replaced with a Runeglaive enchantment to open up more options for junglers.
Diablo III‘s public test realm received a mega patch this week that will soon be making its way to the live game. Patch 2.3.0 adds the new Ruins of Sescheron zone, an artifact called Kanai’s Cube that is the predecessor of Diablo II‘s Horadric Cube, and big updates for crafting and adventure mode. The patch is also adding four new difficulty levels above Torment IV, new legendary and set items, and a new Season Journey interface that tracks your accomplishments over the course of each season.
- Elite was officially recognised as the longest running space sim in the world.
- The Dota 2 digital compendium is fast approaching its final $15 million goal.
- Online RTS Grey Goo announced its new Stars and Stripes tournament.
- Free-to-play MOBA Sins of a Dark Age has dropped back to its pre-launch activity levels, with around 60-70 players online at any given time.
- Star Citizen discussed the reasons for the delay of its FPS module, which is now two months behind schedule.
- Mobile MOBA Vainglory is gearing up for its official Android launch on July 2nd.
- MOBA Lord of Vermillion: Arena released new characters from Final Fantasy and other classic Square Enix games.
- Moonrise released the fourth part of its travel guide series, this time looking at Tajiri Station.
Every week, Brendan Drain scours the net to bring you all the latest news from from the world of MOBAs, lobby-based games, and other online multiplayer games that aren’t quite MMOs in Not So Massively. If there’s anything you want to see covered here, post a comment or send mail to brendan@massivelyop.com to let him know!
