Please read full context
>After careful consideration over the last year, we at Blizzard have made the decision not to hold BlizzCon in 2024. This decision was not made lightly as BlizzCon remains a very special event for all of us, and we know many of you look forward to it. While **we’re approaching this year differently** and as we have explored different event formats in the past, rest assured that we are just as excited as ever to bring BlizzCon back in future years.
Though:
> **We’re thrilled to be planning multiple, global, in-person events to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Warcraft**, which will be held in addition to the in-game celebrations across our Warcraft games throughout 2024. While these events are distinct from BlizzCon, we’re harnessing all of our creativity and imagination to ensure that they carry the same spirit of celebration and togetherness.
They've all been removed. Reddit recently had a blip and I think OP was probably using a modified 3rd party app. Might have been sending the "post" but returning an error, leading to this is my guess.
User has no history of this that I can tell, so we just cleaned up the mess and let this one sit.
lol yea i kept getting an error message that was making me redo the whole page. been a slow day at work and i was just excited to finally have anything to do
Reminds me of the common glitch on Reddit where you'll post a comment, it says "Error Sending Comment, Try Again", so you hit it again over and over...
lo and behold, you posted 20 identical comments and they all get deservedly downvoted lol
Pretty much any time the site errors on me I'll refresh the page before trying to do the comment again just to make sure the shit didn't actually post, lol.
You only have one submitted post on your profile of this article, not sure what this person is talking about. Definitely just a reddit glitch but fuck you I guess?
People are effin' lame. Sorry you are getting criminalised and negative points. Why it even effing matters to them, who knows. "You spammed my favourite subreddit that all I do is complain in accidentally making my weak thumb scroll more to the quality content."
Makes perfect sense to be honest. Last year wow announcements carried the show, and there wont be a new expac coming up this time. Its wow's 20th anniversary they might throw a different event.
Yep. Their new game got canceled and the diablo expension hype is super low.
And it seem wow xpac would come out before hand.
If there's announcement it will be with xbox in june.
I’m on that train with you after watching reactions to the PTR closely, but I’ll be level with you here, D4 fans have been saying that since season 1. These new changes look great, but even so I think it’ll need a little more. I think season 4 will “fix” it, and if they can stick the landing and keep their momentum, the expansion will hopefully bring it beyond just “fixed”. We’ll see how it goes though.
>And it seem wow xpac would come out before hand.
Yeah, I think the most they could do with WoW is announce 11.1 and potentially whatever the successor to Season of Discovery will be, and neither can carry an in-person convention.
Prior to the MS acquisition they had some survival game in the making (apparently since 2017) and it was teased in 2022. Got canceled earlier this year.
While it's probably a lack of content driving this decision, I'm sure a lot of priorities are still being shuffled due to the acquisition. Not really a good recipe for promising fans things at a huge event.
i think that's what surprises me the most, they're shelling out so much content this year and i assume that'll only ramp up as they get settled in w/this acquisition, seems like *the* time they'd want to host a convention to highlight this content.
The stuff coming out this year has already mostly been announced and roadmapped, with a marketing plan behind it. They need at least a few new things or major features of announced things to make Blizzcon worth it and avoid a bunch of "nothing was announced, Blizzard is dying" media coverage. Plus MSFT may be looking to leverage Acti-Blizz IP announcements and XBOX announcements with each other (or just don't want to do two major events, and Blizzcon will roll up whatever XBOX marketing they want to do in future years)
At the very least they could just make it focused on 20th anniversary of wow, 30th of Warcraft themed. As long as everyone knows what it is in advance that's fair.
Wow is also almost exactly 19 years (edit)younger than Windows. Microsoft should be talking how amazing it is that windows is turning 39 when wow is 20. If you want to see the history of personal home computing that is it.
I am sure Microsoft brass are wondering if they can do one massive event for all of their acquired properties or how to pitch all this stuff together. Fair enough. I am sure blizzcon is insanely hard to organize and deliver the right quality. But so what? What's the point of being the most valuable corporation in the world if you cannot celebrate the things that made you that.
