Blizzard Watch Weekly: It’s PTR time for Blizzard games

We’re in the midst of a busy PTR season with both WoW and Diablo 4 running test realms right now — though Diablo’s is only running for a few more days — which makes this weekend a great time to test out new game features. (The best time to test out new game features would have been last week when player housing was still live on the WoW PTR, but you have to take what you can get.) But there’s more than PTRs happening this week, so let’s run down the week in Blizzard news as well as what’s coming up.

What happened this week?

• WoW patch 11.2.7 is back on the PTR, but without housing. Now testing is all about the new and improved Brawler’s Guild, and you can jump in right now to check it out.
• Turbo Boost is back in WoW! While it has technically been live since patch 11.2.5 dropped, some key Turbo Boost features only arrived with Tuesday’s reset, including Puzzling Cartel Chips, no cap on Crests, and more.
• Legion Remix enters phase 2, adding the Suramar campaign, Nighthold raid, and Return to Karazhan dungeon.
• We’ve written a lot of words trying to explain all of the changes coming in Diablo 4 patch 2.5.0 and/or Season 11. Here’s everything you need to know about the upcoming patch changes, what we know about Season Rank (which is replacing the Season Journey), and Season 11’s new theme, which celebrates our angelic friends with new angelic powers to collect. (I’m pretty sure we don’t have any angelic friends though, so we should probably be careful.) Patch 2.5.0 remains on the PTR through October 28, and is expected to roll out with Season 11 in December.
• This week’s Hearthstone Tavern Brawl is The Haunted Carousel, which is a highly thematic but very frustrating game of RNG. Good luck everybody.

While player housing remains offline in both the alpha and the PTR — hopefully to return in the future with some bug fixes and improved features! — we still can’t seem to stop talking about it. This week Sara wrote about how player housing will (probably) work for guilds, with an alignment chart rundown of how different guildmasters may want to assign plots.

I can’t necessarily recommend following these, but I can’t make choices for you.

What’s happening next week (and beyond)

• Through October 28: Diablo 4 patch 2.5.0 (Season 11) PTR is available for just a few more days if you want to check out the changes yourself.
• Through October 29: WoW Lil’ Coalee pet Twitch Drop
• Through November 1: Hallow’s End in WoW, and we have a newly updated guide on the Headless Horseman fight to help you get the mount this year.
• November 4: Hearthstone Across the Timeways expansion launches
• Through January 19: Legion Remix

Also the WoW Midnight beta is launching “soon” according Holly Longdale, and our prediction is November 17, after the alpha test has rolled out all of its phases. I will update you with details when we have them, but we’ll almost certainly see the beta start some time in November.

Other things we’re playing, watching, and more

• There’s another spooky freebie at the Epic Games Store this week with horror game Fear the Spotlight. It’s an easy addition to your game backlog.
• Steam Next Fest may be over, but many of the demos that were released with the event are still there to check out: here are 11 of our favorites.
• It’s been a long week, so you should watch these videos of animals crushing, rolling, and occasionally nibbling on pumpkins. Trust me, it’s worth your time.

We’re a little light on other games this week, but we’ll have an icymi spotlight of great games this month out next week, and if I have time I may do a writeup of the SUGOI Awesome Console Showcase, which streams on October 28 at 11am pacific / 2pm eastern. (But if player housing comes back online, all bets are off.)

This week’s podcasts

• Blizzard Watch Podcast: Player housing highs and Diablo 4 lows, which talks a little about player housing and a lot about hats. (Okay, maybe not a lot.)
• Lore Watch Podcast: The lore of Vampire: The Masquerade, in which this week is all about the role of vampires in modern media.
• Tavern Watch Plays Shadowdark, Episode 3: What lies below, in which we wrap up our spooky Shadowdark game! Next week we’ll be talking about the latest TTRPG news, but after that it’s into another game with Starfinder 2e.

That’s all for now, my friends. I’ll be back next week with more news, more podcasts, and (I hope) more player housing.