Carzy Zarx’s PC Gaming Emporium - Catch Up on All the Latest PC Gaming Related News

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Tuesday news, part two:

Chart-topping city-builder Manor Lords hits 3 million wishlists four days before launch
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/city-builder/chart-topping-city-builder-manor-lords-hits-3-million-wishlists-four-days-before-launch/
Medieval city-builder Manor Lords continues to gather steam ahead of its Early Access release, which is doubly impressive considering its set in a preindustrial society. The game surpassed three million wishlists on Steam over the weekend, adding another 500,000 to the total in the span of seven days.

Diablo is donating 6.66 million maggots and counting to a wildlife sanctuary in honour of Duriel the Maggot King
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/diablo-is-donating-666-million-maggots-and-counting-to-a-wildlife-sanctuary-in-honour-of-duriel-the-maggot-king/
Blizzard is rounding up all the maggots it can find and shipping them off to Tiggywinkles UK, a specialist wildlife hospital, this Earth Day. The number of maggots sent off depends on how many likes one tweet gets. 
Well, specifically, the person rounding up all the grubs is actually Diablo 4's Duriel the Maggot King, which is pretty apposite, honestly: "Duriel the Maggot King has enlisted you to help sacrifice his horde," Diablo's official Twitter account explains in a tweet. "For every 25 likes on this post, we will donate 45,000 maggots to birds undergoing treatment and rehabilitation at @TiggywinklesUK. Send millions of maggots to meat their maker."

Path of Exile studio warns of 'malicious' phishing post that appeared on Steam, tells players 'please take immediate action to secure your account'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/path-of-exile-studio-warns-of-malicious-phishing-post-that-appeared-on-steam-tells-players-please-take-immediate-action-to-secure-your-account/
Grinding Gear Games is warning followers to change their passwords after a post containing a phishing link appeared briefly on the Path of Exile page on Steam.
"Earlier today, a malicious news post containing a phishing link went up on the Path of Exile Steam page from a compromised account," the studio wrote in a message posted to Steam and Twitter. "The post was taken down quickly, but if you followed the link or suspect your account may also be compromised, please take immediate action to secure your account."

After a year marooned on the Epic store, Dead Island 2 debuts on Steam to 'mixed' reviews for a very silly reason
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/after-a-year-marooned-on-the-epic-store-dead-island-2-debuts-on-steam-to-mixed-reviews-for-a-very-silly-reason/
After a year of exclusivity on the Epic Games Store, the zombie survival game Dead Island 2 is now available on Steam—and not everyone is as excited about its arrival as you might expect.
(...)
Interestingly, the early reaction to the Steam launch is mixed. Many users are happy that they can now get Dead Island 2 from their preferred digital seller (and take the opportunity to slag off Epic Games) but there's a significant number of negative reviews driven primarily by the presence of Epic Online Services, a free SDK that enables various sorts of multiplayer functionality—matchmaking, voice chat, friends list, leaderboards, all that sort of thing—regardless of engine or platform.
>> The article lists other games that use EOS, in case you want to cross them off of your “to buy” list.

Blizzard 'remixed' one of the best WoW expansions with new items and boosted XP and it starts next month
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/world-of-warcraft/blizzard-remixed-one-of-the-best-wow-expansions-with-new-items-and-boosted-xp-and-it-starts-next-month/
Blizzard is leveraging pure nostalgia with WoW Remix: Mists of Pandaria, a limited-time opportunity to rewind time and play through a modernized version of the 2011 expansion. When it goes live on May 16, you'll be able to quickly level up a character who will transfer over to the regular servers when it's over, presumably as a fun way to prepare for The War Within expansion later this year.
>> By the way, Blizzard claims to pay attention to all users, even the “shoutiest of the shouty”.

Even with my bad case of battle royale fatigue, this upcoming mecha game's 60-person battle royale/extraction shooter hybrid mode sounds pretty sick
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/third-person-shooter/even-with-my-bad-case-of-battle-royale-fatigue-this-upcoming-mecha-games-60-person-battle-royaleextraction-shooter-hybrid-mode-sounds-pretty-sick/
We weren't quite sure what to make of Mecha Break when it was unveiled at last year's Game Awards⁠—is this a story-heavy challenger to Armored Core's throne, or something else entirely? After a gameplay reveal earlier this year and a conversation through a translator with developer Amazing Seasun's CEO, Kris Kwok, I got the skinny on a much weirder game, one that's pairing tight team-based shooter modes with a take on battle royale that, despite my fatigue from the genre, definitely has my interest.

