In an interview with Yahoo Japan, executive producer Jun Takeuchi outlined Capcom’s plans for its flagship horror franchise, revealing that its encompassing narrative has a definite conclusion — and that end could come shockingly soon.

Takeuchi began by explaining how the team had expanded on Resident Evil’s overarching story with every game, saying that a ten-year strategy was crafted during the planning stages for Resident Evil 2 Remake.

“The series' story wasn't planned out from the beginning; it expanded with each new game. When we were planning RE:2 and creating a 10-year branding concept, this was the most challenging aspect. If you play through all of them, I think you'll realize the meaning behind the order of the remakes,” he said.

“With the release of Requiem this year, I feel like the first 10 years have come to a close, so I think the conclusion will come in the next 10 years."

This is somewhat sad news for hardcore fans who were hoping to blast through hordes of zombies with Leon until the end of time, not to mention fans of all the other characters we’ve come to know and love over the years. And who’s to say if that means we won’t see these characters again in a new, different story?

As for how many Resident Evil games we can expect from Capcom in the interim, Takeuchi assured us that there will be several, though he didn’t describe any of them in depth.

"I can't say, because it would spoil the fun for everyone, but there won't be just one. There will be multiple titles,” he said.

Resident Evil has proven to be a massive hit for Capcom, particularly after RE7: Biohazard shocked life back into the series. Resident Evil 2 Remake is the best-selling game in the franchise, and its most recent addition, Resident Evil Requiem, passed $500 million in revenue after releasing earlier this year, becoming a driving factor in console sales within Japan.

Adding to this, Resident Evil 2 Remake was one of the top ten best-selling titles for Capcom in the first half of its 2027 fiscal year, with RE7 not far behind. Resident Evil 4 was also on that list, as was RE3 and Requiem — meaning that half of the company's top sellers in this period were in the Resident Evil franchise.

There’s lots for Resi fans to look forward to in the coming months; the Code Veronica remake launches early next year, and screenwriter Haris Orkin basically leaked a story mode DLC for Requiem that’s supposed to involve Spencer in some way. There’s also Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil movie to consider, which was met with rave reviews and a hit at the box office — though it's unlikely Cregger ever makes a sequel, even though he already has plans for what he’d do next.

Acclaimed voice actor and screenwriter David Hayter opened up about his canceled Lost Planet movie adaptation, explaining why it never got off the ground in a throwaway tweet more than a decade after it was first confirmed.

Did you know that David Hayter, the voice of Solid Snake in the Metal Gear games, wrote the screenplay for a Lost Planet movie? I didn’t either, until he tweeted about it today — almost twenty years after the project fell through.

Hayter spoke up about the film on October 27, 2026, reminding fans that yes, he writes for movies, and one of those movies would have been an absolute dream for fans of Capcom’s long-forgotten sci-fi shooter series Lost Planet.

Fun Fact: I wrote a huge LOST PLANET movie for Warner Brothers in 2008, and then the entire financial world crashed, and that was the end of it.

— David Hayter (@DavidBHayter) October 27, 2026

“Fun Fact: I wrote a huge Lost Planet movie for Warner Brothers in 2008, and then the entire financial world crashed, and that was the end of it,” he wrote.

While Lost Planet’s demise has been thoroughly catalogued at this point — and it’s been so long that newer generations were completely unaware that it even existed, in the first place — this appears to be one of just a few times Hayter has spoken on the 2008 financial crisis playing a part in the project’s premature end.

Previously, Hayter said that internal company politics was to blame, telling MTV in 2010 that there were “some internal issues between a couple of the companies, which I think has caused a delay there.”

And in 2014, Hayter told IGN that the movie — which he described as a “Lawrence of Arabia on an ice planet” — was interrupted by the financial crisis. “Unfortunately, right about the time I was delivering the script, the financial crash hit, and it just devastated the business — in ways that I don't think people grasped. Like, I would get phone calls saying, ‘Well, Disney wants to do such-and-such, but they're out of money until August,’” he explained.

“I heard that about a number of studios. ‘Oh, they're out of money until January,’ or whatever, and I'd never heard that about a movie studio before. So in the midst of all of that turmoil, it just went away, as these things tend to do. So, you know, I guess Warners probably still owns it, and they have my script. I don't know if there are any plans to bring it back up or not. But that was just one of those Hollywood casualties, unfortunately.”

Hayter expounded on some details about his Lost Planet movie in his interview with MTV, saying it “had this incredible visual world. Great suits of armor, great creatures, and its story was about energy — the dwindling energy resources of the Earth and how we’re going to other planets to [solve that problem]. So I thought it was really timely and the world was beautiful. And the other thing that I really felt as a screenwriter made it ideal for adaptation was, the original story in the game was… not… great."

"It was sort of presented in a very Japanese storytelling fashion. It’s very elliptical and difficult to follow, and you’re not really sure who’s who. That’s fine in a game because… you’re really trying to get to the next level. It’s a great opportunity for me as a screenwriter to step in and infuse that incredible visual world with a really compelling — for lack of a better term — American-structured film."

For now, all fans can do is pine after what could have been… though, given Capcom’s renewed interest in “reactivating IPs that haven’t had a new title launch recently," on top of its successful movie adaptations for Resident Evil and Street Fighter, it’s possible that Hayter’s long-awaited Lost Planet flick could come to light. (But maybe that’s just me trying to cope.)

An October 27 statement from employees of Don't Nod, the developer best known for making the original Life is Strange games, warn that the company is in danger of insolvency and layoffs, and accused its management of "illegal" practices that have caused staff "uncertainty and anxiety."

The damning statement comes from employees who are members of the French game industry union Le Syndicat des Travailleureuses du Jeu Vidéo, which revealed that Don’t Nod is currently under a safeguard to help protect itself from insolvency (meaning that the company wouldn’t be able to pay its debts).

The statement claims employees were approached by management and given “several financial scenarios” that could happen in the near future, both of which “included redundancies," with the worst case forecasting the “liquidation of the company through 2026.”

The message states that “nearly all of the non-managerial jobs” were cut at Don’t Nod, which reportedly included all animators, character artists, concept artists, associate producers, and most environmental artists, sound designers, level designers, programmers, QA testers, HR and developers. Half of its game designers were also laid off, according to the statement.

“Management is extremely clearly going for heavily individualized targeting and hasn’t been shy about their intent to keep selected people in rather than jobs, which is illegal,” the union wrote.

The statement goes on to claim that management is betting on outsourcing to take on the workload of these fired team members — a decision that the union feels is “out-of-touch.”

The letter then says Don't Nod employees have been “living on the edge, in uncertainty and anxiety” for the last two years, to the point where six workplace accidents occurred this year and an inquiry was recently launched into a “serious and immediate danger.” It also alleges that management “refused to let those who would be willing to leave earlier go through a voluntary leave plan,” saying they “do not care about the damage it deals to employees’ health.”

The statement ends on a striking note; a government agency that represents employees is set to make its ruling on November 3. After that, management will have 21 days to decide on a plan. If this plan is accepted by the government agency, it’s possible that employees could “get their firing letters on November 25.”

“If it were to be rejected however, management would have to go back to the drawing board and improvise because, as you might have gathered, planning for contingencies isn’t their forte,” the letter concludes.

This is the latest news to surface regarding Don’t Nod’s dire financial straits after it was warned by auditors in a financial report that it could run out of cash as early as November. Its latest game, Aphelion, was released earlier this year to middling reviews, and given this recent union tell-all, its next project could be in peril.

Shipment, one of Call of Duty's most iconic maps, has officially been added to Modern Warfare 4's multiplayer.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4's Shipment is now available in the standard 6v6 map rotation, as well as in a playlist known as Shipment 24/7. Call of Duty fans are likely well-versed in the latter, which allows players to exclusively play Shipment, with the only variable being the mode you play. The playlist is preferred for camo and challenge grinding, as you can just farm kills ad nauseam. Needless to say, it should be pure chaos, just the way Shipment fans like it.

You know what to do 😤

Shipment is LIVE NOW in #MW4 https://t.co/FSX7GmbZ0r

— Call of Duty (@CallofDuty) October 27, 2026

The map was introduced back in 2007, nearly 20 years ago, and was reportedly a total accident. The map was meant to be a simple test environment for certain features like split-screen, but was mistakenly left in the final build. This was right before the days of constant game updates, and if a developer did want to make a change, it cost money. So... it stayed. Fans liked it, and then it became iconic for its fast-paced, chaotic nature. It has returned in a number of Call of Duty games, but is a prominent staple of the recently rebooted Modern Warfare saga.

Shipment makes for the first post-launch map in MW4, but more is on the way. The game's first season of post-launch content will debut next week. We don't currently know what will be part of the first season, but you can likely expect new weapons, a battle pass, skins, and potentially new maps and modes, if history is anything to go by.

IGN posted its full review of Modern Warfare 4's campaign and multiplayer the other day, giving the two modes a collective 7/10. Although the review praised the campaign, it noted that the multiplayer didn't push the franchise forward in any major ways, despite still being fun.

"The new shape-shifting Kill Block arena is certainly a highlight, but elsewhere very little has been offered when it comes to innovation or interesting map design. It’s still that familiar Call of Duty brand of fun, just not in any way I haven’t seen before. Overall, it’s a good package from Infinity Ward, with a great campaign as its highlight, ensuring Modern Warfare 4’s place as one of Call of Duty’s better recent entries."

The 1993 first-person shooter Doom is legendary. Its place in history is both untouchable and inarguable. The details of that history, though, are currently being debated on social media. Not by fans, mind you, but instead by two of the very people that created it. Doom co-creator John Romero and Doom level- and game-designer Sandy Petersen took to X (formerly Twitter) to dispute each other's recollection of the origin of Doom's groundbreaking DeathMatch PvP multiplayer mode.

