WRUP: It’s Friday, and Team Blizzard Watch just may be engaging in some Fire Emblem

Hello and happy Friday! Whether you’ve had a very long week, a very short week, or any kind of week in between, you’ve made it to Friday. And Friday means it’s time for WRUP: What aRe yoU Playing?

Here, we talk about all the things we’re getting up to this weekend, from gaming to entertainment to, well, anything! Phil “Red” Xavier leads us off:

Phil Xavier

• Hearthstone Battlegrounds
• Persona 5 Royal
• Fire Emblem Engage…? Question Mark?

Having recently taken the shortest break from WoW ever, followed by the shortest comeback to WoW ever (I’m already taking a break again, lol), most of my PC-gaming time is being dedicated to Hearthstone Battlegrounds. The arrival of Season 3, with Undead and dual-type minions, means many new strategies are being developed, and the meta still in flux — that’s always a really fun time to play for me.

Adventures in Persona 5 Royal continue, as I passed the 70-hour mark and accomplished one of the major goals I had for this second playthrough. I’ve also just pre-ordered Fire Emblem Engage, which comes out this Friday — but I don’t know if I’m starting it just yet. I might wait a little before fully diving headfirst into it, with the appropriate attention it deserves.

Mitch “Mitch” Mitchell

• Splatoon 3
• Elden Ring
• D&D Planning

Life has been a bit chaotic lately but not in the way I typically like. To the best of my knowledge, this weekend has no planned events, which means we’ll likely default to the usual games when we’re not busy with unplanned events. That means Splatoon 3 for me, Elden Ring for the GF, and D&D homebrewing in between.

…Or, um, wait. Am I allowed to say that last thing? I don’t know if I’m allowed to say that last thing.

Christian “Kalcheus” Thoma

• Critical Role: Legend of Vox Machina season 2
• Life is Strange: True Colors
• Dragonflight
• D&D Planning

It’s been too long since I last heard Sam Riegel’s iconic “Scanlan’s Hannnnnnnnnd!” so I’m super-excited for the second season of Legend of Vox Machina launching this weekend. They’re sticking to the three episodes a week format, which actually works out well since I’ll probably watch some playoff football too.

In gaming the Year of the Backlog™ continues with Life is Strange: True Colors. I’m planning on playing the original and Before the Storm as well, but I wanted to see if I enjoyed the format on Switch before committing to it.

In Dragonflight my main has accomplished most everything I wanted to so while I’ll still play some this weekend it’ll mostly be focusing on figuring out what to do when patch 10.0.5 arrives next week.

Like Mitch I’ll also be looking to replicate my favorite aspects of a certain TTRPG in a way that doesn’t run afoul of current or future “Open” Gaming Licenses. Since I don’t currently partake in a campaign it’s not a huge deal, but I always like to prepare for the future.

Renee Lopez

• Dragon Age Inquisition
• Stardew Valley
• Triangle Strategy Demo
• Dragon Quest Treasures Demo

It’s about that time to fire up Dragon Age Inquisition again. I decided to start a new character that would romance Solas. I’m looking forward to the frustration and heartache that the story will bring. I just need Dreadwolf to come out soon, or I might have to start again with Dragon Age: Origins. BioWare, if you’re hurting for more stuff, can we please get a Dragon Age Remastered series?

I’ve been in the mood for a cozy game, but I didn’t want to start a new one, so I dipped back into my beloved Stardew Valley. My longest playthrough is in Year 4, and I have a lot to do. My plan during the winter months is to completely redesign my farm. There are patches of land that are not being properly utilized. I also started another farm because I can’t commit to one farm.

I downloaded the demos for both Triangle Strategy and Dragon Quest Treasure. I love the whole look of Triangle Strategy, and it’s been such a long time since I played a tactical strategy game. I’m still looking for something to fill that Final Fantasy Tactics hole I have in my heart. As for the Dragon Quest Treasure game, I love Dragon Quest, and I love all the spin-offs. Dragon Quest IX S was an absolute delight to play, so I am really excited to check out DQ Treasure. Honestly, I don’t know why I even bothered with the demo, I’m just going to buy this game anyway.

Anna Washenko

• No Man’s Sky
• Pac-Man 99
• Atelier Firis

My regular gaming group has started getting into No Man’s Sky, so that’s my main focus right now. I’m slowly relearning how to play it, since there are about 10 million more things to do than when I first took a spin out in space. I wasn’t immediately attacked by sentinels, so I have a good feeling about this attempt!

If my Switch is handy and I want to dink around for 20 minutes, my go-to game is usually Dr. Mario. However, I booted up Pac-Man 99 on a whim the other day and wow, is it fun! Somehow I hadn’t been grabbed by any of the other arcade-games-turned-battle-royales, not even for my beloved Tetris. But the stars aligned for dot-munching this week and now I might be hooked.

I’m also down to 69 days (nice) before I have to take my alchemy exam in Atelier Firis, so this weekend I will likely finish off this first phase of the game. There are a lot of elements to this Atelier entry that I’ve really enjoyed, but I’ve also been hugely frustrated by the opacity of others. I’ll be curious to see how much the game opens up after the exam; I’m hoping my playthrough will end with a stronger focus on the fun parts. We’ll see!

Ted Atchley

• Marvel SNAP

I’m enjoying the Savage Lands season of Marvel SNAP. I’ve made it to Rank 50 which is usually where I plateau each season. Mid-60s is my highest ever. I’ve got Shuri pinned in the Token shop. I actually have enough tokens to buy the card, but on January 31st, she is getting changed to Series 4 instead of Series 5 which means she will cost 3000 Tokens instead of 6000 Tokens. I will save enough coins to buy another Series 4 card if I wait.

