Month: April 2022

Azeroth and its heroes are taking to the skies in World of Warcraft’s latest expansion, Dragonflight. Blizzard announced World of Warcraft: Dragonflight on Tuesday, during a livestream that included a preview of the expansion.

The expansion’s announcement included a cinematic trailer that gave players a look at Azeroth’s history, before revealing how dragons returned to the modern world to vanquish an ancient threat.

Dragonflight will put Azeroth’s Dragon Aspects at the center of the Warcraft story for the first time since Cataclysm back in 2010. The Aspects have sought the help of the world’s mortal heroes in order to restore their powers and to stop a newly emerging evil. To do this, players will journey to the Dragon Isles, which will be split up into five different zones. Players can also navigate the Dragon Isles through the air using Dragonriding, which seems to be somewhere between gliding and flying.

Image: Blizzard Entertainment/Activision

The new expansion will also add a new race called the Dracthyr: shapeshifting dragons with draconic and humanoid forms. The Dracthyr will only be able to play as the Evoker, a new class that’s also being introduced in Dragonflight. The Evoker is a class that can only be chosen by Dracthyr characters.

The Evoker has two specializations to choose from: Devastation, World of Warcraft’s first new ranged damage-dealing spec since the game’s release, and Preservation, a healer. The Dracthyr can join either the Alliance or the Horde and will start in their own special starting area, at a higher level than other starting races and classes.

Image: Blizzard Entertainment/Activision

As well as these larger new features, Dragonflight will also include many smaller updates that will be welcome additions to fans. Professions are getting a massive upgrade in the form of work orders, which will allow players to recruit each other more easily to create items, as well as new profession equipment, and a new specialization system. Blizzard is also upgrading World of Warcraft’s basic user interface for this new expansion, though they didn’t preview much of what we can expect from it.

Perhaps the largest systematic addition in the expansion is the game’s new talent trees. The system is reminiscent of the talent trees that World of Warcraft used to have, and will give players dozens of options and combinations to customize their class exactly how they want to play it, according to Blizzard.

Dragonflight does not have a release date yet, but Blizzard said to expect news of the expansion’s alpha sometime in the near future.

Sega is reportedly developing “big-budget” reboots of its Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio franchises, according to Bloomberg, as the company seeks to create a global hit. The projects are reportedly components of Sega’s so-called Super Game Initiative, a plan that parent company Sega Sammy unveiled in 2021.

Sega’s Super Game Initiative is the company’s strategy to develop “new and innovative titles” with a focus on global reach, online interactivity, community building, and IP utilization, Sega said in November, when it announced a strategic partnership with Microsoft to use its Azure cloud platform. In May 2021, Sega said it planned to exploit its suite of dormant IP for remakes, remasters, and reboots, naming games like Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio as candidates for revitalization. Other potential games on the list of dormant franchises include Space Channel 5, Rez, Panzer Dragoon, Nights, Shinobi, Virtua Fighter, and Altered Beast.

Bloomberg reports that Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio are up first; a new Crazy Taxi is already a year into development, with plans to release it in the next two to three years.

Sega has remastered, remade, and reimagined its Dreamcast-era properties over the years. Both Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio were included in Sega’s 2011 Dreamcast Collection, and Sega has attempted multiple Crazy Taxi spinoffs for mobile devices, including 2017’s Crazy Taxi Tycoon (née Crazy Taxi Gazillionaire), a business management sim/idle game. But Sega has also outsourced many of its IP revivals, including Streets of Rage 4, Panzer Dragoon: Remake, Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX, and The House of the Dead: Remake, to independent developers.

Beyond games, Sega is working to turn its stable of game franchises into live-action movies. Following the success of its Sonic the Hedgehog film franchise, Sega hopes to adapt IP like Yakuza and Streets of Rage for the big screen.

In 2020, Mike Waddell spent most of his free weekends packing trading cards featuring Bigfoot, Mothman, and other strange cryptids into promo packs, then shipping them out to potential collectors, investors, and gaming companies. He hoped they might be interested in his new trading card game (TCG), called MetaZoo. He was right. In the years since, MetaZoo cards have exploded in popularity and in value.

MetaZoo was created in August 2020 with a Kickstarter campaign that fundraised $18,249. The official first set, “Cryptid Nation,” launched July 2021. As of January this year, MetaZoo’s newest Kickstarter raised more than $1.8 million, and MetaZoo cards can be found in major retailers like Walmart.

Some investors and collectors have compared MetaZoo to products on par with a first-edition Pokémon Charizard hologram or unopened boxes of Magic: The Gathering booster boxes. A limited run of sample MetaZoo cards, now deemed rare, can command thousands on the secondary market. Specific rare cards summon even more, like the Red Ink First Secret Rare Box Topper, which is listed on Ebay for $20,000. MetaZoo has also attracted big names from the collectibles market, including Steve Aoki.