Arrowhead's latest major order is exploiting the Helldivers 2 community's greatest weakness: communication
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/third-person-shooter/arrowheads-latest-major-order-is-exploiting-the-helldiver-2-communitys-greatest-weakness-communication/
Less than three days remain on Helldivers 2's latest major order, and the projections are grim.
Super Earth has tasked the community with successfully defending 10 planets from enemy takeover, but over the weekend, we barely managed three. With a handful of new defense missions opening just hours ago, it's looking like this major order might be a wash.
To be fair, the deck was stacked against us from the start. The community has racked up a handful of impressive collective milestones these last few months—the unexpectedly quick liberation of Tien Kwan, The Battle of Malevelon Creek, pulverizing two billion bugs in just over 12 hours—but we have a blind spot. We're very good at tackling simple, focused goals in record time, but historically bad at coordinating when there are multiple targets on the board. Arrowhead knows this, and is exploiting it.

Fortnite's battle royale mode was cooked up in the back of an Uber in 'like, three hours'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/battle-royale/fortnites-battle-royale-mode-was-cooked-up-in-the-back-of-an-uber-in-like-three-hours/
Fortnite—or, specifically, Fortnite: Battle Royale—is inescapable. It is a titan with the gravitational pull of the sun, dragging in characters from dozens of IPs to brawl for their chicken dinners. It's kind of beautiful, in a cosmic horror, grey goo sort of way—Aang can kamehameha Peter Griffin and hit the griddy, after all.
Before its battle royale mode changed the landscape, however, Fortnite was a humble co-op game with some building elements. Considering how much more relevant it is in a post-battle royale mode, you'd be forgiven for thinking its transition was a masterstroke of marketing genius. Turns out, it was cooked up in the back of an Uber.
>> And its latest change is the inclusion of a toggle to disable 'confrontational emotes'.

Final Fantasy 14 is bringing its Yo-kai Watch crossover back after 4 years, offering weapon glams, mounts, and a minion we crowned 'the ugliest MMO pet of all time'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/final-fantasy/final-fantasy-14-is-bringing-its-yo-kai-watch-crossover-back-after-4-years-offering-weapon-glams-mounts-and-a-minion-we-crowned-the-ugliest-mmo-pet-of-all-time/
Final Fantasy 14 is no stranger to crossover events. Most recently, a FF16 crossover where you could wear Clive Rosfield's clothes and steal his dog hit the servers. But it's also had some cultural exchanges with Nier: Automata, GARO, Dragon Quest, and (most relevant to the sinful dog in the header image above) Yo-kai Watch, a Pokémon-adjacent franchise with its own line of RPGs that made its debut back in 2013. 
The event itself sees players collecting a bunch of mounts, weapon glams, and minions (mostly by doing overworld events called FATEs with the minions out, and a special watch equipped). It first arrived in 2016, to be repeated in 2017 and 2020—meaning that it's been four years since any of these minions, weapons, or mounts have been achievable. Luckily, Yo-kai's so back, baby.
>> And it will also receive version 2.0 of the new Dawntrail benchmark.

Team Fortress 2's latest silly business sees the game crashing because it thought players were Gordon Freeman
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/team-fortress-2s-latest-silly-business-sees-the-game-crashing-because-it-thought-players-were-gordon-freeman/
Team Fortress 2 just received a huge update, upgrading it 64-bit, finally bringing the 17-year-old shooter into the modern age of gaming. But in true TF2 fashion, there was a problem that no one foresaw: the game kept crashing because it thought players were Gordon Freeman from Half-Life. 
The issue has since been fixed by the latest update on April 22, and all the patch notes reveal is: "Fixed a crash under 64-bit caused by some custom HUDs using Half-Life 2 HUD elements which assume the player is Gordon Freeman." It's a bit of an odd outlier, sandviched between ABI compatibility issues and snd_cull_duplicates command not working. I nearly glossed over it myself.