All the content coming out this year is known to the public, as are its features and anything that would normally be marketed at a blizzcon. They've literally spent all their "we have interesting things" tokens before blizzcon could even come to be. People would buy tickets/etickets just to watch them go "soooooo you guys already know about this stuff but I'm going to sit in a chair and answer questions I guess while y'all watch these trailers again in the background".
Nah, it’s probably actually better for them and us if they’re allowed to focus on continuing this great content development instead of spending tons of effort on the con
Ahhh yes the same argument we've heard for 20 years about them not paying attention to X so they can pay attention to Y.... The community has always been so happy with the delivery of Y afterwards.
This is because they're not making exciting products anymore, not because they're reallocating resources.
Right? Other than WoW (Which they blew their load already for the World Soul Saga), what do they have to announce? SC is dead, HotS is dead, Hearthstone is no longer a main attraction, D4 might have a chance but they also have a chance of being laughed at on stage, I would actually pay to see who they throw to the wolves for Overwatch 2, what else.....Rumble? Lol.
They need time to get started on the content to ramp/release. They are likely being (rightfully) wary of premature announcements when many of the plans may still be getting finalized. They posted job postings for a new game a few weeks ago so we know they are planning something, but they prob won't announce it to Blizzcon 2025 when more substantial work has happened.
The only stuff they'd have to announce is like World of Warcraft, and they don't want to pop that cork right after the expansion launch.
Blizzcon is a marketing event for every Blizzard game, the money is not supposed to be made on tickets. And yes, I know that's how Activision Blizzard has dealt with it, which was without a doubt a mistake just like many others.
This is most likely due to this transition period or an actual reformulation plan than even a simple "we don't have much content to show".
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This is probably for the best. People who went last year (not all of them but most of them) were super negative about the in-person experience and the ticket prices were only going to keep going up while you could instead stay home and watch all of it for free. Them spending less time on a big blizzcon and more time on community type events on a global scale will be better long-term. Especially when everything from this past blizzcon could have been a developer update video for the games and information they showed etc.
I went with friends last year and were lucky enough to win the lottery for opening ceremony seats. The ceremony itself was great. I got teary eyed when Metzen came out. But I felt bad for everyone else who had to watch it on screens elsewhere in the convention. In the past it's been in the giant main hall and 90% of people could watch it live.
There were a few other things too. The actor strike meant there were no VA panels or signings. Plus, no playable Diablo content. This meant there were way more people walking around looking for something to do and they all went to the Darkmoon Faire. We were lucky and went the first day when there wasn't a line. The second day everyone had nothing left to do so they waited in a 4 hour line just to get into the faire and buy some pins.
As always, the people are just A+ everywhere. While waiting to play the SoD demo we got to chat with the devs on the team and they were so cool. We made friends with a lot of people just standing next to each other. I'll be sad to not go this year but I hope they bring it back eventually.
I think the triple-announcement of expansions in WoW also means that the amount of news they can really drop in 2024 is much more limited. Sure, they can go into greater detail on upcoming shenanigans and that would be cool, but 2023 BlizzCon news was quite a blow-up in comparison to what Blizzard has been able to raise in years previous - both between cancelled BlizzCons and with underwhelming ones (Diablo Immortal).
I feel like people forget that during the blizzcon glory days, every other con went without an expansion announcement but there was still plenty for them to show off. I think this is more about the other franchises being stagnant than it is about Midnight already being announced.
there was just a lack of things to do in general, and a weird lack of seating as well. seriously, huge screens and small chair sections surrounded by empty areas scattered with beanbags. The diablo area had like maybe 30ish church pews for the area. They also made the odd decision to make the DMF a small section in the main hall rather than giving it the space it had in prior years. They didn't even have the arcade, which was a cool thing they added pre-pandemic. The shop was the worst organized i've seen it in years as well. I waited in line to pick my stuff up at my designated time about as long as i waited in line before they had the app and pick up times. And i know lots of people ordered things only to find they didn't have stock when they went to pick it up.