It started with Petersen posting a thread titled, "How Doom changed the world." He discussed his history in the video game industry prior to getting hired at id Software to work on Doom – specifically on a real-time strategy game released in 1990 called Command HQ, and how designer Danielle Bunten Berry "thought that since 65% of gamers had modems it would mostly be played head-to-head. It bombed. I think it had about 40,000 sales." That set up a memory he shared next about working on Doom, about which he said, "We all agreed at id that it was unlikely anyone would ever play Deathmatch, except in very small numbers. After all, zero games had a robust head-to-head experience, and my personal time with Command HQ just hammered home the point. However, everyone at id loved Deathmatch, so we kept it in the game. We figured, even if no one else played it, WE could keep doing it."

Romero responded to politely take issue with Petersen's recollection of the team's sentiment around DeathMatch prior to release. He posted, "Hi Sandy. Are you well? This is wrong. On January 1, 1993, we sent a press release saying that multiplayer would be in DOOM, a full 8 months before you joined the company. We knew deathmatch would be huge. In that press release, in January 1993, we said multiplayer would be 'the number one cause of decreased productivity in businesses around the world.' We were sure of it, and we needed no convincing. I understand you are proud of your work on DOOM, and you should be, but please also respect the accuracy of your statements, particularly around game history. My concern is that these false statements are designed to trigger replies (like this one), reposts, and outrage discussion, all with the view of increasing your followers and subscriptions, particularly since this false deathmatch story (among others) is so easily disproved. I’ve even welcomed you to reach out to me ahead of time. You seem to appreciate game history as much as I do. Could you not also make yours accurate?"

Petersen continued the discussion with Romero, responding with, "John. First, 8 months before release is before I joined the company. So I have no knowledge of what you did then. Second, AFTER I joined we had a discussion in which I talked about my experience with Command HQ and YOU YOURSELF agreed that Deathmatch wouldn’t be that big a deal. Do you not remember? Third yes we all wanted Deathmatch anyway. And I’m glad my predictions were wrong. Perhaps check your own memory before gaslighting mine. Hope you’re well."

Romero came back with, "I am well, thanks, and so is my memory. I do not believe your recollection is accurate and neither do other members of the team. We KNEW deathmatch would be huge from the beginning. We said so. Once it was in, those aspirations were confirmed." As of the publication of this story, that's the last post in their online discussion.

Regardless of who is correct about DeathMatch's pre-release history, it certainly blew up once Doom shipped in December of 1993, and every multiplayer first-person shooter released since can trace some part of its lineage back to Doom. For my part, Doom is one of my favorite games of all time, and I was fortunate to get to check off a personal and career Bucket List item by playing through the entire legendary first episode of Doom (called "Knee-Deep in the Dead") in co-op with Romero to celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2013. Today, Doom of course lives on with the new-generation team currently at id Software, with the studio having shipped the amazing Revelations DLC for Doom: The Dark Ages earlier this summer.

Over the last decade, Discord has become the de facto community space for gaming, and there are a lot of huge servers out there that you can find by scrolling through its public servers page. But starting on November 16, some messages in these huge servers will be viewable from Google.

In a blog post, Discord laid out its plans to publish 'Server Web Pages' for every discoverable server on Discord by default. These are bespoke web pages that give a preview of a server's contents before forcing users to hit the join button. There are already several of these pages live, typically for huge online games like Rust or Dead by Daylight. These pages will be discoverable on Google, and will display a summary of the discussions going on in the server.

But while these Server Web Pages will be going live next month, another update is coming in December that'll allow answers to questions to appear in Google search. According to the blog post, "Answers to questions your members sent in public channels can be found in a web search, in their own words. Server admins decide which channels take part, and server members can choose whether their own messages appear. Usernames and avatars will not be shown alongside these messages."

It's important to note that only large discoverable servers will be affected by these changes, meaning your World of Warcraft guild or friend group probably won't be affected in any way. Discoverable server admins can opt out their servers or even individual channels by going to Server Settings, then Web Presence and choosing which channels you want to be visible. But, if you don't change anything, public channels will have the setting enabled by default.

If you're just a user in one of these huge servers and you don't want your messages to be viewable from Google, you can also opt your own messages out. Simply go to User Settings, then Data and Privacy and disable 'Show my message content from Discoverable channels on web pages.'

Discord is introducing this feature to help people find answers to questions. If you've Googled anything in the last couple of years, you've probably noticed that a lot of search results for questions will lead you to Reddit, or another similar message board. It seems like Discord wants a slice of that pie.

According to the blog, "Prior to Discord's launch, message boards were common, ranging from community-driven forums to official ones run by game studios. These message boards excelled at hosting long-form, structured conversations about helping people, theory crafting, and more. While they still exist today, many have moved into Discord servers. This has led to valuable information being locked in Discord conversations, inaccessible to the wider internet. We want to fix this."

There will likely be some useful information that you'll be able to find when these changes go live in December, but there are definitely some privacy concerns as well. So, if you don't want your messages in large discoverable servers to be seen by everyone, make sure to disable the feature today, before all the changes go live. So far, these changes will be exclusive to large public servers with more than 1,000 members, and hopefully it stays that way.

Capcom is celebrating its highest software unit sales for the first half of a fiscal year in the company’s 47-year history, with games like Monster Hunter World, Resident Evil 2, and RE7 Biohazard leading the fray.

It’s safe to say that 2026 was a hugely successful year for Capcom, and its next fiscal year is already looking just as rosy. In the 2026 calendar year, the developer launched three Game of the Year contenders in Resident Evil Requiem, the new but ambitious Pragmata, and Onimusha: Way of the Sword, all of which were met with critical acclaim.

These recent titles aren’t responsible for making up the bulk of its profits for its current fiscal year, though. Instead, older titles like Monster Hunter World (a live-service game that released in 2018), Resident Evil 2 Remake (2019), and Resident Evil 7: BioHazard (2017) took the top three spots in its top ten best-selling titles for the first half of its 2027 fiscal year.

Given their popularity and prestige, it’s not a massive surprise that these three titles continue to do gangbusters for Capcom almost a decade after their release. For example, in July, Resident Evil 2 Remake officially dethroned Resident Evil 5 as the series’ best-selling game at 19.75 million copies sold — a number that, as of Capcom’s latest public financial report, has increased by 2.06 million to sit at 20.38 million total copies sold.

Monster Hunter World takes the cake far and away, though, sitting at 30.83 million units sold at a 1.17 million increase. RE 7 takes third place at 20.38 million units, with a 2.06 million unit increase.

The total list of Capcom’s top ten best-selling games in the first half of its 2027 fiscal year is as follows:

1. Monster Hunter World - 30.83m (+1.17m)
2. Resident Evil 2 - 20.38m (+2.06m)
3. Resident Evil 7 - 18.87m (+1.47m)
4. Resident Evil 4 Remake - 17.5m (+3.54m)
5. Resident Evil Village - 16.27m (+1.33m)
6. Resident Evil 3 - 14.93m (+1.56m)
7. Devil May Cry 5 - 14.78m (+1.83m)
8. Resident Evil Requiem - 8.51m (+1.59m)
9. Pragmata - 2.73m
10. Onimusha: Way of the Sword - 1.78m

It's worth noting that the newest Monster Hunter entry, Monster Hunter Wilds, isn't listed on here. However, the previous game in the series is still a juggernaut for Capcom, going to show just how unpopular Wilds is following oodles of player complaints in the year since it's February 2025 launch... and that's even after Capcom 'permanently' slashed the game's price.

According to Capcom's financial report, these figures mark the company's highest-ever total and catalog unit sales for an H1 period, and most of them were digital. This same report shows that a staggering 92.4% of sales were digital, with 57.1% coming from PC and 35.3% from consoles. In stark comparison, physical units make up just 7.6% of sales. (This is actually a bit of a drop from its previously reported digital sales figures back in Q1 2026, which was listed at 93.3%.)

This all comes hot off the heels of Capcom’s two newest film adaptations, with Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil movie becoming the most profitable in the series’ history and Street Fighter launching to number one at the box office during its opening weekend (news of a sequel, however, is still up in the air).

Pragmata also performed well for Capcom, with corporate officer Yoshikazu Shimauchi suggesting that sales were so good that the likelihood of a sequel is high. Combine that with Onimusha selling one million copies on day one, it’s clear that 2026 is Capcom’s year. Now, we just need to see how The Game Awards pan out.

Update 5:29pm ET: The name reservation system seems to be fully online.

4:51pm ET: I have been able to get in, but every time I try to reserve my character name and hit 'Finish,' I'm greeted with an error message saying 'Character creation timed out.' If you are running into this issue, Blizzard is aware of the issue and is working on a fix.

4:17pm ET: Blizzard still hasn't delayed the feature in the US, but many players in the forums are reporting facing login queues, only to be disconnected when their time in line is up.

4:10pm ET: It looks like Blizzard has pushed a fix out to EU users, telling people who are still having problems to log out and then log back in.

4:00pm ET: The WoW Forever name reservation system has gone live in the US, and players are being greeted by login queues. Blizzard has not pushed an update saying the feature has been delayed for NA servers at the time of writing.

Original article continues below.

The World of Warcraft Forever beta ended last week, and in the space in between that and its full launch on November 4, Blizzard is offering players the ability to reserve character names ahead of release. There's only one problem: the system looks like it's broken.

Right now, the name reservation system is only supposed to be available in Europe, with North American servers getting a name reservation window starting at 1pm PT/4pm ET today. But the WoW Forever team has issued a message to players in the Battle.net client, saying "World of Warcraft: Forever Name Reservations are delayed while we resolve some final technical issues. Thank you for your patience!"

The way the name reservation system is supposed to work is that, by launching the latest version of WoW Forever, players will be able to pick a ruleset (PvE, PvP, etc,) and then create up to three characters with reserved names. But, for a lot of European players, the blue 'Play' button on the Battle.net launcher is grayed out, meaning they can't even get into the game to try and make a new character.

Just like with any sort of World of Warcraft delay, players have taken to the WoW forums to voice their discontent, in a massive 120-post thread. Player Equinox posted, "There is literally nothing going right the first time something new launches. It's ridiculous how they manage it every time to screw things up." Meanwhile, Katerlina asked, "They did this already for USA right? Or are we the test?" And, no, Blizzard has not launched the feature in the U.S. quite yet.

