Watching Blizzard: Already ready for the weekend (Patreon)

The week is half-way over, people! We're on the downhill slope to the weekend, and that means games. (Or at least relaxing in the peaceful Jade Forest. It is peaceful, right? I'm not misremembering that am I? I'm sure I'm not.) Even if your only plan for the weekend is to enjoy not having to get up when your alarm goes off every morning, that's a pretty good weekend, too — and we're nearly there.

But while we wait out the rest of the week, here's the news.

The Overwatch PTR is back with a pile of hero changes

• The Overwatch team has been hard at work on hero revamps — some of which Geoff Goodman talked about last week — and now the changes are available for testing. Most interesting are the changes to Sombra, which Jeff from the Overwatch team told us all about in today's developer video.

The latest from the Battle for Azeroth alpha

• Anne has been running around the alpha screenshotting everything. Today we have a gallery of Zala’mar in Nazmir.
• There are some controversial changes to pets on the alpha realms right now which limit every pet to a single, pre-defined specialization. With those changes making waves, Class Designer Solanis made a post explaining the devs' thinking about pet design.

Diablo Season 13 is coming... with a terrifying murder bear

• No, really. There is a terrifying blood-soaked teddy bear reward for completing the next season. Sure, there are other rewards, too, but once you see that bear how can you think about anything else? The season kicks off next Friday at 5 p.m. PST on US realms.

Hotfixes on top of hotfixes

• Heroes of the Storm patches come out on a pretty zippy schedule, which means hotfixes come out on a pretty zippy schedule, too. Today's hotfixes are all about fixing bugs that the last patch introduced... but as Alex notes, the bugs that come with this quick release schedule are stacking up.
• We have more optimism about today's WoW hotfixes, which bring the mobile auction house back to working order and once again buff Shu-zen's floof levels. Shu-zen has had a wild ride since his release: this is the third change to his size since his release on Monday.

That's everything for today, folks. Tomorrow we'll have another day of news, including a writeup at the apparent removal of First Aid in the current alpha. This is Liz, signing out for the evening.

P.s. I did not go mad running Ulduar Timewalking yesterday, but also didn't make it all the way to Yogg-Saron. Maybe the weekend is for madness.