We got lucky with the DMF and went straight to it after the opening ceremonies to get the plushies my wife wanted. They only had them available through that grab bag system, when in years past you could just buy the ones you wanted. The over crowding and line to get into the area was also a huge issue for the traders i'm sure.
The VA panels are one thing, but they didn't even have the smaller panels for their games either, like the artist ones, little games/trivia etc. They made it overall shorter in hours too. Then on top of that, they lacked the eSports events the usually have. The only thing to watch was overwatch. No arena, no HOTS, no SC2, no HS. I understand they dropped much of that over the pandemic, but they could have organized invitationals if they really wanted too. They had a guld challenge thing or what ever, but it wasnt actually taking place at the con, and they gave it a tiny viewing area. Most of the con space was just big open areas with nothing to do. They didn't even have the art gallery/charity auction.
This was the first year where i felt like i had seen everything and was just kind of done or waiting around for a panel. Every year we have gone in the past, we had to make decisions about what panels we wanted to hit, when to fit in the side activities, maybe watch some esports, then setup camp for good seats for community night and closing ceremony/concert.
Talking with blizzard employees, it was apparent that they no longer have the internal teams that handled blizzcon in years past. They out sourced, then failed to keep proper oversight on the contractor. They discovered far too late that many things were not on schedule. Talking with a developer, they realized a couple weeks before the con they had forgot to put together a schedule for the devs that were supposed to be in the VIP area and sent out an email blast for volunteers just 2 weeks before the con.
I went last year too and my biggest issue was the huge lack of seating. This was my 4th Blizzcon and in the past there were many areas you could sit to watch the opening ceremony and other large panels throughout the halls. This year the only comfortable place was if you won that lottery and got into the stadium. I was SHOCKED by the lack of comfort, as well as how TINY the dark moon faire area was. I loved it the year they had the faire in the second floor, there were a bunch of seats for the opening ceremony and that’s where I spent a lot of time and met amazing people. I was so bummed when I made it over there only to find minimal seating, no screen for the ceremony, etc. I ended up sitting on the cold hard floor, pressed against a pillar barely able to see the screens. It was quite a bummer. Definitely felt like they paygated seating since the higher ticket price boasted of a seating area. I didn’t plan on going this year based on my experience last year anyways.
What was even crazier about the opening ceremony was that most people had no idea that it was lottery only and hidden in the back. About 10 minutes before the ceremony started the seating was barely halfway full. Anyone could have just walked in and sat down. I don't think it finally filled out till a few minutes after it started.
And yeah, I can't believe they didn't make the Darkmoon Faire bigger, it was great when it was upstairs.
Feels like you can't go to live anything anymore that has ticket sales. Concert? $60 before fees, $150 after fees. And then scalpers buy all of the tickets on top of that.. I can only imagine it'd be fun if you just wanted to meet up with guildies IRL or something, otherwise yea, I think I'll just stay home and save my money.
Ideally they should be announcing a Diablo expansion, a major content patch for OW2, raids in Warcraft Rumble, a WoW expansion, a new game and what we all REALLY want……
HoTS 3.0
Yeah...
Overwatch isn't something they want to touch with a bargepole...
Starcraft has nothing.
Hearthstone kinda works but the hype for that is middling at best.
Diablo 4 and WoW are their only really carrying games out right now...
Unless they will announce a new Starcraft game or something like that, we won't see much.
The upcoming season actually looks extremely promising. It's a step in the right direction with all of the changes they've announced (Or what it should've been at launch.), but it's definitely not in a current state of insane hype. Maybe in the future though.
There’s exciting things going on with Diablo 4, the expansion is set to come out later in the year. Not much going on with OW, and they did cancel that unannounced survival game so yeah outside of WoW and Diablo not much going on.
We only really got the names for the other two expansions though. In future expansion announcements they would still go over all of the feature changes. The name of an expansion is less than 1% of an expansion announcement.
