Blizzard Watch Weekly: Family togetherness

As many of us prepare to spend a holiday together with family, just remember that it could be worse. Malfurion could be your surrogate father.

Here is our Friday wrapup of all the stuff that happened this week, everything you need to know for next week, and a few helpful reminders to help you slog through it all.

What Happened This Week?

• Godspawn update for Guild Wars 2
• November 21: WoW Classic Season of Discovery phase 6 release
• November 21: WoW Classic Classic realms open
• This week’s Hearthstone Tavern Brawl: Storming Stormwind Brawl
• This week’s WoW World Boss: Orta, The Broken Mountain
• Active Twitch Drop campaigns

The big news this week was WoW Classic starting and restarting two new sets of content at the same time. Season of Discovery players got enter the AQ phase with the release of phase 6 — though the raid itself doesn’t open until December 6 — while another set of Classic players got a brand new set of servers to play in, going from day one all the way through The Burning Crusade in the next year or so.

The next hero for Overwatch 2, the phreaker tank Hazard, was announced with a cinematic, and then a gameplay trailer. You can try him out this weekend before he hits the game for real in Season 14.

The nominees for The Game Awards were announced, and we had some opinions about what was included and what wasn’t. Though of course, no time is a bad time to talk about how great Balatro is — it will ruin your life. That is not a negative.

What’s Happening Next Week (and beyond)

• November 19-26: Diablo 4 Mother’s Blessing Event
• November 24-December 1: Pilgrim’s Bounty in WoW
• Overwatch Classic event through December 2
• Hearthstone Battlegrounds season 9 starts December 3
• Diablo 4 Midwinter Blight through December 3
• World of Warcraft 20th Anniversary Event through January 6, 2025

Podcasts

• Blizzard Watch Podcast: Deep diving into the WoW 2025 roadmap
• Lore Watch Podcast: Will the Light bring together Anduin Wrynn and Faerin Lothar?

The main Blizzard Watch Podcast this week was all about the Warcraft Direct, particularly the WoW roadmap. We, unsurprisingly, had a lot of opinions on player housing. The Lore Watch podcast talked about some of the parallels between storytelling in WoW and Diablo, plus a little matchmaking between lore figures who happen to wield similar powers. (Now kiss).

If you’d like to listen to the podcast early, Tier 2 Patreon patrons get access two days before the shows are posted here on the main page. Plus, you get our eternal gratitude for your support.

Reminders, to-dos, and ICYMIs

As per usual, we’ll subtly remind you to check out our weekly list of games you might want to try out this week. (And also, Balatro).

If you happen to be American, and happen to be in charge of the Thanksgiving turkey this year and it’s still in the freezer, the rule of thumb is about a day of thawing in the fridge for every four pounds of bird. So, if you purchased a 15 pound turkey, you need to stick it in the fridge Sunday if you want to start roasting it overnight Wednesday into Thursday. You may want to go a day further out if you’re doing a wet brine — you can do a dry brine if the center still needs a day or so to unfreeze. ‘Tis also the season to think ahead to the next holiday — if you’re thinking about ugly holiday sweaters with a gaming theme, we’ve got you.

Personally, Icarus still has my heart, but soon to overtake it is the amount of cholesterol in this mac and cheese I’m going to make for Thanksgiving. With a side of mashed potatoes. Ah, food-based holidays. At least I still have Balatro on my phone.

See you next week, Watchers.