Check in on the most important Blizzard news bits over the last three weeks!
Between the long Labor Day week, a lack of news that following week (I did tweet out about the only news so make sure you are following me!), and a certain wedding and honeymoon I have not put up a Blitz in several weeks so I’m rounding up the most important (and relevant) articles since then. BlizzCon is coming, are you prepared?!? Well check out all the goodies that you can get from joining AND viewing remotely as well! Last year an extra weekend was needed for all the eSports, but this year they need an extra week before BlizzCon to get all the matches finalized for BlizzCon!
I have been enjoying much of the ancillary books and materials that Blizzard puts out, and now they have a partnership with Random House which starts with a solo Illidan novel ANNNND a StarCraft novel by the legend himself, Timothy Zahn!! Don’t miss the upgrades to the Battle.net authenticator that will give you artwork every time you load a key plus you can further protect your Battle.net account with SMS protection! A fan of Illidan or Nova? Then you can’t miss out on getting their figures from the Blizzard Gear Store!!
Diablo 3 – The only news for D3 is about the double bounty cache weekend that ends tonight so make sure you get playing! My friends powerleveled me a bit before I took my break, and now I’ve found out that being at 62 without many of my items around that level is leaving me in the dust a bit even on Normal difficulty. Hopefully the sword I looted last night which said it was around +500% more damage might help me take down the mobs a bit easier so it won’t take me a few hours just to get through a single map bounty loop. Keep your fingers crossed for me!! There was a hotfix and patch deployed over the last few weeks to fix an exploit with the Hellfire Amulet!
HearthStone – Do not miss out on the Exodar’s Exodus card back which will only be available for a few more days to earn! Also check out the results from the North American Qualifer for the Americas Championship! Lately I haven’t felt like playing HS much, and some of those reasons are listed front and center in this Kotaku review of HS changes over the years and the new expansion also too!
Heroes of the Storm – Getting bored with the current heroes, skins, and mounts? Well if so I don’t know who you are, because there is SO much content to experience in the game, but find out about a TON of new content that is coming down the pipe with the preview video (like SC medic Lt. Morales) and then read up on all of the changes coming to the game via the Public Test Realm patch notes which will go live on PTR this week!! Not only do you get up to date on the changes that are on their way, but there are a slew of developer comments that are interesting to read because it seems that many hero changes are to address issues in competitive play that I had not really known about. Maybe that is because I do not watch replays or Twitch streams, but Blizzard has a promotion to change that by giving players that watch some specific Twitch events an exclusive in-game portrait! Then find out what the August leaderboard results were for Hero League in the absence of any in-game leaderboard yet! Did you wonder why there are SIX heroes on sale during this Weekly Sale!? Me too! Then I read this article that explained it is due to the Americas Championship and it also says what FIVE skins are going to be on sale next week too!! One note, if you were thinking about buying Chen since he is on sale make sure you read through the PTR patch notes because his in-game gold price will be dropping so you may want to wait.
Overwatch – New heroes have been revealed and they are on a crime spree too (this might be their plan too)!! Even Forbes is getting on the bandwagon for the game and you can get an in-depth review of the heroes too!
StarCraft 2 – Did you enjoy the cinematic of the retaking of Aiur during the reveal of StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void releasing on November 10th?!? I felt that it followed the trend they set with the Heart of the Swarm cinematic of not really advancing the storyline a whole lot, but capturing the spirit of what is coming in the game, and the related video Reclamation shows more about the internal struggle Artanis (who will be playable in Heroes of the Storm with your purchase of SC2:LotV) has about reclaiming the Protoss homeworld!! Not up on the history of StarCraft? Learn from Carbot Animation’s video series to catch up! Then enjoy a visual novel about SC2 and pro-gaming which has taken a few years to come together, and is getting some good reviews too!
Excited about the upcoming co-op missions? Well you are going to be ecstatic to find out that THREE additional commanders will be added to the feature!! There were also some tweaks in the latest Balance Update which has players in the comments section in an uproar! Of course there were more suspensions and bans this month but more exciting is the WeLoveFine contest which will allow players to submit designs that could eventually be sold in Hot Topic stores and online too! Find out what a Senior Game Designer has to say about micro and a new pinging system too!
World of Warcraft – Don’t miss the Pet Battle bonus weekend! Then there have been a series of hotfixes early in the month, a small patch update, and several more hotfixes over the last few weeks!! Also find out the results of the poll on where you would invade if you were a pirate, and vote today in the poll for what other heroes you would honor during Harvest Festival! The month may be over, but take a moment to catch up on a few things which are going on during this month! If you are looking for more online streams to watch, then do not miss this feature on Sparty Smallwood who has over 30,000 Twitch followers!
Twitter Question of the Week – I haven’t played or been on Twitter for the last few weeks, so I’ll need to get some more ideas and then get them in front of Blizzard in the coming weeks!!
Enjoying the Blitz? Want to ask some questions or give me ideas for future articles? Reach out to me on Twitter @rusty_schmidt!
