Christian Thoma

Brewfest is the best time of the year, and the 2025 edition is running from September 23 to October 9 with the updates promised in this year's road map.

The latest Overwatch 2 collaboration has started and this time it's with the Phantom Thieves of Persona 5!

Nothing like coming back from a weeklong road trip and being immediately assigned homework from a fellow Queue writer. I’m not one to back down from a challenge so I’ve spent all week working on my answers. So if this article feels especially Cory-heavy well now you know why.

My trip itself was really fun. Drove through the wilds of Kentucky (stopping at Cumberland Gap and Mammoth Cave NP) and Missouri to get to Kansas City (this just in: BBQ is yummy). Saw some wild bison on the way back which was really awesome. But enough about last week, it’s time to get to my work from this week!

Probably the biggest Guild Wars 2 feature introduced in the Janthir Wilds expansion was Homesteads. GW2's version of player housing eschews the neighborhood approach of FF14 and World of Warcraft's upcoming implementation for a large personal instance with a ton of customization options.

Patch 11.2 introduced the Reshii Wraps, a new upgradeable legendary cloak that's required for the Manaforge Omega raid.

Several of us here at Blizzard Watch are big fans of Spirit City: Lofi Sessions and so the announcement of a new expansion is (lofi) music to our ears.

When Phase Diving was first announced for patch 11.2 I figured it was going to be a sort of “Maw lite” with harder challenges and trickier navigation (no flying? in 2025?!?) but it turns out that Phase Diving not only isn’t that hard to deal with, it actually makes getting around K’aresh faster and easier. Don’t want to be phased anymore? Just click off the buff that puts in you the phase — even if you’re being dogpiled by elite mobs. Want to quickly get from Tavazesh to the Oasis? Dive into the phase and teleport over. Have a challenging treasure to get? Fly to it in normal space and quaff an Untethered Xy’bucha and you may even get an achievement for your “hard” work recovering it.

It’s like the dev team got through 90% of phase diving development and remembered that the vast majority of the playerbase hated the Maw and scrambled to remove the worst roadblocks. I’m not complaining, mind you, as the Forge knows I have precious little time to play as it is. There’s just a dissonance between the challenge that phase diving wants to be and the fact that it actually provides some quality of life benefits.

I do look good in translucent sparkly pink, at least. Speaking of phase diving …

The official cinematic for Midnight was released during Gamescom 2025 and alongside the announcement preorders officially opened for the next expansion in World of Warcraft's Worldsoul Saga.

Visions of Eternity, the new Guild Wars 2 expansion arriving on October 28 has been announced and not only do we know all of the Elite Specializations for the next week you'll be able to test them in an open beta.

Finally. After years of NPCs taunting us with their casual leaning against walls and other structures, with patch 11.2 we finally have the ability to /lean! While slouching against a wall is cool and all SJHawk pointed out in yesterday’s queue comments that it works without a wall, effectively making players mimes! Hopefully this is not the last mime-able emote as /pullrope and /againstthewind — cue Bob Seger — would allow us to further perform mimeish (mime-like? mime-style?) feats.

It’s been a week but it’s Friday so let’s answer some fun and have some questions!