Blizzard Watch Weekly: loud noises!

I have a nine year old son and a fully grown husband so of course this is their favorite collective holiday. We’ve rounded the corner from sparklers being cool and fun to whipping snapits at each others feet — and then we found the snakes, and now the neighbors hate us.

While we dodge roman candle fireballs, 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?

• Mists of Pandaria Classic: prepatch launched July 1, full release July 21
• Diablo 4 season 9 started July 1
• The Druid class was added to Diablo Immortal July 3
• Midsummer Fire Festival in World of Warcraft, June 21 – July 5
• This week’s Hearthstone Tavern Brawl: Lost City of Un’Goro pre-release Tavern Brawl (Special, Constructed)
• Active Twitch Drop campaigns include a new crossbow cosmetic for Diablo 4
• Epic Games Store free game of the week: Backpack Hero and Figment

This week Mists of Pandaria Classic opened its prepatch experience, allowing players to roll their Pandaren in advance. This also allows players to get the beautiful Shaohao’s Sage Serpent mount, so even if you’re not all that into Pandaland, eh, maybe? Unfortunately for the Classic diehards, this mount will only be available for use in Retail.

If you’re into mounts you’ll be glad to see the Collector’s Bounty buff, which is live July 1-29, and gives a hugely boosted chance to get old mounts and other swag from legacy raids. You may be able to see Invincible at long last.

New D&D adventure anthology Dragon Delves releases July 8, but you can get it from most local booksellers now. It is the first adventure to use the new updated core rulebooks for D&D 2024, and it delivers on its promise of dragony goodness.

There was a series of sweeping layoffs announced at Blizzard parent company Microsoft a couple days ago. We’re still sorting through much of the fallout, but one casualty has been make clear: Warcraft Rumble is officially in maintenance mode. In other words, the servers are still on, but nobody’s home.

Plus, we have another round of great picks for you from the Steam Summer Sale, this time focused on the games our writer Chris thoroughly enjoyed already.

Last but literally not least, this week we looked at some big dogs. Or maybe small ponies, if ponies drooled a lot and shed. The search for the largest Newfoundland in Newfoundland is on.

 What’s Happening Next Week (and beyond)

• Summer Games Done Quick starts on Sunday and runs through July 13
• The Lost City of Un’Goro Hearthstone expansion releases July 8
• WoW Classic Anniversary Realms phase 5 releases July 10

While we’re still not quite sure when patch 11.2 will release, we do know that there will be a new Mythic+ rotation, and we do know which dungeons will be featured in season 3. Some of them were voted on by the larger group and we’re not quite sure what the larger group was thinking.

We are also engaging in a little speculation about 11.2, namely that we may be getting more options for Demon Hunter specs and races. The clues are all there!

And next week is SGDQ, which means it’s a week packed with video game speed runs for charity, supporting Doctors Without Borders. Mitch has a list of must-see runs for the event, but really you should watch the whole thing.

This week’s podcasts

• Blizzard Watch Podcast: Too Much Transmog, Too Little Time
• Lore Watch Podcast: From class fantasy to (redacted) fantasy, we answer your gaming questions
• Tavern Watch Podcast: Looking forward to playing Rebel Scum (but you can’t buy it on DriveThruRPG)

This week was a bit of a grab bag across all the podcasts. Blizzard Watch Podcast highlighted the news of the week, which was oddly focused on transmog across a few different franchises. Lore Watch was a Q&A episode, where Matt and Joe discussed game mods and WoW class fantasy. Lastly, Tavern Watch was a talk episode, featuring discussion on the staffing moves of Darrington Press and DriveThruRPG, and a few games we’ve been enjoying lately.

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend with all your digits, and we’ll meet you back here next week.