Christian Thoma

At first glance the Hearthstone December card back reward for winning five games in ranked play seems seasonal and innocuous — some snow, a red scarf, and the glowing warmth of the inn fire through the window.

Next week is replete with expansions, with Tuesday seeing the release of Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker (those who purchase early access can start playing this Friday), Everquest taking us back to Luclin, and Hearthstone visiting Alterac Valley.

Shadowlands patch 9.1.5 is very alt-friendly, especially in terms of making unlocks account wide.  Armor upgrade items from Archivist's Codex can be purchased by all characters once one reaches Tier 6 reputation, and the Covenant armor appearances, mounts, and toys can be used by all characters after a character reaches Renown 80 with the Covenant.

World of Warcraft patch 9.1.5 added a lot of nice quality of life features to Shadowlands, from renown catchup to new character customizations to getting around the Maw faster.

Shadowlands patch 9.1.5 added a lot of quality of life features for those of us adventuring in the Maw and Korthia -- alts are now able to skip the Maw introduction, and those farming Archivist's Codex for item upgrades will have better acquisition rates.

This weekend sees the premiere of the first 3 episodes of Arcane, an nine-episode animated series on Netflix taking place in the world of League of Legends.

This week the latest Hearthstone mini-set arrived and with it came five new mercenaries with a pirate theme.

World of Warcraft Shadowlands patch 9.1.5 is now live, and with it will come Legion Timewalking and the return of the Mage Tower for two weeks starting on December 7th, but the Mage Tower gets an additional two weeks on top of that, and will close with maintenance in the first week of January.

I was watching a Super Carlin Brothers video last week, and the host made a reference to Diablo 2 Resurrected — and I started thinking about how I used to play that game but never got far before other games intruded.

In the midst of an aggressive fall release schedule -- an adventure in the Feywild last month, Fizban's Treasury of Dragons this month, and the Magic the Gathering setting of Strixhaven in early December -- Wizards of the Coast quietly released two new official 5th edition supplements to the DM's Guild, their official PDF and print-on-demand website. Domains of Delight is a companion piece to The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, providing information for DMs on how to create their own realm in the Feywild, and Minsc and Boo's Journal of Villainy is a compendium of locations, patrons, and villains along the Sword Coast in the Forgotten Realms setting for fans of the titular heroes as well as DMs looking to flesh out their campaign.