Gaming News

Following on from the confirmation of the BobLAN 2025.1 dates, we now know that the Autumn LAN will take place from Thursday 13th to Sunday 16th November 2025, so effectively the same weekend as the one just gone.

The confirmed dates for the next BobLAN are Thursday 1st - Sunday 4th May 2025. The dedicated BobLAN page will be created with around a month to go.

DFC have made the move to Bluesky after being forced to stop using our Twitter account shortly after Muck took over.

You can find us at @desertfoxclan.bsky.social

The plan is to reintroduce the integration points back into this website when time allows.

As another BobLAN drew to a close, the attendees shared their thoughts on Discord. Here is a compilation of those...

• BF 2042 - loved, but think we need to put a little extra effort into map lists. And have a mix of humans only, human and bot, and human vs online players - all have their place. Favourite map was with Q as a gunner and repairer whilst I rampaged with a tank (the helicopter we moved to was slightly less successful) [Pup]
• Another great LAN, fantastic host, brill quiz and some terrible ideas like watching a pensioner question his life choices at 5.30am - although that's possibly not the first time we've done that [Bynar]
• CS 2 - really enjoyed. I do think it is better with stats. Thanks to both Daz and Dan for their support in getting this working. Still a bit of work to do, but getting there. First stop will be a good set of instructions for getting it running locally with hyper V, and then federating dev [Pup]
• Absolutely brilliant couple of days - really enjoyed it. Thanks to everyone for the excellent banter and great fun games. Thankyou so much Lynx for your continued excellence at hosting and thanks to Lynda for all her work behind the scenes [AngryDaz]
• Absolutely brilliant weekend - loved every minute - even the abuse I got whilst trying to do my Wordle! Unbelievable hosting as usual Lynx and Lynda - can't wait until the next one! [Mesmer]
• Bob doing Bob things. Just the nicest host in the world - the amount of effort to make the weekend a success is pretty mind blowing [Pup]
• Thanks Lynx and Lynda for being wonderful hosts as always, had a fabulous time! Shout out to Pup for the quiz as always, really appreciate you doing that. Thanks also to pup for sorting out CS, I'd thank Daz but I think he just spent the weekend introducing problems to be fixed by someone else. Boxing was a stupid idea. Food, beer and banter was as gorgeous as ever, can't wait til the next one! [Trebz]
• PupQuiz seemed to go down well. Sharing the responsibility for creating the content really helps me, thanks to all those that contributed. Favourite stat is Wij getting 20% without being able to see the questions or the answers, yet Themy only got 15% and was in the room :D. And how excited was Dan at finally winning?! [Pup]
• Massive thankyou to Lynx and Lynda! Feeling a bit weird having been last out of bed this morning and having managed a solid 8 hours sleep, very un-BobLANesque [Fox]
• Thank you Lynx and Lynda :D truly awesome weekend [Reubs]
• Can't add anything that hasn't been said so I'll just add my thanks Lynx and Lynda for a great couple of days. I am insanely tired, I'm assuming this is a normal side effect? [Elmo] (spoiler: yes, it is!)
• Not much to add what already has been said but. Thanks to Bob and Lynda as always for opening their home to us. And everyone who makes it a fantastic weekend [Max]

Day two is usually when the team gaming starts in earnest, and this was no exception. We had some excellent Battlefield 2042 with 12 players on the same team against some online randoms. In the evening we had some superb and well-balanced rounds of Counter-Strike - huge credit to Pup, Trebz and AngryDaz for getting the server and stats working and sorting out the map rotation!! Add to that some Call of Duty Zombies, GRID Autosport and Pup's quiz and it was a brilliant day.

Setup day included some CS2, BF2042, Call of Duty and Wreckfest, plus a coding session to get stats working on the CD2 server. All rounded off with Bob's curry and chilli - great start to the weekend!

It's BobLAN week \o/ Get those games installed and updated, pack your bags and see you at BobLAN 2024.2

Westie has hinted that the launch of Season 1 of Black Ops 6 will be on Thursday 14th November, which coincides with day 1 of BobLAN 2024.2. New seasons invariably bring massive updates, bugs, fixes to bugs, fixes to the fixes for the bugs, more massive updates, etc etc. And the real kicker - you have to wade through all that nonsense even if you just want to play DMZ. ggwp Activision.

Ahead of the launch of Black Ops 6 later this week, Activision have revamped the home screen for CoD HQ. Whereas before, you could see all game modes if you scrolled down and right, you now only see Black Ops 6 and some Modern Warfare III modes.

In order to launch modes from all supported Call of Duty games, you need to click the All Games button at the top, and then select the one you want. For example DMZ is under Modern Warfare II. No more difficult to launch than before, but hidden away that little bit more!

