WRUP: Celebrating America’s 2023rd birthday with a lot of video games

Hello and happy Friday, Watchers!

Is that joke dumb? Yes, of course it is. Am I going to make it anyway? Clearly yes. But hopefully it at least helps set the tone for WRUP — What aRe yoU Playing? — where we here at Blizzard Watch talk about things that are fun, exciting, and in our near future.

So if you have a moment, sit back, relax, and enjoy a peek into our weekend plans. Yours truly kicks things off this week.

Mitch “Mitch” Mitchell

• D&D surprise birthday one-shot
• WoW
• Tears of the Kingdom
• Diablo 4
• Elden Ring?

After a successful, RP-heavy session last Friday, I’ve managed to get my D&D group (less one) to join for another session this coming Friday (AKA tonight, when this gets published). Except it’s not actually a normal session; I’m turning it into a “one-shot-like” that serves as a surprise birthday session for my partner. Of course, that means that I’m currently spending all my spare time designing a themed dream dungeon crawl in under a week. It’ll be fine. I’ve got this. I love doing this to myself.

Saturday and Sunday will be spent as a mix of not-surprise birthday celebrations and relaxing. We’re slowly working through Diablo 4, and I think after two weeks of intense D&D planning, I can finally step back into Tears of the Kingdom.

Unfortunately, I don’t have Monday off, so while Tuesday will also be a nice chance to (hopefully) relax, it’s not quite the long weekend I’d love to have. (But when do I not want a long weekend?)

Phil Xavier

• Diablo 4
• Final Fantasy 16, maybe?
• Persona 5 Royal

I’ve found a nice rhythm for my daily Diablo 4 playing: complete a full set of Whispers for the Tree, then do a Nightmare Dungeon. In the course of doing those activities, if I see something else popping up, such as a World Boss, a Legion Event, or a Helltide Zone, I jump into those as well. This is usually enough to net me between 50% and 75% of a level per playing session, so it’s kinda slow going, but it’s been fun and helps me avoid burnout.

Last WRUP I said I was gonna play the FF16 demo, but I still haven’t found the disposition to sit down and do it for some reason. I’m gonna try to get to that this weekend.

Finally, I decided to go back to my unfinished second playthrough of Persona 5 Royal that I abandoned 80 hours in (in order to play Fire Emblem Engage, and then Octopath Traveler 2). I need to finish it and then finally move on to the sequel, Persona 5 Strikers, which has been sitting on my backlog for quite a while now.

Matthew Rossi

• Diablo 4
• Cyberpunk 2077 getting ready for Phantom Liberty, the upcoming expansion that utterly redesigns pretty much every single system in the whole game
• Canadian Citizenship Achievement unlocked
• Steelrising because I can’t say no to a robot riddled French revolution

So yeah, finally swore the oath and I am a Canadian citizen, only seventeen years after I first came up here. Bit of a slow burn there but I’ll take what I can get.

Still playing a lot of Diablo 4, I hit 77 today and I am in awe of the level 100’s I see running around in the world. Also, cannot tell y’all how excited I am for Phantom Liberty, because of the many revamps and updates yes, but also because of the upcoming sixth ending to Cyberpunk 2077 as a whole based on the choices you make in Phantom Liberty.

Anna Washenko

• Diablo 4
• Overwatch 2
• Cooking

I’m on the slow track with Diablo 4 because my first playthrough is a co-op one with my husband. We just closed out Act II and are both honing in on our optimal builds. I’m playing my beloved necromancer for my first character. I’ve been delighted by the corpse and blood skill trees so far, and I think this weekend I’ll be doing a full respec to try out the bone abilities. Husband is playing a rogue, and he’s likely going back to the knife skills after attempting a bow build that left him decidedly underwhelmed.

It’s not specific to this weekend, but I will be putting in my usual time on Overwatch matches. The daily grind approach really works for me, where I spend a half hour playing while I drink my morning coffee. This season happens to have great goodies for many of my most-played heroes — Tracer, Kiriko, Orisa, Mei, and Zenyatta – so I’m enjoying working my way up the paid Battle Pass.

I’m also very fortunate to have central air in my home, so I can spend some time in the kitchen without expiring from heat or air pollution. Summer in the midwestern U.S. has amazing produce, so I’m hoping to prep some tart pastry that will highlight the best seasonal treats. And if I’m really on top of things, maybe I’ll whip up some cookies for July 4 picnicking.

Ted Atchley

• SWTOR “Showdown on Ruhnuk”
• SNAP
• HSBG
• Writing

With all the news about SWTOR moving from BioWare to Broadsword, and the uncertainty of the games future, I decided it was a good time to catch up on the game’s story. I’m one patch behind and taking my Jedi Knight through the “Showdown on Ruhnuk” storyline released in patch 7.2. The story took an odd turn from what I was expecting. They built up this one character, but then shifted focus to this other character. Still, there’s been ample opportunity to use my lightsaber.

During SNAP’s current Spider-Versus season, I’ve hit my highest rank ever, rank 86. I immediately tumbled back down to 82, and I’m slowly working my way back up. I climbed mostly with a Evo Lockdown deck, but that has been getting progressively worse so I’ve switched to a Sera Control and also a cheesy Spider-Ham/Sentry Toxic deck.

Just when I felt like I was getting a handle on HSBG, Blizzard performed a balance pass as well as some new minions added. I’m adjusting and learning the new minions.

Finally, I’d like to express my gratitude to everyone who helped out with my book launch. It went better than I expected, and I so appreciate everyone’s help. Thank you, thank you, thank you! What’s next for me on the writing front? Chapter 1 of a new story, of course!

Christian “Kalcheus” Thoma

• Final Fantasy 16
• Season: a Letter to the Future

The 4-day weekend is going to be a busy one for me work-wise, so I’m only planning on spending time with FF16 and Season: a Letter to the Future which my son got for me for Father’s Day. I’m not expecting to make much progress with FF16 but I do hope to complete Season.

Sara Hanson

• Rest and recuperation
• Diablo 4
• WoW

The project I was working on for the last year deployed about 2 weeks ago, I’m now between contracts and catching my breath. I will most likely be spending a chunk of the weekend playing Diablo while rugged up in an Oodie because it’s freezing down here right now. I had a ninja day spa visit yesterday to work out some of the kinks from the long deployment weekend, and I’m making my way through my backlog of admin tasks for work. I have a bunch of health check ups this week – I am officially 10 years past my cancer surgery date; at which point — while I have to keep being monitored because it’s of high risk of returning — it’s fairly comfortably behind us now.

I’m currently trying to find all the statues of Lilith and uncover all the map to have that ready for Season 1. I have a bunch of items to farm up for my build and I’m trying to decide what I might play for Season 1 – maybe a rogue or a sorcerer.

Phil Ulrich

• Pokémon Scarlet
• Diablo 4

This weekend is the Pokémon Scarlet & Violet 2023 North American International Championships in Columbus, Ohio, and that’s where I’m gonna be. But before we leave, and when I get back? Diablo 4. Starting to get into World Tier 4 with great gusto, by which I mean occasionally just getting completely flattened by a bear, or a room literally full of elite demons.

That’s Blizzard Watch for this weekend! If you celebrate, I hope you have a fun (and safe) holiday weekend, and if you don’t, I hope you have an equally safe and fun non-holiday weekend.

And if you have a sec, why not tell us: What aRe yoU Playing?