Blizzard Watch Weekly: Logging on to The War Within and more in gaming news

It’s a busy week in Blizzard games — and in games in general. Practically every game in the Blizzard stable has something new this week, and Gamescom has brought a mountain of trailers and announcements to our eager eyes. Frankly, I can barely keep up, and I’m sure I’ve missed plenty of Gamescom events in the middle of all the excitement.

But to help you stay on top of the latest, here are the highlights from Blizzard (and beyond) from the last week.

New this week

• World of Warcraft: The War Within is now available in early access for players who pre-ordered the Epic edition. This pseudo-launch went smoothly, so hopefully next week’s actual launch will go just as smoothly. The first hurdle to any new expansion, however, is knowing where to go to start the expansion quest chain — which can be a little confusing due to a minor launch day bug.
• Hearthstone Battlegrounds Season 8 just launched, adding a new selection of crazy hero skins and shaking up gameplay with trinkets you can buy at various turns to completely change the flow of the game. This feels like a new take on quests, which I also enjoyed a lot.
• Diablo 4 spills details on Mercenaries and The Dark Citadel. I’m happy to hear that D4 Mercenaries will be very much like D3 Mercenaries, with their own unique characters and quests. The Dark Citadel is a cooperative PVE dungeon Blizzard has teased before, but until now we didn’t even know its name. It seems like a mini-raid that requires a small party to complete challenges and puzzles.
• Overwatch 2 Season 12 started, introducing new support hero Juno, an adorable Martian. There are, as always, new skins to collect this season, including Widowmaker Sylvanas — and a Juno trailer that ended with a shot of Frostmourne suggests we could see more Warcraft crossovers coming soon. Alongside the launch, there’s a Twitch drop for the epic Sojourn Barista skin that costs nothing but your time — it’s available through the 30th, so act fast.
• Warcraft Rumble Season 8 started, bringing a new Dryad mini to the game… but frankly we’re still up on conspiracy theories.
• Diablo 2: Resurrected Ladder Season 8 started, and though we don’t talk about D2R much the ladder seasons are always an exciting time to play and experiencing the rush of leveling to max alongside all of your friends.

Happening next week

• The War Within finally arrives, with a global launch on August 26 at 3pm pacific. We have some tips on how to look after yourself during those long launch day game sessions… or, well, we have a shrimp offering surprisingly sage advice. And it’s no surprise there’s a new WoW Twitch Drop to celebrate the launch: starting Monday you can get the Watcher of the Huntress pet, a somewhat menacing green owl.
• Another Diablo 4 Campfire Chat will presumably give us even more details on the game’s expansion, due out on October 8. Catch it streaming on Twitch Thursday, August 29, at 11am pacific.

Ending soon

• The War Within pre-patch event, Radiant Echoes, ends on August 26 before launch. If you want to buy the mount, the pets, or any of the transmog gear, you only have a few more days to do so.

This week’s podcasts

• Blizzard Watch Podcast: The War Within early access anticipation, because when we were recording on Tuesday we were only anticipating early access, whereas now we are playing early access. Also included in this episode you can hear me plaintively complaining that I don’t want to go back to turbo-hell when Matt suggests WoW Remix: Shadowlands. 
• Lore Watch Podcast: How will the Worldsoul Saga address WoW’s long running storylines?

What to play this weekend

A lot of us are playing The War Within early access this weekend, but there are plenty of other games out there, including some great new releases. I just picked up Sunset Hills, which is at a slight discount in celebration of its release, but I’m also playing TWW this weekend and I’m not actually sure when I’ll have time to get to it.

But Chris has some other great game recommendations to help you avoid FOMO if you aren’t in early access, including Tactical Breach Wizards, a game I cannot figure out how to describe so I will just leave you with the trailer to judge it for yourself.

And if that doesn’t strike your fancy, Diablo 4 seems like it’s desperately trying to hold our attention lately. The game is currently free to play to level 20 on Steam if you want to try it for the first time (it’s also available on Xbox Game Pass if you’re a subscriber). If you’re an old hat at the game, Blizzard really seems to be trying to pull you back, with the super-leveling Mother’s Blessing buff running for a few more days, followed by the March of the Goblins next week.

I don’t think that’s enough to grab me away from everything else there is to play, but D4 is a great game and with the improvements the team has made to leveling and loot, the game is a lot smoother than it was at launch. It’s a good time to check it out.

If you’re more interested in gaming news than games themselves, you could also spend the weekend catching up on Gamescom, which was packed with new trailers. Xbox had a daily stream (which included Blizzard games) and Opening Night Live was typically packed with trailers. But if you just watch one thing, watch this Date Everything! trailer. (If you just watch two things, also watch this Secret Level trailer.)

But that’s all for this very busy week. Next week The War Within gets its full launch so I imagine even more of us will be diving into Khaz Algar, and the newly opened Heroic dungeons and higher-level Delves. I’ll see you back here next week to talk about it.