Some players have found a workaround that gets them in the game, but it doesn't seem to be doing a lot of good right now. Aureliani posted "Go to install folder of forever and just start wow.exe, use email + password, and that at least brings me to the rulesets (that are still greyed out though)."

While it probably won't get you into the game any faster, player Bìsh has some helpful advice, saying, "If the PLAY button its greyed out, that means your launcher was set in another region. I dunno why, but mine was set to Americas. I logged out from Battlenet, I clicked switch accounts to clear the name of the account also, and in the right corner there is a cog where you can put it back to Europe. After I've done that, the PLAY button its not greyed out anymore."

There are only a couple more hours before this feature launches in the U.S., and unless Blizzard figures out the root cause of this issue ahead of time, it's likely that NA players are going to experience delays, too. Either way, hopefully these kinds of issues aren't present when WoW Forever gets its full launch on November 4.

Ahead of WoW Forever's launch, we got a chance to sit down with Blizzard principal game designer Kris Zierhut to talk about the future of the MMO. It sounds like updates will be coming regularly, and we might get a chance to visit some of the continents that got added in expansions, like Northrend and Pandaria.

In the brand new free-to-play game Roco Kingdom, developed by Tencent’s Morefun Studios, you journey through the bright, colorful world of Carosiaas a Roco, a mage from the magic academy, who sets off on an adventure to collect Jinies. These Jinies are magical creatures that are native to Carosia, and there are a ton of different Jinies roaming the land. Morefun’s closed beta test is currently ongoing, and players are already experiencing what the magical world of Carosia and all that Roco Kingdom has to offer.

There are so many different kinds of Jinies to collect in Roco Kingdom, in fact, there’ll be 212 unique Jinies to find in the test, though you can expect hundreds more to come with the full launch of the game. There’s Vargheim, a wolflike Jini with tough claws and fur that acts as natural armor; Cluckchamp, a warrior chicken; Bluffa, a sweet yet feisty battling bear; and Duckiji, a super soft duck who has a penchant for spotting shiny objects around Carosia.

Though some Jinies look similar, every single Jini you encounter in Roco Kingdom is unique. That’s because each Jini varies in talents, personality types, height, weight, color, and specialities. Two Bluffas could be entirely different, with one having a stubborn personality (which means they have higher physical attack abilities), the other Bluffa could possess a cheerful personality, marked by their distinct smile. Jinies also have their own innate and unique specialities, like Shared Ride, which allows a Jini to carry you on its back as you explore, or Sharer, which can trigger bonus drops when using that Jini. There are, of course, visual differences, too. Some Jinies have a Chromatic variant, which gives a Jini a completely different color scheme. If you are lucky enough to find a Prism Pod, you can use them to capture Jinies and create a new random color gradient, which combine with glittery effects to make your Jini one of a kind. Some Jinies even have distinct physical variants that go beyond color changes. That means for Jinies like Duckiji, you can get an adorably fluffy (think chonkier) version, or the sleeker, slightly taller Duckiji. Finally, if your Jini has an Alpha Bloodline through hatching from Alpha boss eggs or an Alpha Bloodline Elixir, you have the chance to evolve your Jini to its Alpha Form, a fully upgraded and impressively powerful Jini.

To collect these Jinies, you’ll use pods, which all catch Jinies and provide different buffs. A solar pod is best suited to get Flora and Light class Jinies, a Prism Pod gives a Jini Prismatic, and a Net pod works best for Water and Wing classes. These are just a few examples of the different pods you’ll use in Roco Kingdom.

In the world of Carosia, you’ll find Blossoms, which you can target and battle to capture specific Jini. You can team up with up to four players, as Blossoms can offer opportunities to capture high-level and high-individual aptitude Jinies, or even Chromatic and Prismatic variants. You’ll also participate in weekly PvE challenges in Roco Kingdom. This test features legendary boss battles against Winged King, an epic, flying horse character with bold purple wings that would give Pegasus a run for his money. You can also encounter Parlyth, a ferocious mystical dog with a devilish tail and sharp blue scales, claws, and horns. Taking them down rewards Jinies and other surprises.

This is just a taste of the deep gameplay and rich setting Roco Kingdom offers as the newest entry into the creature collecting space. Wishlist Roco Kingdom on Steam now.

World of Warcraft Forever gets its full release on November 4, and while the MMO will stay tethered to the two vanilla continents, Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, it sounds like future updates could add some of the areas we've visited in the expansions.

I recently got a chance to sit down with Blizzard principal game designer Kris Zierhut to talk about the future of WoW Forever, and when I asked him if there were threads the developer could pull at to find new content "without going to outer space," Zierhut responded by saying: "Correct, correct. Now, that said, the Dark Portal exists, Northrend exists, Pandaria exists, and we could make minor forays into those areas. We might have a dungeon or a quest that takes you there for a mission or two and come back."

So, rather than going to these places for these multi-year epic quests, like going to Northrend to stop Arthas, it seems like these would be little jaunts to a different part of the world, then quickly returning back to the vanilla continents.

Zierhut emphasized that any journeys to other parts of Azeroth would be brief, saying: "But the key detail there is Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor are your home. You don't have capital cities, you don't have auction houses and innkeepers and things like that outside of Eastern Kingdom and Kalimdor. We won't introduce new capital cities in this plan. Okay. You always come home."

Later on in the interview, Zierhut clarified that the versions of these continents wouldn't be the same as what we've visited in the expansions. Using Northrend as an example, he told me: "If we ever went to Northrend, we wouldn't be visiting the version that you see in Wrath of the Lich King. But could we visit some extremely hostile level 60 version of it because Arthas is still in the stage where he's sending Kel’Thuzad to Eastern Kingdoms to assault Eastern Plaguelands? We could. There's so much that we can do with the timeline that we're in."

While it seems like working in areas from the expansions would run counter to Forever's mission statement, the developers are more focused on maintaining the spirit of classic WoW, rather than strictly adhering to the same content that we played in 2004 and 2019. For instance, Blizzard took a pretty early stance against adding features like group tagging, because it wanted players to group up and do content together. But, later on, it added the 'Kyle's Gone Missing' quest, even though it intially came out as a part of The Burning Crusade, because it fit with the spirit of the original game.

Forever is also adding entirely new parts of the world, including some maps, like Mount Hyjal, that were originally supposed to be part of the original World of Warcraft, but didn't make the final cut. It's going to be interesting to see what direction future content is going to go in, because unlike other versions of Classic, Blizzard doesn't have to rigidly stick to what World of Warcraft did in the past. One thing's for sure, though, we won't have to wait as long between patches as some of the older WoW expansions.

World of Warcraft Forever has its full launch a week from now on November 4, but ahead of time, Blizzard principal game designer Kris Zierhut shared a little bit of insight on why the new Skyborne race was added to the game.

When I asked Zierhut about Skyborne's addition, he told me that the goal was to add more elves to the game but to maintain the faction balance in the process. "We knew that we wanted to bring in more of the elves into the game. We know they're the most popular races in World of Warcraft historically. And in particular, the current alliance and Horde races from the Classic Era have the unfortunate feature that they tend to cause a faction imbalance," he told me.

As for why Blizzard needed to add elves specifically, it's because there's a segment of the player base that doesn't want to play some of WoW's more unique races. Zierhut explained, "There's a certain... a lot of players who don't want to play a monster, to put it really honestly. They don't want to be an Orc or a Troll or a Tauren or Undead. They want to have something that looks prettier. It's not everybody."

There are other possibilities for elves in Azeroth, like the Blood Elves, but the Forever team doesn't want to step on the retail team's toes. Elsewhere in the interview, I asked about Silvermoon, the home of the Blood Elves, and Zierhut referenced that, saying, "You mentioned Silvermoon, and this is a story that Retail had recently told, and we didn't want to get in each other's way of telling that story. We want to give them time to let their Silvermoon story breathe and do everything they wanted with it. And then once they were done with it, we could maybe then go visit Silvermoon."

So, it sounds like there's a chance that the Blood Elves could come to the game in the future, but for now, players will just have to make do with the Skyborne if they want a Horde elf race.

Ahead of Forever coming out next week, Blizzard has also detailed how often players can expect new updates, which will be added slower than the quick eight-week patch cycle of the modern game. Zierhut has also told me that the Forever team is looking at visiting some of the locations we've been to in expansions, like Northrend and Pandaria, in future updates.

Now that the World of Warcraft Forever beta has come to an end, Blizzards alternative history version of Vanilla WoW is finally ready for a full launch on November 4. But even though the beta was extensive, it was capped at level 30, which leaves plenty of mystery for fans. Luckily I was able to sit down with Blizzard principal game designer Kris Zierhut and lead Classic designer Tim Jones to tour through the game and chat about what the future holds. And, really, it does sound like WoW Forever is going to take a pretty unique path as it unfolds over the next few years.

Kris Zierhut: I know you're very interested in this question of what it means to have a single subscription with these three pillars that we talked about at BlizzCon and how they're different and what each of them means. We should probably start with WoW Classic, because it’s kind of the base start. Take somewhere like Elwynn Forest where you're going to go to. It's been that zone for 22 years with very little change, and Classic Era, the Classic cycle, really the Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King as well, is really when we think of it a little bit like a museum. It's what the game was, so we can preserve that forever for the people who loved it and for reference and people to see, oh, what was it like back then? So it's an attempt to just recreate the world as it was in that 2004 to 2008 cycle.

And now Forever is saying, well, what if instead of opening the Dark Portal and moving on to Outland, what if that dev team back in 2006, Jeff Kaplan and Tom Chilton and Scott Mercer and Eric Dodds and me, other people on the team, what if we'd stayed in the original world and kept on developing it and done things that were consistent with what they would've done back then?

Whether that's adding additional quests... So here in Elwynn, there's one major new quest line that involves Kobolds stealing books. But every start area has new quests, every zone has new quests, new things to discover. We've made a great effort to look at all of the rare creatures in the world and make sure each of them has unique and interesting things that they drop if you fight the rare creatures.

Or things like Trade Skills, where we made Trade Skills more prominent, achieved Eric Dodds' original vision for what Trades could be by adding to them, adding new recipes and making it more important and more balanced with the rest of the game. So if they've been able to work on the game for a couple more years before releasing it, what would they have done? And then of course, modern.

