This week is a great week to tune in to OMDU on Twitch to soak up some of the new awesome phase 2 game play.

Remember here at REF we do the time-zone conversion for you so there is no need to miss out on a show. You can find all the details on our Twitch Stream page.

Over last few weeks there has been some pretty interesting Orcs Must Die! Unchained insider access streams taking place over on the OMDU Twitch channel. These shows have given fans a good insight onto what kind of things we can expect to see in phase 2 of the closed beta.

Show #1 – Tencent announcement

The first insider access was a biggie, it was where we found out that Robot has a new partnership in place with Tencent Games in China to bring OMDU to the eastern audiences. It was also where, much to fans excitement we found out that barricades are returning! Other traps were discussed along with some ideas about changes to the gameplay and in-game economy.

Show #2 – Bosses and levelling

In this Insider Access, Mother (Ian Fischer) took the hot seat to discuss the cool ideas the studio has about implementing bosses. We saw a ton of artwork for potential bosses and we learnt about the plans to introduce daily challenges, specific goals that players can work towards.

Show #3 – Meet Doug Houserman, balance designer

In this show we met Robot’s new balance designer, Doug Houserman who talked to us about some of the plans and ideas he has for game-balance. Not only that but we got to see a whole ton of new trap ideas fresh out of the box from Doug’s mind!

Show #4 – Hero rewards, experience, bosses, XP and rewards.

Shoop (Shovaen Patel) and Shade (Doug Houserman) join Justin for a detailed look at how things like experience, XP and rewards are changing in Phase 2. We learnt that there are plans to track victories for individual heroes, allowing players to level up on a per hero basis. Bosses were discussed again, and we also found out that at the end of each game players can choose a card from a random set to get a random reward.

Reveal #5 – New Map!

Something we have all been waiting eagerly to hear about, a new map, this time with a much darker Orcish map to give contrast to the two current fortress based Order maps.

Catch up show – Tuesday, January 27

With so much that has been covered in the last few weeks, it can be tricky to digest all the new ideas that Robot is working on. Luckily Robot’s community team have this covered with this weeks show going to be a “Reveals Overview” show where Justin “SixOkay” Korthof will be going through the key highlights of each of these five big reveal shows to give us the low down on the key changes that will be going into Phase 2.

Its definitely a show not to be missed so be sure to check out the next Insider Access Tuesday, January 27 at 2PM Central Time on the OMDU Twitch channel. If you have a burning question be sure to come along and ask it in the Twitch chat.

See you there!

Did you catch last weeks Insider Access? If not you missed out on some great behind the scenes footage showing the making of the PS4 OMDU trailer which was completed in house at Robot Entertainment. I’m sure you will agree the trailer was excellent and certainly shows the talent on hand at Robot. The making of video shown in last weeks Insider Access gives us an insight on how it was put together, and in such a short space of time! Check out the extract from the show here:

Also shown last week was a look at some of the marketing events that have been going on over in China with Tencent Games. There are some great pictures of the extravagant material Tencent put out, including a real-life Bloodspike!

The show featured Community Manager, SixOkay speaking to Robot head-honcho, CEO, Patrick Hudson and Lead Producer Chris Rippy. Be sure to catch up via the VOD below!

Starting next week Gameforge are introducing their own regular Twitch stream schedule with community manager FaTeReLLa taking to the new official OMDU EU Twitch channel at www.twitch.tv/orcsmustdieeu.

Programming is complete with four different streams detailed below. All of these streams ave been added to our Twitch Stream calendar, so you can now view all of the Robot, GameForge and community streams all from one place. Head on over to our Twitch calendar to check them out. If you are a Twitch streamer yourself, you can add your streams to our calendar too by submitting them.

GameForge – OMDU EU Twitch Schedule

MONDAY

4PM CET – Hands-On Highlands
Monday is 3-lane map day! Join the Custom Room and enter the Gameforge Room to play the exciting Highlands!

THURSDAY

9PM CET – Pixie Cups or Beat the Bot-Invasion
Pixie Cups
From time to time FaTeReLLa gets challenged. Challenge matches are streamed on Thursdays. Would you like to challenge her? Team up with your friends and throw down the gauntlet here

Beat the Bot-Invasion
On Thursdays when there are no Pixie Cups challenges, join the TeamSpeak Server and help FaTeReLLa to Beat the Bot-Invasion in Co-Op matches.

FRIDAY

4PM CET – YOLO-Solo

Tune in on Fridays for some exciting Orcs Must Die! Unchained matchmaker gameplay. Join FaTeReLLa as she tries not to die too often in public matchmaking games!

Changes Robot’s “Orcs After Dark” stream

There is also scheduling change for Robot’s popular “Orcs After Dark” stream. Following fan feedback the stream will now commence from the earlier time of 6:30pm – 8:30pm CDT. If you havn’t already been to Orcs After Dark stream, be sure to tune in sometime. Its a great stream with chances to win prizes, Free card packs, Beta friend codes, and even instant access Beta Codes. There are reasons to join whether you are in the OMDU beta or not!

REF look forward to seeing you on either the GameForge or Robot streams!

Moltenink has taken a video recording time lapse of his most recent OMDU digital painting. OMDU fans will be well aware of Moltenink’s talents from the many concept hero designs earlier in the year. The time lapse of his latest Orc painting shows just how much time and level of detail goes into his creations, and it really is the finer detail that counts. Check out his awesome time-lapse below:

For those interested in digital art Molten hosts a Twitch art stream each weekday from 9am at twitch.tv/moltenink. Be sure to check it out sometime! If you would like to find out a bit more about the man behind these excellent works of art, check out our interview with Moltenink from earlier this year.

The Orcs Must Die! Unchained “Orcs after dark” event is returning tomorrow. The stream will see Robot staff playing against the community from 8PM CDT to 10PM. Players can join in simply by queuing up in the unranked game type mode and you never know, you may be featured on the official stream!

If you havn’t got access to the beta yet be sure to check out the stream on the day as keys will be given out on the Twitch Chat at www.twitch.tv/orcsmustdie

Orcs After Dark is set to become a regular feature and will take place every other Thursday going forwards.

See you there!

This week on the Insider Access stream over on the official Twitch channel saw community manager Justin Korthof (SixOkay) sit down with Art Director Dave Kubalak (Kube) and designer Jerome Jones (Bugs911) to talk about some of the hero designs in OMDU. the War Mage, Master, Sir Winston and Bloodspike took center stage this time around.Each of these heroes as it happens, had origins from previous games in the OMD series. Bloodspike was first considered a boss fight in OMD2 where he would be in a mine cart throwing dynamite.

The name “Sir Winston” also has a very interesting past. It all goes back to this YouTube video by level player “Sips”. When he encountered the paladin he called the paladin “Winston”. Later in the game when he was able to place paladins on the map he called them “Sons of Winston”. This became a running theme in his videos all from there on all the way through OMD2. Robot decided to name their Dark Paladin concept Sir Winston as a nod to Sip’s YouTube videos. If you skip to 1:40 on the video below you can hear Sip’s first mention of Winston!

During the rest of the Insider Access interview we get to see tons of concept art never seen before and even some sneak peaks at some awesome new skins coming out soon.

Along with some Q&A on the Twitch chat and some answers to some forum threads this insider access is once again well worth watching. Check it out on the video below!

Watch live video from OrcsMustDie on Twitch