WRUP: What’s Blizzard Watch up to this weekend? Dying twice — or more!

Hello and happy Friday, everyone! It’s just about time for the weekend, which means it’s also time for our weekly WRUP — What aRe yoU Playing?

This week, the Blizzard Watch staff is relaxing with some vidjya games. Or, maybe relaxing. I, personally, can never quite tell how a From Software playthrough will go for my emotional state. In any case, Phil starts us off this week.

Phil Xavier: My love for WoW has definitely been rekindled! I’m playing the game a lot lately, and with much gusto. Hearthstone has been pretty kind for me lately as well — sorry, but it’s time to brag. I got the Spicy Pretzel Mustard achievement on Battlegrounds last week — I’m now part of the 5.8%!

Other than that, I’m still playing the same… *counts in head* six games I had been playing for the past few weeks on the Switch and PS4.

Deb Montague: My guild is doing a “Steal a Mount from Gimm” event this weekend. Since I usually go 0-5 on my Tuesday run, we’re going to be 0-5 during this event. I’ve spent the week, because of the Darkmoon Faire, working on The Avowed rep. I had so many Sinstones and after you grind from honored to revered, suddenly you don’t have Sinstones. The Whee! buff truly is the best for rep grinding. The BMAH this week, has been great for filling in battle pets I don’t have; and there goes all my money. My sportsball team is 1-0 but facing a difficult opponent on Saturday. I have to mow the lawn, at least the back. Why can’t I get one of the Tillers from Halfhill to come do it for me? They were so eager to help. Reading CHICAGO CONFIDENTIAL and working on a script about time travel.

Andrew Powers: I am continuing to play SW:TOR in my free video game time. I’ve reached max level, 75, and I’m still playing through all of the expansions’ stories. Shadow of Revan was not their best writing, but the ending was good. However, Knights of the Fallen Empire is excellent, and is reminding me why I love the Star Wars universe. It has about five minutes of play time for every twenty minutes of cut scenes, but that’s ok, that’s why I’m there.
And then this weekend is all about D&D.

Cory Taylor: It’s been a busy week for me with the start of a new semester of school, so I’ll be using this weekend to catch up on all of the Wizard chores that I’ve missed. My poor mission table followers must be so confused why they’re not being sent out to collect all of those valuable Augment runes and pet charms. The rest of the time I’m probably going to be catching up on all the sleep I’ve missed so far.

Scratch that sleep thing, I just realized that the New World open beta is this weekend so I guess I’m playing that!

Ted Atchley: This weekend is the official start of the NFL season. I’m looking forward to cheering on my favorite team. #KeepPounding

For gaming, I’ve gotten back into Civilization VI. This game I’m trying Tomyris of the Scythians. When I procc’d my Great Prophet, Spain (my closest neighbor and chief rival) had already established Catholicism. One of the options for the religion my Great Prophet could found was Protestantism. Too on the nose?

I find games like Civ more forgiving of the long breaks between gaming sessions I’ve needed lately.

Like Cory, I’m going to have to put my Civ conquests on hold. The New World Open Beta is this weekend. I enjoyed the game during closed beta and I’m excited to see what changes the developers made and how the game plays with a larger community than what we had.

Mitch “Mitch” Mitchell: I managed to (mostly) stay true to my gaming plans last weekend, and I’ve finally made my way to Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, after having beaten the Dark Souls 3 DLC just a few days ago (goodness, was that game fantastic). Sekiro, so far, has all the hallmarks of a From Software game but still stands on its own as incredibly unique from the others. It’s fascinating and I’m excited to see where it takes me.

Oh, and we have our Blizzard Watch D&D session this weekend, after much time off. My Kenku Bard is almost certainly going to get into trouble, and possibly even die (you never know with him). It’ll be a good time!

Joe Perez: Reinstalling Destiny 2 and going to see if I can mess around in it again for a little bit. Been a very long time since I played and I have zero idea what’s going on anymore, so that should be fun. Losing my mind over the Spider-Man 2 video game announcement! Hoping to spend some time cleaning up my workspace at home a bit as well this weekend, so I can blast through some more of my painting commissions.

Matthew Rossi: So I’m primarily focused on transmog farming in WoW, and outside of WoW I’m playing the Baldur’s Gate 3 early access (still no Barbarians!) and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. Since BG3 isn’t done yet, it’s not a fair comparison, but I will say that I really greatly enjoy P:WotR’s sheer customization options and think Pathfinder actually works amazingly well as a CRPG.

Anna Washenko: I don’t have much new on the gaming front, but I do want to shout out two of the mobile titles I’ve enjoyed revisiting lately. Like many of my favorite casual games, they each offer twists on straightforward gameplay concepts. Miracle Merchant (http://www.miracle-merchant.com) is a potion-making card game with delightfully goofy artwork. Swap Sword (http://swapsword.com) is probably the most fun riff on a match-three game I’ve ever played. I highly recommend either of them if you want something that’s both bite-sized and strategic.

Liz Patt: I’ll be tackling more Ethereal farming in Diablo 3 this weekend, as I only have a few more weeks before all of my attention swivels to Diablo 2 Resurrected. Outside of that, I’ve been really enjoying the new podcast I’ve found to help me sleep, called “The Sleepy Bookshelf. It’s created by the same team behind the “Get Sleepy” podcast but revolves around classic literature. The first seven episodes cover Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and it’s basically my phone quietly reading me bedtime stories.

Elizabeth Harper: I’ve been re-reading the Wheel of Time, which isn’t something I can entirely recommend. The books are extremely wordy, often repetitive, and has a number of characters that I just don’t like very much. But it also has characters I do like, and the way all of the disparate stories and characters are woven together is really interesting. So here I am, slogging through this morass of words and trying not to put my editor hat on, because when I’m wearing my editor hat I’m inclined to take a red pen and scratch out about 30% of the books. But I was really hyped about the Wheel of Time trailer, and interesting to see how they adapt this massive series… which means I guess I have a lot of reading to do.

Other than that, I’m playing D&D tomorrow with my Blizzard Watch buddies, where we’ll be returning to Matt’s campaign, which was really fun (and also occasionally I get to polymorph Mitch into a mouse). There will probably be some video games on the agenda, but I’m not feeling anything in particular.

That’s WRUP for this week! We’ll see you again next week — and in the meantime, why not let us know what you’re playing?