Blizzard Watch Weekly: The War Within looms

It’s been a busy week in Blizzard games with the launch of patch 11.0.1, but let’s start out with the new War Within trailer, a no dialog affair that’s all about the vibes (and maybe the characters, too).

New this week

• World of Warcraft patch 11.0.1 is now live, after a long day of delayed maintenance (for which NA subscribers will be credited an extra day of game time). Game servers came online near midnight eastern time (i.e. past my bedtime), and were a little shaky after that, but they’re currently online and stable. The patch includes all of the content leading to The War Within, including major class chance as the new Warbands feature. (Though Warband banks still aren’t working.)

• World of Warcraft developers unionize, forming a wall-to-wall union of 500 workers. It appears to be a trend at Microsoft this month, as a smaller team of 60 Activision-Blizzard QA workers formed their own union this week and Bethesda formed its own wall-to-wall union of 200 workers last week.

• Hearthstone’s Perils in Paradise expansion just launched, and we’re a little under-hyped. The expansion comes with 145 new cards wrapped in a summer vacation themed package, but the new mechanics feel a little lightweight and the expansion didn’t come with a new board. And perhaps Blizzard realizes that this expansion launch has felt a little muted: this week they also made a post assuring us that Hearthstone is here to stay.

• Molten Core launched in WoW Classic Season of Discovery, and, well, it’s a little different than  we remember. Now it has three difficulty levels, including an easy mode to help you get started and a hard mode for an extra challenge after you’ve collected plenty of fire resist gear. If you get to the highest difficulty, there’s also an extra boss to face. And, of course, it’s already been cleared.

Happening next week

• The War Within pre-patch event, Radiant Echoes, starts on July 30. It’s going to be a great chance to pick up high-level warbound gear for all of the alts you’ve been leveling.

• Overwatch Summer Games is wrapping up for another year, ending on July 30.

• Cataclysm Classic Phase 2 launches on July 30, adding Zul’Aman and Zul’Gurub to the game.

• The Diablo 4 team will have a dev livestream on August 1 with more details on the next season, which feels like it’s cutting things a little close since Season 4 ends (and Season 5 begins) on August 6.

This week’s podcasts

• Blizzard Watch Podcast: The War Within pre-patch brings the goods and the bads, in which we discuss what’s in the pre-patch as downtime continues to stretch on towards midnight. (We’ll talk more about it next week.)

• Lore Watch Podcast: The role of Magni and Brann Bronzebeard in The War Within

What to play this weekend

The much-anticipated Fallout London mod is here, after some serious setbacks caused by the otherwise great Fallout 4 next gen update. But if you aren’t interested in braving the post-apocalypse (or you’re a console player, like me), we have some other game suggestions for the weekend if you’re not feeling like playing any of the current crop of Blizzard games.

Or it’s always a good time to pick up Stardew Valley, especially since the developer just vowed never to charge for updates.