Blizzard Watch Weekly: I’m working late, cuz I’m a writer

Everyone else is at the Summer Game Fest kickoff party, but I’m still at the office prepping Blizzard Watch Weekly. I’m just hoping somebody saved me a drink with a little umbrella in it.

While my give-a-hecks pack for their vacation, let’s look back at what happened this week, what we have to look forward to next week, plus some stuff you may have missed.

What happened this week?

• Overwatch 2 Pride Celebration, May 30 – June 30
• Revamped Arena mode for Hearthstone releases June 2
• Diablo 3 season 35 begins June 6 (today!)
• Nintendo Switch 2 releases June 5
• Mother’s Blessing XP boost live in Diablo 4 through June 17
• This week’s Hearthstone Tavern Brawl: Mimiron’s Faceoff (Standard, Provided)
• Active Twitch Drop campaigns
• Epic Games Store free games of the week: Deathloop and Ogu and the Secret Forest.

Dastardly Duos went live in WoW this week, and immediately a bug surfaced in this new Player vs Boss and Another Boss At The Same Time event. Because some people were doing Shenanigans with artifact weapons, Blizzard added in a control that slid your in-event item level based on your current ilevel, like how it scales lowbies into current content without making it seem like they’re wearing paper armor and wielding a wet noodle. However, they included all your item slots in this, so lots of players were getting rocked because they were wearing ilvl 1 shirts or tabards. As someone who’s been too busy to jump into Duos just yet, lmao. However, there is an easy fix until they actually fix it behind the scenes: don’t wear a shirt. If only IRL was that easy.

Heroes of the Storm is celebrating its 10th anniversary with an in-game event, which includes a very cool new Thrall cel shaded skin. You can also go play all the Heroes for free until June 15.

Also, we published a “summer gaming list,” a la summer reading lists. Just kind of a fun, breezy list of a few different types of games to pass the time this summer, like how Espresso was everywhere last summer. We also have our weekly slate of newly released and discounted games you might want to play this weekend in between Summer Game Fest showcases. Speaking of, we’ll probably be hanging out in the Blizzard Watch Discord discussing Summer Game Fest all weekend, so make sure you look through the calendar for the showcases you’d like to watch.

What’s Happening Next Week (and beyond)

• The Lost City of Un’Goro Hearthstone expansion releases June 8
• Battle for Azeroth Timewalking begins June 17
• World of Warcraft patch 11.1.7, Legacy of Arathor, releases June 17
• Mists of Pandaria Classic: prepatch July 1, full release July 21

We got the announcement of the release date for World of Warcraft patch 11.1.7: June 17. If you’re more the Classic type, also looking forward to July for the release of MoP Classic, you might want to jump in-game now. Joyous Journeys and its big XP boost is back, which will help you get your characters in order before MoP Classic releases. Plus, there was an announcement of a very cool mount from MoP Classic: Shaohao’s Sage Serpent.

The Hearthstone team announced a whole expansion and oh by the way, it goes live next Tuesday. No biggie, just a whole expansion, don’t get too bothered about it. The Lost City of Un’Goro features the new Kindred keyword, Tortollan lore, and Elise Starseeker is back!

This week’s podcasts

• Blizzard Watch Podcast: Pride month kicks off and Heroes of the Storm turns 10
• Lore Watch Podcast: Lorewalking: what to expect from this upcoming feature
• Tavern Watch Podcast: There are too many new TTRPGs to list (but we’ll try anyway)

Tavern Watch this week was a talky one, and there was a ton of TTRPG news to cover from the past month — Daggerheart, new Paizo, and a Monty Python TTRPG, which sounds chaotic as we are. Also talky, with a lot of news to discuss, the Blizzard Watch Podcast, which ranges from Overwatch 2 Pride through Heroes of the Storm‘s Anniversary and a whole bunch of Diablo events.

Plus, on Lore Watch, Matt and Joe talked about the upcoming Lorewalking feature, and which lore beats we’ll be visiting when we play it through.

Hope you have a spectacular weekend, full of paper umbrella drinks.