WRUP: How are we supposed to watch the World Cup with all these video games to play?!

Hello and happy Friday, friends, enemies, and everything in between! Whether intentional or not, you’ve stumbled into WRUP — What aRe yoU Playing — our (mostly) weekly column where Team Blizzard Watch sits back, relaxes, and talks about all the cool stuff we’re getting up to this weekend.

Put simply: There’s a lot happening right now, and I doubt it’ll slow down until the new year. So let’s waste no time and dive right in! Liz Patt leads us off this week.

Liz Patt

• World of Warcraft
• Diablo 3
• Hades

I dipped my toes into Vault of the Incarnates and found it a bit toasty, so I’m going to try to sweep the Dragonflight dungeons on heroic or mythic this weekend for gear. Plus a bit of primal chaos farming for crafting orders and maybe, MAYBE introducing a gathering alt to the Waking Shore.

In the Diablo 4 livestream Thursday, they teased a holiday event in Diablo 3. Apparently it’s getting announced today — perhaps will have been by the time this WRUP comes out! So I need to refresh my memory on what class I started the season with and how it works after a few weeks of focusing on work and WoW.

Finally, because when it rains it pours, Hades! The Hades 2 announcement sparked a desire to continue playing. You have seen the Hades 2 trailer, right? SWOON. There are still some subplots I have yet to encounter; moreover, it’s just satisfying! I can knock out a run in less than an hour, sometimes with completely ridiculous builds.

Andrew Powers

• D&D
• Avatar: The Way of Water
• Hot Skull

Sunday is another in person D&D monthly group. This is the Tomb of Annihilation campaign, yes, modified, but the next part isn’t: unlocking puzzle boxes to open the City of Omu. This looks fun, I’m excited for it. Working backwards, Saturday seeing the new Avatar film. When the first film came out, my son was one year old, now, he’s 14 and can go see this one. Recently made him watch the first one, he didn’t love it, he’s not looking forward to this one, but, doesn’t matter, he still has to see it.

As for TV recommendation of the week — Hot Skull. This show is from Turkey, a pandemic is going through the world, that travels by sound, people wear headphones, not masks, to protect themselves from it. One guy seems to be the key to a cure for it, and he doesn’t want to be. Interesting way to show a pandemic, knowing how people react, and this is one trippy show, my description did not do this justice.

Mitch “Mitch” Mitchell

• Avatar!
• Cocktail double date
• Splatoon 3
• Dragonflight
• ???
• WORLD CUP FINALSSSS

It’s gonna be another busy weekend here, but for plenty of good reasons. Friday, we’re seeing the new Avatar film on one of those stupidly absurdly huge Dolby Atmos screens. I’ve been excited for this eye candy of a film for a long time, and it’s actually getting better reviews than I expected, so I’m hoping it’ll be a good time.

Then Saturday will be a combination of World Cup matches and a double date at my favorite cocktail-and-fragrance bar, which has a nice history of getting me solidly buzzed for a good night out. Sunday, of course, is the World Cup Final. At the time of this writing, I have no idea who Argentina will be facing, but the game starts in like an hour, so we’ll know soon enough!

In between all that, I’ll be attempting to fit in the usual suspects of gaming.

Christian “Kalcheus” Thoma

• Aka
• Bravely Default 2
• Dragonflight
• Three Axes to Fall

The new release for the week is Aka for the Switch. Open world game with a red panda protagonist that has the option to nap? Can’t wait!

Still working my way through Bravely Default 2 and enjoying it so far.

Dragonflight continues to require a lot of attention as well as I’m still trying to suss out what I’m supposed to be doing every week; alts are so far being ignored until I get a handle on everything.

Finally I’m reading the newest book in Sam Sykes’ Grave of Empires series, Three Axes to Fall. I’ll probably finish it this weekend and need to figure out what I want to read next.

Ted Atchley

• Mario Strikers Battle League
• Mario Kart
• SNAP

Nintendo released the third set of Deluxe Booster Courses. It’s been awesome racing around the updated versions of Maple Treeway and Peach Gardens. The holiday themed Merry Mountain has gotten plenty of play as well. What I love most about Mario Kart is my young adult daughter will occasionally join in and play with me and her brother. They are eleven years apart so it’s not often that the three of us can find a game we all enjoy.

My son and I have been working our way through Mario Strikers Battle League. He loves the new Bowser Junior character and begs me to play Bowser. He’s having a blast with the game.

SNAP continues to dominate my solo playtime. The meta in The Power Cosmic season has been really interesting. The Lamentis-1 Featured Location brought Leech back into play, and even with a new Featured Location, he’s in so many decks that people are actively designing decks to counter his counter. I feel like the meta is moving and changing faster this season than ever.

Matthew Rossi

• Still a lot of Dragonflight
• Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, what can I say, it is to me what Mass Effect is to Liz
• If I managed to find my PS4 I’d also play Horizon Forbidden West
• I stopped playing Callisto Protocol, it was too much for my tender insides – good game but not my deal
• I started playing Shadowrun Dragonfall on my Xbox and of course Cyberpunk 2077 there, too

That’s about it for me.

Phil Xavier

• World of Warcraft
• Hearthstone
• Persona 5 Royal

Dragonflight has been an enjoyable expansion, and I think it’s time for me to start leveling some other alts to 70. So maybe I’ll do that. Or maybe I’ll continue slowly trying to gear up my Monk main. This isn’t Mists of Pandaria, but I’m taking the advice to “slow down” to heart.

Hearthstone has put out a good expansion in March of the Lich King, even if balance is a little skewed at the moment — Rogues are too powerful, while the new class, DK, could use a buff. Still, I’ve been enjoying it a lot — more than any other recent expansion, to be frank.

My Persona 5 Royal saga continues, as I’ve just passed the 40-hour mark, and I’m still on the third dungeon (of eight). The other night, I completely lost track of time and played until 1:30 AM. What can I say, I really love this game.

Nick Marino

• Dragonflight
• The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt
• DnD Prep
• Last Chance U: Basketball Season 2
• Dragon Age: Absolution

Like the rest of the staff I’ll be making my way through Dragonflight when I can but I think my main gaming focus this week and weekend will be The Witcher 3. It’s been some time since I last played it so it feels good to start another play through of open-world gwent collecting. I’ve got some mixed feelings on the next gen graphical update – the ray tracing on PS5 setting feels clunky but the performance setting feels almost silky smooth and is my preferred setting right now.

Last month I put my DnD group, 99 Bottles, through a fair bit of trauma and we took this month off because the holidays were just too difficult to get anything scheduled. Our next session is in a few weeks and coincides with one of the player’s birthday so I’ll spend that time over-preparing and over-crafting a birthday-specific one-shot that my players will subvert in some outlandish fashion, per usual.

In between, I’ll find time to continue watching Dragon Age: Absolution as well as the new season of Last Chance U: Basketball.

Renee Lopez

• God of War Ragnarok
• Overwatch 2
• Diablo 2

I’ll be playing more God of War Ragnarok. I’m almost done with it. I think. I hope. Then I’ll be jumping into Witcher 3. I haven’t played the game yet, so I am very excited to get started. Then, if I have time, I’ll be playing a little Diablo 2 and Overwatch 2. I’m excited for the new season of Overwatch after being away for so long. I wanted to play last weekend, but God of War is a timesink. I don’t have much else going on this weekend which is a nice change of pace for me. These past few weeks have been very busy and really draining. Things are starting to slow down a bit, and I can enjoy my free time a little bit more.

 

That’s us for this, the final weekend before Christmas. What about y’all? What aRe yoU Playing?