It's such a nice, warm, beautiful day outside! I would love to be lying in the hammock, sipping a tall lemonade, and reading a book, but instead I'm stuck in here with you people. Alas. No offense. I think you get it, though.
I'm going to type this as quickly as I can: let's take a look back at what happened this week, and what we have to look forward to next week, plus some stuff you may have missed.
What happened this week?
This week's preshow was dominated by Liz and the hot new game that makes everyone seem like a crazed conspiracy theorist when they discuss it, Blue Prince. It's a puzzle that you didn't know was a puzzle. It's a story you didn't know was a story. It's an ever-shifting house wrapped in an enigma, and the question is yours to discover, and you're all alone but the dogs are fed and the pantry is stocked with fruit and there isn't a speck of dust anywhere, so there must be someone else here, but there isn't, and-- Ahem. If you are, unli...
2025-04-24 16:53:21 +0000 UTC
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This week we're bringing you another game Pigeon's 11, in which our feathered cast of criminals dives into the world of esports and culinary delights at MetzlCon. The plan: to steal the coveted pretzel trophy in the middle of a packed house of gamers and amateur chefs. It may be the biggest gaming convention of the year, but our pigeons only have eyes for the pretzels. (Well, most of them anyway.)
Join GM Liz Harper and a cast made up of Blizzard Watch's bird alter egos:
It is the best night of the week, with the best food for the best night of the week.
We're gonna grab a slice while we take a look back at what happened this week, and what we have to look forward to next week, plus some stuff you may have missed.
What happened this week?
In this week's preshow we wave through the microphone. We also discuss Gundam, which Joe is very interested in, at which point Matt busts in with Garzy's Wing, which leads to a broader conversation on localization of Japanese media. You know, how we like to do. The preshow ends at 27:44
Puzzling Cartel Chips and the mystery of them leads off the Blizzard Watch Podcast this week. We're not exactly sure what the deal with them is -- hence the whole "mystery" thing -- but we're looking forward to figuring it out. Noblegar...
2025-04-17 16:01:19 +0000 UTC
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This week's episode was inspired by a question from a listener, about where the story is going from here as we make our way toward the next expansion of World of Warcraft, Midnight. We veer right into Tinfoil Hat territory pretty quickly. After all, it's tough when a lot of the sources we have are either written by unreliable narrators, or were written well before any of current events were even thought of -- which is part of the question itself. The Titans, the First Ones, and how they interact with the Void is a topic wit...
2025-04-15 21:34:06 +0000 UTC
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Ever since Blue Prince -- which was included in this week's games post -- came out yesterday I've been feeling a little feverish. I adore (most) puzzles in games -- my favorite all-time board game is Boggle -- so it's super unfortunate that I have to call in sick today. Cough cough. Definitely coming down with something. Somebody tell Liz. What do you mean I forgot to hide my Steam activity status?
While I s...
2025-04-11 21:47:35 +0000 UTC
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This week we're playing Pigeon's 11, an adventure where our fine flock of felonious fowl are getting ready for the heist of a lifetime. (Spoiler: it involves a lot of baked goods and bread puns.) Join GM Liz Harper and a cast made up of Blizzard Watch's bird alter egos:
Phil Ulrich as Frankie Two-Talons, a boat-tailed grackle.
Joan Albright as Professor Beakley, an African gray parrot.
Eric O'Day as Thurston Owl III, a barn owl.
Matt Rossi as Drom, an emu.
- <...
2025-04-11 20:19:59 +0000 UTC
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Liz is excited about Murderbot, and explains exactly what that is in this week’s preshow. Our guest host Nick is all about Dragon Age Veilguard right now, and that leads into a larger conversation on the Dragon Age series and the gameplay of the series — and Bioware’s games as a whole. Everyone agrees that we should just have one extra hour every day for gaming. If you don’t have an extra hour for gaming (or listening to podcasts) the preshow ends at 28:57
Patch 11.1.5 for World o...
2025-04-10 23:05:34 +0000 UTC
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The Netflix animated show Cyberpunk Edgerunners is a great entry in the Cyberpunk universe, and one we felt worth exploring in-depth. Joe and Matt give us a spoiler-filled tour of Night City and how all the details of life in that universe lead to a dystopia packed with despair. This is an episode from the archives, so it's one we felt we should bring back to the front in case you missed it.
Content Warning: both the podcast and the show we're discussing involve violence, bodily harm, mental...