IGN: How did Blizzard decide on what stayed from Classic unchanged, then what was added that was probably more of a modern feature? Because I know the DPS meters and the Cooldown Manager are in Forever.

Zierhut: Right. First, we look at our four major pillars on our design values. Way back when we were starting to make changes in Wrath of the Lich King Classic, you said, "Hey, before we get started on this whole path of making changes, what is important to us? What are our guiding principles of making the world still feel classic?" The most important probably of those is ‘the world is the main character.’ We think the world has a story that you discover while you explore it with your friends. It's your player stories when you wander into these quirky little places that have their own local stories about minor characters and not world shattering events and not major NPCs.

It's about the journey being just as important as the destination, that there's all kinds of cool things to discover and experience along the way, and we want to make sure that we keep adding new things to see along the way. It's not all about max level.

And I think that's probably one of the biggest philosophical differences between retail as you call it, and what Forever is. Retail is very focused on what's going on at max level. We create a new campaign, you level up through the campaign and now you're max level again. And it's all about things for max level, where we want to keep on delivering new things to do all the way through the level up experience and reasons to make new characters and experience the journey all over again.

A sort of goal of that is then to make sure that the world always feels full, no matter what zone you go to, there's always characters in that level range. We were very inspired by World of Warcraft Hardcore in that. We loved how in Hardcore it always felt like every zone you went to was full of other players. It was never empty, and part of that was because you always had to re-roll a new character when you died. We were looking for how we could get the same kind of effect in World of Warcraft Forever by encouraging [players] to make new characters and experience the journey again.

Approachable and familiar, which is an interesting pillar because in some ways. It's a little bit at war with itself. We want the game to be approachable in the sense that we want a new player, somebody who's never played World of Warcraft, to walk up in 2026. And by the way, we know there are many, many tens of thousands of people in this category just from seeing in the beta.

A new player who's never played before, can they learn the game and find it approachable and understand it and become new people to go on the journey? Can we continue to grow and collect new players? So, [being] approachable is very important. And the original classic game was very, very approachable. And then familiar is, well, as much as possible, try to keep things familiar to what was in the Classic era. So if you played in the Classic era and you come into Forever, you're like, oh yeah, this feels like how that used to work. This feels familiar to me. I'm home. I'm not in some alien, strange place.

And a lot of that was careful attention to things like the models, where we decided we wanted to keep the standard definition models or at least an option between standard definition and high definition models and the animations on them. The way we decided to go about the lighting and shadows of the world and making sure that things felt the same as they always had, or the UI, making sure that while we're using a lot of modern UI conveniences you talked about, that it still feels like a classic game and not just a copy of the Retail UI. It feels like its own game with its own UI goals.

And finally, our last big pillar was to nurture and protect social experiences. So we feel that one of the Classic era's biggest strengths was just how social a game it was. You need other people to do things, to make progress on the big things. Now, you could go adventure by yourself, you can make progress by yourself, but the game's just kind of always better with friends to do a dungeon, to do a harder quest, to do a raid. There's always opportunities to have friends and get more out of the game.

So for that, we leaned into new systems like the new camping system, which is designed to help people have good experiences. They run into each other in the wilderness. I find somebody out in the wilds in Feralas and they've got a camp and I sit down at camp and I add something to it. They're happy, I'm happy. We both get buffs. We have to sit there for a minute and talk to each other. And when we talk to each it's like, 'Hey, we're working on the same quest.'

Well, let's group up and do it together. It'll be faster. It'll be easier. We log in the next day and say, oh, that person's on my ‘recently played with’ list. Maybe I'll ask them to play with me again. Maybe they still have some quest in Feralas. And soon an actual relationship is born that continues past those couple encounters.

That's our goal, our vision for how that works. And so those pillars drive a lot of our decision making. So we say, 'Hey, we want to change this thing. I've got this idea for how I could change it. Should we do it or not?' Well, does it strengthen those pillars? Does it weaken those pillars? Does it do something sort of neutral? And we try to pick only the things that strengthen the pillars.

One area we made a lot of changes on is sort of a sub-goal that we ran across during development, which is the idea of ‘unsolving’ the game. People who've been playing Classic era for the last 21, 22 years, they know the perfect leveling path. They know exactly what Trade Skills to take, exactly what talents to take, exactly what gear to collect. And we wanted to make a new experience so somebody familiar with how it played before understands how it works, but maybe what they've done 10 or more times before isn't always the right choice.

IGN: One of the biggest questions I've had about Forever since it was announced at BlizzCon is, there's all these graphics improvements, and the game looks incredible, especially when it comes to lighting and the water physics. Why were these improvements made here and not in the modern version of the game?

Zierhut: I think they were made here first, is a better clarification. I think they're planning on eventually doing some of these same things in the Retail game as well. So it's not like it's a Forever-only feature, like better water, better lighting, those things are coming for retail as well. I don't know when, but I know they're talking about doing it.

But why here? A few reasons. One big one is in our minds 20 years later, we remember what WoW was like in 2004 as just a little bit shinier and better than it actually was. So there's this vision of, let's give people Azeroth as they remember it, not as it actually was. They remember it having spectacular graphics and these crazy vistas and lighting and shadows, but when you go back and look at it and say, oh yeah, we've made a lot of progress making these things better. This isn't as great anymore as it used to be, but I remember it being that great. So let's make it actually look as cool as our memories tell us it looked. That was one part of driving it.

Another part of driving it was those tens of thousands of new players we're talking about. We want to bring in the next generation of gamers who are used to a lot of these higher graphical fidelity things. Let's bring that into Forever, especially if we can maintain World of Warcraft's classic style and visual aesthetic, which we did. I think we did an excellent job. The game looks like the same game in terms of the style, the art style and the types of characters and the types of buildings you see, but it just looks so much more beautiful than it did before.

IGN: How much of a lift was it bringing these new graphic systems to the WoW engine? Because I know the WoW engine is famously huge and I’ve heard the word spaghetti code a few times in the forums, for instance.

Zierhut: It is not spaghetti code. I think that's totally an unfair player characterization. I think it's personally one of the best game engines out there. When I have friends go off to, because they've left Blizzard to work in another company, work in other engines, when we have conversations like, 'Oh man, I wish I just had the WoW engine. Could we just license the WoW engine? It would be so much easier, better to do the things I want to do.' I've heard that comment repeatedly from other developers.

And kind of the opposite of spaghetti code. What our developers have done over the last really 25 years, because it started even before the game came out, was continually improve the engine and make updates to make it run better, run more efficiently. We can get a higher frame rate, have more units in the same area, [and] have better server response times because we've been perfecting these algorithms and making them better and better and better every year.

And now it's really hard to catch up. It's the best that there is because it's been continuously developed for 25 years, which is the complete opposite of spaghetti code. It's really a fantastic engine. Players say that on the forums and it really isn't that. There's bugs, that's what players say when there's bugs. And any piece of software is going to have bugs. That's reality.

IGN: On the subject of bugs, another thing I've been curious about is what the update schedule for this game is going to look like. Because one of the biggest topics in the modern version of the game right now is the eight week patch cadence since Dragonflight. I've seen a lot of people complaining about repeated content and buggy launches. Are the future updates for Forever going to be coming as frequently or is it just going to be more laid back, slow growth?

Zierhut: I’d say it's a little more laid back. What we've identified through a lot of experimentation, everybody on the dev team, not only are we super involved in designing this game, but we've all been playing the Classic era games continuously since [they] came out in 2019. And we've played around with different rates of releasing content, and going six or eight months without new stuff always feels bad. We know that.

But Season of Discovery, we cut it down to closer to that eight week or 10 week schedule. It felt way, way, way too fast. So we've done a lot of experimentation to see what is the correct rate, and we're fairly convinced the correct rate is something closer to once every four months or 17 weeks or three times a year, whatever you want to call it. That is a cadence we have in mind for releasing new content.

And our plan for being able to do that is essentially, we say we have this much time, how much can we fit in the time? That's one of the advantages of telling smaller stories and more localized stories, is we don't have a giant huge story that needs six months to be told.

We come up with enough local stories that it's appropriate for a four month development period and then we release that four months and then we can have dangling threads to the story that we finish later. But the cadence intent is about four months, at least between raid tiers is four months. Our plan for PVP seasons, and there will be PVP seasons, is four months between seasons. So it's a little more laid back than Retail, but not as laid back as some Classic era expansions, where you might go six months or longer between new raid tiers and new things to do.

And then one nuance on that is we do plan on making content that unlocks in between. So you might have patches with major releases four months apart, but there may be things that unlock two or three months in or one month into that.

So you want to stagger out some content across those four months. It's not just patch day comes [around], here's a content fire hose, and now we're silent for four months. A lot of that is, hey, there's a time event calendar that gradually unlocks things and opens them up over those four months to give things a little bit more life instead of that all at once effect. And Tim's actually the wizard of doing all that stuff.

IGN: So I know that thematically we're talking about just living within Azeroth and not having these giant universe ending threats. When there are updates, is it going to follow the same path that Vanilla did when it was first coming out? Are we going to Molten Core? Are we going to Naxxramus? Or is it going to be a new path?

Zierhut: There's going to be a new path and old path. At BlizzCon, Josh talked about, there's three types of content we want to add to the game. They're the things that you expect the classic era had. Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, An’Qiraj. We will go to those places. We'll go through it a little slower. We're not starting with Molten Core. We're kind of slowing down the timeline and stretching it out a bit, but we will go to those places you expect.

And then there are places that are new but feel like they do belong. So we're going to go to... we added the Riverglades zone and we added a new dungeon there that's an ogre dungeon. And those didn't exist, but they feel appropriate. And as we add new places, new raids and dungeons, there'll be some in that category as well. They feel like they fit in the classic era, they make sense, they're just a natural follow through, but they didn't exist there.

And then there's sometimes going out of our way to do something really different, and that's something like the Skyborne and Zephras, where we go to a part of the world we've never seen before, never even thought existed before so that we can tell all three types of stories and of all three types of content. That ensures that there's always room to add more things. If we only did what was expected, we would run out very quickly and we want to do the unexpected.

