At a BlizzCon 2018 panel, Blizzard and game director Ion Hazzikostas revealed that World of Warcraft: Classic will not simply dump all of its content at once when it releases next year. When World of Warcraft: Classic is first released next year, it’ll start with what Blizzard is calling stage one. Stage one is essentially what World of Warcraft was back in March of 2005. Zul’Gurub — a raid that spawned a World of Warcraft pandemic — will also open in stage two. Hazzikostas was clear that the op

When Tik Tok acquired Musical.ly back in August, it inherited most of Musical.ly’s teenage community. Tik Tok users came late to “I’m Already Tracer,” which dates back to January 2017, before the Tik Tok days. The only reason people are seeing them right now is because others went on Tik Tok to actively find and ridicule them. The spread of “I’m Already Tracer” across Tik Tok could just reinforce stereotypes, and male commenters reflect this theory. The majority of these “ironic” cringe-y videos

‘What the heck is The Nutcracker and the Four Realms?’ and other burning questions, answeredShare ‘What the heck is The Nutcracker and the Four Realms?’ and other burning questions, answeredAs Polygon’s entertainment team geared up for our screening of The Nutcracker and the Four Realms — re-reading the Nutcracker story, rewatching the better Fantasia segments — we discovered that many of our coworkers had no idea what The Nutcracker and the Four Realms was all about. Directed by Lasse Hallström

While you’ll have to wait until Nov. 23rd for the biggest deals, Target is currently offering a nice buy-two-get-one-free sale on all video games and board games (plus movies and children’s books). Also on sale this week is a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Ti graphics card for $349. Polygon readers can still take advantage of an exclusive discount on RavPower’s powerful (read: can charge your Nintendo Switch while playing) USB-C portable charger. Sometimes the weekend is just too short: join us on Twit

At the 2018 World Championship Finals Opening Ceremony, Riot brought their fictional pop group, K/DA, to life using AR technology. Alongside Madison Beer, Miyeon and Soyeon of (G)I-dle and Jaira Burns performing on stage, K/DA Akali, Ahri, Evelynn and Kai’Sa performed Pop/Stars. This isn’t the first time Riot has used AR to give us a show for an opening ceremony. At the opening ceremony in 2017, an AR Elder Dragon flew through the Bird’s Nest in China, giving everyone watching from home quite a

World of Warcraft’s first major patch — Tides of Vengeance — is just around the corner, set to launch on Dec. 11 in North America. But at BlizzCon 2018, the Blizzard team unveiled the second major patch of the expansion as well. Patch 8.2 will be called Rise of Azshara, and will send players into the depth of the sea to fish out N’zoth’s favorite minion. In the heart of Nazjatar, players will find Azshara’s eternal palace, the raid location for patch 8.2. Blizzard teased that players will take o

Art assets in Rainbow Six: Siege will be toned down to conform to Chinese censorship requirements as the game gets ready to expand into Asian markets. “Moving forward, we do recognize and understand that for some elements, it is not possible to have a completely global build. Rainbow Six Siege launched in December 2015. Earlier this year, Ubisoft moved aggressively to sanction players for hate speech in the game’s chat. Earlier this year, Rainbow Six Siege hit an all-time high player count that

LittleBigPlanet, the PlayStation 3’s first sortie into the player-created content genre, turned 10 a week ago (it launched Oct. 27, 2008). To celebrate, Media Molecule created the game’s first stage in Dreams, the even more robust video game creator coming soon from the British studio. As you can see in the video, Dreams’ rendition of The Gardens incorporates nearly every detail that makes LittleBigPlanet still familiar after 10 years — from the music, to Popit, the jumping physics and, of cours

Blizzard unveiled Diablo: Immortal, a new game set in the the Diablo universe built for mobile devices, at BlizzCon 2018’s opening ceremony yesterday, and reaction from fans has been unkind at best. Suffice it to say, a vocal portion of the Diablo fanbase isn’t happy with Blizzard’s Diablo: Immortal announcement. Today, Polygon spoke with Allen Adham, executive producer and Blizzard co-founder, and Dan Eggren, production director, about the response to Diablo: Immortal. “We have said that we hav

“Dam Agent 53” was one of four GoldenEye 007 speedrun records set between 2002 and 2004. It is the oldest standing record in one of speedrunning’s gold standard games. The video above by RWhiteGoose examines if a 21-second time in Runway, Agent difficulty, is even possible. Because Bosshardt’s record was recorded on VHS, there’s no way to measure fractional seconds. The record has to be rounded to the whole second and has to be taken from the stage ending report card.