Image: MetaZoo

But MetaZoo’s popularity isn’t solely driven by its investment potential. There are fans snatching up MetaZoo products as quickly as they appear on the market simply because they like cryptids and enjoy playing TCGs. There are around 12,100 members on the official MetaZoo Discord, where members share tribute art, new releases, and fan-fic, as well as play live games. There are also in-person MetaZoo tournaments, largely organized through the MetaZoo Play Network.

MetaZoo cards are most easily compared to Pokémon, but these cards feature cryptids, which are mythical creatures that have never been proven to exist, such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and the Chupacabra. Each card boasts a colorful illustration of a cryptid, reminiscent of Ken Sugimori’s initial Pokémon designs, and is based on United States folklore and strange tales. Snow snake, for instance, borrows its backstory from a mid-century lumberjack story from Wisconsin about venomous serpents that become practically invisible when coiled on a snow drift.

Cryptids were always intriguing to Waddell. Growing up in Brazil, he often heard tales of Saci, a mythical creature said to control the wind, smoke a pipe, and play tricks on the locals. But it wasn’t until he saw the 2002 film The Mothman Prophecies, Waddell said, that cryptids took on a bigger meaning to him, sparking the idea to make a trading card game around them.

While MetaZoo might be aesthetically reminiscent of Pokémon, the game’s mechanics are much more similar to Magic: The Gathering. Play is focused on reducing your opponent’s life points to zero, with a combination of creatures, spells, and magic potions. MetaZoo also uses “fourth wall” effects, in which real-life actions and surroundings have an effect in-game. For example, if you have a water-based “beastie” card, you can amplify its powers by having a glass of water nearby.

“My favorite part of the game is the way outside objects can influence it,” said James Studley, a member of the Caster Society, a MetaZoo community focused on teaching and organizing gameplay. “It’s a rapidly changing and responsive card game.”

The fourth wall effects can get a little strange, especially if you’re playing face-to-face in a tournament. For instance, if you’re playing a Cactus Cat card, you can avoid damage by drinking a beverage when you throw down the card. If you’re at a MetaZoo tournament and you’re within eyesight of a radio, you lose a ton of attack points when playing the Metal Man of Alabama card. Maybe the most extreme example is the Jersey Devil card, which requires the user to unfurl a “blood-curdling scream” to avoid 50 damage when playing it.

The most committed players can take an exam, conducted monthly, to become recognized “Metazoologists,” with tests and study guides released through the MetaZoo Discord. “I’ve been a part of many different online communities, but the MetaZoo ones have been some of the most friendly and welcoming. It was very easy to become a part of the community and get into the game,” said Trey Tadpradel, a Metazoologist who is a volunteer judge for tournaments and gameplay.

But the prices for certain cards can make it hard for first-time players to join in. As a longtime collector and player of TCGs, YouTuber Ethan Pohl uses FourthStarTCG to primarily talk about Pokémon, but MetaZoo caught his eye upon its first Kickstarter campaign.

Image: MetaZoo

“Upon release, a lot of the discussion was focused on the high prices that some of the cards were commanding,” Pohl said. “MetaZoo has fostered this money-making aspect by rolling out endless special limited promo cards, first editions, NFTs, and artificially limited products to maintain interest and hype.”

Pohl credits MetaZoo’s success to “right product, right marketing, right time,” adding that the company hasn’t been coy about positioning MetaZoo as “the next Pokémon” during the massive Pokémon hype of 2020 and 2021, which led to a large speculative bubble. He believes that marketing directly to collectors and borrowing Pokémon’s release style has helped boost MetaZoo’s popularity and visibility. But Pohl questions the sustainability of this strategy in the long term. “As a trading card game, not a collectible card game, I am very skeptical of MetaZoo,” Pohl said. “The cards do not seem to be balanced, and the ‘fourth-wall-breaking’ method of playing the game seems to take away from skill-based gameplay and limit feasibility.”

Waddell doesn’t seem too concerned, though. This year, he plans to expand the world of MetaZoo well outside the card game with the lofty goal of launching 56 verticals by its end. That includes everything from figurines, footwear, pins, T-shirts, and NFTs. MetaZoo will also continue to release more expansion packs. Wilderness recently launched on March 31, and UFO will launch in July.

“My belief is you can’t just have TCG with just cards, and fandom likes to develop as a lifestyle,” Waddell said. “From a business and creative perspective, it just makes sense.”

As MetaZoo continues to grow, many fans have been playing the game virtually via a mod to Tabletop Simulator. This is how Noah Hess, known as Peazful in the MetaZoo community, has been playing it. He first saw MetaZoo featured on Alpha Investments, the popular YouTube channel about the collectible card market with a focus on Magic: The Gathering.

