Blizzard Watch

We're waiting on a whole lot this week -- servers to come up for the  Burning Crusade Classic  Anniversary realms pre-patch, and for the  Midnight  pre-patch next week, and all the sweeping changes that brings. The team discusses the addons they'll miss and why, which also serves as a bit of a reminder to you to make sure yours are all updated, or they won't work at all come pa...

It's 2026, and the more things change, the more they stay the same. We start off with a new  Hearthstone  gatcha promotion, and follow it up with yet another splinter version of  WoW Classic  -- this time,  WoW Classic Anniversary  is splitting into  WoW Classic Burning Crusade Anniversary  and  WoW Classic Classic Era Anniversary .  Legion Remix &...

This week we're looking back at the events of 2025, with our special guest Phil Ulrich. Rather than going at it chronologically, Matt consults a D8, which means we discuss one of our favorite things from the year which actually happened last: player housing! But there were a ton of things that happened in all of Blizzard's games this year, from Plunderstorm's return to  Legion Remix , three&n...

Santa Rossi is visiting us this week with player housing-related delights, like the upcoming Night Elf and Blood Elf house exteriors! But beware, if you're naughty, Joe will tell you the tale of how healing, and especially resto shaman are shaping up on the  Midnight  beta -- and that's a ghost story that would kill a Victorian child. Liz also has a few dire predictions for transmog futu...

This week our usual hosts were joined by our  Diablo  Maven Liz Patt to talk about the announcement of  Lord of Hatred , the next  Diablo 4  expansion.  Lord of Hatred  was announced at The Game Awards -- though it was not related to The Statue -- and we have a ton to say about the details we have so far. Liz Patt preordered the expansion, and so therefore got to...

This week we're still immersed in Player Housing, but just a little bit of the shine has worn off, mostly as we've tried to chop down enough trees to decorate the houses of our dreams. Maybe our power level is so high we're just out here decimating every tree we encounter into matchsticks. But not everything is Player Housing. Some versions of  WoW  are also  Classic , and  MoP...

We very wisely started off the podcast this week with all the  other  news. There's a new  Hearthstone  Battlegrounds season that just started, with a fun new mechanic which is actually pretty similar to Trinkets, if we think about it, but we can play as Chromie so everything else is irrelevant. Plus, there's an upcoming  Diablo 4  season, and a potential announcement...

Our intrepid hosts dragged writer Phil Ulrich along as we spent another show discussing transmog changes. As it turns out, making transmog very much more expensive last week, and then retuning it this week so that it's merely much more expensive like it's a gift hasn't really made our hosts happy. Purchased slots are warband wide now, at least, so that's better, but everything else remains awful (...

We start off the show this week talking about  WoW Classic , namely that  Burning Crusade  Anniversary realms were announced and are coming in January, perhaps concurrentish with the release of  Midnight . It's fine, it's not like we have lives outside of this one video game or anything. Then, we pivot to the changes to transmog coming in  Midnight , and it seems like ever...

This week our hosts Liz and Joe were joined by Cory as the  Midnight  beta officially launched, with access for people who have preordered the Midnight epic edition. It was a little bumpy, per usual, but we made it. We would be testing, but transmog is unavailable until next week, so it's literally unplayable. BlizzCon was announced and early bird tickets were already sold out, but...

Cory is our guest host for the Blizzard Watch Podcast this week and, spoilers, that means there's  Heroes of the Storm  news again. The PTR opened up for people to test Player Housing again this week, but it was already down again by the time they recorded the podcast. Liz was thrilled with this chance to collect more data though, because her house in the alpha is currently haunted. In o...

If you thought we were going to talk about something other than changes coming to  WoW  in  Midnight  this week, you must be new, so hi, welcome to the podcast. The UI changes, specifically the changes that make it harder for us to change our own UI, was front and center. The hosts talked about the accessibility issues this could present, but personally I just think Friz Quadra...

Since Player Housing hit the PTR last week -- for a briefer time than any of us realized -- we had a lot of Housing-related stuff to talk about. Lots of community members took their testing time to do things like build huge mechs made out of wagons in the backyard. Neat! Player Housing just does a lot of stuff like that. But for every high there must be a low, and this week, that was the discussio...

