WRUP: The Salmonids invade in Big Run and Team Blizzard Watch is thoroughly hooked on Dragonflight

Hello and happy Friday, friends! Heck, happy Friday to most of my enemies, too! It’s the weekend, and that means it’s time for us to talk about what we here at Blizzard Watch are up to. ‘Round these parts, we like to call it WRUP (What aRe yoU Playing?). Don’t think too hard about it. Instead, why not sit back, relax, and enjoy a look into our lives?

First up this week, yours truly.

Mitch “Mitch” Mitchell

• Splatoon 3 (Big Run!!!)
• Pokémon Violet
• Wedding
• D&D planning (hopefully)

Friday evening kicks off the first Big Run event in Splatoon 3, and I cannot wait to see what it’s like! From my understanding, it’s basically the Salmon Run equivalent of a Splatfest. And given I’ve been loving Salmon Run, I’m excited! I also hope it means we get higher drop rates on Cohozuna Scales.

Saturday is actually a friend’s wedding, which should be good fun and a nice chance to hang out with that particular friend group.

When it’s not Splatoon or wedding time, I’ll be fitting in some Pokémon Violet and more D&D planning/map-making. For the former, I’m very close to the end and mostly just keep getting distracted before beating it. For the latter, I’m making good progress on the map but I need to start some actual written-down lore building. A lot of it is in my head, but I’m hoping to kick this campaign off in the new year and really need to get moving at this point.

Renee Lopez

• God of War Ragnarok
• WoW
• Overwatch 2

I’m almost done with God of War Ragnarok. It’s my first GoW title and I could not be happier with it. It’s a gorgeous game and the story is fantastic. I get why people love it so much. Is it my Game of the Year? We’ll see.

With the release of Dragonflight, I now determined to dust off my Night Elf Hunter and level her up. Finally.

I’m also going to dive back in to Overwatch 2 and play Ashe. I’m excited for the new season!

Andrew Powers

• D&D
• Hearthstone
• 1899

Saturday is an in person D&D game that I’m DMing. I don’t have the story or next part of the campaign planned yet. But I have less than 48 hours to go at the time I’m writing this, I have time…. With March of the Lich King out for Hearthstone, I’ve been playing that a bit more. Trying to like the new Death Knight class. And thinking about who will be the next class: Monks or Evokers. I feel it’ll be Evokers, for some reason. Finally, for a show to watch on Netflix, 1899. From the creators of Dark, which is the greatest time travel show ever, this is a mystery on a boat show, better than it sounds, but, also, just as slow. Interesting, but requires attention.

Nick Marino

• Dragonflight
• Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
• Pokémon Yellow/Silver
• Dragon Age: Absolution

The last week or so has been a weird week in gaming for me – I’ve been enjoying all Dragonflight has to offer but somehow I’ve gotten sucked back in to playing Skyrim. I really want to focus on making some progress through the Dragonflight story by at least getting through the Ohn’ahran Plains but we’ll see if my attention span holds up before I drop through a portal and end up in Tamriel again. Thanks to the latest release, I’ve started playing a lot of Pokémon Yellow and Pokémon Silver on my commutes in the morning and evening, I was lucky enough to get an Analogue Pocket this year and it has been a pretty nifty device. I’m also looking forward to watching the new Dragon Age: Absolution series on Netflix this weekend which I’m sure will inspire me to fire up Inquisition and finally finish it, though, we’ll see how that goes with the current-gen Witcher 3 updates releasing next week.

Christian “Kalcheus” Thoma

• Dragonflight
• Bravely Default 2
• Grave of Empires series by Sam Sykes

I’m still spending a lot of time playing Dragonflight because, well, yeah, new shiny content. I’ve gotten a much better understanding of what I “have” to do as well as “want” to do on a weekly basis so I should have time to do other stuff this weekend. So I’m starting Bravely Default 2 on the Switch and hopefully I can make some good progress on it.

Besides that the 3rd book in the Grave of Empire series — Three Axes to Fall — is out. The book was nice enough to provide a two-page summary of what had happened so far and since I was like “I have no memory of this place” I’ve decided to re-read the entire series first. They are sizable tomes so I’m not sure if I’ll get to Three Axes to Fall this weekend but I do expect to finish Seven Blades in Black and make headway on Ten Arrows of Iron.

And we’ll be decorating the Christmas tree this weekend.

Matthew Rossi

• Dragonflight
• Dragonflight?
• Dragonflight!
• Cyberpunk 2077
• Horizon Forbidden West
• The Callisto Protocol
• Fool on the Hill by Matt Ruff

Honestly I’m still not sure if I’m gonna keep playing The Callisto Protocol. It’s a good game, but I’m not a big fan of horror games and I feel like it doesn’t take enough chances with the formula created by Dead Space. Now, I know these guys are the people who made the original Dead Space, so it’s not surprising, but still I’m not sure I’m into the game enough to keep going through the horror aspects.

Dragonflight is a really good expansion so far, y’all. Maybe their best leveling experience since Warlords, and it may even be better than that. Having fun so far.

The rest are the usual suspects, not much new to say there.

Phil Xavier

• World of Warcraft
• Persona 5 Royal

My favorite time of any WoW expansion is usually the first few weeks, as we’re leveling, reaching max level, and seeing this brave new world of max level activities to take part in. And with Dragonflight, I need to open by saying how much I enjoyed the questing this time around. The designers and writers have really upped their game; some of those quests are truly fantastic, and I can already say with confidence that the Bronze Dragonflight quests in Thaldraszus are my favorite quests in WoW history. I never expected to be able to enjoy WoW questing this much again in 2022, but here we are!

Other than that, I’m still going strong on my second playthrough of Persona 5 Royal, slow and steady. Just finished the second story arc, currently in the intermission period before the third one begins, and I’m simply calmly enjoying my warm, comfortable, yummy gaming experience. It’s really nice to have that.

Rob Flanagan

• Baking

It is time for my annual family cookie baking weekend. Four days of nonstop baking and decorating cookies. Typically it is a few thousand cookies to be distributed to friends and family. Eat, sleep, breathe cookies.

Ted Atchley

• SNAP
• Christmas parties
• Christmas movies

The holidays are in full swing. I’ve got two Christmas parties this weekend, one for my “day job” and one for my church community.

Families have many traditions around the holidays and one of those is often watching a favorite holiday movie. My favorite Christmas movie is A Charlie Brown Christmas which debuted on this day (December 9th) in 1965. We’ll be breaking out the old DVD player and gathering around the TV to watch it again this year.

My main game these days is still Marvel SNAP. I’ve been having a blast with it. I’m enjoying the new The Power Cosmic season. Lamentis-1 was such a fun Featured Location. I’m already looking forward to it coming back as a Hot Location at some point. Since I’ve collected all the Series 1, 2, and 3 cards, I’ve been working my way through Series 4 and Series 5. I’ve collected Absorbing Man, Titania, She-Hulk, and Bast.

Elizabeth Harper

• Dragonflight

Man, this expansion is just so much fun… and there’s SO MUCH TO DO. I have so many things I want to play and there’s never enough time.

 

That’s us for this week! I hope you all have a lovely weekend and the best of luck with loot! If you have a second, why not let us know: What aRe yoU Playing?