Blizzard Watch WeeklyJan 19, 2026 9:00 am CT

Blizzard Watch Weekly: From one maintenance to another

By Elizabeth Harper

It’s a big month for World of Warcraft, with a pair of absolutely massive patches: WoW Classic Anniversary launched The Burning Crusade pre-patch last week, and modern World of Warcraft launches the Midnight pre-patch this week. Both of these mean a lot of maintenance, and WoW Classic realms were offline for over 24 hours to make a necessary database change to shift some formerly Classic era realms into a slightly more modern version of the game. Fortunately modern realms transitioning to Midnight won’t only requires a standard long maintenance, with downtime scheduled for a mere eight hours.

Those may be the biggest things happening in Blizzard games this week, but it’s not everything. Let’s catch up on all of the news and posts from last week, as well as what’s coming up this week.

What happened last week?

The Burning Crusade pre-patch launched on the Anniversary realms after a staggeringly long maintenance. But, for once, we actually knew what the maintenance was about, because Senior Game Producer Tom Ellis posted about the hurdles the team overcame to launch TBC, and the big database change that made the maintenance run more than 24 hours.
- If you’re at a loss on what to do since the servers came back online, we have some advice on what to do to get ready to run through the Dark Portal when the full expansion launches on February 5.
- Already looking ahead as to what comes next? Here are our best guesses at the release dates for all upcoming TBC phases.
Blizzard announced Guild Halls are coming to WoW Player Housing soon(tm) but has not explained what a Guild Hall is, which just leaves us more room to ~~daydream~~ speculate about our perfect guild housing solutions.
Remember last week when I told you that Hearthstone announced a new miniset? And said I would let you know when we knew it would go live? Well, Echoes of the Infinite launched on Tuesday without much fanfare. You can pick up the set now.
Think fast! This week’s Hearthstone Tavern Brawl is Nozdormu at the End of Time, in which every turn lasts just 12 seconds. (Thanks?) We have decks to help you win, but there’s no helping the lightning-fast rounds.

What’s happening this week (and beyond)

Through January 19: Legion Remix ends at 10am pacific (1pm eastern), so I hope you managed to finish all of your Legion goals! Now it’s time to move on to the next big thing.
January 20: WoW’s Midnight pre-patch launches, and it brings some huge changes to the game with a major addon rework, as all addons are restricted from accessing live combat data. Many addons will be broken, and some may never be available again. We have a couple of articles that might help you manage the transition:
- These are the most popular addons that will — and won’t — be coming back, as well as some suggested replacements.
- We updated our review of the built-in Cooldown Manager tool, which could help you overcome the loss of WeakAuras — after updates in beta, it’s better, but still not perfect.
January 27: The Midnight pre-patch event begins, and we have a rundown to help you earn the event’s rewards, including the not-suspicious-at-all Definitely Not a Cultist title.
Through January 31: Diablo 3’s Darkening of Tristram event wraps up on January 31, so you’re running out of time to jump on this one!
February 5: The Burning Crusade Classic launches on Classic Anniversary realms
Until they’re gone: BlizzCon 2026 tickets are on sale

Other things we’re playing, watching, and more

If you ever fancied being a fantasy assassin, the last two games from the Styx series are free this week on the Epic Games Store. Grab ’em before the latest game, Blades of Greed, comes out in February.
Looking for more new games? Steam Detective Fest offers sales on a myriad of mysteries waiting to be solved. It’s only live for a little while longer, though: the sale ends January 19 at 10am pacific (1pm eastern).