The three Blizzard Watch Podcast amigos had a ton of  Midnight  news to discuss this week. They would have had more housing stuff to discuss, but the public PTR that was going to let us finally dig in was unceremoniously yanked off the schedule with no ETA. Surprise, it was released late Thursday, and it's still ending an hour after this podcast gets posted. Welp! Unsurprisingly, Matt sa...

Liz had the good fortune to make her way into the  Midnight  alpha, so this week's episode is a round of Ask A Beta Tester. Liz regaled us with discussion on the various housing plots available, some of how the talent changes and stat squish feels, plus what it looks like in a post-add on  WoW  (we're assuming more Friz Quadrata than we've opted for on the live servers). Also,...

This week our hosts Liz and Joe were joined by Nick, our  WoW Classic  expert. While they waited very impatiently for the next round of news about  Midnight , they talked about the new trend in  Classic,  to use addons to make Hardcore mode even more Hardcore by obscuring certain heads up data in the UI. When is enough enough? But that wasn't all. There was a new Trading P...

This week, we got the announcement that the alpha for  World of Warcraft 's next expansion  Midnight  is beginning in just a few weeks. Blizzard ran down some of the content we'll be seeing and roughly when, which was a hot topic for the cohosts this week. Everything seems to be coming out October 2, from the  Midnight  alpha to Naxxramas in the  WoW Classic  Ann...

We're joined by Cory for this week's Blizzard Watch Podcast. There's no one big news item this week, but lots of tidbits around a ton of different games. For instance, Brewfest begins next week, and there's a new mount and some transmog, but everything else is same ol same ol. There's a  Diablo 4  seasonal switchover coming soon with a very horrifyingly cute fox pet, plus a whole lot of&...

This week our writer Christian Thoma joined the mayhem that is the Blizzard Watch Podcast. Speaking of mayhem and the Blizzard Watch Podcast, you may recall that last week's episode ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, as the hosts discovered that, while they were recording the podcast, Blizzard released 14 blog posts detailing all the announcements that happened at Gamescom. This week, they discussed...

The litany of  Midnight  updates and information continues with things ranging from UI updates to dual wielding baguettes. Of course, we pore over every tiny crumb of Player Housing info, as the upcoming truest true end game. Our staff Druid Cory joined us, with an appeal for more Druid forms -- there are a few from the teasers we've seen that he is specifically writing to Santa Metzen a...

Midnight  and Gamescom were the core topic of this week's Blizzard Watch Podcast. A big part of the discussion centered on just how odd -- and, frankly, frustrating -- the way the information disseminated throughout the convention. Events posted late, misinformation, and illogical choices plagued the newest expansion's reveal. We're still excited for Player Housing, but there could be more we...

If you thought this week’s show would be entirely about the  new  Midnight  trailer  and the information we’re getting out of gamescom, you would be right. Site writer Rob Flanagan (who we all call Flan) joined Joe, Matt, and Liz to discuss the news, which included a heated discussion of Blood Elf lore, and whether we’ll miss our ol Delving buddy Brann. It’s a split house on al...

This week our host is our special guest, Liz Patt, who has a lot of opinions on  Diablo , but she's also here for a discussion of patch 11.2. The team love Tazavesh, 10/10 city, no notes, though they remain a little skeptical of Broker culinary pursuits. We also looked at the Race to World First, which is underway as raid guilds contend to see who can get the first Mythic kill of Dimensius. P...

This week patch 11.2 finally released, and we have the rundown of all the features for you, including the new World Boss, which was up this week -- surprise! We have a lot of opinions on the new Delve and dungeon and raid their collective lack of smooth Goblin jazz. We especially have thoughts on the new Cooldown Manager, which is slightly less "as seen on Temu." Plus, as the servers came up, some...

Cory joined us for this week's show, and by coincidence there was also a  Heroes of the Storm  patch the day they recorded. What are the odds? Not very good, if you ask Cory. There was also a new  Hearthstone  Battlegrounds season to discuss. We're all very much looking forward to next week, when patch 11.2 finally releases, and we learn more about what Xal'atath has cooking. T...