IGN: I imagine there's plenty of loose threads that you can pull at to find new content without having to go to outer space.

Zierhut: Correct, correct. Now, that said, the Dark Portal exists, Northrend exists, Pandaria exists, and we could make minor forays into those areas. We might have a dungeon or a quest that takes you there for a mission or two and come back.

Those [are] things that we're not doing soon, but it is something we think about within the scope of what we might do eventually with Forever. But the key detail there is Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor are your home. You don't have capital cities, you don't have auction houses and innkeepers and things like that outside of Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. We won't introduce new capital cities in this plan. Okay. You always come home.

IGN: Speaking of which, housing. I know you have mentioned housing as a possibility for Forever, but I mean, I love housing in Midnight. It's one of my favorite things to do in my down time in between raids. Coming to Forever anytime soon?

Zierhut: It’s definitely something we’ve heard players ask about, and it’s a very interesting idea. That said, we don’t have any plans to add player housing to Forever right now.

IGN: So talking about the raids, I know that one of the guiding principles for endgame is this horizontal progression where it's not like a new raid comes out, that's the only place to get gear now. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Is there going to be a point where there's seven different raids out and it's kind of expected to do all of them to get the best gear because they're all at the same level?

Zierhut: I think it's something we're definitely cognizant of. At some point there are too many raids and too many dungeons. We know we don't have to solve that yet, but we have lots of solutions that we're banding through like, okay, when we have too many, how do we curate it or control it so it's not overwhelming?

And so we're definitely keeping that idea in mind. We don't really have anything to talk about now other than we're aware of the issue, we're thinking about it, we have plans and ideas, they just haven't been fully explored. We're just too focused right now on shipping the game. But it's not a case of we're just going to ship it and figure it out later. We have really good ideas and plans, just can't talk about them yet.

As far as horizontal expansion of the game, there's lots of places where we are doing that. The legacy system is, I think, one of the big features there, where we're encouraging people to make new characters and experience the journey again. And that supports us saying, 'Hey, we're going to add a new level 30 zone or a new level 40 dungeon.' And the best way to experience those is to make a new character and level up to those levels and play it at that level. Don't just go in and crush it with a level 60 character. It won't be that much fun.

So definitely horizontal expansion is a big thing that we're interested in doing. Also in terms of itemization, I showed off at BlizzCon how we're doing a lot of trinkets that vary in power based on what kind of creature you're fighting or what kind of environment you're in. And we will be leaning into that, collecting different items that have different purposes and sort of a bag of tricks with your trinkets.

Now that said, we know that means there's going to be a burden on bag space eventually. Oh my God, I've got 50 different trinkets in my bag. So we will be taking care as the game grows, making sure there's enough storage for it all.

As it is right now, everybody has a bigger bank than they started with in the classic era, so they can store what we're giving them right now, but we'll be watching that storage problem. And again, trying to make as many different interesting items that are real choices about which one I should use is one of our itemization goals.

IGN: I think one of the things that follows from that is that you're also going to want different specs for those situations as well. I know that one of the problems that I've always had with Classic WoW, at least pre-Wrath of the Lich King, was respec costs. And that's something that has been solved in the modern version of the game. How flexible are people going to be with their talents or are people going to be stuck with their build and just relying on gear to handle different situations?

Zierhut: The first thing is that we have dual spec in the game at launch. So you'll be able to have two different specializations, so you can have two different builds available. Our experience is that most of the time in classic content, two builds is enough, but that's certainly something we would watch. Would we ever want to have a third spec, for example? I wouldn't take that off the table. We don't need it now, but I could imagine a future where that becomes something desirable.

What I think we don't want to do, just because it's a different game, is have you able to change your loadout on the fly talent by talent. It gets a little bit too overwhelming and finicky. The danger there is it becomes the expectation that for every encounter you're going to change your talents, and then that becomes not so approachable and familiar.

It starts to become a different game. So I think we do want to keep talents being a commitment. I can't just change them at any moment, but we do have ideas and plans for making it a little easier to change your talent spec when you need to change it. And of course, dual specs, you can have two different specs available to you at all times.

IGN: One of the things that I've been seeing covering the beta is a lot of griefing, and I know there was a controversy around character names as well. How are you going to maintain a friendly atmosphere so that people don't get to the point where they're so afraid of dealing with other people that they just shut themselves in and go solo?

Zierhut: Right. I agree with you, that's a problem in all of gaming, right? Yeah. It's one of the problems that gaming is desperately trying to solve. And our big answer to it is I think the healthiest answer, which is, it's our duty to make a game that pushes people towards positive social interactions and doesn't push people towards toxic social interactions.

And then if you can get enough positive interactions, you can turn the tide of where most people want to be nice, want to cooperate, and the jerks [are] in the minority. And so we're doing a lot of things to lean into what we call pro-social design. Again, the camping system is a good example of that. When I run into somebody out in the world, I'm happy to see them.

Having quests that require you to be in a group to complete the elite quests or group quests are another way where like, 'Hey, I wanted to be able to finish this quest line.' I can't just yell at the whole zone about they're all jerks. I need to be friends with people, more cross-linking in professions. Hey, I want to be able to craft this thing. I might need another person to help me craft it. I can't just go to the auction house and buy everything I need. Any other players to put down a work bench from a campsite or do an enchantment without a Vellum Scroll? So I got to be able to work with other people and do things. Dungeons and raids requiring groups.

One thing we're doing that's very different from later WoW expansions is we are having 10, 20 and 40 player raids as well as five player dungeons. we have four different types of endgame content sizes [for] endgame content people are playing in. And what that does is help people create more extended social networks.

A good illustration: If we go to the Barrow Deeps raid and we're going to go on Friday night, but our 10th player doesn't show up, we only have nine people, what do we do? Well, if all you have is 10 player raids, you might just be stuck or you might have to go to just shouting on LFG to see if somebody could join you. But if you also have a 20 and 40 player raid you do each week, you say, 'Hey, what about Jane from our 20 player raid that we did two nights ago? She was cool. Let's ask her and see if she can go to our 10 player raid with us.' So by having different sizes and different groups, you get a more resilient social network.

And the more resilient and positive the social network is, the less people are tempted to act out and act like jerks. That's sort of our belief, that people are fundamentally more interested in being good. We just have to lead them in that direction and have designs that encourage positive social interactions.

Other things in that space, we also have the ‘recently played with’ list. So when you've played with somebody, we show you the people you've recently played with so you can find them again. That could be people you traded with, people you grouped with, who you cast spells on. They all show up in that list. And then when we talk about how we place people out in the world, we have to distribute the population. If there's 5,000 people in Elwynn, they can't all be in the exact same version of Elwynn, they have to be in different ones.

Well, who gets put in which version of Elwyn at what time? We try to put people together in cohorts where they will keep seeing the same people over and over again. And we know that repeat social interactions encourage people to be kinder to each other.

We're mean to strangers and we're less mean to our neighbors and the person we see drive by or walk by with their dog every day because we'll see them again and we don't want to have a bad relationship with them. So seeing people multiple times over days and weeks also encourages us as human beings to be kinder to each other. So a lot of that type of design, if that makes sense.

IGN: Yeah, that sounds good. I know that it's kind of hard to just police people, especially when there's just so many people playing.

Zierhut: It can't be all punishment, all punishment. It's got to be sort of a positive inducement like, Because I was a nice person and played nice with others, this cool thing happened to me. You know what? Maybe I should be nice again tomorrow.

IGN: What is the Classic era, do you think?

Zierhut: I mean, there's different eras to different people. Some people will say it's only the original game because that's what they remember because they were playing it actively. They were 14 years old in 2004 and it was their whole world.

For some people it's going to be Burning Crusade or Wrath of the Lich King because that's when they played it. I've talked to people who the first time they played was Mists of Pandaria and that's it for them. So everybody has a different line on where it was. And even beyond that, people like, 'I started playing in Legion and I loved it. It was the best expansion ever.' There's people across the whole timeline that will have different opinions on that.

IGN: Yeah. I want to meet the people who are like, 'Shadowlands Classic is my thing.'

Zierhut: I'm sure that those people, they may not be noisy now, but give yourself five or six years and yeah, they'll come out of the woodwork, 'That was the best time ever. Trust me.' Once you get some distance, [the expansions] all have amazing things. It's when you're too close to appreciate what was great about them, but once there's distance, they're all amazing in different ways.

IGN: I know that a really cool story that I covered a couple weeks ago is the ‘Kyle's Gone Missing’ quest getting added into the game. And I loved that. Are there more things like that that were added to the game maybe a little bit later than Burning Crusade or Vanilla that are so iconic to World of Warcraft, regardless of whether or not they were in Classic?

Zierhut : Yeah. I think we've definitely talked about them. I think our only limitation has been time, how much time and bandwidth do we have to do it? So a really good example of that is, the area of Southern Dustwallow Marsh was redone post-Burning Crusade, and this little town called Mudsprocket, little goblin town got added to it. And we think it would be amazing to try to have our version of Mudsprocket and what was going on with the goblins in Southern Dustwallow and things like that. So there's a lot of things that happened during Burning Crusade, Wrath of the King, [and] Cataclysm that we like to make echoes and references to.

A good example of that we looked at earlier today with another journalist was in the zone of Shen’dralas, which is one of our smaller new zones. There's a character named Mordent Evenshade who is some kind of a highborn elf. Maybe he's actually a Skyborne elf. And he was introduced in Cataclysm as part of letting the Night Elves become mages, which was a big, big cultural break for Night Elves because magic was forbidden for them. And he shows up in Shen’dralas and he has his own story connected to the new stories we're telling. And so we like to have those kinds of echoes of what was going on, even if they're not exactly the same, of things that were done after the original classic era. They can still fit in our world.

IGN: When I think of Mount Hyjal, I think of the Cataclysm version of the zone and this (Forever version) looks completely different.

Zierhut: It's a very different experience without flying, because you have to walk along the ground and see it from that level. Whereas the Cataclysm version is fun. It's super fun, but you're moving from place to place, flying from these high points, and now you're down on the ground and you have to do the big walk up the mountain.