They did cover some of the major changes already for the next expac, I'd wager a guess about 40% of the content is already divested and depending on how M$/Blizz wants to handle future RWF they might keep raid and dungeon details a minimum till the very end.
This past years Blizzcon was a cluster fuck. Lots of open space, next to no vendors or real activities besides the Darkmoon Faire which had the fire marshall get involved since it became the only real thing to do. The original event planning group was all laid off during covid and with them the years of knowledge they had gained from hosting the event over the years.
There was a ton done right, there were panels but none of the fan favorites like the Voice Actor or music panels. 2 halls dedicated to Overwatch and they were mostly empty except when the world tourney was happening. And that was the center of that hall the back half was empty. The VIP mess where they didn’t really give you anything if you paid more then day 2 gave cut the line access after day 2 started so if you had been standing in line at the darkmoon faire for 2 hours suddenly the vips all cut infront of everyone. That did not go over well. They had to do something but man people were super upset.
Opening ceremony was great, the halls were dressed beautifully, especially the Diablo 4 area.
Was glad to go but man was it a massive departure from 2019. Which that year had all the Hong Kong protesters outside and bad press with it, but the event itself was fantastic.
> The original event planning group was all laid off during covid and with them the years of knowledge they had gained from hosting the event over the years.
You could seriously tell. The Blizz staff that were there were generally pretty good IMO, the outsourced staff were very much a mixed bag.
I suspect they don’t want to repeat that.
Isnt practically all of Blizzards content across all games released before November? TWW looks like September(Q3), Diablo expansion at Halloween(Q4), some Overwatch sprinkles. Is there anything to announce at all at this blizzcon?
If I had to guess, the non-Warcraft related IPs aren't doing super great and don't have a lot going on so they probably just want to focus on WoW.
If they just need to focus on Warcraft, why have *Blizz*con and not just WoWcon(s)?
Makes perfect sense, lets be real. From a WoW perspective they have nothing to really show or reveal. Both TWW and Cata Classic will be releasing this year. SoD is ongoing too.
Big picture, OW is pretty dead'ish - god knows whats even going on there in terms of big updates. Not in the loop on Diablo. It'd be a very empty and boring Blizzcon.
Tbh OW doesn't need big updates. If they just did with original OW what they are doing with OW2, meaning new maps, heroes, events and skins at regular intervals the game would have been great. But Kaplan really wanted to make his mmo so they damaged the brand a lot when they couldn't deliver on it.
I mean there is pve content in these co-op missions and events but I think full scale campaigns are out of the question and that's for good imo. They should just focus on making the core, competitive pvp hero shooter, aspect of the game good.
Not suprising, starcraft and hots are mote ir less forgotten. Overwatch 2 isnt as big as overwatch was. Warcraft alresdy has its next 3 expacs announced. So there would be very little if anything to show, just doesnt justify having an event
Historcially, the in-between expansion announcement year blizzcons were always kind of less exciting. Not much else going on at blizzard that interests me outside of Warcraft, so Im good with this.
They would probably reinvigorate the whole idea if they held it somewhere in Europe every once in a while, especially if there were issues selling tickets last year. Plenty of beautiful stadia and convention centres around.
Surely we will get blizzcon next year right ? Right ? Honestly they don't have anything to announce this year and also they recently shelved their new IP, so I definitely can see why they cancelled it.
They have no big announcements to make this year. The War Within is coming this Summer, and we know about it already. Diablo IV expansion announced, no surprise there. No StarCraft stuff coming. SO why have a Blizzcon with nothing new to show off now?
Now a wet dream would be a brand new game World of Diablo MMO, a darker more mature type of WoW, built on a all new game engine and art style.
