Blizzard Watch Weekly: Trial of the Crusader is coming to Wrath Classic, plus our continued Diablo obsession

It’s been 10 days since the game launched, but most of us here at Team Blizzard Watch are still pretty hyped about Diablo 4. But before we get into our new favorite game, let’s look at what’s happened over the past week in Blizzard news as well as what’s coming soon.

Now live

• WoW’s Winds of Sanctuary buff is now available, offering a +50% bonus to both experience and reputation gains, making this one of the best times ever to level alts are grind rep. The buff will be available through July 11, so you have a lot of time to take advantage of it. There’s one downside: the buff doesn’t apply to Niffen, so if you want the latest rep you have to grind the old fashioned way.
• The Revival Catalyst is now live. You’ll rack up one charge for the Catalyst every week, without doing anything at all, so you can convert one piece of Season 2 gear to tier gear now, and another after reset. Don’t need tier? You can convert any armor slot — even armor slots that don’t have tier pieces — for transmog that matches the rest of the set. next week, so you’ll soon be able to convert all of your spare Season 2 gear into tier and collect those juicy set rewards.
• Overwatch 2 Season 5 is live with an all new epic fantasy theme. I admit, a lot of us on Team Blizzard Watch are feeling a little burned after the game’s PVE mode was canceled, but if you’re playing, there’s a new set of cosmetics to collect and events to participate in.
• Diablo 4 Twitch Drops (and other game rewards) continue. You can get two Sorcerer transmogs for watching six hours of Diablo content on Twitch through this weekend, but on Monday Druid transmog drops will begin. There are two more weeks of Diablo 4cosmetics via after this with new drops each week — so be sure to check when you should watch to get the rewards you want. Amazon Prime Gaming is also continuing its series of WoW freebies with the Epic Purple Shirt available through June 29.

Coming soon

• Wrath Classic Phase 3, featuring Trial of the Crusader and new Titan Rune dungeons, goes live with reset this coming week. If you’re trying to level or gear up for the raid, you have this weekend to wrap things up!
• WoW Midsummer Fire Festival starts on June 21. We haven’t heard about any changes coming to this year’s event, so it may be same old same old.
• Final Fantasy XVI comes out on June 22, and I seem to be the only person who doesn’t care about this. It’s not my thing. But if it’s your thing, it’s almost here.
• For soloers and transmog collectors, Blizzard has added a skip to Siege of Orgrimmar on the patch 10.1.5 PTR, as well as allowing us to solo queue for Shadowlands LFR (though I’m not sure how soloable they’ll be). We expect patch 10.1.5 to be out by mid-July.

We’re still doing a lot of Diablo content

• The world of Sanctuary is vast, but fortunately there are some easy ways to get around. We have a guide on how to navigate Diablo 4’s massive world.
• We have some more info on Diablo 4’s somewhat confusing stats: here’s our guide to Lucky Hit, as well as last week’s guide to Fortify in case you missed it.
• Diablo 4 doesn’t have set bonuses, but it may in the future.
• How about some lore? Matt does a marvelously succinct writeup on the history of Mephisto, Lord of Hatred. Do be warned, spoilers within.

And if you want any more Diablo 4 lore, I’ve been joining Matt and Joe on our Lore Watch podcast to discuss the story of the new game. So far we’ve covered the first three acts across two episodes, and we’re likely to have at least two more breaking down what happens in this game.

That’s all for now. I’ll talk to you again next Friday, everybody!

— Liz