Cataclysm also had the Firelands section and we didn't make that big change. We have that whole additional area to work with that's not been taken over with lava, so there's more space to work with. So it'll have a very different feel.

I think one of the things I really like [about] Mount Hyjal is that as you walk through it, I'm like, Oh, I remember this spot. This spot is where I fought the demon Azgalor. Wait, that's Azgalor's skull on the ground there. There's these call-outs back to the Mount Hyjal raid that are super cool where you recognize the locations and buildings from when you saw it in a different era of the game. I think that's a lot of fun.

IGN: Are there more secret places that weren't added to the original game that were supposed to be? The Emerald Dream, I think was.

Zierhut: We'd love to explore the Emerald Dream at some point. So I think it's on our list of things we want to do. Grim Batol, we'd love to go to Grim Batol at some point. There was a dungeon in Cataclysm, but it was just a dungeon. We'd like to actually go explore the depths of Grim Batol and up to the tops of the towers and really see the whole place the way you saw Blackrock Mountain.

IGN: That place was wiped out by the time the classic era begins, right?

Zierhut: It's still there, but it's not clear what's been going on inside the mountain. The orcs have lost some control over it. There's cultists who come in later in Cataclysm. It's still there in Cataclysm.

It's just Cataclysm, there's a dungeon where you kind of fly... It's the one where you're on the flying dragons, you have kind of a bombing run before you land and do the full dungeon. We just like to go into it in more depth and fully explore it. Tim is showing on his screen a whole new dungeon that we've added. This is at the north end of Un’Goro Crater, and it's kind of a reference to some of the things that happened in Wrath of the Lich King where there were these titan sites on the north rim of Un’Goro.

Tim Jones: This an example of in Wrath of the Lich King, like you said, you could take a teleportation device from Sho’lazar Basin in Northrend to this location, the Shapers Terrace, which is north of Un’Goro. And so it is an example of, yes, there's definitely elements.

The Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, that is our canvas. There are so many spaces and zones that never existed in Vanilla, places that we haven't really fully explored, like you said, the Emerald Dream. There's definitely places to explore in the Caverns of Time that we've never been to. The Riverglades, we went there a little bit earlier on our jaunt around the world, but that represents, just there was never a zone there and that space got destroyed in the cataclysm by Deathwing. But before then, what could it have been? And so we reached back into lore from Warcraft 1 and Warcraft 2.

There's a faction called the Brotherhood of the Horse. And so we craft this story with Chris Metzen helping us along the way to really figure out, okay, maybe this was an area where the the Alliance was chasing armies of the Horde out even further east than the Redridge Mountains, but they never got help from the Alliance, and so they had to settle on the frontier.

So there's opportunities like that to create brand new spaces and opportunities like this where it's like, yes, this was lightly touched on in a future expansion, but can we take that small little space and expand it into a dungeon, expand it into a zone, into a new raid? There's so many opportunities with the base world.

IGN: Is that going to be the shape of story additions that are coming to Forever? Things that were hinted at or referenced in other versions of the game or even the novels?

Jones: It's one of the pieces of the pie. Yeah.

Zierhut: It’s probably about a third of the pie. Probably about a third of it is things you expected, you've been waiting to see forever. And another third are things that just fit in the world and they always belong there.

And the last third are brand new things that you never imagined could be there. Another good example, we have all of the terrain for Gilneas is in the game. So Gilneas from Cataclysm, where the Worgen start, is in our world and we want to go there eventually and tell a new story in Gilneas. You can't go in there right now. Sharks will eat you. But when we do go to Gilneas, there will be a whole new story there and a chance to explore Gilneas before it gets destroyed in the Cataclysm. So lots of those kinds of opportunities.

IGN: What about Silvermoon?

Zierhut: Silvermoon we would like to get to eventually as well. Right now, Silvermoon's a big focus in Retail, so we think it's better for us to focus elsewhere, to not have overload on so much of the same story on every version.

Jones: But I think our attitude is [that] we are in a kind of a time bubble, right? We're locked in the place in between the end of Warcraft 3 and before Burning Crusade. And everything about Azeroth existed, even Outland exists, even Northrend exists, like Quel’Thelas exists. All these places are there. And I don't think if we ever went to Northrend, we wouldn't be visiting the version that you see in Wrath of the Lich King, but could we visit some extremely hostile level 60 version of it because Arthas is still in the stage where he's sending Kel’Thuzad to Eastern Kingdoms to assault Eastern Plaguelands? We could. There's so much that we can do with the timeline that we're in.

IGN: I do want to ask about the Skyborne and the reasoning behind adding them instead of some of the other races that existed in Azeroth already, like the Goblins or the Blood Elves.

Zierhut: We knew that we wanted to bring in more of the elves into the game. We know they're the most popular races in World of Warcraft historically. And in particular, the current alliance and Horde races from the Classic Era have the unfortunate feature that they tend to cause a faction imbalance. There's a certain... A lot of players who don't want to play a monster, to put it really honestly. They don't want to be an Orc or a Troll or a Tauren or Undead. They want to have something that looks prettier. It's not everybody.

And so we knew that having elves available on both sides would help with our faction balance, and it'd be very popular with the players. So then it became a question of, well, which elves do we want to tell a story of? There's lots of different elves in this world. Elves are one of the races that were all over Kalimdor and The Eastern Kingdoms in times past. So where do we want to go? Which elves should we tell a story about? And you mentioned Silvermoon, and this is a story that Retail had recently told, and we didn't want to get in each other's way of telling that story. We want to give them time to let their Silvermoon story breathe and do everything they wanted with it. And then once they were done with it, we could maybe then go visit Silvermoon.

So let's not do that. Let's not do more on the Night Elves. So who else do we have? Well, we have the elves from Dire Maul, the Shen’dralas elves, and what story could we tell from them? What happened to them? Some of them survived inside Dire Maul with Prince Tortheldrin, but where did the rest go? And that's where the idea for the Skyborne Elves came from. They're refugees from that civilization.

Jones: We are in Zephras Isle [now]. So if you look up into the sky, you can see elements of the -

Zierhut: Skywall.

Jones: The Skywall architecture from the Elemental Plane of Air, because that is part of the story that as refugees, they allied with air elementals to create this kind of refugee island in the sky. And there's going to be exciting opportunities to explore more of their history in future patch content, [and] raid content. Al’Akir is definitely like... I mean, we fought Ragnaros and we fought Prince Thunderaan when folks were trying to craft Thunderfury back in Vanilla WoW. So dealing with these elemental deities has been part of WoW's history. And I think it's exciting that this race is connected so heavily to [those stories].

Zierhut: Yeah. So just exciting to keep telling these stories and the Skyborne are very deeply connected to the stories we plan to tell. This is not just sort of an island off in Skywall [where] we'll drop the story and never go anywhere. The Shen’dralar elves are connected to Shen’dralas, that new zone and connected to the Shen’dralar Elves in Dire Maul.

And we'll have more ongoing stories with Prince Tortheldrin and Dire Maul and what was really going on there, a story that Chris Metzin always had something in his mind, but we never got to tell that story. Now we get to go back and tell more of what was really happening around Dire Maul and how they got in the situation they were in.

IGN: So, obviously three different versions of World of Warcraft is a lot of game for anyone.

Zierhut: Yeah, but for different types of players or different types of gameplay they want, right?

IGN: Right. Do you imagine a world where the patch cadence is such that there's downtime in Retail so people pick up Forever and then downtime in Forever so people pick up Retail? Or do you think people are going to find their home among one of these three games and really embrace it?

Zierhut: I think there will definitely be downtime where you can play both games. In particular, just because the modern game is focused more on the sort of level 60 or max-level endgame progression rating, or PVP, arenas or battlegrounds. They're focused very much on that, and that tends to come in sort of bursts.

And then between those bursts, there's time to say, 'You know what? I'm just going to level up a new character in World of Warcraft Forever and learn a new tradeskill and earn some more legacy points and unlock that cool cosmetic in that game.' So there's opportunities for different types of gameplay in different games, and I think there will definitely be players who are playing both, and I think that's exciting and great.

World of Warcraft Forever launches a week from today, and while the game will have a huge swath of content available on day one, there will be new content continually added to the game. But how frequently should fans expect new content to arrive? It sounds like Blizzard is willing to take things a little slower than in the modern version of World of Warcraft.

In a recent interview with IGN, World of Warcraft Forever principal game designer Kris Zierhut, said Forever will employ a slower cadence than Midnight's aggressive eight-week content cycle: "We're fairly convinced the correct [update] rate is something closer to once every four months or 17 weeks or three times a year."

This is in contrast with the modern version of World of Warcraft, which has had an aggressive update cadence since Dragonflight launched in 2022. And while that approach has meant players of the modern version of the game have something new every couple of months, some have said the updates often feels rushed, with bugs and repeated content. We've all done some form of invasions several times in the last couple of years, after all.

Zierhut did say that Blizzard experimented with a faster update schedule in Season of Discovery, an experimental Classic game mode that came out in 2023, but "we cut it down to closer to that eight week or 10 week schedule. It felt way, way, way too fast."

But by going with a four month update schedule, Forever will also avoid the content droughts that some older expansions were infamous for. There have been times in WoW's history where the game didn't have new content for a year at a time, like in Warlords of Draenor, where patch 6.2, which included Hellfire Citadel, lasted for 13 months before the prepatch update for Legion.

Zierhut acknowledged this as well, saying: "We've played around with different rates of releasing content and going six or eight months without new stuff always feels bad. We know that."

Just because World of Warcraft patches will be released in four-month intervals, it doesn't necessarily mean you'll have to wait four months for something new to do. Zierhut also told me that the team may timegate some content, saying "one nuance on that is we do plan on making content that unlocks in between. So you might have patches with major releases four months apart, but there may be things that unlock two or three months in or one month into that."

The idea there is to ease players into content, rather than overwhelming them with everything all at once. Zierhut continued: "It's not just patch day comes [around], here's a content fire hose, and now we're silent for four months. A lot of that is, 'hey, there's a time event calendar that gradually unlocks things and opens them up over those four months' to give things a little bit more life instead of that all at once effect."