“Initially I was not a fan of the artwork,” Hess said. “But now it has grown on me and I love it. Especially the new Wilderness artwork.” Hess has since jumped headfirst into MetaZoo analysis and competition. In February, he was one of thousands who flocked to Collect-a-Con in Florida for a major MetaZoo tournament.

But while he’s seen a massive increase in exposure for MetaZoo, as well as the number of collectors and investors, Hess said the player base hasn’t experienced the same expansive growth. With more in-person tournaments coming up — some of which attract players with large cash prizes — he hopes that changes.

“This year is all about the players,” Hess said.

Bugsnax and a timely indie game about taxes star in lineup of games coming to Xbox Game Pass in the second half of April. Microsoft’s Tuesday morning announcement also mentioned that Ubisoft will be contributing two more games to the library “in the next two months,” under a vague partnership announced at the beginning of the year.

No dates were given, but the two games will be Assassin’s Creed Origins, for cloud, console, and PC; and For Honor: Marching Fire Edition on PC. For Honor is already available to cloud and console subscribers, and it will upgrade to the Marching Fire Edition for them at that time, too.

Ubisoft and Microsoft announced the team-up on Jan. 5 with the news that Rainbow Six Extraction would make a same-day launch on Xbox Game Pass, which it did on Jan. 20. Since then, there has been little movement on this particular development. Currently, the only Ubisoft titles available in Game Pass are For Honor, Rainbow Six Siege, and Extraction.

It is not, however, a melding of the Ubisoft Plus library with Game Pass, as EA Play and its library did at the end of 2020. Ubisoft Plus itself will come to Xbox at some point (it is currently only available for PC, Amazon Luna, and Google Stadia), but it will be a separate subscription, the publisher said back in January.

As for games available in the here and now, Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion, which Snoozy Kazoo launched to very positive player reviews on Steam one year ago, arrives one day after tax returns were due in the U.S. The clever and brightly colored game has players solving puzzles, crawling dungeons, and harvesting plants to help Turnip Boy repay his debt to The Man. Spoiler alert, that Man is “a corrupt onion mayor,” so ultimately the goal is to take down the system. I suggest Turnip Boy point out that the flag of onion town has gold fringe, and claim sovereign citizenship to get out of his societal obligation.

Where were we? Oh yeah, the rest of this month’s games:

• F1 2021 via EA Play (Cloud) — April 19
• Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered via EA Play (Cloud) — April 19
• Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion — (Cloud, Console, and PC) — April 19
• 7 Days to Die (Cloud, Console, and PC) — April 26
• Research and Destroy (Console and PC) — April 26
• Bugsnax (Cloud, Console, and PC) — April 28
• Unsouled (Console and PC) — April 28

The seven new additions mean four games will be leaving Game Pass libraries on April 30. Subscribers can buy them for 20% off their Microsoft Store price before the end of the month.

• Cricket 19 (Cloud, Console and PC)
• Outlast 2 (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Secret Neighbor (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Streets of Rage 4 (Cloud, Console, and PC)

A new trailer for Xenoblade Chronicles 3 reveals more of the game’s characters and overarching mission — but more importantly, a new and earlier release date. The game was supposed to come out in September, but in a rare move, will be released on July 29, nearly two months early.

The new game in the JRPG series will take place after the events of Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade Chronicles 2. In the third game, you play as new characters Noah and Mio, who lead a team of adventurers from two rival nations. They will discover the source of their countries’ conflict while journeying to a place called Swordsmarch, which, true to its name, is a land pierced by a giant sword.

The trailer shows new gameplay, including the battle between two characters and their subsequent fusion into an hybrid mecha-fusion device called an Ouroboros.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 comes to Switch on July 29. Nintendo Switch also has a second and a remastered copy of the original game.

Blizzard Entertainment plans to reveal the next major expansion for World of Warcraft on Tuesday, April 19, during a livestream that will kick off at 12 p.m. EDT/9 a.m. PDT on the Warcraft YouTube and Twitch channels. Blizzard says the stream will offer “a sneak peek at what’s next for the heroes of Azeroth.”

World of Warcraft‘s new expansion will pick up where Shadowlands, Blizzard’s eighth expansion pack for its Warcraft massively multiplayer online role-playing game, left off in a controversial state. The next major expansion to the MMO is rumored to be titled Dragonflight, based on reported leaks from Blizzard’s own website, and is believed to prominently feature … well, dragons.

Activision Blizzard has not communicated a release date for World of Warcraft‘s ninth expansion, but has said it will release “substantial new content” for the franchise this year.

Blizzard has revealed World of Warcraft as part of several Warcraft-related announcements that the company made this spring. The latest expansion for Hearthstone, Voyage to the Sunken City, which launched last week, was revealed in March. Blizzard will release the first details about a mobile game in Warcraft’s universe.