Some of gaming’s most compelling player stories have sprung out of the complex machinations of EVE Online’s nullsec sovereignty gameplay, including the devious Guiding Hand Social Club assassination, the staggering Bloodbath of B-R5RB, the near-instant fall of the implacable Band of Brothers Alliance at the hands of a traitor, and many more. These legends are born in the imaginations of the most complex, intricate opponents available—human beings—and are carried out by the strength of the real relationships of EVE pilots around the world as they build their own metaphorical sandcastles and work to knock down those of their enemies.

Yesterday, the final part of EVE’s Aegis release brought with it a fundamental change to how players war over the lawless solar systems beyond the reach of Empire control. Evolution has come to EVE warfare and the ramifications will affect every single one of EVE’s hundreds of thousands of players in the same shared sci-fi universe.

In nullsec space, thousands of solar systems can be claimed by players, their moons harvested for minerals, giant space structures built, local pirates killed for bounties, and more. Previously, warfare contesting ownership of space was relatively static, a sort of protracted siege based around grinding down structures in one location that favored bringing massive ships to bear on enemies and encouraged holding vast swaths of vacant buffer space.

Fueled by the technology introduced by a mysterious new force in EVE known as the Drifters, Aegis’ new Sovereignty system is much more dynamic. It offers more opportunities for small gangs of pilots to make a difference in the attack or defense of a solar system, spreads conflicts across constellations, and encourages the use of space by inhabitants instead of leaving it as a no-man’s land between superpowers.

With this new, multiple-capture-point system, the possibilities for fresh tactics, changes in the ship-fitting metagame, diplomatic shenanigans, and the likely rise of wholly new emergent careers for players are at an all-time high. The battlefields of EVE will likely be littered with exploded ships as players adjust to the tactical demands of a new system. As always, those who fail to adapt in New Eden are likely to either perish outright or accept temporary losses while they bolster their forces or forge new diplomatic ties. Those who evolve their gameplay will reap the benefits during this time of upheaval.

Warcraft is a movie based on the popular video game series and is due for release in 2016. The feature film trailer premiered at this years Comic Con and RaGEZONE has the leaked trailer for all to view.

More than 100 Heroes of the Storm teams will be battling it out in the North America July Open for a chance to secure a $25,000 prize pool and a slot in the American Championship. The action will be taking place live this weekend, July 11–12 at 12:00 p.m. PDT. You can be sure to watch all the action live on the Heroes of the Storm community streams. The Round of 8 will conclude next weekend with broadcasts from the ESL studio on July 18–19.

The winning teams will be transported alongside the greatest Heroes of the Storm players in the world to a new battleground—BlizzCon! Heroes of the Storm will be featured on stage alongside StarCraft II, World of Warcraft, and Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, with the World Championship for all four events taking place at BlizzCon on November 6 – 7 in Anaheim.

The stakes are high, with a total prize pool of over $1.2 million in total cash and prizes—including $500,000 at BlizzCon. The World Champion team will walk away with $200,000—and bragging rights as the best Heroes of the Storm players in the world.

Find out more on the official website.

All World of Tanks players are eligible to take part in the 9.9 Public Test as long as they were registered before June 22nd. You don’t need to be an experienced tester to join in, you just need to be willing to try out as many of the new features as you can, and send in your helpful feedback.

Included in the patch are various fixes to tanks, some graphical tweaks to help with quality of life, such as correcting vehicles that had too little camouflage.

What’s the next step for Domination mode? Can a Tiger be Japanese? Will the graphics improve? What’s happening to the Swamp and Highway maps? Learn about all the changes on the way in the 9.9 update with the new episode of ASAP.

Dirty Bomb just released a new video for Phantom. He brings an entirely new melee weapon to the field: A razor-sharp Katana, ready and waiting to plunge into the back of an unsuspecting medic. It’s slower and more unwieldy to use, but when it finds its target it hits for massive damage, carving foes up into nice little pieces.

Phantom is somewhere around here, but good luck finding him before he strikes! Willing to do anything to get rid of him, his Commanding Officer volunteered Phantom to take part in an experimental Refractive Armor test program. Returning the favor, Phantom promptly stole the suit and used it to plant incriminating evidence/livestock in his former Commanding Officer’s quarters. Since then he has been a legend in his own mind. Never, ever lend him money, or your mobile phone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBqAXM5gY20

Phantom’s pride and joy, his Refractive Armor, is the piece of technology that justifies his code name. He can activate this specialized suit of camouflage and, in only a few moments, fade from sight. The armor’s power will drain for as long as he’s invisible, although while he is moving the power will drain faster, as well as visually disrupting, making him easier to spot when chasing down the enemy.

Of course, this is armor, not some magic cloak! If Phantom is shot while Refractive Armor is enabled, that damage will instead deplete the Armor’s remaining power, giving him enough time to close the gap and take advantage of his shiny new toy.

