Deadlock matchmaking has been opened 24/7. There's also a new, snazzier Minimap and a queue with a lower priority for sinners.

According to an update released yesterday, Deadlock, Valve’s not-so secret MOBA, no longer has playtest restrictions.

Anyone who has played the beta of Deadlock will tell you that the game's testing session times are locked. They range from 1 pm to 3am Monday to Thursday and 9 am to 3:30am Friday to Sunday. This is usually based on your local timezone. I've been caught a few time myself, taking a lunch break early only to be turned out at the door for having the audacity of eating before 1 pm.

The patch notes state that "Matchmaking will now be available 24/7 for all regions." The server status window in-game only reads "Status" without anything to the right. What is the current status of Deadlock? That's classified.

There are a few more things to look forward to. There's also a new minimap. You might wonder why this is important, but if anyone has played MOBAs for any length of time, they know that the minimap is what you look at when you are not shooting or fighting.

This creates a beautiful backdrop and also highlights creeps or neutral camps with a glow surrounding the buildings. Unfortunately, I couldn't see this in the bot game I joined. Also, the orange lanes are now green. This colour change has a huge impact on the metagame, and its effects should be seen in the next few days.

There's a low priority queue as well. Anyone who has played Dota 2 will be familiar with this, but basically, abandoning games and being rude will place you in a queue of sinners where you have to play a few rancid matches before you can play with the good children again. "Regularly misreporting other players will result in your losing the reporting feature and in some cases, you may be put into low priority."

The last major change will be that your first "flexi" slot will unlock after you have killed the secondenemy walker, not the first. This is a big deal, as it slows down the power scaling for a team that is on the offensive.

Valve is still in the early stages of development with Deadlock. This means that patches are frequent and large, too big to list. Valve's forum post contains the complete list of tuning tweaks, as well as additional details. Unfortunately, Slork is not yet visible.