2025-04-08 20:56:51 +0000 UTC
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Ironwood Studios pushed a huge update to Pacific Drive earlier this week, so I'm happy to report that Mel's back, baby. There's a new set of maps called Expeditions, and a new trader who has cool stuff for sale. I've played through a few, and in typical Pacific Drive fashion, just as soon as I've worked out a strategy everything goes completely haywire and out of control and I simultaneously love and hate it.
While I wait for my battery to charge back up in this windstorm, let’s see what happened this week...
2025-04-04 21:59:45 +0000 UTC
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This week's preshow discusses how Canadians are nice because all their meanness is concentrated by eldritch ritual into their eponymic geese (true). Plus, Liz is playing Pacific Drive but I keep telling her that despite it being my favorite game of 2024, she absolutely should not play it -- you'll probably start to get why by the end of the preshow, which ends at 28:35.
In the podcast proper, after a short apology for his scratchy voice, Matt leads the cohosts in discussion on a number of topics. Since Co...
2025-04-03 20:58:24 +0000 UTC
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Sometimes it's a good idea to go back to the basics, and really dig in to the source material given. This week, we went ahead and really, really dug in to some of the most cherished stories in WoW. We know this is the content you really wanted, but were too shy to ask for.
2025-04-01 16:43:09 +0000 UTC
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Ah, to be a tiny rabbit made of rice, dunking a cucumber slice into a mug of steaming hot tea in a cozy breakfast nook.
Actually, no. It's Friday, I'm ordering pizza.
While I try to convince the delivery person my actual name is honest to god Anna (space) Bell, let’s see what happened this week, and what we have to look forward to next week, and some stuff you may have missed. You want garlic knots?
2025-03-28 21:28:59 +0000 UTC
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While there are still plenty of crunchy tabletop games out there, lately we're playing a lot of shorter TTRPGs that lean into narrative elements — and are easier to schedule than long form campaigns. We talk about our recent Pigeon's 11 game, the cozy fantasy of Legend in the Mist, and the Nebula-nominated Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast. Also, we're apparently going back to Eberron this year in a surprise D&D book that wasn't part of the original 2025 release slate.
Plus the speedy demise of Sigil, Wizards of the Coast's Unreal-based...
2025-03-28 16:30:05 +0000 UTC
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In this week's preshow Matt is still monologuing about Godzilla. The team also talks about their plunder from the most recent Steam sale while this week's special guest Phil Ulrich slanders me about my wishlist (I wasn't even there!). The preshow ends at 32:29.
Hearthstone's new expansion Into the Emerald Dream was our lead story this week, as the two sides don't seem all that well balanced between good and morally gray, let's say. The team also discusses the morality of the character restores co...
2025-03-27 20:37:15 +0000 UTC
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This week's Lore Watch Podcast is Q&A style, so the topics veer all over the place -- more so than usual. We start off with a question about the Emerald Dream and whether it was designed as a prison -- timely, given Hearthstone's latest expansion releasing yesterday. Speaking of Hearthstone, the next question concerns in-game board games, and what kind of play happens on Azeroth. Then, they follow it up with a question about the Botani and other NPCs potentially coming to Azeroth from different planes and timelines. See...
2025-03-25 23:59:31 +0000 UTC
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I've been playing my way through the games I bought during the Steam Spring Sale, and one really stands out. Sulfur's gameplay isn't revolutionary, but its take on the roguelike genre is both fun and punishing. I also adore a lot of the UI elements, particularly how they represent the clips of some of the wackier guns. However, what has me hooked is actually the sou...
2025-03-21 22:04:38 +0000 UTC
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It's a tough day for the employees of Triangle Agency, but our skilled Agents are always ready to beat back any challenge — even when that challenge is a mass of anomalous electrical wires intent on their deaths! But don't worry about them, because Triangle Agency is always here to help Agents who help themselves. They've really earned their paychecks today! (At least those of them who get paid.)
In this episode, GM Phil Ulrich does his very best to get all of our Agents killed (or at least rack up some demerits). But if you want to ...
2025-03-21 16:30:02 +0000 UTC
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Cory joined Joe and Liz this week to hide their shame, discussing all the games they've purchased during the Steam Sale (Wanderstop! The Long Dark! Avowed! The now-Nebula nominated Pacific Drive!). And also on the spending money topic, Joe talked about his hobby of painting minis, and he wants to emphasize that it isn't as expensive as it seems, and he wishes more people would give it a try. The preshow ends at 29:23
It probably isn't a huge surprise that our hottest topic this week ...