My son’s FLL (First Lego League) Robotics team has their Qualifier tournament this weekend. We’ll be spending most of Saturday watching his matchies. He’s super excited. His team can qualify for State if they do well enough.

Andrew Powers

• D&D
• Dungeon Petz
• The Mayfair Witches
• The Last of Us

A lot of D&D this weekend, with real life, in person games on Saturday and Sunday. So a quick note about whether or not it’s ok to play D&D. D&D isn’t the bad guys, it’s Wizard of the Coast. They didn’t invent D&D, they, with Hasbro, bought the rights, and are now doing some shady licensing to gouge content creators. In the meantime, you’re still allowed to have fun with your friends. You’re allowed to homebrew your own campaigns. You’re allowed to use what you’ve already bought. Maybe send a signal to WOTC by not spending more money, but there are plenty of ways to play D&D by not giving WOTC money. Like, for example, WOTC doesn’t sell dice. You need dice, but you don’t them for the dice. They don’t sell imagination. Just my two copper.

Haven’t tried it yet, but bought a board game that looked cute called Dungeon Petz.

Started two new tv shows. The Mayfair Witches is based on an Ann Rice trilogy of books, and is on AMC. The Last of Us is on HBO, and has some intense moments. It seems well done, and I’m looking forward to this, but, I’ve never played the video game, not sure how true it is to the game.

Nick Marino

• WOTLK Classic
• Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
• Legend of Vox Machina Season 2
• Unnamed TTRPG

It’s been a busy few days for me, I’ve mainly played TW3: Wild Hunt and I forgot just how expansive it is. It’s been just over a month since the next-gen release and I’m just a little more than halfway in to the story and I haven’t even touched the DLCs. I’m debating just how much I want to complete this round or if I want to try a true completionist run on Death March difficulty.

I’m getting back in to Wrath Classic for Phase 2 and while I don’t anticipate being ready for Ulduar any time soon, I will be trying my hand at the Argent Tournament grind, at least when I’m not hunting for more gwent cards.

I’ve eagerly been waiting for the second season of The Legend of Vox Machina and am incredibly excited to watch the first set of episodes when they release. I plan to watch them before I DM an unnamed TTRPG for my friends tomorrow and, who knows, maybe I’ll be inspired to add a little more spice to what I already have cooked up.

Anna Bell

• Collect All Pets
• Hearthstone Battlegrounds
• Rubix Cubes
• Heirloom seed gardening?

Since WRUP is a judgement-free zone, I’m going to admit that one of the best games I’m playing right now is a game on Roblox. If you’re not familiar, Roblox is more like a platform like Steam or Battle.net, with multiple games developed on its proprietary software available in one place rather than a singular game. As such, there are multiple games throughout it, and my kids have made me try them all, but one really stuck. Collect All Pets is a somewhat standard merge game, but because it’s on Roblox it doesn’t have the overly predatory monetization of most of the genre (though there are a few things you can purchase). The way the grind is tuned, from lucky perks and rebirthing mechanics all the way down to the clinking of coins, it is a dopamine-generating juggernaut. I’m not sure the game is good, and honestly I’m not sure I’d even call it fun, but my brain cannot get enough.

I’m also playing a lot of Hearthstone Battlegrounds. I’m not all about the Undead just yet, but I tend to favor chonky stat snowball builds, and families like the Undead always feel very uncontrolled to me. Also, because it’s the new hotness, some cards can start getting very tough to come by early on when everyone else in the lobby tries to force Undead. We’ll see how it plays out!

In real life, my son is now very into Rubix cubes, so this weekend we’re deep diving YouTube to try to learn how to solve them. I also just received an order of seeds so I’m getting together all my stuff to start those up for transplanting in a couple months. This year I’m growing a few varieties of cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, and strawberries as usual, but I’m putting some lavender and marigolds around the veggies for both pollination and pest control. I’m also interspersing some peppers described as “viciously hot,” so hopefully the chipmunks eat those first — though hopefully not all of them! — and stay away for the rest of the season.

Joel Davis

• NieR:Automata
• Super Mario Galaxy
• Rat on a Stick

I have so many games to catch up on that aren’t completely in my wheelhouse like
NieR:Automata. So, I hope to get in a little time playing this weekend.

My original intention was to pull out the Wii and play Super Mario Galaxy, but that is turning into a game of open up the console and troubleshoot the optical drive…

Finally, I’m in the mood to peruse my archives for reading material. Am thinking of pulling out Rat on a Stick, a module for Tunnels and Trolls that features what may be the first fantasy TTRPG fast food franchise in a dungeon…

Sara Hanson

• WoW
• NationStates
• EpicRPG

Hi, I’m one of the new writers, I’m located in the land downunder – no we’re not a myth. It’s summer down here and our internet is known to be awful.

This is not a week where I’m getting a lot of downtime.

In WoW this week, we’re working on Raszageth normal and hoping to get him down, we had lots of people away on our progression night last week and I lost my co-raid lead mid week this week… so we’ll see how it goes.

In not-Blizzard-games, I have a couple of long term light games ticking along:

NationStates is a little web based game where you need to make difficult choices governing your country and it then rates based on your decisions how happy your population is, how strong your economy is, your corruption levels, political freedoms, civil rights etc…

EpicRPG is a Discord bot game I’ve been playing for nearly two years now. It’s a good time filler game because you can play it anywhere, on any device that supports Discord.

In not gaming directly, my other half got us a surprise invite to a red carpet event halfway across the country on two weeks notice and I am running around sorting out clothes and flights and hotels and leave for us both. Oh, and doing some mandatory management training through work – it’s a four month course on top of my full time job.

 

That’s us for this week! Welcome to (even more) new virtual faces on the team! ^_^

And, as always, if you have a moment, why not tell us — What aRe yoU Playing?