Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 is getting a small-scale beta that will go live next month, weeks ahead of the game’s launch. The beta will be playable from Thursday, Feb. 7, to Sunday, Feb. 10, according to a trailer that Ubisoft released on Wednesday morning. Players will be guaranteed access to the beta by pre-ordering The Division 2 from certain retailers. It’s unclear if that will be part of the beta for The Division 2 as well. Ubisoft says it will release more details on what will be included

Bethesda Softworks today unveiled its 2019 plans for The Elder Scrolls Online, including a new story chapter called Elsweyr, part of a four-part story arc that will include dragons, a first for the fantasy online multiplayer game. Many of the update’s details were already known, due to a leak earlier this month. The new zone is described as “similar in size and scope to last year’s Summerset zone.” Around 30 hours of adventuring are promised. The update will include a new class, the Necromancer,

Final Fantasy 14’s newest job, Blue Mage, dropped today as part of patch 4.5. Unlike the other jobs in the game, Blue Mage learns spells from enemies, requiring players go out on hunts to collect them. You can take Blue Mage into these types of content in pre-made parties, however. The Blue Mage was introduced to the Final Fantasy series in Final Fantasy 5. Final Fantasy 14 and all of its expansions are available for Mac, PlayStation 4 and Windows PC.

The mother of “Orange Shirt Kid” wants justice for her son, and is suing Epic Games over Fortnite’s Orange Justice dance emote. The complaint, first reported by Variety, was filed in California court by Rachel McCumbers, the mother of the boy known as Orange Shirt Kid (named as C.C.M. Unlike the complaints filed by creators like Alfonso Ribeiro and 2 Milly, Orange Shirt Kid’s case is distinct. While Orange Shirt Kid didn’t win the competition, the express purpose of the contest was for creators

Today’s update also removed two dance emotes from the game — animations that are at the heart of ongoing lawsuits. Those emotes, named the Carlton and Floss in Forza Horizon 4, are no longer in the racing game as of this week, according to the franchise’s official website. Alfonso Ribeiro, who starred as Carlton Banks in the ’90s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, sued Epic in December of its use of “The Carlton” dance in Fortnite. Forza Horizon 4 features an array of emotes and dance moves tha

Battle for Azeroth, the latest World of Warcraft expansion, has been almost entirely centered around the Horde. Sylvanas, the Warchief of the Horde, stole the spotlight and was the most compelling character in the Battle for Lordaeron. For many Alliance players, there’s a sense that they’ve been tagging along for the ride so far. Spotlight on Darkshore“In Battle for Azeroth, one of the things we set up to do is tell a really strong Horde story and a really strong Alliance story,” Burke says. For

Tabletop games continued their meteoric rise on Kickstarter throughout 2018, helping push the games category to an all-time high of more than $200 million. Data provided to Polygon by the crowdfunding platform show a nearly 20 percent increase in funds raised by successful tabletop projects over the previous year. Earnings for successful video game projects were down for the third year in a row. In total, the tabletop games category — which includes board games, hobby miniatures games, card game

Pokémon Go players can stock up on Pokémon from the Hoenn region this month as part of a two-week event in Niantic’s mobile game. Starting on Jan. 15 at 1 p.m. PST, Pokémon from the Hoenn region will appear more often in the wild. Shroomish evolved into Breloom can learn the move Grass Knot, while 7 km eggs will spawn Hoenn Pokémon. During that two-week event, Niantic and The Pokémon Company will also give some love to Feebas, the ugly duckling fish Pokémon of the Hoenn region. A handful of Hoen

Bandai Namco Entertainment will release Super Dragon Ball Heroes World Mission, a card game-meets-RPG, this April. The Dragon Ball Heroes series kicked off last summer with both the card game and a promotional anime tied into it, which lies firmly outside of the primary Dragon Ball canon. In this game, players star as Beat, who lives in a place called Hero Town, and takes part in World Mission’s meta-game: He wants to be the best in the world at playing the Super Dragon Ball Heroes card game. Un

The release date for Game of Thrones season eight is finally here as HBO released the details just before the first new episode of True Detective. The final season will premiere be on April 14. The announcement cameAs an additional surprise, HBO also treated fans to a short trailer, which might featured the most footage we have seen so far of the show’s final season. But, just like every Game of Thrones trailer over the last couple of years, it’s hard to tell what is real and what’s just misdire