2025-03-20 19:16:33 +0000 UTC
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Join our hosts Joe Perez and Matt Rossi as they discuss the lore around the Sethrak, the snakelike humanoids we initially met in Vol'dun in Battle for Azeroth. How does their worship of the animalistic Loa spirits shape their society? Titans may tie in to the animalistic loa, and the two working together may have shaped Azeroth as we know it. Plus, they discuss the evolution of species in the context of a magical world: when is a dragonfrog a froglike dragon and when is it dragonlike, but a frog?
This week's Lore Watch Podcast...
2025-03-18 20:24:30 +0000 UTC
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Triangle Agency's agents are on the case — with a little help from corporate HQ, of course! Our highly skilled team of experts is in the process of tracking down a dangerous anomaly, but don't you worry (or you might become a loose end we have to deal with).
In this episode, GM Phil Ulrich helps the Agency's best make some art, earn the high score in their favorite video game, and untangle some extremely dangerous wires. It's all in a day's work for the employees of Triangle Agency!
This is the second of a three-part series in ...
2025-03-16 02:14:41 +0000 UTC
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If you're wondering how the site curse is going, this is a photo I took in the moment as my phone started blowing up with notifications from discords that BlizzCon is back in 2026. I don't announce my vacations publicly -- that's kind of internet safety 101 -- but somehow, Blizzard always knows.
So, you can thank me (and ...
2025-03-14 22:12:26 +0000 UTC
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This week's preshow featured a discussion about how some cats really enjoy video games, and how majestic samoyeds are. This discussion does feature an unwarned spoiler for Dragon Age Veilguard, so if you're not into that (or the preshow, really) you may want to skip ahead to 28:37 when the preshow ends.
This week starts with Joe eating crow as he reflected on his prior assertion that BlizzCon would never happen again. But, lo and behold, Blizzard announced that BlizzCon returns September 12-13...
2025-03-13 01:45:20 +0000 UTC
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This week we put on the tinfoil hat to contemplate Xal'atath's plans for the future, the nature of the void, and where we might be going in the Midnight expansion due out in 2026. As with most of our wild speculation episodes, the conversation goes off the rails and then forgets there were ever rails in the first place. Enjoy!
Thanks for your support, and please let us know if you have any questions for future episodes of Lore Watch!
2025-03-12 07:09:53 +0000 UTC
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The highlight of my week has been the Race to World First, not because I care about cutting edge raiding, but because Chef Heidi (who you might remember as the chef for the Philly Fusion) is allowing us behind the scenes into her kitchen on Twitch every day of the race. She's cooking for Team Liquid, but many of the things she's been making h...
2025-03-07 23:53:15 +0000 UTC
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Welcome to beautiful Ternion City, home of the Triangle Agency. In our corporate headquarters, agents are hard at work — right now! — to preserve reality. You like reality, don't you? Of course you do. And your friends at Triangle Agency are here to keep the reality you love safe... preferably without you noticing any of those pesky breaks in reality in the first place! What breaks in reality? We certainly haven't seen any!
GM Phil Ulrich helps the Agency's latest employees with their new field assignment: to investigate a string o...
2025-03-07 17:30:03 +0000 UTC
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Well, this week Matt began the preshow with the strident assertion that Godzilla is a cat, and things just kinda unfolded from there. Despite working here in the word mines for 10 years I don't have any available to describe the preshow further. It's peak unhinged Blizzard Watch. You're welcome -- I think. Preshow ends at 29:29.
This week's show started off with The War Within season 2. We discussed how we feel about Undermine now that we've had a week in the zone, though Liz noted the patch added a ...
2025-03-06 17:31:43 +0000 UTC
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We're doing something a little new this week for Lore Watch, with a remaster of an older episode. As Joe explains in the new intro, we wanted to highlight something that we've already covered, but which could use another look as it becomes relevant again. Paladins or Crusaders are one of the most common fan picks for the second new class to come to Diablo 4, so we're revisiting the lore that makes them so popular.
In this episode, Joe and Matt give us a primer on the in-game religions that Crusaders, Templars, and Paladins are holy war...
2025-03-05 02:47:51 +0000 UTC
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While I know we're all in on Blizzard Entertainment around here, when Steam Next Fest started I once again went feral. Everything from Squirrelled Away to Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 is just waiting on a release date, and until then, they're with a thousand of their besties in the purgatory that is my wishlist.
In the meantime, let's see what happened this week, and what we have to look forward to next week, and some stuff you may have missed.
2025-02-28 23:07:35 +0000 UTC
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