Blizzard Watch Weekly: Earworm rabbit hole

It started this week when Cory mentioned opera in his Queue, so of course I had to immediately go watch Diana Damrau sing the Queen of the Night aria — and down the rabbit hole I went, listening to both analysis of the performance and even more opera I enjoy. Chuck Mangione’s death brought me down another, as did Ozzy’s earlier this week. And then somebody mentioned Lubalin earlier today and I’m just done for. Pack it in, folks, here we go again.

I don’t want to meet people, I don’t want to make friends, no, I just want to 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 full release July 21
• 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: Unidentifiabrawl Tavern Brawl (Wild, Deck Provided)
• Active Twitch Drop campaigns
• Epic Games Store free game of the week: Legion TD 2

As Mists of Pandaria Classic released earlier this week, we also got a new trailer to go with it. It doesn’t top the “why do we fight” trailer from the original release, but it offers a great look at the crux of that idea without actually making Taran Zhu say it. This week’s Cute post also paid tribute to Pandaria, with some of our favorite battle pets.

We talked a bit about accessibility in gaming — what it means, and how to find games that might better meet your needs.

The new game from Moonshot Studios, Wildgate released this week.

 What’s Happening Next Week (and beyond)

• Ghosts of K’aresh patch 11.2 releases August 5
• Hearthstone Battlegrounds season 11 begins August 5

We got word this week about the upcoming season 11 of Hearthstone Battlegrounds. It’s a usual slate of what we’ve come to expect of Battlegrounds seasons, with minions and spells cycling in and out, a new Hero, a few quality of life changes, and a new set of cosmetics and other swag in the Tavern Pass. More information will be coming out over the next few weeks as we get closer to release.

We took a look at all the new elite specializations coming up in Guild Wars 2‘s Visions of Eternity expansion.

Plus, it’s a week ending in Friday, so here’s even more Player Housing content, which will continue until we get our grubby mitts on it. This week we’re speculating how much Player Housing (and all its decor) will cost.

This week’s podcasts

• Blizzard Watch Podcast: The latest news on Mists of Pandaria Classic
• Lore Watch Podcast: Void Demon Hunters and other magical mixups
• Tavern Watch Plays Daggerheart, Episode 3: The hidden heart of the Motherboard

The long-time Blizzard Watchers will recognize the title of this week’s podcast: as Mists of Pandaria Classic releases, we now have the latest new on the Mists of Pandaria again. I’ll remind you that we did launch the site in the middle of Warlords of Draenor. We’ve been cooking since day one.

Speaking of things we’ve been cooking since day one, this week’s Lore Watch Podcast answered a bunch of listener questions. Weirdly, they all had as much mash-up energy as an episode of Glee, asking about Demon Hunters using the Void instead of Fel, and Deathwing’s mashed up Shadow plus Fire making ShadowFlame. Plus, we concluded our playthrough of Daggerheart on Tavern Watch.

I hope you have a restful weekend, with a nice little treat. We’ll meet you here next week.