Gaming
Middle-Earth: Shadow Of War Microtransactions To Be Removed In July
Microtransactions are a current blight on gaming that just about all gamers unanimously hate, but video game publishers still attempt to shove them into every game they possibly can. Well, we have some good news for at least one game that includes them, as Middle-Earth: Shadow of War’s microtransactions are going away this July.
This news was announced by publisher Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, revealing that they will be removing microtransactions and loot boxes from the game on July 17th. This will take effect for all versions of the game, which are PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. Once the aforementioned date arrives, all cash shop transactions will end, and gold, war chests and marketplace items will no longer be available.
This shift in direction will actually start rolling with the spring update that’s set to release on May 8th, as that will cease the players’ ability to purchase virtual gold with real money. Monolith Productions said the following on the official WB Games website:
“While purchasing Orcs in the Market is more immediate and provides additional player options, we have come to realize that providing this choice risked undermining the heart of our game, the Nemesis System. It allows you to miss out on the awesome player stories you would have otherwise created, and it compromises those same stories even if you don’t buy anything. Simply being aware that they are available for purchase reduces the immersion in the world and takes away from the challenge of building your personal army and your fortresses. In order to fully restore the core promise of the Nemesis System, we’ll be permanently removing Gold, War Chests and the Market from Shadow of War. This means the option to purchase Gold with real-world money and the ability to gain Orc Followers from War Chests will be removed.”
This won’t be the only thing that is coming with the update, as it will also bring new content to the campaign mode. This includes new narrative content for defending fortresses, and more updates to the Nemesis System. This is all in an effort to make the game more streamlined and less of a chore, which is something that inevitably happens whenever a publisher shoves microtransactions into a game.
It’s going to be very interesting to see how this impacts the game’s overall experience, as hopefully the developer doesn’t put something else in its place that makes it even worse. Then again, this really could end up being a conscious move on their part to make the game better for fans. It would have been nice if the move came a little sooner, though (like at launch).
Middle-Earth: Shadow of War is available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. It released last year to solid reviews, though it wasn’t as well-received as many were expecting it to be. The game it follows up, Shadow of Mordor, released in 2014 and ended up on many game of the year lists due to its ground-breaking Nemesis System. This system essentially allowed players to form rivalries with the game’s enemies, with your enemies remembering your previous encounters if they survived and moving up the ranks as you progressed through the game. This system was expanded in the newest game, which received plenty of praise in its own right.
Gaming
Ubisoft says that future Assassin’s Creed games will need more time to be made
As Assassin’s Creed Shadows is about to sneak up on people in November, Ubisoft says that the time between developing games needs to be longer to find the “right balance.” Shadows has been in development for four years, longer than any other game in the series up to this point. That includes the huge open-world epics Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
Shadows lead producer Karl Onnée (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz) says that the latest AC game took 25% longer to make than Valhalla. He says this is necessary to keep the quality of the series that it is known for: “It’s always a balance between time and costs, but the more time you have, the more you can iterate.” You can speed up a project by adding more people to it, but that doesn’t give you more time to make changes.
Onnée says this has as much to do with immersion and aesthetics as it does with fixing bugs and smoothing out pixels. This is because the development team needs time to learn about each new historical setting: “We are trying to make a game that is as real as possible.” We’re proud of it, and the process took a long time. In feudal Japan, building a house is very different from building a house in France or England in the Middle Ages. As an artist, you need to learn where to put things in a feudal Japanese home. For example, food might not belong there. Get all the information you need and learn it. That process takes a long time.”
You’ll have to wait a little longer for Ubisoft to work on each game. Are you okay with that? In what part of Shadows are you now? Is it interesting to you? Leave a comment below and let us know.
Gaming
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP on PS5
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, a remaster that Dragami Games and Capcom both created. You can now pre-order the PS5 game on the PS Store for $44.99 or £39.99. If you have PS Plus, you can get an extra 10% off the price.
The company put out a new trailer with about three minutes of gameplay to mark the start of the pre-order period. Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP is a remaster of Grasshopper Manufacture’s crazy action game from 2012. You play as Juliet, a high school student who fights off waves of zombies.
The remaster adds RePOP mode, an alternative mode that swaps out the blood and gore for fun visual effects. It also adds a bunch of other features and improvements that make the game better overall. You can expect the graphics and sound to be better as well.
The game will now come out on September 12, 2024, instead of September 12, 2024. Are you excited to get back to this? Please cheer us on in the section below.
Gaming
This Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 zombies trailer is way too expensive
Is there really anyone who is following the story of Call of Duty’s zombie mode? We’ve known about the story in a vague way for a while, but we couldn’t tell you anything about it. It looks like the “Dark Aether” story will continue in Black Ops 6, but we don’t really know what that means.
For those of you who care, here is the official blurb with some background: “Requiem, led by the CIA, finally closed the last-dimensional portal, sending its inhabitants back to the nightmare world known as the Dark Aether, after two years of fighting zombie outbreaks around the world during the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War timeline.”
Wait, there’s more! “Agent Samantha Maxis gave her life to seal this weird dimension from the inside out.” Even worse things were to come: senior staff members of Requiem were arrested without a reason by the Project Director, who turned out to be Edward Richtofen.
Black Ops 6 will take place about five years later, and it looks like it will show more about Richtofen’s goals and motivations. The most important thing is that you will probably be shooting an unimaginable number of zombies in the head. This week, on August 8, there will be a full reveal of the gameplay, so keep an eye out for that.
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