Blizzard Watch Week in Review: From Hearthstone raps to Lucioball

Are you ready for the weekend? I definitely am. After all, I have a lot of Hearthstone to catch up on before Knights of the Frozen Throne comes out next week. What about you all?

But while we wait for next week’s releases, let’s catch up on the past week’s news.

Coming up

• Are you ready for this weekend’s esports action? With the HGC Western Clash and the Overwatch World Cup, there’s plenty to watch.
• Lucioball is (nearly) back! The Overwatch Summer Games are returning on August 8. And for those of you who really can’t get enough Lucioball, there’s now a new competitive mode.
• New hero Garrosh Hellscream is set to arrive in Heroes of the Storm on Tuesday. Whether you plan on picking him up or not, you’ll be seeing a lot of him in the Nexus.
• Knights of the Frozen Throne is due out on August 10 —  are you ready to take on Arthas?

Know Your Lore

• Anne dives into the Tomb of Sargeras, taking a look at what we’ve learned this expansion.
• Rossi continues our series about Arthas, examining his time as a servant of the Lich King.

World of Warcraft

• We had a ton of new info on patch 7.3 and beyond in this week’s Q&A with Ion Hazzikostas, including:
  • Legion Artifact appearances are likely to be unlockable after Legion, which is great news for transmog fans.
  • Argus content and the Netherlight Crucible will be time gated, so you’ll have to wait a few weeks to get everything.
  • The Netherlight Crucible will let you customize your Artifact traits, but it’s not just Reforging 2.0.
  • It will soon be a lot easier for alts and newbies to catch up with their Artifacts and Followers.
  • Ion had some interesting things to say about the challenge of balancing both Mythic and LFR content.
  • If you want to watch the Q&A for yourself — it was a good one!  —  it’s up on YouTube.
• In other 7.3 news, new cinematics from the 7.3 PTR are chock full of story spoilers.
• Somehow it’s already August, which means it’s time for the monthly rundown of what’s happening in WoW.
• Have you been enjoying your class hall mount quests? Scott takes a look back on vanilla WoW’s Paladin class mount.
• There’s an adorable, color-changing new mount and battle pet in the in-game shop, and if you don’t have one yet we’re giving some away!

Hearthstone

• Ben Brode’s latest rap, Arthas, is here,  so drop whatever you’re doing and go listen. But if you want a slightly wordier version of Arthas’ fate, we have a Know Your Lore on just that.
• Knights of the Frozen Throne is nearly here, and we have an updated list of all the cards.
• Pack changes have arrived in Hearthstone! Now you won’t get duplicate Legendaries until you have every Legendary in a set, plus you’re guaranteed to get a Legendary within the first ten cards of any expansion.

Overwatch

• Overwatch has a band new reporting system that’s set to dish out harsher punishments.

Heroes of the Storm

• You can take Garrosh Hellscream out for a test drive on the Heroes of the Storm PTR. He’s due out on the live realms this week.