The sense of horror suffusing the third season of True Detective comes not only from the central mystery but from Wayne Hays’ (Mahershala Ali) deteriorating memory. Sometimes they’re smooth transitions, serving the story, and other times they’re jarring, mimicking Hays’ own sense of disorientation. The second episode ends on a cliffhanger that drives that sense of distorted perception home. According to interviews with Ali and showrunner Nic Pizzolatto, Hays was originally written as white, and

Unlike its predecessor, Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 has seen a comparatively brief hype cycle. Here is everything we know about Tom Clancy’s The Division 2, which brings the pandemic and pandemonium to Washington, D.C. this March. Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 launches March 15 on PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One. Tom Clancy’s The Division stumbled at launch, suffering from the usual exploits and glitches one might expect of a game with such a large multiplayer component. Either way, Spier i

Distant Worlds 2, the epic spacefaring expedition within Elite: Dangerous, kicks off this afternoon at 3 p.m. The event, a sequel to 2016’s Distant Worlds expedition, will take place on all three platforms (PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One) in three regions (Europe, the Americas and Oceania). ET: In a not-unexpected turn of events, the stress created by so many ships jumping out at the same time brought down Elite: Dangerous’ servers for many. But many Elite: Dangerous players are unable t

Wonderstorm Inc., the team behind The Dragon Prince, are quietly working on a video game, and the second season of the Netflix show. We now have a release date for the show’s second season, which will debut on Feb. 15. The first season of The Dragon Prince was excellent, but it was also set at a nearly breakneck pace as our three protagonists navigated danger with their dragon egg in store. Season one ends with that dragon egg hatching and our protagonists’ location revealed by dark magic. We’ll

Ignoring the hammy segues, this behind-the-scenes video for PlanetSide Arena contains a lot of information on the vehicles and weapons players will be using when Daybreak Game Company’s new multiplayer shooter launches at the end of the month. PlanetSide Arena, which we previewed last month, is a class-based shooter featuring traditional multiplayer types as well as, yeah, a battle royale. Daybreak developers say the weapons will feel familiar to those playing PlanetSide 2 — the balancing progre

Meet NodePanel 2:Better game server hosting, built with gamers in mind. We’ve created a unique control panel that provides you with real-time access to your servers. It doesn’t matter if you’re a hardcore gamer, parent, or just getting into gaming; NodePanel is easy to use.

Since the release of Sid Meier’s Civilization 5 in 2010, designer Jon Shafer has made more headlines for what he hasn’t accomplished than for what he has. At the Gates is a novel strategy game that began life as a Kickstarter project, where it raised more than $100,000. In a feature story from 2013, Polygon called Shafer and his collaborators “superheroes.” As it turns out, Shafer himself was anything but. “Day after day. Week after week.

Destiny 2’s newest puzzle has players completely stumped. With Destiny 2’s weekly reset on Tuesday came a new event known as Niobe’s Torment. Completing that puzzle will unlock the fourth and final forge in Destiny 2’s Black Armory Annual Pass content. But after more than 24 hours of attempts to solve the puzzle, Bungie has revealed that the Bergusia forge will open Wednesday at 2 p.m. PT, regardless of whether the puzzle is solved. Players have made it up to Bypass level 7, presumed to be the f

From the mega-afros and big perms to the teensy little shorts, Legendary Eleven takes its soccer style cues from the golden age of the 1970s. But Legendary Eleven also offers a time warp to ’90s-style soccer games, with all that entails. Legendary Eleven offers a time-warp to ‘90s-style soccer gamesBut Legendary Eleven is solid enough, offering basic, single-button controls. Anyone schooled in the finer arts of EA Sports’ FIFA play may find Legendary Eleven a bit basic. It’s more interested in t

New Super Mario Bros. U hums in the mode of retro classics Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World. New Super Mario Bros. U and New Super Luigi U didn’t even get that. Nintendo marketed New Super Mario Bros. U as the first truly high-definition Mario game, a pitch that probably set the wrong expectations. On the Switch, New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe hurls all of that baggage into the trash heap. Meanwhile, we haven’t seen a 2D Mario platformer since New Super Mario Bros. U’s initial release s