Blizzard Watch Weekly: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

We’re at the end of another week of news, and it is finally officially spooky season, so let the hauntings commence. This week the Halloween-themed events went live in most of Blizzard’s games, from the expansive fan favorite Junkenstein’s Revenge to the minimal Hearthstone event where you earn a few card packs and the background of the main menu is sprinkled with candy corn — the most evil of all confections, to be fair.

This is our weekly rundown of the events that happened this week, the ongoing and upcoming events to watch out for, plus a few timely reminders. We’ve made it to the weekend, Watchers.

What Happened This Week?

• Halloween Events:
  • World of Warcraft Hallow’s End: Through November 1
  • Overwatch Halloween Terror: Through November 4
  • Warcraft Rumble Hallow’s End: Through November 6
• This week’s Hearthstone Tavern Brawl: Three Wishes
• Steam Next Fest: Through October 21

We started out this week with a few guides to round out our coverage of Diablo 4‘s season 6 launch the previous week. We had a lot of the Vessel of Hatred stuff beforehand, but there were a few new hooks for season 6 we hadn’t had an opportunity to preview. We now have guides on how to kill Realmwalkers, and how to get Seething Opals. Hearthstone pushed through a set of changes which is otherwise minor (RIP Swan Goldenizer), but reverted recent quest changes we really liked back to how they were initially, which has us asking “but why tho.”

This week we also discussed a bit of lore. Christian discussed the role of the Venture Company in WoW and how they may be used in the future.

Former Blizzard president Mike Morhaime’s new studio announced their first game, Sunderfolk, which both seems like it has innovative gameplay and looks cozy as heck. While we were feeling cozy, we took an opportunity to showcase some TTRPG kickstarters going on this fall. We also played through a handful of Steam Next Fest demos (in this case, we fit 11 teeny tiny but worthwhile demos in our figurative mitts). Next Fest ends on Monday October 21, so it’s the perfect activity for this pre-Halloween weekend.

And just a quick note to fistbump the skeleton crew behind it: Heroes of the Storm got a balance patch this week. Brings a tear to our eye. Miss you guys.

What’s Happening Next Week?

• October 20: Diablo 3 Season 32 ends
• October 22: World of Warcraft patch 11.0.5 launches
• October 22: World of Warcraft 20th Anniversary Event begins
• October 25: Diablo 3 Season 33 starts

We have a whole lot of guides and other content to prep you for the 20th Anniversary of World of Warcraft, the event for which is starting next week. No, we didn’t stutter — 20 years of World of Warcraft. Yes, you should probably start a calcium supplement. A major draw for those of us who were there 20 years ago will be the updated tier 2 transmog pieces, and we have a primer for everything you need to know. To get them you’ll need a new special currency, and we have an article telling you how to get those Bronze Celebration Tokens.

In addition to the new stuff launching, all the Halloween events are still going on, so make sure you’re checking all the boxes to get the stuff you want from these events.

Blizzard Watch Podcast

• Blizzard Watch Podcast: The High Cost of In-Game Cosmetics
• Lore Watch Podcast: Exploring the story campaign of Diablo 4‘s Vessel of Hatred expansion

While we also discussed the most iconic example of Blizzard monetization, the Sparkle Pony, coming to Diablo 4‘s in-game store on the blog, they also discussed it at length on the podcast this week. The team discussed the story of Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred on Lore Watch — as might be obvious, story spoilers abound, so you may want to bookmark this for later if you were too busy punching Junkenstein to finish D4‘s campaign.

Remember that if you enjoy our podcasts, you can subscribe to our Patreon to get them uncut and a little bit early.

Reminders, ICYMI, and stuff to do this weekend

In addition to our weekly post of new video game releases and other games to watch, two Halloween-adjacent staff fave indie games put out major announcements this week. Supergiant Games pushed its first major update to Hades 2 since it hit Early Release. The Olympic Update added a new weapon, new challenges, and new allies for players to try out, though there’s still a good amount of polish to add, and no official release ETA yet. Also with no official ETA, Subnautica 2‘s first teaser cinematic dropped. While the debate will always rage on whether Subnautica is truly a horror game, the trailer alone pairs the agoraphobia of a yawning expanse simultaneously with the claustrophobia from the closeness of having breath fog a tiny scuba mask — and then, of course, the thalassophobia. My skin is crawling and clammy already.

It’s almost Halloween, so this is your mom reminder to make sure you have your costume set now, young lady, lad, or gentlethem, even stuff like glitter sprays or lash glue, because if you need to order anything you’re going to want to make sure to do that before the weekend is over. We’d also recommend you take this opportunity to stock up on those little mellowcreme pumpkins while they’re in stores, because they’re the best.

Finally, there was another mass exodus from Twitter for Reasons, so just a very subtle reminder that we are active on social media, but particularly both Bluesky and Mastodon, in addition to our fabulous Discord. And, you know, we post here sometimes too.