With The War Within's release date rapidly closing in on us, the World of Warcraft team has been pushing little teasers and images and rundowns to pique our collective appetite for the upcoming expansion, and Alleria: Light and Shadow may be the pinnacle.

I want to watch Big Trouble in Little China again.

There are six main Renown factions in The War Within that players can earn reputation with.

The World of Warcraft development team released a new blog post yesterday on Hero Talents, and while it didn't go as in-depth as previous articles it does a nice job of summarizing all 39 flavors of new class fantasies.

As has become tradition, the Warcraft Rumble team released a teaser for Season 8 ahead of its launch next week.

I'm making some assumptions here, but I think it's a pretty safe assumption that Khadgar's day is not going to improve from this point on.

Overwatch 2 is blasting off into season 12 -- New Frontiers -- on August 20, with a preview video showcasing what we can expect, especially astronaut-themed support hero Juno.

There’s a lot happening next week:

The end of ReMists.

The release of the next Guild Wars 2 expansion Janthir Wilds.

Gamescom — Europe’s biggest gaming convention — starts on Tuesday with an opening night show featuring who else but Geoff Keighley.

Oh, and there’s a little thing called The War Within releasing in early access.

So even though I had earmarked this week for in-game cleanup, I knew I had to get out last weekend and take in the sunshine while I still could. So I drove on up to the Blue Ridge Parkway and stopped at many places on the Virginia portion south of Roanoke. Mabry Mill (pictured in the header) is one of the more iconic sites on the BRP so it was nice to see the water flowing and the wheel turning. Unfortunately the sun was high up in the sky when I arrived so the picture looks pretty washed out, but that’s ok — it’s a memory, not a piece of artwork. I saw a deer grazing on the side of the road, hawks riding the thermals, and lots of pretty butterflies. It was a nice trip, and hopefully I’ve stored up enough air and sunlight and mountain music to last me these next few weeks.

While I feverishly plan my next trip outdoors, let’s answer some questions!

Next week is the early access launch of The War Within, the latest expansion for World of Warcraft.

The World of Warcraft servers went offline for another long Tuesday maintenance this morning, scheduled through 3pm pacific (6pm eastern) — but the servers came online about an hour early, around 2pm pacific.