Blizzard Watch Weekly: Calling in sick

Ever since Blue Prince — which was included in this week’s games post — came out yesterday I’ve been feeling a little feverish. I adore (most) puzzles in games — my favorite all-time board game is Boggle — so it’s super unfortunate that I have to call in sick today. Cough cough. Definitely coming down with something. Somebody tell Liz. What do you mean I forgot to hide my Steam activity status?

While I struggle with a puzzle that involves elementary level arithmetic, 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?

• WoW Classic Season of Discovery phase 8 (Scarlet Enclave) released
• This week’s Hearthstone Tavern Brawl: Party Portals! Brawl (Wild, deck provided)
• Active Twitch Drop campaigns
• Epic Games Store free game of the week: River City Girls

This week saw the release of the Scarlet Enclave and season 8 of Season of Discovery. Scarlet Enclave is a brand new raid for WoW Classic, which seems a little bit odd, but as long as everyone is having fun that’s what counts.

We celebrated National Pygmy Hippo Day in style, with all the best baby hippos from around the world.

What’s Happening Next Week (and beyond)

• World of Warcraft patch 11.1.5 releases April 22
• Diablo 4 season 7 end and season 8 start April 28
• Nintendo Switch 2 releases June 5

This week we got the release date for patch 11.1.5: April 22. If you’re not sure why we’re chasing the Dark Heart — or what the Dark Heart is — we wrote an explainer going all the way back to its origins. A part of that release will be the return of the Winds of Mysterious Fortune buff, which will give a boost to XP and some rep gains until May 20. Also in patch 11.1.5 is a new event, Dastardly Duos, which seems like a mashup of Brawler’s Club and a bunch of iconic boss fights.

The Diablo team released their road map for everything coming in 2025 and beyond. It’s a bit late, since it’s April now, but we guess late is better than never, and there are some things that have us intrigued — like a new expansion slated for 2026. No extra details at this time, however. One of those upcoming events involves Belial, a Lesser Evil in the Diablo universe we’ve seen before. We wrote a lore primer on Belial earlier this week. And speaking of bosses we’ve defeated, we got a look at how the updated boss ladder will work starting next season.

We also explored what some upcoming legal moves in the EU might mean for video game microtransactions around the world.

In addition to our usual weekly gaming post, if you’d like something extra to dive into this weekend, the first Wildgate playtest is going on until April 14.

This week’s podcasts

• Blizzard Watch Podcast: WoW Classic goes from #SomeChanges to a whole new raid
• Lore Watch from the Archives: Cyberpunk Edgerunners explores a crumbling dystopia

Our writer Nick Marino joined the crew of the Blizzard Watch Podcast this week to chat about the WoW Classic changes — and it was a bit more than #SomeChanges. A whole newly designed raid is in store for WoW Classic players.

Plus, this week was an episode from the Lore Watch Archives, as Joe and Matt discussed the Netflix series of Cyperpunk Edgerunners.