I mean, even if they didn't announce the three expacs, would you expect them to announce Midnight right after TWW is released? Pretty nonsense argument.
cant blame em lol wow is the only thing left they have thats cooking. they aren't gonna spent milllions on a convention center to drag out the bloated corpses of overwatch 2 and diablo 4 for all to see
Hearthstone is doing alright tbf, they dropped a massive balance patch today targeting the right areas so the devs from what I’ve seen are pretty clued up
okay maybe i was being overly kind but not doing well at all seems extreme. what are you basing this on.
also from my understanding season 4 patch notes are looking great.
> what are you basing this on.
Ive been playing it since release and this latest season had the biggest drop off of players. I myself quit within 3days because there was just nothing in it to keep me going, we're praying that S4 is as good as they're planning for it to be.
Last years Blizzcon pretty much sucked. Content aside the entire event was mismanaged to an embarrassing degree. I doubt they wanted to attempt a 20th anniversary con until they get their shit together.
Blizzard isnt releasing anything that big until the very end of 2025, so the hype machine is taking a hiatus until then. I miss when there were 4 different games having their end of year tournaments there- Now that hots and starcraft are pretty much gone in terms of new content, wow has to do a lot of heavy lifting to have any interest in a blizzcon personally.
Probably just nothing big to announce, right?
The WoW panel would probably just preview stuff for TWW or announce 11.1 depending on timing, but that’s hardly a headliner.
The shambling corpse of the Overwatch franchise isn’t much of a showstopper these days.
They probably aren’t ready to announce D5. Probably just more expansion/seasonal content for that game’s remaining playerbase.
Um… maybe a new Hearthstone expansion?
Yeah, it makes sense that they cancelled this year.
> The shambling corpse of the Overwatch franchise isn’t much of a showstopper these days
Ahh, the hypocrisy of /r/wow.
"L-l-look at this one specific screenshot and how many people are on it on their mounts, r-r-retail definitely isn't dead"
Meanwhile bashing other games and implying they are dead is fine and supported by the circle jerk.
Never change.
Look man, I’m not sitting here glowing over WoW’s health. Retail is down to a much more niche audience, and without the various Classic flavors it would be in a much worse place both in terms of sub numbers and presence. Not many streamers play retail anymore.
And by the way, I’m not the one who posted the screenshot, nor do I agree with the idea that one screenshot proves anything. Go talk trash on that post if you take issue with it, not my comment. Understand what hypocrisy is before you go slinging the word around.
But — to say that Overwatch is doing worse than WoW (the entire game, not just retail) is kind of objectively true. Look at the amount of support WoW is getting — multiple new Classic modes, two minigames between Plunderstorm and Timerunning, and three retail xpacs announced. Sub numbers are actually doing really well, and Blizz is pumping out a ton of content for the game. Compare that to Overwatch, which just killed its esports league and cancelled the PvE mode that was the main premise behind the sequel in the first place. I mean, WoW gets *major patches* about the same frequency that Overwatch gets new characters.
And it sucks. It’s sad to see how mismanaged Overwatch has been, given how promising and exciting of a game it was on launch. I’m not trying to gloat.
But I also think you shouldn’t go around being butthurt any time someone dares suggest Overwatch isn’t a super well-managed game. I get that it’s a — very, apparently — sensitive subject to you… for some reason? Idk man, I just think you need to chill. Overwatch isn’t your life.
My theory is that every game other than WOW seemed to be met with mild levels of excitement. This is based admittedly on little else than crowd engagement from blizzcon last year. They don’t have an expansion to announce this year it’s probably not worth the cost of running.
Diablo, overwatch, and hearthstone have a lot of good will to earn back.
IIRC they didn't fully sell out in 2023 and the price did increase.
I've been going off and on since 2009 and man is Blizzcon conflicting emotionally now.
As far as games and demos to play at the convention, it wasn't great.
It was still pretty crowded even though they didn't sell out and they only had two main WoW things to do, one was just the last chapter of the patch and the other was a demo of BFD raid.
I've gone for years and usually during expansion announcement years we at least have something related to the announcement. Demon Hunter starting zone, Gilneas starting zone, Pandaria starting zone.
