Blizzard Watch Weekly: starts with a p, rhymes with layer housing

Unless you’re living under a rock you already know what time it is, so let’s get to it.

What Happened This Week?

• Warcraft Direct
• Final Fantasy 14 patch 7.1 released November 12
• This week’s Hearthstone Tavern Brawl: Send in the Murlocs Brawl
• This week’s WoW World Boss: Shurrai, Atrocity of the Undersea
• Active Twitch Drop campaigns
• World of Warcraft 20th Anniversary Event through January 6, 2025

As we suspected last week, this week’s Warcraft Direct was 45 minutes worth of wall-to-wall announcements for a ton of different games, but one finally fulfilled the most common requests players have had for the past 20 years: Player Housing is coming to World of Warcraft in the upcoming expansion Midnight. We have zero details beyond this, but this hasn’t stopped us from overhyping it already. Can you blame us? It’s been 20 years. We don’t yet have a release date for Midnight, but we’re estimating early 2025.

But, let us back up a little. This week’s Warcraft Direct was heavy on the future, including a ton of roadmaps to upcoming content. They kicked off the show by revealing that they’re remastering Warcraft and Warcraft 2, plus going through a major overhaul of the almost universally panned Warcraft 3 remaster. Wait, excuse me, they didn’t just announce them — they released them. You can buy them already on battle.net, both separately and in a bundle.

Hearthstone was the first game with a spelled-out roadmap for 2025, including some of the themes — but not things like mechanics — of the expansions and minisets we’ll see this year, which is the Year of the Raptor. They also let us know to expect Battlegrounds seasons in the same timeframe as usual, in the X.2 patches around a month after the expansions launch. Somewhat unexpected was the announcement of the theme for the upcoming Great Dark Beyond miniset, Heroes of StarCraft which is a crossover with the space-themed RTS. Sure, it’s a little off-the-wall, but we love that about Hearthstone.

Speaking of mobile games on PC, Warcraft Rumble is going to join Hearthstone in having both a mobile and PC version — though we suspect it’ll still be the grindy mess we know (and love?).

And then it was time for WoW, which began with WoW Classic, and its roadmap for 2025. We already knew WoW was increasingly several games stacked on top of each other in a trench coat, but seeing all three separate eras of Classic next to each other really drove home the point. It seemed a foregone conclusion that Mists of Pandaria Classic would happen, and yes, now that it’s been announced we will have the latest on Mists of Pandaria Classic.

And then in was time for the modern WoW presentation, featuring the roadmap for 2025. In that roadmap is stuff we already knew, like Plunderstorm Redux, but also a bunch of stuff we sort of guessed at, but didn’t have an absolutely firm timeline on. For one, patch 11.0.7 will release December 17 — but that announcement was a little bit overshadowed by everything else. We got to hit the highlights of patch 11.1, where we’ll take out Gallywix at long last in the Undermine. The Undermine will feature a whole lot of really cool stuff, including customizable blinged-out racecars, and a new set of Delves — but maybe not a new Delve companion.

Not to be outdone, the Diablo 4 team also announced a bunch of stuff, which is mostly starting next week. The Overwatch 2 team announced — and simultaneously launched — a limited time event, Overwatch Classic, which not only uses a 6v6 team comp, but also brings back old abilities, like Symmetra’s car wash with 6 turrets out in the world at once.

What’s Happening Next Week (and beyond)

• November 19: Diablo 4 Welcome Back Booster available
• November 19-26: Diablo 4 Mother’s Blessing Event
• November 19-December 3: Diablo 4 Midwinter Blight (sort of?)
• November 21: WoW Classic Season of Discovery phase 6 AQ release
• November 21: WoW Classic Classic realms open
• Overwatch Classic event: Through December 2

Podcasts

• Blizzard Watch Podcast: WoW Winter Veil rewards we must have
• Lore Watch: What is the nature of the Light?

This week the podcast was recorded the evening before the Warcraft Direct, so expect the discussion on player housing to happen next week (and probably every week thereafter). This week on the main podcast, they talked about Overwatch Classic, the new rewards for Winter Veil, and a whole lot on Dragon Age, which has consumed the lives of our podcasters. Lore Watch was all about the Light, that mysterious force, and the yin to the Void’s yang.

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

Reminders, to-dos, and ICYMIs

As we start rounding the corner on the holiday season, make sure you’re keeping up with all your WoW anniversary doings, so you don’t have to try to pack it all in at the last minute. If you’re a Classic player, you’ll also want to get your IRL ducks in a row before Thursday — don’t forget the snacks. Since we are rounding that particular calendar corner, for much of the northern hemisphere it’s getting chilly in earnest, and our recipe for beer cheese soup has been making the rounds on our Discord. It’s not a great choice if you’re hovering over a keyboard, but hey, you have to ride the gryphon sometimes.

In other games, we have a roundup of the good stuff again this week, and the Cozy Quest Steam promotion goes until the end of the weekend. Unfortunately, I just started playing Icarus so I’m just trying my hardest to fight off the demon that is gaming hyperfixation. So far, it is not working. Please send exotics and/or ren.