OwnedCore Report #63 - Valve buys AutoChess >Sponsored by MMOGOLD4USA<

**Kenneth** · 02-24-2019

Greetings OwnedCore and welcome to the 62nd Report. Today we have community highlights, gaming news including Dota Chess being bought by Valve, and clips of the week. We are still looking for suggestions on merchandise designs. The launch of what we have so far should come some time in early March. Also if your an artist looking for work throw me a message on OwnedCore we would love to work with you on creating cool stuff for the merch shop.

Make sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for updates to OC, sharing our hottest threads, and great memes.

This OwnedCore Report is Sponsored by

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for Path of Exile, Maplestory 2, World of Warcraft, Runescape, ESO, SWTOR, STO, Neverwinter, Blade & Soul, FF14 and many other MMORPGs.

MMOGOLD4USA Deals

This week MMOGOLD4USA is offering a special sale on Path of Exile. Just use the code OWNEDCOREPOE15 at checkout to get yourself 15% off on all Path of Exile purchases.

OwnedCore Merchandise

We decided a cool way to work with the community in one of our next OwnedCore projects was to include them in our latest venture of OwnedCore Merchandise. Merchandise like t-shirts on Teespring.com has been something we have thrown around for awhile and we finally decided how we want to do it. In a thread seen here, we go over what kind of merchandise OwnedCore is looking to make, how we plan on paying the artist, and more. OwnedCore is nothing without its community so we figured why outsource for art when we have insanely talented artists right here in our community? So if you have any interest in working with us drop a comment in the thread or send me a personal message right here on OwnedCore.

Not an artist? Still want to contribute to what ends up on our store? Submit suggestions in the main thread over in the community chat! We have seen some hilarious but also great ideas already thrown our way.

Community Highlights

Lovely Charm farms are always iconic this time of year. Thanks to osiris7777777 we got to obtain 500 per hour with this neat spot.

Thread found HERE

A Crazy exploit that personally reminded me of some older exploits of similar fashion. Raid boss Warlock vs Orgrimmar by advanta

Thread found HERE

A cool way to get Titan Residuum through item Restoration every 15 days by Kissankello

Thread found HERE

Are you a donator or have contributor status? If so there is a huge Opulence cheese in the WoW Elite section thanks to uldirpog

Thread found HERE

Island Expedition faster leveling for both Horde and Ally by Prayfordusk

Thread found HERE

A discussion on when WoW names are freed up by JimmyPage2

Thread found HERE

Gaming News From Around the Globe

Dota Auto Chess

First we have what I would consider to be pretty big news. It is looking like Valve is in the process of acquiring DOTA AutoChess & Droto Studios. Dota Chess has taken gaming by storm especially in the last two months. It has an average of over 100k concurrent players and when you click on Dota 2 on Twitch a lot of the top streams are Dota Chess related. A bunch of former Hearthstone pros have hopped on this which to me skyrocketed the viewership. There are over 4.4 million people subscribed to Auto Chess on Dota 2. It wouldn't be the first time Valve has bought a mod and turned it into a global phenomenon. Dota itself was a Warcraft 3 custom game that Valve acquired the rights for from Blizzard themselves. So to me this is a no brainer. Also Tencent has been apparently working on a mobile version of Dota Auto Chess which just fuels the fire under Valve even more to get ahead of this as soon as possible.

The possibilities are endless with how the game can be commercialized. Right now Droto Studios has made a killing through a candy system. In Dota Chess your only controllable character is the courier and if you want your courier to look cool you will have to spend candies. Candies are earned one of two ways. By buying them from Droto Studios Ebay account or by coming in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place in a Dota Chess match. When you place top 3 you get a random amount of candy between 1-5 with a daily cap of 10. Each courier roll costs you 40 candies. I have personally seen streamers already blow hundreds of dollars on candies to try getting the courier they want. Try you ask? Yes you don't get to choose the courier but rather the 40 candies basically opens a CS:GO style loot crate which spins and eventually stops on the courier you get. Couriers are split into rarities from Black, Blue, Purple, and Orange/Legendary.

Another big way to monetize the game would be a candy system for board customization. In Dota Chess you are put in a FFA game of 8. So you are constantly scouting what other players are going and checking out their comps on their board. I would bet custom boards would be something a lot of people would like to also show off along with their courier.

All in all I hope this game succeeds. It is a ton of fun, free to play, and is a fun mix of strategy, luck, and speed.

ArenaNet layoffs are incoming

Guild Wars may be dead but this is still a very sad time. Just like Blizzard it seems ArenaNet is about to undergo massive layoffs. According to Kotaku they informed employees yesterday that it is planning big layoffs.

Songyee Yoon, the CEO of Korean publisher NCSoft West, which owns ArenaNet, e-mailed employees this afternoon with the news. “Our live game business revenue is declining as our franchises age, delays in development on PC and mobile have created further drains against our revenue projects, while our operating costs in the west have increased,” she wrote. “Where we are is not sustainable, and is not going to set us up for future success.”

ArenaNet consists of about 400 people so if the layoffs are as big as they are leading on to be this could be the end of ArenaNet as we know it. Talks of a merger between ArenaNet and NCSoft publishing division is also in the works. The last thing ArenaNet released was Path of Fire, an expansion for Guild Wars 2 back in September 2017.

Jason Schreier of Kotaku has been updating his thread on this topic which you can check out here

Synthesis Official Announcement from POE

So what is this new league for the most popular ARPG out? This league like Incursion and Delve but also like Bastion if you ever played that. Delve pathing but in your full control type of deal. You get these pieces out in the world, take them to memory nexus, click on one of the bridges, and you can now use the pieces you've acquired to connect the bridge you chose to the destinations you want to get to. Like the old Pipe Dreams Windows game if anybody remembers that. Each piece is essentially a pipe and you have to find a way to connect your start to the destination of your choice. Now here is the kicker. Each piece you place to connect your point to the destination of your choice has a roll on it like a map. For example a piece could have a modifier of “elder reflect”. So when you run the map of your destination it will include all the modifiers of the pieces you used to get to it. This is at least how it seems to work based off of the trailer.

All around it looks simple but also fun. Path of Exile has done it again and every time a new POE season comes out I cant help but imagine how Blizzard plans on competing with this.

Clips of the Week