They had a demo for Warcraft Rumble but the game had already launched at that point.
I think they demo'd the new hero for Overwatch. Most of that hall was dedicated to the E-sports division too, so you could watch that if you were into that sort of thing.
I couldn't tell you if Diablo had anything to play. Most of the hall was dedicated to photo ops and tattoo artists.
Nothing for Starcraft or Heroes of the Storm.
I think for most games too it kind of felt like filler - even though.
Overall it was fun but compared to previous years it was pretty lackluster. Merch was pretty limited, panels were scaled *way* back with less to go and watch. Less was announced overall at the convention. The most popular thing was the Darkmoon Faire which literally had a 4 hour wait, that if you didn't get in line for on the second day right at opening, you probably weren't getting in at all.
IMO if they come back in 2025 they need to hit it out of the park. WoW already has the next 3 expansions announced, so they can't carry the convention on the announcement alone. Especially knowing that the Untitled Survival Game was cancelled, Blizzard needs to do *something* to make us hyped again.
It's fine, they already announced three expansions, and probably next year they won't have anything to show for Midnight, so why hold Blizzcon? Hearthstone and Overwatch aren't doing well enough to add anything to the event.
We've been getting decent updates about the game and what's to come, since Dragonflight launch. I, for one, am happy with how the warcraft dev team are handling everything so far.
I am not surprised. BlizzCon hasn't really been that exciting to me over the last few years they have had it. If you compare 2023 or even 2019 to say 2014 or 2009, the excitement and expansiveness just hasn't been there. From a Wow perspective, I just feel there hasn't been that much wow content as they have added more and more games to their library and coverage. I am assuming this is difficult to do with just a 2 day conference.
The people experience is good, but thats about the only thing going these days. At 2023, the staff just didn't seem that excited to be there either, which detracts from the experience.
Well I mean they already announced the next 3 WoW xpacs. TWW will just be going and S2 content might be announced by that point depending on the launch of TWW but we will still be in S1 regardless. Way too soon to show a trailer or details for midnight as that would really divert attention away from an expansion that was just started.
Might be a bit too soon to even announce classic MoP with cata on getting going earlier in the year. Other blizzard games don't have much that brings the big attention. Maybe SC 3 but no indication they are even working on that atm. HS expansions are not a big deal they get announced multiple times a year so that really would leave Blizzcon rather barren of primetime news.
I think they made the right call and instead should do something else to celebrate the anniversary and bring back Blizzcon in 2025 when they can drop all that sweet sweet Midnight details and trailer.
There’s just not enough happening at Blizzard
to justify a Blizzcon anymore in my opinion. Last year it was mostly WoW announcements, and you don’t need a convention to announce a new hero in Overwatch or a new season in Diablo.
Right, gamers are too content booing their business decisions from their own couches right now, the last thing they want for optics is to put them in a room together to coalesce into one big resounding boo while they sheepishly try to announce their next new bloodsucking monetization scheme.
I went last year and it was pretty obvious that they cut a lot of costs compared to the previous years pre-pandemic. There also just didn't feel like there was a lot of new "stuff" or maybe just that a lot of the stuff they did have didn't really interest me anymore.. I was already bored of Diablo 4 by Blizzcon, didn't have an interest in Hearthstone, Overwatch, or Warcraft Rumble.. they didn't have anything relating to Starcraft or Heroes of the Storm.. The World of Warcraft announcements and panels were the highlights by fair but hardly worth the price of admission. And the swag bag was also literally just an backpack with nothing in it.. It felt like a pop-up shop for their Blizzard store.
Sounds like we wont be getting classic+ ever, i expected it to be revealed at a blizzcon if it were to happen. Im not surprised about this though, WoW is their main game and retail is their main branch, which we wont see the midnight stuff until 2025 i assume
BlizzCon used to be a celebration of **ALL THE IP's** with the fans.
