Blizzard Watch Weekly: Taking a well-earned post-BlizzCon nap

BlizzCon 2026 is over, and we are all exhausted from the tsunami of news Blizzard revealed this weekend. We have a lot to be excited about, but also a whole mountain of new questions as we wait out upcoming releases… some as far out as 2030. With World of Warcraft: Forever, Diablo 5, StarCraft, Warcraft 3: Forsaken Kingdom, a new Hearthstone expansion, the return of Heroes of the Storm, WoW patch 12.2 and patch 12.2.5, a new Overwatch hero, a new Hearthstone hero, and a new Diablo 4 hero, there’s a lot to talk about. A lot.

If you’re scrambling to keep up, I’ll try to help. Here’s what’s been happening in the world of Blizzard games, and what’s coming up.

What happened last week?

• Instead of rounding up everything that happened at BlizzCon from scratch, I will point you to our big BlizzCon roundup, with links to all of the weekend’s news. If you just want to see the shiny new content, we also have all of the weekend’s game trailers in one place for you.
• While BlizzCon is over, you can still earn some Twitch Drops for the event — check our list for the details on every drop!
• If you need just a few more Trader’s Tender this month, you can get 500 for logging on to WoW five times during the Winds of Mysterious Fortune event, which is live through September 22. No effort tendies? Sign me up.
• If you have the new Tortollan Endeavor in your Player Housing Neighborhood, we have a guide on how to complete the Souvenir Seekers achievement.
• Eric is back at it, ranking the Midnight Season 2 tier set appearances from best to worse, including a shockingly wearable Hunter set. I  know, I was surprised too.
• In WoW patch 12.1.5, Battle for Azeroth and Legion reputations are going Warbound as Blizzard continues to make old reputations more accessible to your new alts.
• Patch 12.1.5 also has a brand new gold sink mount, with customizable extras for a cool 7 million gold.
• This week’s Hearthstone Tavern Brawl is the World Championship Tavern Brawl, to celebrate the World Championship that happened at BlizzCon this weekend. It’s a fun brawl that invites you to try out decks built by previous World Champions, so you get to play around with some of the best decks ever constructed… except you’re playing against other people with the best decks ever constructed.

What’s happening this week (and beyond)

• September 15: Diablo 4 Season 15, the Season of Hell’s Legacy
• September 15: Diablo 4 launches on Switch 2
• September 17: WoW: Forever beta begins
• Through September 22: Midnight Winds of Mysterious Fortune buff available
• September 28: Xal’atath in Heroes of the Storm
• October 6: Overwatch Season 5 with new hero Doctrine
• October 6 (estimate): WoW patch 12.1.5
• October 20: Hearthstone: Reign of the Black Empire
• November 4:  WoW: Forever launches
• November 17: World of Warcraft D&D book launches

What’s happening in the distant future

Blizzard threw a lot of upcoming content at us during BlizzCon, including several games and features we’ll be waiting on for a while:

• 2027: Monks come to Hearthstone, Amazons come to Diablo 4, Midnight patch 12.2 launches with the return of Xal’atath
• 2029: Diablo 5, a new and even bleaker version of Diablo in which the Lord of Terror has won and Sanctuary has become a literal hellscape
• 2030: StarCraft, a new open-world shooter set in the iconic StarCraft universe

Other things we’re playing, watching, and more

We’re continuing our actual play of Blake Manor on Twitch, but we keep coming up with more questions than answers, so it’s possible we’re just very bad detectives. Catch us streaming indie games live Thursday at 8pm eastern (and follow us on Twitch to get notifications), and watch Liz, Liz, and Mitch stumbling through the manor’s hedge maze here:

• Blizzard Watch Plays The Séance of Blake Manor, episode 4: More questions, no answers

This week’s freebies from the Epic Games Store are Astral Ascent and Luftrausers, a charming Metroidvania and a classic arcade shooter, respectively. Both games are free to download through Thursday.

To help us survive BlizzCon, Rob put together a recipe for lemon bars to give us the food buff to power through. I didn’t have time to make it before the convention and definitely didn’t have time to make it during the convention, but I’m thinking it may be a good recovery snack this week. Check it out if you need a sweet and citrusy food buff of your own.

Our latest podcasts

• Blizzard Watch Podcast: Countdown to BlizzCon
• Lore Watch Podcast: How the Arathi might appear in The Last Titan (if they’re in The Last Titan)
• Tavern Watch Plays Fallout, episode 2: Conversations with Deathclaws (and more moral quandaries)

This week’s Blizzard Watch Podcast will be a super-sized BlizzCon edition, in which we try to discuss everything that happened at the convention. We record on Tuesday at 8pm eastern, and you can listen live on Twitch — or look for it to pop up in your podcast player later this week.

That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading, and I’ll be back next week with another weekly news recap!