Blizzard Watch Weekly: The biggest week for Warcraft since 2004

Oh, what a week. With the rollout of Player Housing, World of Warcraft has had the biggest update it’s had since launch. There are tons of new cosmetics to collect in order to fully customize our new households, through questing, running dungeons and raids, collecting achievements, and earning reputation. Collecting costs time, gold, and a great deal of other resources… and that’s on top of designing and building your home. Customization options aren’t quite infinite… but they’re pretty good.

But I’m taking a break from collecting every last piece of decor to be here and run down everything that happened last week (and what’s coming up this week), so we can both pretend we’re on top of things. Here’s what you need to know.

What happened last week?

• WoW Player Housing launched in early access for players who pre-ordered Midnight, and we have a pile of guides to help you get your house set up (and we’re working on more for next week). Here are how-tos to help you set up your house and build your collection of decor:
  • You’ve probably figured this one out already, but here’s how to buy your first house.
  • How to level up your house (get ready for a grind)
  • If you have Player Housing questions, we (hopefully) have answers in our Player Housing FAQ
  • How to get to your new home (or home to be) — it’s easy to get to your neighborhood from anywhere, with a quick 15 minute cooldown!
  • Here’s how to solve every one of The Last Architect’s Treasure Hunt riddles
  • How to get lumber to craft decor
  • All of the cartable decor (that we’ve found so far) — I’m in the middle of updating this with links and new recipes now that housing is live, but it it should still be a good resource if you want to see what you can make!
  • How to make dyes to custom color everything in your home
  • Our 10 favorite pieces of decor from dungeon and raids
  • Decor to help you recreate your Legion Class Hall
  • Decor rewards from WoW’s expansion-spanning meta achievements
  • If you’re trying to manage your decor collection or track down the perfect piece of decor, we have addons and tools to help.
  • What exactly is the Player Housing end game? We’d try to figure it out but we’re too busy building our decor collection.
• WoW patch 11.2.7 launched, and while its biggest feature was Player Housing, there was more to this patch, including the return of the Brawler’s Guild, Heritage Armor for Pandaren players, a new round of Turbulent Timeways, a new Lorewalking scenario covering Blood and Void Elves, new series of story quests, and changes to Skyriding.
• Could a new secret have been added in WoW patch 11.2.7? The secret finding community is already on the case.
• Last week we learned that Diablo 4 was launching on December 11 instead of December 9 like we expected. It also launches at an odd time: 8:30pm pacific (11:30pm eastern), which is coincidentally around when The Game Awards ends. The devs have very strongly suggested that we should all watch TGA, so a D4 expansion announcement seems very likely… and perhaps there’s some content in the new season we shouldn’t see until after we know what’s coming.
• Diablo 3 Season 37 launched with one of my favorite themes, which I call Kanai’s Cube-o-Rama (though I’m not sure it’s caught on with the rest of the community). But even though I like this one, it’s a rerun of a rerun, as D3’s maintenance mode becomes a little more repetitive.
• The latest Hearthstone Tavern Brawl is Dual Class Brawliseum, so obviously we hate it. But it’s a unique take on the much-reviled Brawliseum format that lets you build a deck from two classes of your choice, resulting in some unique card combinations. We have a few deck recommendations to get you through the week.
• Hearthstone Battlegrounds season 12 has begun and we love it! This season has a timey-wimey twist as we visit the Timewarped Tavern twice a game to pick up unique buffs and minions to help us out. Also you can now play as Chromie or Murazond… basically it’s the best season ever.

What’s happening this week (and beyond)

• December 9: Mists of Pandaria Classic Phase 3 launches with Throne of Thunder
• December 9: Legion Remix Phase 5 launches, adding catchup mechanics and possibly some additional mystery content.
• December 11: The Game Awards starts at 4:30pm pacific (7:30pm eastern), and while we’re excited to see the winners — particularly the indie games that have been nominated — the Diablo 4 team has not been subtle about saying we should watch the show, so it’s pretty likely the next Diablo 4 expansion will be announced here.
• December 11: Diablo 4 Season 11 launches at 8:30pm pacific (11:30pm eastern). The new season adds a host of angelic powers for players and likely includes some spoilers for the upcoming expansion that necessitated its post-TGA launch.
• Through January 12: Free character transfers available from Classic anniversary realms to other Classic realms for players who don’t want to continue to The Burning Crusade.
• January 13: The Burning Crusade Classic expansion pre-patch launches on the anniversary realms! (We don’t yet have a confirmed date for the expansion itself.)
• Through January 19: Legion Remix
• Until they’re gone: BlizzCon 2026 tickets are on sale

Other things we’re playing, watching, and more

• Guild Wars is now 20 years old and while I crumble into dust, you may want to check out Guild Wars Reforged, an updated version on the original Guild Wars that includes all three campaigns. It’s available now for just $20.
• The Darkside Detective is this week’s freebie from the Epic Games Store. It’s from the developers of The Seance at Blake Manor (a recent favorite), Spooky Doorway, so I’m looking forward to giving it a try.
• It’s the beginning of December, which means it was recently the end of November. We’ve rounded up some great indie games that from November that you may have missed.
• Who knew turtles could be this adorable? (Probably some of you out there.) So this week we’re introducing you to sassy Caretta the loggerhead sea turtle.

This week’s podcasts

• Blizzard Watch Podcast: The most important WoW patch of all time
• Lore Watch Podcast: The cherished history of the troll raid
• Tavern Watch Podcast: Artificers, evil(?) Rogues, and new Daggerheart

Tavern Watch is taking this coming week off while we get our next game ready. Look forward to our game of Brindlewood Bay starting on December 15!

That’s all I have for this week, but I’ll be back with more of the latest news (likely including big updates on Diablo 4) next week. See you then.