Except for Sugar Plum. Not everything about The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is what it seems, and the way they treat this character actually gives this by-the-books movie a punch. For The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, it’s the eerie, hag-like Mother Ginger (Helen Mirren) who’s bent on taking over the Four Realms for herself. We find out that it was Sugar Plum who falsely accused Mother Ginger of turning on the Four Realms. She’s so racked up with the grief of losing Clara’s mother Marie tha

With Diablo: Immortal, it’s easy to feel like you’re playing Diablo, but it also feels like an illusion. As a hardcore Diablo player, Diablo: Immortal just seems too similar to what I’ve been playing for years. It’s hard to look at Diablo: Immortal and not think about what the Diablo community needs right now. Diablo: Immortal has potential, thanks to its lore and setting (between Diablo 2 and 3), and it looks and feels like Diablo 3, all in the palm of your hand. But Diablo: Immortal also feels

World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth’s first major patch — Tides of Vengeance — is set to release later this year, on Dec. 11 in North America. At the World of Warcraft: What’s Next panel at BlizzCon 2018, the game’s developers ran down all the content coming early next month. In the Warfront, Alliance players will aid Malfurion and Tyrande as they fight to reclaim their homeland and stop the Horde from pillaging and burning their forest. Tides of Vengeance will also offer players new islands t

During an interview at BlizzCon 2018, Blizzard’s Brian Souza and Pete Stillwell explained that players who own the original Warcraft 3 will be able to play against those who own Warcraft 3: Reforged, and vice versa. Maps and other community created content made in the original Warcraft 3 are also compatible with Reforged. Warcraft 3: Reforged was developed with a different goal in mind than last year’s StarCraft: Remastered, Stillwell said. And those changes will go back into the original Warcra

Judging by the trailers, Bodied, picked up by YouTube while it riled up everyone on the festival circuit in 2017, would be easy to dismiss as simply a celebration of rap battle culture. A slim, shady, redheaded Berkeley grad student, Adam translates every lightning-fast vulgarity to his mortified vegan girlfriend Maya (Rory Uphold). Bodied struggles with finding a clear answer, but provides enough hints and arguments from both sides to instigate the viewer’s opinion. While Kahn’s kinetic energy

Diablo: Immortal, for iOS and Android devices, is being made by NetEase, a Chinese company licensed to operate several Blizzard games in that country. NetEase also made Crusaders of Light, a mobile game that launched in the summer of 2017. Diablo: Immortal bears so much resemblance to Crusaders of Light that many fans are calling the new game a reskin. Polygon has played Diablo: Immortal at BlizzCon 2018 and will have impressions coming soon. “I’m sure the core game play is good but everything e

At BlizzCon 2018 today, Lego announced six Overwatch building sets will hit shelves with the new year, and are available for pre-order right now. The kits pair off Tracer and Widowmaker; Genji and Hanzo, McCree, Reaper and Solider: 76, D.Va and Reinhardt; Mercy, Winston, Reaper and Pharah; and Bastion in a 602-piece mega-set. The set can be combined with the Watchpoint: Gibraltar map kit that includes Mercy, Reaper, Winston and Pharah. D.Va and Reinhardt are standalone mechs both more than five

Fallout 76 beta participants can now invite three friends to join them in the game. Beta participants can get the codes to share by logging into their Bethesda.net account. They’re listed in the user’s transaction history as “Fallout 76 BETA Friend Codes.” Note that the codes will only be for the platform the user is playing on —PlayStation 4, Windows PC or Xbox One. The Fallout 76 BETA (short for “Break-It Early Test Application”) began Oct. 23 on Xbox One and Oct. 30 on PlayStation 4 and Windo

Blizzard’s biggest fan event of the year, BlizzCon, is here once again and during the opening ceremony Blizzard had plenty to share. With all this news going out in such a short time, we broke down the top five announcements from BlizzCon 2018’s opening ceremony. Warcraft III is getting remasteredOne of the most important games of all time is coming back with Warcraft III: Reforged. There’s a brand new Diablo Game, but it’s only on mobileThere’s no denying that fans were pretty excited at the pr

While half of the game focuses on managing an item shop, the other explores where all those items come from: dungeon crawling. To make enough cash to spend on the local weaponsmith and potions master, he’ll need to run a profitable business. While the dungeon-crawling is a straightforward affair, the shop management aspect of the game is where things get complex — and exciting. While the ever-changing dungeons offer up their own surprises and scattered bits of lore, the most fun is in exploring