Blizzard Watch WeeklyOct 12, 2026 9:00 am CT

Blizzard Watch Weekly: Looking forward to Labyrinths

By Elizabeth Harper

World of Warcraft patch 12.1.5 launches this week, and I’m looking forward to checking out the first Labyrinth, the Troll tomb Kindo’jan, when it goes live on Tuesday. Even though this is a “minor” patch, it’s pretty packed with new features, including a new one-boss raid (interesting), a new invasion (yawn), a new story chapter (okay), and more. Unfortunately with great content comes great maintenance, so expect modern realms to be offline for most of Tuesday.

That’s the big news for this week, but while we’re here let’s catch up on what’s been going on in Blizzard games over the last week, and what’s coming up this week.

What happened last week?

Name reservations are available in WoW: Forever starting on October 27 for players who pre-purchased one of the game bundles, and we have all the details on how to lock in your Forever name.
WoW: Forever is making quite a few changes to the original game, one of which is an overhaul of Priest racial abilities. Gone are the days where you had to play a Dwarf or Undead for their powerful racials, as Fear Ward and Devouring Plague are available to all Priests, and other abilities have been tweaked for balance.
Beyond World of Warcraft: Forever, it’s been extremely quiet in WoW Classic lately, with nothing new scheduled. Now we know that at least The Burning Crusade realms are getting updates, with TBC Phase 3.5 launching on October 22. This is a smaller phase, adding the Zul’Aman raid and updating older raids to be more accessible to players who haven’t gotten to them. Still no word on whether Classic progression realms — currently on Mists of Pandaria — will be getting further updates.
In modern WoW, patch 12.1.5 is going live on October 13, and we have a look at some Player Housing changes coming with the patch, with lots of new decor to buy and new craftable decor recipes (as well as discounts on current craftable decor). Want even more decor? There’s some fun Hallow’s End items coming with the holiday next week.
Hearthstone has given us a preview of the Journal system coming in the Reign of the Black Empire expansion on October 20, adding a single-player narrative campaign that looks a lot like the old adventure modes. We’re looking forward to seeing it in full later this month!
If you’re keen to start serving the Old Gods immediately, this week’s Hearthstone Tavern Brawl is the Servant of Yogg-Saron Tryouts, in which you’re given a random deck full of random minions that cast random spells when played. (And we do mean random; the spells can be from any class and have any cost.) Hope you enjoy chaos.

What’s happening this week (and beyond)

Live until it isn’t: World of Warcraft: Forever beta test
October 13: WoW patch 12.1.5
October 19 – November 11: WoW Hallow’s End
October 20: Hearthstone: Reign of the Black Empire expansion
October 22: The Burning Crusade Classic anniversary realms Phase 3.5
October 27 – November 3: WoW: Forever early name reservation available
November 4: WoW: Forever launches
November 17: World of Warcraft D&D book launches

Other things we’re playing, watching, and more

We didn’t do a new episode of The Séance of Blake Manor this week, and our alternate game stream has not been posted yet due to technical difficulties. But look for our indie game stream to be back this week: you can watch all of the episodes of Blake Manor (so far) on YouTube or catch us streaming indie games live Thursday at 8pm eastern (and follow us on Twitch to get notifications).

As for other games to play, this week is LudoNarraCon, a celebration of narrative games presented by Fellow Traveller. It includes sales on a broad mix of games that feature a strong narrative focus, as well as panels hosted on Fellow Traveller’s YouTube channel. I’m personally looking forward to seeing Tonda Ros talking about Blue Prince later today. LudoNarraCon runs through October 15, so pick up any game sales before then.

For more discounts, there are two free games in the Epic Games Store this week, the casual citybuilder TerraScape and the unusual horror FPS Out of Sight. Grab them both before Thursday to get them for free!