It's only 4 weeks until the official start of BobLAN 2024.2. Game chat will be in Discord as usual, where Bob has also been posting photos of his food preparation! The staple games will likely be Call of Duty Warzone, Battlefield of varying flavours and Wreckfest/Grid Autosport/Assetto Corsa. The Finals proved popular last time, and there are some pre-release games such as Delta Force for us to try. More updates to follow when the LAN gets closer!

This year's Intel Extreme Masters in Rio is currently in the Elimination stage, with the semi finals and grand final being over the coming weekend. As usual, stream the matches on Twitch and follow the results/fixtures in HLTV.org

The recent Reloaded update for Modern Warfare 3 had the side-effect of fixing a major glitch in DMZ - the under-barrel grenade launcher issue. This glitch, when exploited, allowed cheaters to fire grenades at the same rate as an AR can fire bullets, meaning that any players who encountered this were unlikely to survive. This does leave the Koschei and Snipers Nest glitches remaining, but they are not as devastating to non-cheaters as the one they fixed.

It is interesting to note that Activision have not announced or even acknowledged this fix, so may be it was by accident relating to another change within Warzone?!

The only other things to affect DMZ are the need to reinstall it, and the moving of the button to launch DMZ to within the MW2 section, hidden off to the right. It's like they don't want you to play it anymore :)

The Intel Extreme Masters event in Cologne is up and running. The group stages started over the weekend and continue during the week. The finals at the Lanxess Arena take place next weekend, concluding with the grand final on Sunday 18th August.

Catch the action over on the ESLCS Twitch stream and follow the fixture list on HLTV.org

Long in the making, Fallout London (FOLON) dropped last week and is virtually a complete new game set in post-apocalyptic London. All the major landmarks are included, and they look stunning!

Installation is interesting - the game is free on GOG, however it is not compatible with the recent Next Gen Update. Even if you install it into a separate location, it appears there are shared files somewhere within your Windows profile that cause issues with your game-state on the main Fallout 4 game. If you have finished with the main Fallout 4 game, the best approach is to completely uninstall that and then install FOLON via GOG. Whether the developers will upgrade FOLON to the Next Gen version remains to be seen.

Read a whole lot more, view screenshots, watch gameplay footage etc over on the Fallout London project site.

A recent update to Counter-Strike 2 adds additional crates to the CT spawn ramp in Dust2, making it possible to jump up without the need for a boost - this saves around 4 seconds compared to walking round.

Also, we finally have CS2 servers in the UK, meaning better pings and more chance of English speakers in the game!

Watch this video from 3kliksphilip for all the details.

In a surprising move, Valve have issued a huge update to Team Fortress 2. The update brings new maps, cosmetic changes, bug fixes and changes to map rotation. Included in the new maps are ten community maps.

Read the full article on PCGamesN

Swagg gives us a preview of some of the features of this year's Call of Duty game - Black Ops 6. It will merge many of the features of the previous Black Ops games with the more recent MW2/MW3 games, including its own flavour of Warzone. Will there be a DMZ tho? That's the big question!

Watch the full video on Swagg's Youtube channel.

The group stages of the Intel Extreme Masters in Dallas are now complete, with the playoff and grand final over the coming weekend. You can see the draw on HLTV and follow the action live on Twitch.

Bethesda have applied a major update to Fallout 4, many many years after the last one. The new update gives you a new quest, new weapons, power armour and skins. The update was followed a few days later by another update fixing a few bugs that were introduced.

Interest in the Fallout series has been reignited following the superb TV series on Amazon Prime that aired recently, bumping it right back up the game play charts in recent weeks.

You can read the full patch notes here and view the general Bethesda Fallout 4 News here.

Another BobLAN comes to an end, and this one was rather special with it being the host's 60th birthday event. As always, great company, food, facilities and above all the hospitality shown by Bob and Lynda - amazing as usual!!!

We didn't play too much in the way of new games - Helldivers 2 and The Finals being the only newcomers (although we had played The Finals a couple of times during the year). Everyone seemed to enjoy them, so definitely ones to play again. We had the usual mix of Battlefield 1, CS2, Call of Duty, Wreckfest, Grid, Codenames and Rockband. We did give PUBG a go on a private server, but after playing the newer FPS games, PUBG feels sluggish and somehow just wrong. There is talk of them switching to the Unreal 5 engine which should really help, but maybe one to drop from the roster. You can see the full list of games played on the dedicated BobLAN 2024.1 page.

One of the highlights of the LAN for a few of us was the mini hackathon in our bid to get HLStats working on CS2. I am pleased to announce that we did it eventually. Maybe not in time for it to see much use this time, but definitely promising for future events.

Massive thanks again to Bob and Lynda for all that you do - it means so much to us all. The next LAN starts on 14th November 2024 - counting down already...