Watching Blizzard: The week in turtles and other Warcraft happenings (Patreon)

I’m not sure I quite understand, but turtles are totally in right now, and I’m sticking to what’s trendy. But enough of that: let’s check out the week’s news.

Are you playing the raiding game?

• Battle for Azeroth’s first raid is well and truly here. Normal and Heroic Uldir opened last week, and this week LFR and Mythic joined them.
• If you’re just heading in, here’s what you need to know and a walkthrough of the first three bosses in LFR.
• But of course there are bugs. Some day one raiders picked up an unusual weapon that wasn’t on the official loot table: Khor, Hammer of the Guardian. And while it dropped as a normal weapon, it was supposed to be a transmog appearance only — so Blizzard changed it. Rossi has some thoughts on how Blizzard could have handled it better.
• Mythic opening means it’s an all new race to world first. Method has been livestreaming its trip through Uldir so you can follow their attempt to snag another world first live. Right now, Method and Limit have both cleared six of eight bosses and are working on Mythrax.

The week in Warcraft lore

• This week we have an even Alliance/Horde split. Anne talks about Taelia and Rossi talks about Zul.
• And in a different kind of Warcraft lore, Scott talks about WoW’s long history of bugs. It fits right in with Uldir’s slightly bumpy rollout.

There are so many adorable things in World of Warcraft that we’ve lost count

• We’ve already thoroughly documented all of the things you can and can’t pet in the expansion, but now there are tiny dinosaur babies you can pet.
• And while all the buzz this week is about Warfronts, we’re more interested in the pets and mounts you can find there.
• Since we’re talking about adorable things, let’s talk about Scrollsage Nola. Her voice actor made it to Twitter and you should say hi.

We know you love Diablo. We love Diablo too.

• And maybe, just maybe, we’re finally getting new Diablo stuff at BlizzCon. One of this year’s virtual rewards is a Demon Hunter themed Sombra skin. That totally means new Diablo stuff, right? Right??
• There’s one Diablo announcement we already know about: the game is coming to the Nintendo Switch. Now we know it will be launched on the first day of BlizzCon, November 2. Is it bad timing — after all, I’ll have other things to do that weekend — or simply more hype for the as-yet-unknown Diablo project?

The updated Garden of Terror doesn’t really terrify us

• Heroes of the Storm updated the Garden of Terror map, abandoning everything that made the map unique. Yawn.

That’s all for now, my friends. As you’ve probably noticed, this is the first roundup in a while. Instead of posting daily roundups with one or two things in them (and a lot of me rambling about slow news days), we’ll just be posting when it’s been a busy news day, plus a once-a-week roundup. And, somehow, even with the Mythic race and an LFR wing, it hasn’t been a particularly thrilling news week.

So until next time, this is Liz, signing out.