Get the full patch details and other notes at the official Dirty Bomb website.

Blue Manchu today announced that Card Hunter will be launching later this month on Steam for Windows and Mac. Formerly only available as a browser-based game, the combination of card play, deck building, tactical combat and classic fantasy role-playing will soon be accessible as a standalone free-to-play client via Steam. At the same time, players on all platforms can take on a brand new high level expansion pack  Expedition to the Sky Citadel that introduces a variety of punishing new game mechanics, items and their associated cards – and introducing new a computerized GM ‘Cardotron 2000’.

Along with the new client and content, all versions of  Card Hunter now support co-operative multiplayer mode throughout the entirety of the formerly single-player only campaign, a much requested feature from the game’s legion of fans.

“The Steam ecosystem is called home by millions of gamers across the globe, and we felt the time was right to launch a client version of the game to connect with that audience,” explains Chey. “Card Hunter is now a mature, balanced game with a huge amount of free-to-play and optional add-on content, and we have implemented the fan-anticipated co-op mode. We felt that with the completion of  Expedition to the Sky Citadel, the most challenging and fun expansion to date, there was no excuse not to embrace Steam and its community.”

Official Card Hunter website.

Kiev-based independent developer geim.pro has opened the arenas of its successful title Batla for players worldwide. Batla was launched on Steam for free on May 15th, the Unity engine-based arena shooter is picking up popularity. With nearly 10 million registrations and 150,000 daily active players, Batla is one of the current successful games from Eastern Europe.

In search of new resources, the highly developed robots from outer space landed on Earth looking to exploit the planet. But due to a fatal error, the success of the project is in danger: the robot’s calculations have disregarded that they are, according to Earth scale, very tiny. However, the shock was quickly overcome when they discovered the source of their desire is to be found in children’s rooms all over world – glucose. Deeply divided among themselves and driven by sugar addiction, the mini robots engage in fierce battles for the precious treasure.

So you’re basically playing a fast paced FPS as a sugar addicted mini robot on a rampage, great!

Players can choose from three classes: Soldiers, Scouts and Tanks. Each call is equipped with an arsenal of ten different weapons and diverse skills. The action-packed PvP battles take place on 15 diversified maps. Depending on the surroundings, sandcastles, racecourses, toys or water bombs can be used as tactical elements or weapons. The game’s four modes Capture the Candy, King of the Hill, Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch allow team-based and thrilling gameplay.

Batla steam page.

Jagex Games Studio just launched their RuneScape summer event content, which has turned the desolate Lumbridge Crater into a holiday retreat for players to relax in this summer.

Although previously the battlefield of two gods, the RuneScape community has been working to turn the Lumbridge Crater into a little piece of paradise, just in time for summer. There are a number of summer-themed activities to get involved with, including: sandcastle building, rock pool fishing, beach grills and even a coconut shy. Each activity rewards players with skill-based XP as well as a number of summer emotes and cosmetic items.

Not all the locals are friendly though as every hour a giant beach boss monster, named ‘Clawdia’ by the players, turns up to kick sand in their collective faces.  Defeating her quickly will provide players with the best loot including ice creams and cooling cocktails. What could be better on a hot summer day?

Finally, if you’ve missed out on festival tickets this year, then RuneScape has you covered.  The development team will be making guest appearances on a stage that will magically appear in the area. Their arrival will also herald happy hours which will gift increased XP for all beach events and activities.

RuneScape’s summer festival will be live until 31st August. Play for free at runescape.com.

Later this summer, Riot will be launching their next event called “Bilgewater: Burning Tides.” As part of the event, the temporary Butcher’s Bridge ARAM map brings Bilgewater to life for the first time in game. The standard ARAM map will be switched out for the new themed port city.

We ended up choosing Bilgewater when a dev team built a Bilgewater-style ARAM map from scratch during one of our Thunderdome hackathons. Everyone’s enthusiasm at seeing Bilgewater realized in-game drove the overarching thematic of the event. After the jolt of creativity sparked by Thunderdome, tons of teams across Riot banded together to deliver a Bilgewater experience with a wide swath of content–including a re-imagined evolution of that Thunderdome map.

Full notes here.

Heroes of the Storm has their public test realm opening up tomorrow. The Eternal Conflict will invade the Nexus in the next patch, and they need your assistance in testing some of the new content and changes it contains before the update arrives on June 30. In order to do this, a public test realm will open up tomorrow.

Accessing the PTR is easy! Click over to the Heroes of the Storm tab on your Battle.net application, and then follow these steps:

• Click the Region/Account dropdown list found just above the big blue “Play” button.
• Select “PTR: Heroes of the Storm” from the top of the list, and then click “Install”.
• Once your installation completes, simply click “Play” to log in to the PTR.

Keep in mind that you need to have played Heroes of the Storm at least once before the PTR will be available to access. So if you can’t see it, trying logging into the game first, then look again.