Only time will tell if this middle ground between rapid updates and slow updates will pay off, but according to the roadmap that Blizzard released at BlizzCon, Forever will have its first major update sometime in spring 2027. So, if that four-month timeline that Blizzard is targeting pays off, WoW Forever should have a fresh round of new content sometime in March.

While you wait for the game to launch, check out more on Blizzard's plan for World of Warcraft Forever.

A South Korean politician has urged the country's President to play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 to grasp the potential devastation of a North Korean invasion.

In a report from Korean outlet The Herald Business, politician Han Dong-hoon urged President Lee Jae-myung to play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 to grasp how catastrophic things could be if the country was ill-equipped to defend against a North Korean invasion. He noted that the country should be actively preparing for any kind of situation, rather than simply hoping it never happens. He also pushed back against critiques of the game depicting an active all-out war between the two countries, believing that it should be a wake-up call to assess whether or not they're prepared for something like that to happen.

"I hope the image of a Seoul reduced to ashes in the game remains in the realm of fiction," he said.

In Modern Warfare 4, the game opens with a group of South Korean soldiers patrolling the city streets before an EMP takes out all power in the area. The North Korean army then attacks the city with a barrage of missiles before air-dropping soldiers and launching offensive measures through a series of tunnels. It's pure chaos, not unlike the surprise Russian invasion of America in the original Modern Warfare 2 from 2009.

Half of Modern Warfare 4's story focuses on South Korean forces trying to push the North Korean opposition back, despite being hopelessly outmatched and overpowered, partially thanks to a groundbreaking new technology that can wipe out defenses in the blink of an eye. The story also feels oddly timed, as reports last week claimed that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had fallen into a coma or even outright died.

These reports have been denied and countered, but the comparison to the game came as Kim Jong Un's sister, Kim Yo Jong, made threats against South Korea. In Modern Warfare 4, there's a familial power struggle within North Korean leadership, which ends with the Supreme Leader's sister taking command and unleashing war on South Korea. Given the timing of the real-life situation and the release of Modern Warfare 4 last week, it was hard for fans not to see eerie similarities between reality and the game's fictional story.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 also has an entire mode set in the DMZ, a real-world location that sits on the border of North and South Korea. In the game, the player explores this environment to complete missions, extract loot, and learn additional lore about the game's story. IGN gave Modern Warfare 4 a 7/10, noting that the game's multiplayer feels a bit too familiar, but the campaign elevates the larger package: "Multiplayer may not quite hit the mark, but a great campaign ensures Modern Warfare 4's place as one of Call of Duty’s better recent entries," reads an excerpt from our review.

With intense performances, a heady atmosphere, and sharp writing, The Wolf Among Us’ gripping neo-noir saga rivalled the prestige TV dramas of the time when it first came out in 2013, earning acclaim as one of Telltale’s greatest yet. Now, with a long-awaited sequel in the works, it’s been given a fresh coat of paint that’s gussied up locations and added a slew of behind-the-scenes content to sweeten the pot. Some holdover annoyances haven’t been addressed, like the original’s stiff and occasionally uncanny animations, which get in the way of The Wolf Among Us Remastered feeling truly definitive. Still, this story remains a fantastic one, and the enhanced set dressing even manages to deepen its sinister mood.

For those who didn’t play the original, The Wolf Among Us thoughtfully adapts Bill Willingham’s beloved graphic novel series Fables, in which folklore characters covertly coexist with humans in a New York suburb aptly called Fabletown. Set roughly 20 years earlier as a non-canon prequel, Telltale’s adaptation artfully draws on classic noir storytelling, dropping you into the shoes of Sheriff Bigby (aka the Big Bad Wolf) to solve a bizarre but gripping murder. With a decapitated head on his stoop and little more to go on than a ribbon and an etched ring, the marshal must use his keen nose and perception to find the culprit… and he has to do it fast. With humans investigating the case and the social fabric of the mythical community at stake, failure could cause their secret society to collapse entirely.

On top of that already immense pressure, there’s one more important piece of subtext to consider: after centuries of violence as a storybook baddie, Bigby’s constituents don’t necessarily trust him to get the job done and, naturally, watch his every move. As such, he’s forced to lean on familiar faces like Snow White, The Little Mermaid, and Bufkin from The Wizard of Oz to chase leads as he unravels a web of complex issues spanning class consciousness, poverty, and abuses of power. It’s a journey that proves to be thoroughly engrossing.

To peel back the seedy underbelly of Fabletown, your time as Bigby is loosely split into segments. For the most part, you’ll have intriguing conversations from a third-person perspective, choosing from a handful of responses as a clock quickly ticks down. Through this system, you can lean on witnesses who seem to be hiding something, threatening them if they continue to hold back. Or, if all else fails, you can resort to physical violence (assuming that aligns with your own moral compass). Cleverly, the language used in these interactions draws on its fairy tale source material without ever feeling corny. So, despite including terms like Witching Well and Magic Mirror, the conversations remain emotionally charged – a tribute to the writing underneath and the resonant, enduring performances of its cast.

What’s most important is that your reactions here are not one-sided. As you make certain decisions, a threatening notification pops up stating that the character you’re interacting with will remember what you did (a staple of the genre). For example, say you make a promise to deliver something and don’t come through – well, they might have a few choice words for you the next time you meet. In this way, The Wolf Among Us is not just about solving the whodunit; it is also about choosing whether Bigby will shake off his villainous origins and prove his status as Sheriff and protector.

What’s neat is that the choice is mostly up to you. If you want to, you can cruelly push the citizens to get your answers, or try as often as you might to take their side, even if that means going against the legal institution to which you are professionally bound. By exploring this curious grey area, I began to understand why the residents of Fabletown act as they do, eventually allowing me to empathise with their actions, no matter how desperate or depraved they may be.

Amidst these social calls, you’ll occasionally control Bigby directly as he picks through dingy locations – such as dive bars and ornate offices – interacting with clues to advance the investigation. Just like in conversations, there are even more ethical quandaries to consider, like whether you should interrupt a wake like an unemotional jerk or kick in a door instead of knocking like a gentleman. As the confusing haze of right and wrong settled in, I frequently struggled to maintain my good-guy persona, especially when provoked. It would be so easy to smack an obvious bad guy in the head to get the answers I needed more quickly, but then wouldn’t I be just as bad as him?

Last but not least are the interactive sequences, which require you to complete a series of quick time events to survive some of the higher octane moments throughout the tale. You’ll rip out throats, jump across city blocks, and even set broken bones, with failure occasionally leading to a game over. Thankfully, frequent checkpoints drop you right back into the action if you miss a beat. The variety and frequency of these moments do well to keep you busy as you piece together the killer's identity, particularly as many of them arrive with mesmerising (and sometimes gruesome) animations.

Mirroring the flow of the original, The Wolf Among Us Remastered takes place over five episodes that are about two hours long (all included in this single package instead of being sold individually). For the most part, the choices you make feel impactful, which keeps the momentum chugging along nicely. That is, until the penultimate episode, when the pace suddenly dips and characters start needlessly reiterating their points of view. In earlier episodes, I’d look under every stone to figure out who the villain was, and I was fairly confident I understood what was going on by episode four, so everything slowing down right when I was ready for the payoff felt slightly disjointed.

I do get why they didn’t alter this chapter more substantially; this is a remaster, not a remake, and major story alterations could ultimately do more harm than good if handled poorly. Besides, there are still enjoyable chats throughout the episode, so the dragging is only a minor blip in an otherwise brilliant story, with a finale that certainly clawed me back. But when the rest of the tale is so tight and considered, it’s still a bit annoying to spend a couple of hours rehashing information you’ve already worked hard to uncover.

That dissatisfaction is also softened by the fact that the locations you visit are so intentionally designed and brilliantly reflect the personalities of their inhabitants. While Bigby's tiny, sparsely furnished flat fits with his lone wolf status, the local watering hole’s scrappy yet warm atmosphere matches its down-on-their-luck clientele. The remaster's design glow-up further bolsters that environmental storytelling, as everything from couch upholstery to pawn shop artefacts has been redesigned with far more detail. For instance, those familiar with Aunt Greenleaf's apartment will see that it’s now even witchier than before, with hanging tassels and strewn curios. Elsewhere, the infamous Puddin ‘n’ Pie remains seedy but stylish, featuring Art Nouveau-esque pendant lights and extravagant neon piping.

With so much effort spent on the look, it’s a shame that not every detail received the same touch, and that there are still a handful of friction points on the technical side. Characters sometimes move as if on a swivel, and Bigby’s animations when finding clues tend to feel strangely rigid and occasionally robotic. In the 2013 original, these blips were passable, but in a 2026 remaster, the awkward animations and jerky movements stand out. That’s not to say they are so distracting that they undo all the impressive polishing elsewhere, just that I wish those edges had been similarly smoothed over in order to soundly mark this as the definitive version of the tale.

Harkening back to a simpler era of DVD extras, The Wolf Among Us Remastered also includes a gaggle of bonus features for fans who might want a peek behind the curtain of development. There’s a toggleable Noir game mode that lets you play out the tale in black and white, a digital gallery that compares old art stills with new ones, plus developer and cast interviews about the making-of. As someone who likes to sift through every scrap of lore, I found these additions certainly fun to pilfer through… even if the interface is a tad old-fashioned, leaning more toward sentiment than usefulness. The most compelling add by far is a handful of playable deleted scenes that, while rough around the edges, highlight interesting plot threads and deviations that are exciting to experience after the final credits roll.

Warhorse Studios — the developer behind Kingdom Come: Deliverance, its sequel, and an upcoming Lord of the Rings RPG — has been hit by a “serious” cyberattack. The company announced the news on its website.

The developer is currently working with cybersecurity experts to “secure its systems, investigate the incident, and assess its full impact.” Warhorse has also reached out to authorities to track down the culprits, who accessed company systems and data.

“This is a serious incident for Warhorse Studios and everyone affected,” said Martin Frývaldský, CEO of Warhorse Studios. “Our immediate priority is to secure our systems, establish the full extent of the breach, and take the necessary steps to protect our employees, partners, and community.

