We're admittedly pretty pumped for the diverse roster we saw in the last Overwatch trailer, but one thing still worried us: the lack of body diversity among their female characters, who underneath all the armor appeared to share the same "generic sexy thin-framed game lady" build with one another. Well, good news! Blizzard has heard our concerns, and their latest  is exactly what we were looking for—somebody ripped as hell.

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Because honestly, what's the point of spending all that time crafting yourself a pair of Tankatronic goggles if you can't see yourself looking cool in them?

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Blizzcon 2014 kicked off today, and CEO Michael Morhaime had some great things to say during the opening ceremonies. Though he never specifically mentions Gamergate by name, anyone with a modicum of common sense knows of whom he is speaking.

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Sure, Overwatch sort of looks like Destiny meets Team Fortress meets League of Legends, but damn it if the characters they've introduced here haven't won me over. Here is a summary of my thought process: "Oh, future Egypt, that's neat. Cool, they started with a female character. Wait, there's another one now and... I think she's Indian? WAIT, now there's third one with an Arabic name? THREE LADIES IN A ROW??? WHAT IS HAPPEN."

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Blizzard has announced that when the next World of Warcraft patch comes out, a whole bunch of old usernames will go the way of the dodo. Hey, as long as Everquest leaves the Half-Elf warrior I got to level three back in high school alone, I'm fine.

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We've all been dealing with the passing of Robin Williams in our own way, and for World of Warcraft players, that way was to create a petition to have him honored in the video game he loved. Only a short while later, they've already gotten an answer.

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The Internet (us included) was in an uproar recently over a men-only Hearthstone tournament. Such an uproar, in fact, that the International eSports Federation reversed its policy of separating competitions by gender, but competitions specifically for women remained. Diversity in games and eSports are tough issues to navigate, and some may not understand why tournaments for women are OK but ones for men aren't.

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The man of tomorrow. (Tor)

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Today in the world of money, gaming powerhouse Activision Blizzard has announced plans to buy itself from parent company Vivendi Universal in a two-part stock deal. When the dust settles, almost $8.2 billion of stock will have changed hands, leaving Activision Blizzard free to go its own way. We kinda suspect the new company will do OK.

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If buying expansions and paying a monthly fee to play the World of Warcraft wasn't enough fire to burn a hole in your pocket, then Blizzard has good news for you: Items you can buy with real money are on the way. Players recently found an item purchasable with cash that would grant you a 100% EXP bonus on a public test server. When pressed on the subject, Blizzard confirmed that microtransactions are in the works.

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Diablo III keeps having economy issues on the PC, so of course it's only appropriate to keep chugging along with the console version, right? Right. That's apparently the thinking at Blizzard, as Diablo III is set to release on September 3rd for PS3 and Xbox 360. It's currently unclear when it'll drop on next-gen consoles, but it's not improbable that we'll hear in the coming week.

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Blizzard's upcoming MMO project -- known only by its codename 'Titan' -- has been the subject of plenty of speculation and anticipation. Gamers may want to tamp down their anticipation, though, as it looks like we have one more hard fact to go on about the project today, and it's not an encouraging one. According to VentureBeat, Blizzard has scrapped the all-star, 100-person-strong development team that developing the game, reassigning more than 70 staff members to other projects while the remaining staff reboots 'Titan' from scratch.

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(Minor spoilers ahead.) Sarah Kerrigan sits in a high-security research lab, obediently following Prince Valerian’s instructions. To assess how much of the Zerg mutagen is left in her system, he asks her to psionically control a drone in a chamber nearby. This is, of course, the tutorial mission, but there’s more going on here than a lesson in unit control. Kerrigan does as she’s told, but her tone is dangerously apathetic. “You know this is going to end badly, right?” she says. There’s a hint of laughter in her words, condescending and bored. Valerian is not the one in control here. When will these people ever learn that underestimating Kerrigan is a very stupid idea?

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I'm not going to pretend I know a whole bunch about StarCraft. For whatever reason, it was just one of those franchises I managed to avoid entirely during my formative years. When it came to strategy games, my cup of tea was always Red Alert 2 or one of the Total War installments from Creative Assembly. Also, Age of Empires. That said, Blizzard's latest trailer for StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, dubbed "Vengeance," has seriously made me want to start paying attention.

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There are few video game characters from my formative years that I regard as highly as Kerrigan. She was complex and unforgettable, the sort of villain who makes you forget that you’re supposed to root for the good guys. To this day, I can’t help but feel awe when remembering the emergence of the Queen of Blades. StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, on the other hand, left me unimpressed. Naturally, the Zerg were going to get stomped, but to see that brilliant character stripped of her power, both literally and figuratively, then carried off into the sunset by her former boyfriend — come on. Kerrigan deserves better than that. The trailers for SCII’s upcoming expansion, Heart of the Swarm, seem to agree, pointing toward a vengeful reclamation of the leaderless broods. While the expansion's release is still a few weeks out, tie-in novel StarCraft II: Flashpoint, written by Christie Golden, raises some interesting questions about how Kerrigan’s next chapter will unfold (minor spoilers ahead).

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Sure, Blizzard's notorious for running late with products. Okay, maybe Activision is willing to gouge players to the absolute breaking point. Still, there's a reason folks have come back to franchises like Diablo, Warcraft, and StarCraft time and time again. Even if that relationship should sour over time, let it not be said that the people at Blizzard weren't capable of wonders when it came to cinematic sequences. Case in point, the opening cinematic for StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm dropped today, and it's just about as beautiful as anyone could hope.

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World of Warcraft is a community as much as it is a game, and sometimes that community has been called on to help out the real world. Blizzard, the company behind WoW, has hosted fundraising efforts in the past for charities like St. Jude Children's Hospital, the Make a Wish Foundation, and even the relief effort after the devastating 2011 tsunami in Japan. Their latest call to action for players has broken all of their previous fundraising records. Blizzard announced last week that World of Warcraft players have raised $2.3 million dollars for Hurricane Sandy relief.

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