Blizzard Watch Weekly: Pizza Night!

I usually write this intro about what’s sort of going on in my life at any given time. As such, it’s Friday, end of the week, I’m tired and want to be a little bit of a trash goblin, so it seems like I’ve used this whole “pizza night” theme before. C’est la vie, and happy Friday.

While I decide if I want the phenomenal pizza from the expensive place or the decent pizza from the less expensive place, 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?

• Winds of Mysterious Fortune buff returns to WoW July 15
• Hacks and Hijinks event in Overwatch 2 through July 28
• Collector’s Bounty in World of Warcraft through July 29
• This week’s Hearthstone Tavern Brawl: Ragnaros Fire Festival Tavern Brawl  (Wild, Constructed)
• Active Twitch Drop campaigns
• Epic Games Store free game of the week: Civilization 6

Live this week was a new set of incentive rewards for 6 month WoW subs: a mount for Retail WoW and a pet for progression WoW Classic (ie, Mists of Pandaria Classic). Speaking of mounts, if you were keeping up on Timewalking, this week you should have earned your Infinite Pirate Dragon (aka, Chrono Corsair) mount. There are a couple more weeks to go if you were slacking, though.

The Hacks and Hijinks event started in Overwatch 2, and is slated to run through July 28. This adds a new condition to each map at random, like one where all the heroes are tiny and have less health, or one where gravity is turned much lower than usual.

As usual, we have a slate of the newest games released this week for your perusal.

If you’re in the mood to both crumble to dust and simultaneously burst from the cuteness, we have to inform you that this week it was Moo Deng’s first birthday. They grow up so fast.

 What’s Happening Next Week (and beyond)

• Mists of Pandaria Classic full release July 21
• Ghosts of K’aresh patch 11.2 releases August 5

It’s a week ending in a Friday and so we’re still obsessed with the upcoming Player Housing feature. This week we explored — and lightly fought about amongst ourselves — the new places we can put our house in the Neighborhood. After shouting about who gets to have the house by the rainbow — and realizing that those of us who play Horde are out of luck on that plot anyway — we also looked into Endeavors, collective Neighborhood-wide special events with some sweet rewards.

We got the news this week that storage in general was getting a revamp in WoW, specifically with the character banks becoming more like the Warbank. They’re doing away with the reagent tab (making it a generic tab you can still use for reagents), and also Void Storage is no more. Make sure you clear it out before patch 11.2. Also coming in patch 11.2: fel. capybaras.

Moonshot Studios put out their road map for Wildgate for the rest of 2025, just before the game launches next week. This is the extraction shooter from the studio offshoot of Mike Morhaime’s large development company Dreamhaven, and is led by several Blizzard veterans.

Way further down the line, we got word this week that Guild Wars 2‘s next expansion will be called Visions of Eternity, and it’s releasing October 28. And Spirit City announced a new DLC coming later this year with a train theme.

This week’s podcasts

• Blizzard Watch Podcast: And now for even more player housing news
• Lore Watch Podcast: Storytelling in TTRPGs
• Tavern Watch Plays Daggerheart, Episode 2: Ambushed! (But not very well.)

This week the main story on the Blizzard Watch Podcast was Player Housing, and I feel like I can probably just C&P that until we actually get our grimy mitts on it. Also, Joe and Liz debate: when is a limb a wing, and do crocolisks have to have 6 limbs? Are they technically insects?

Our own Phil Ulrich joined the Lore Watch Podcast this week to discuss storytelling in TTRPGs, and how TTRPGs get that certain something that bring them beyond a bog standard board game. Phil was also one of our players in Daggerheart, which is on its second episode. Our adventurers were ambushed this week — or maybe reverse ambushed? It’s all a little confusing, but they’re making their way toward the Motherboard.

I hope you all have a great weekend, with pizza. We’ll see you back here next week.