“We are dedicating the resources needed to address this situation and will communicate further information as soon as we responsibly can.”

Warhorse said it won’t comment further or conduct any interviews on the topic, so the extent of the attack isn’t clear at the moment. The studio will share updates as it can.

Warhorse Studios is currently working on a Lord of the Rings role-playing game, described as an “open world Middle-earth RPG,” and a new Kingdom Come game expected to be Kingdom Come: Deliverance 3 or a spinoff.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 launched last year to critical and commercial acclaim. IGN's Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 review returned a 9/10. We said: "Armed with excellent melee combat and an exceptional story, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is one part sequel and one part coronation, bringing a lot of the original's ideas to fruition."

While Warhorse has enjoyed significant success with Kingdom Come: Deliverance, it has come under fire recently for its use of generatve AI. Daniel Vávra, the previous director of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, stepped down from his role in February to focus on making a Kingdom Come: Deliverance movie.

This month, Japanese developer Capcom was also hit with a cyberattack which saw 196 customer accounts compromised. Retailer Playasia was also taken offline. These hacks coincide with what security experts have dubbed “Black October” in which AI agents have disrupted internet security. It isn’t clear if Capcom, Playasai, or the Warhorse hack is related to that.

Dead by Daylight developer Behaviour Interactive has responded after confirming Chucky would be removed from stores last week, explaining that horror icons will "continue to have an open invitation to join (or rejoin)."

There was a bit of confusion amongst fans when the studio behind the hit asymmetrical horror game announced Chucky as the latest icon to leave its roster. Following the removal of Pinhead last year and Michael Myers just months ago, fans were sad to see another Killer exit stores so soon.

However, it's ultimately not up to Behaviour when it comes to the date some franchises may depart. In a statement sent to IGN, Behaviour said that, while its "goal is always to keep licenses" in Dead by Daylight forever, that can't always be the case. That's why, "despite our best efforts," Chucky and others have left and could continue to leave in the future.

No one wants to see Dead by Daylight's staggering roster of Killers and Survivors shrink for any reason, especially when Behaviour has consistently delivered variety in the decade since its launch. Unfortunately, that's what will happen come November 24, 2026, when the Chucky Chapter is made unavailable to purchase.

The upside, as Behaviour made clear in last week's announcement, is that anyone who purchases the possessed killer doll and any of his accompanying cosmetics will have the freedom to use them beyond the cutoff date. It means that, while Chucky may show up in fewer lobbies over time, he'll never truly be gone.

It's something Behaviour made sure to reiterate in its statement to IGN, reassuring fans that "Dead by Daylight will always be gaming's House of Horror." This means that, even when licenses expire, the Child's Play, Halloween, and Hellraiser franchises will always have the same invitation to enter the Fog that newcomers have. You can see the studio's full statement on Chucky's exit below.

"As with all live service games, players can expect regular updates, new content, and occasional changes over time," Behaviour said. "Our goal is always to keep licenses in our game forever. When they have to go away, it's because - despite our best efforts - it wasn't possible to retain them.

"We want to reassure our community that Chucky will remain part of the Dead by Daylight experience for existing owners. Players who already own The Good Guy, his perks, or any associated cosmetics will still be able to use that content after November 24, 2026.

"Dead by Daylight will always be gaming's House of Horror, and horror icons will continue to have an open invitation to join (or rejoin) us in the Fog."

It'll be painful to see one of Dead by Daylight's more unique Killers leave the Fog, but a return is definitely not off the table. One of the more famous examples of an IP leaving and eventually coming back was Stranger Things and its playable Demogorgon, which was removed from stores in November 2021 before being added back in November 2023.

For now, there's no telling when Chucky and Child's Play may return. Meanwhile, we recently found out that Terrifier's Art the Clown would enter the fray starting next month. Friday the 13th's Jason was added in June. For more, you can check out everything Behaviour announced during its 10th Anniversary Broadcast over the summer.

The Ukiyo Game Bar & Cafe in Tokyo is going viral for its unique guest experience that lets customers play Buckshot Roulette in real life… well, sort of.

Two or more guests can make their reservations to play a game of Buckshot Roulette, with reservations open in blocks from month to month. Of course, this isn’t actual Russian Roulette (which would be extremely dangerous, not to mention wildly illegal), but instead a fun recreation of the viral indie game with non-lethal mechanics. (For instance, if you get 'shot,' you have to take a 'shot.')

As shown in a tweet posted by the bar and photos shared by guests, hosts will don a mask of the dealer’s terrifying face and wield a prop shotgun as players gather round the roulette table with their drinks in tow. (This roulette table, first made for Tokyo Game Show, is now a permanent fixture at Ukiyo Game Bar & Cafe.)

リアルバックショットテーブル 11月9日まで予約解放！

お二人様から予約可能です。

予約は以下のフォームかDMからで！

お待ちしております。 https://t.co/ffPD4M20sb

— UKIYO GAME BAR ＆ CAFE｜プレオープン中 (@ukiyogamebar) October 21, 2026

played irl buckshot roulette at @ukiyogamebar and I cannot stress enough how much fun this was. BIG recommend for anyone visiting Tokyo! https://t.co/yowJEXRP5s

— maria (@eurothug4000) October 26, 2026

Speaking of drinks, Ukiyo Game Bar also has a few themed cocktails on offer, one of which is themed after the hit indie game Arctic Eggs. Made in collaboration with the game’s developer, The Water Museum, this delightful drink even features a gummy in the shape of a fried egg. (These gummies aren’t actually available in Japan; an American staff member shipped 2 kilos worth of them in from the States.)

Photos of the Buckshot Roulette experience quickly went viral on social media, leaving fans with severe FOMO and scrambling to make travel plans.

In Buckshot Roulette, players sign a waiver and engage in a version of Russian Roulette with a Shotgun against a mysterious and terrifying opponent. There’s more to it than pulling the trigger and hoping you don’t meet a grisly end; there are a variety of items on offer that players can use to their advantage and tip the odds in their favor with the goal of surviving — and making off with a major cash prize.

この目玉焼きのグミ日本で売ってなくてアメリカのスタッフが2キロ持ってきてくれました。

売り切れ御免なのでまだの方はぜひ！

Collaborating with @critical_reflex and @WaterMuseum_ for the Arctic “Big Egg”cocktail at the UKIYO GAME BAR.

Thanks for delivering the eggs @dbloodworth2

— UKIYO GAME BAR ＆ CAFE｜プレオープン中 (@ukiyogamebar) October 9, 2026

Buckshot Roulette also boasts a multiplayer mode if you’d like to raise the stakes with your friends. The game is published by Critical Reflex, home to a bunch of other quirky, viral indie games like Mouthwashing, No, I’m not a Human, and even Arctic Eggs. All three of those games are now available to play on Xbox, as revealed during the 2026 ID@Xbox showcase this month.

Image Credits: Ukiyo Game Bar, Twitter/X

Ubisoft has detailed Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced's final major content update, revealing a closer look at new game+, Nightmare difficulty, and more.

The publisher behind the Assassin's Creed 4 remake broke down some of the most-requested features finally set to make their way to players in a video published today. It's one last push that's set to drop tomorrow, October 27, to keep players plundering before Edward Kenway sails off into the sunset yet again.

New game+ and Nightmare difficulty are no doubt the highlights here. The first addition is mostly self-explanatory, allowing players to start a new save file with all of the tools they gathered from a previous, completed playthrough. It supports up to new game+ 5 and, as detailed by game director Richard Knight, gives players "plenty of opportunities to push your skills to the limit and unlock exclusive rewards."

If running it back through the West Indies isn't enough of a challenge, there's Nightmare difficulty. A description for the harder mode's version of Activities, for example, says that "harpooning preys are the most vicious" and "underwater breath is very limited." In addition to making Edward's journey more dangerous, the final major content update is "more spectacular" thanks to a collection of new takedown animations.

"And that's not all," Knight said. "Alongside these new features, we've also added new Easter Eggs, a host of rewards to discover – including community-inspired trinkets – new outfits, sails, and even adorable new pet cat skins.

"Thank you for your support, fan art, videos, and millions of photos shared in photo mode. It was a real honor to bring back Edward's legacy to life and to see that same excitement find its echo amongst you throughout the year."

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced launched for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S July 9, 2026. IGN gave it a 9/10 review, saying, "More than just a shinier version of the same game you remember, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced brings what was already one of the best games in the series up to today’s standards."

Title update 1.0.8 will indeed be the final major content update when it launches tomorrow, but Ubisoft may continue to deliver smaller quality-of-life fixes should the opportunity arise. Until then, you can see what percentage of players have struggled to take down those infamous Legendary Ships.

It's a good time to be a Palworld obsessive. The game recently teased its next update, Palworld: Side by Side, coming this winter, and now collectibles creator The Loyal Subjects has released the game's first official toy collection, featuring everything from articulated figures to mystery eggs. It's available now on Amazon.

Decorate your desk with the frankly adorable Chillet, take everyone's favorite oversized electric menace Grizzbolt out and about, and keep the perpetually vacant-looking Relaxasaurus in your pocket to remind you not to scream at your boss.

There are four different products in the collection, starting with a range of 4-inch articulated figures featuring Foxparks, Relaxasaurus, Grizzbolt, and Lifmunk. Each comes with its own Battle FX accessory, so you can make them fight without having to worry about a raid on your base.

For those who prefer their Pals a little smaller, because it's not the size of the Pal that matters but what you do with it that counts, there's also a 3-inch collector set featuring Chillet, Grizzbolt, and Relaxasaurus (see at Amazon).

And because apparently collecting Pals in the game wasn't enough, there are two different mystery collections to hunt down. The Cheebee Micro Blind Mystery Pal Egg 12-Pack includes a dozen 1.5-inch mystery figures, while the Blind Egg Incubator Reveal 8-Pack offers eight miniature Pals to hatch and collect.

As always, the blind-box format means there's no guarantee you'll get the Pal you're after, so happy hunting to all the completionists out there. At least these ones won't require you to craft hundreds of Pal Spheres.

The collection is available to pre-order now on Amazon.