Blizzard Watch Weekly: Taivan, Plunderstorm, and a second chance for Diablo 4

What a week! From WoW’s new Plunderstorm event to a huge rework of Diablo 4 loot, we’ve had a lot to write about. And don’t forget, we’re looking for help with that: Blizzard Watch is hiring a couple of writers, so please send us your apps!

But that out of the way, let’s get to what happened this week and what to watch for next week!

New this week

• Jump into the Plunderstorm, WoW’s new PVP battle royale mode. I admit, this isn’t my thing, but I’m still working on earning Renown to collect all of that sweet, sweet transmog. Fortunately, you can earn rewards without doing PVP (other than getting killed), so PVE players who love transmog can get in on the event too.
• The WoW Fathom pet Twitch Drop just went live. This cute purple crab is decked out in gold and jewels, resplendent in its off-kilter crown. You can get it by watching four hours of WoW content on Twitch between now and April 5.
• Get your Taivan mount now! Or maybe in a while. Or maybe in a month. A year? Taivan is a reward for the new A World Awoken Dragonflight meta-achievement that went live with WoW patch 10.2.6. The achievement requires clearing a lot of Dragonflight content, but we have a checklist of everything to help you get started.
• Diablo 4 announced massive itemization changes coming to the game in Season 4, which will launch on May 14. These changes streamline gear a great deal, stripping down the number of affixes and removing a lot of junk gear drops so, as the Diablo team says, you can spend “less time sorting and more time slaying.” That’s pretty appealing for casual players, but for high-end players there are new crafting options to improve and customize gear, giving everything you pick up a longer lifespan.
• Hearthstone’s Whizbang’s Workshop expansion is now live, and it’s been such a busy week that I frankly nearly forgot about it. We have a rundown on the most interesting cards that were released with the expansion.
• Overwatch 2 Season 10 will unlock all heroes regardless of battle pass progress, fixing a big frustration with this sequel. Now you can play the heroes who have been added without spending a dime.

Coming soon

• March 26: Mother’s Blessing returns to Diablo 4 through April 2. This +35% (multiplicative) gold and experience buff could help you rocket to the end of Season 3, but honestly I’m having a little trouble working up enthusiasm with the big, exciting changes planned for Season 4. Still, we’re all running out of time to complete this Season Journey, and the XP buff will make it easier.
• March 26: Diablo 4 patch 1.3.5 will primarily contain bug fixes, but it will include ray tracing (for PCs and consoles that support the feature). Ray tracing adds more realistic shadows and reflections, but personally I don’t see a lot of difference — and I suspect I’ll notice it even less when I’m rampaging around the map with my skeleton army.
• March 28: Diablo 4 arrives on Xbox Game Pass. If you’ve been sleeping on Diablo 4, this is a good time to check out the game. Even if you don’t typically enjoy ARPGs, the game has an incredible single-player story campaign that will appeal to traditional RPG fans. If you have Game Pass it’s worth a download to play through it — the story campaign stops around level 50.

This week’s podcasts

• Blizzard Watch Podcast: Welcome to the Plunderdome!
• Lore Watch Podcast: What could be the most cyberpunk story in all of Azeroth?
• Tavern Watch Podcast: Is Critical Role’s Daggerheart the future of TTRPGs?

And if you want to hear more about Daggerheart, we’re running a one-shot game that we’ll be publishing as a podcast soon!

What to play this weekend

If you aren’t playing Plunderstorm or working through the Taivan achievements, Horizon Forbidden West just hit PC, and let me tell you it is a great game. And if you aren’t interested, we have other game recommendations for the weekend.