Blizzard Watch Weekly: Springtime fun with the girlies

I’ve been playing my way through the games I bought during the Steam Spring Sale, and one really stands out. Sulfur‘s gameplay isn’t revolutionary, but its take on the roguelike genre is both fun and punishing. I also adore a lot of the UI elements, particularly how they represent the clips of some of the wackier guns. However, what has me hooked is actually the soundtrack. Slicing my way through scared pacifist goblins with a katana, and then the bass drops? Just great vibes all around. If only all the springtime fun with the girlies was this wholesome.

While I rack this shotgun one-handed, let’s see what happened this week, and what we have to look forward to next week, and some stuff you may have missed.

What happened this week?

• Phase 3 of WoW Classic Anniversary realms live March 20
• This week’s Hearthstone Tavern Brawl: Into the Emerald Dream Pre-Release Brawl (Constructed, Brawlesium)
• Active Twitch Drop campaigns
• Epic Games Store free game of the week: Jurassic World Evolution 2

Congrats to Team Liquid for winning this tier’s Race to World First to Gallywix. It was an atypical race, with Gallywix himself being a pushover compared to some of the fights that came before him. Plus, Trial of Style is on this week, through March 27. Even if you don’t want to participate for the frankly pretty meh rewards, transmog is free, so it’s a favorite around the office.

This week’s Hearthstone Brawl is set to celebrate next week’s expansion release. Into the Emerald Dream is just around the corner! Unfortunately, it is a Brawlesium-style event with tickets you have to purchase with actual cash money (or runestones) after your first go, so as always we rate it a puke emoji.

We got word this week that phase 8 of WoW Classic Season of Discovery is starting April 8, with the New Avalon zone and quests releasing the 8th, with the Scarlet Enclave raid to open a couple days later. I’ll stubbornly insist that this is kinda counter to the whole “classic” thing, but realize this makes me an old yelling at clouds, so.

If you’re just struggling to make it through this sunshiny Friday workday, maybe some cute foxes playing in the snow would help? Or maybe you’d like a fun video game new release involving frogs or teatime or samurai to play this weekend?

What’s Happening Next Week (and beyond)

• Journey to the Emerald Dream Hearthstone expansion releases March 25
• Diablo 4 season 7 end and season 8 start April 28

This weekend Freja will be available for play in Overwatch 2 before she joins the roster for real next season. Also this weekend the Mother’s Blessing event continues in Diablo 4, in case you need to zoom through the end of your seasonal journey. Since Diablo 4‘s season 8 was on the PTR, we now have more details as to the boss-related seasonal mechanics we’ll be exploring starting April 28.

As usual, we have our finger on the pulse of the true WoW endgame, so we wrote an article about the new chihuahua-style pet you’ll be able to customize in patch 11.1.5, Weechi.

Around the office, we’re also very excited that our favorite productivity tool-slash-game Spirit City is getting an expansion, which is set to launch March 26.

This week’s podcasts

• Blizzard Watch Podcast: Racing to World First in the Undermine
• Lore Watch Podcast: On the origins of the Sethrak
• Tavern Watch Plays Triangle Agency 2: An unintended (artistic) detour

This week the Blizzard Watch Podcast had a lot on their plates — maybe literally, since the Race to World First for Undermine was probably determined, at least in part, by Chef Heidi’s stellar menu.

Lore Watch was all about the Sethrak, after a commenter asked Joe and Matt to talk more about the snakey bois we first met back in Battle for Azeroth. They went a little tinfoil hat on this one.

And speaking of tinfoil hats, our playthrough of Triangle Agency continued this week, as the team tried to track down a dangerous anomaly.