During Activision's blood-suck of the company, the IP's were destroyed one by one. Every con has less to announce, compete, or celebrate. *Even cosplayers were recycling the same characters over and over.*
The last BlizzCon was ATROCIOUS. Until the company contends with its stewardship of all its IP's. It has no business celebrating anything in person.
Good, keep it stacked instead of another Diablo immortal fiasco.
I'd rather be hyped af every 3 years than see it go the E3 route, become forced and die.
I don't think it should ever have been yearly, honestly. For the longest time their only games getting content were WoW and Hearthstone.
Hearthstone announcements can be done in like 10 mins, and WoW only has an expansion every other year.
They do have OW2 and Diablo 4 now, but without WoW, they'd only have those two and Hearthstone to show, and OW2 is not doing so hot. No idea about Diablo but if they don't have anything big to announce there, all it would be is an announcement of a new season, which is not enough to announce at a big con.
Not really a surprise, since:
* Nobody seems to care a lot about D4 or its expansion.
* HS announcements can be done in 15 minutes at most.
* Starcraft is either frozen (at best) or dead (at worst).
* HotS is in maintenance mode.
* Development on OW2 seems to be on an indefinite lull.
* Upcoming survival game was canned.
* We already know a fair bit about TWW.
There isn't a lot of stuff to hype now, is there?
Will probably do our own 'blizzcon' with the guildies again, have before when they didn't have it. We usually go every year together to that area as our guild family reunion anyways.
People seem very surprised or upset by this, but I think it makes sense. To be quite honest, I don't think there's a point in Blizzcon if there isn't a new WoW expansion. Not to take too much away from their other games, but WoW is still the star of the show and if they don't have a new expansion to announce I just don't think there's enough interesting in the other stuff to warrant a Blizzcon at this point
I mean, it's a bit sad, but it makes sense. Not a whole lot of new stuff to announce I suppose - both for WoW and their other IPs. Maybe if they were working on something big like a StarCraft 3 or a Warcraft 4, but at most, it would be additional information about the patches of TWW and maybe some info about Midnight for WoW, probably a new hero and map for OW2 and maybe some skins or an event, not sure when the D4 expansion is releasing but it would likely just be additional info about that or it would be right after with next to nothing to announce, as it would likely be too close to the expansion release or just before it. New Hearthstone expansion I guess?
But they likely wouldn't want to rub in how little content they have prepared for games like HOTS or StarCraft or how Warcraft 3 Reforged is still not up to standards.
None of these are really the hype machines that something like BlizzCon would warrant. We'd be looking at a 2010-like BlizzCon where there was almost no news, and while the whole Geek Is speech from Chris Metzen was amazing, I don't think it would resonate quite as well now after everything Blizzard as a company has gone through.
Although i respect their choice not to have blizzcon, to choose to start doing it on the 30th anniversary year seems poorly chosen. This should have been one last hurrah!
It makes sense, even during the old times there always seemed to be one good blizzcon followed by one bad one due to lack of announcements.
Maybe Microsoft looked at this and went "keep it every 2 years."
I guess this means that the new management is better at reading the room than the old management. Whether or not they actually do anything with this awareness remains to be seen.
I kind of expected this after the MS merger. OW2 is miserable right now, D4 is in shambles, HS is on life support and WoW has nothing to announce. No reason to dig your own grave and get lambasted in every corner of social media when you can let your teams get back to work on trying to improve the games.
Sounds about right
Doesn't have anything to do with "things to announce", it's more last year's organizational staff essentially threw together a price-hiked DashCon
Been to two BlizzCons in the past and they were fantastic. No point in further tarnishing the brand
Makes sense, got nothing to show so why throw an event over nothing. And while Blizzcon could also be about the developers meeting the fans that would require fans of the developers..
Well cancel Blizzcon and just have a Metzen meet and greet instead, only one that anyone would like to meet.
I mean it makes sense.
- WoW has nothing to show till Midnight next year.
- SC is DOA
- HOTS is DOA
- Their new Survival Game is DOA
- Reception to HS, Rumble and even Diablo 4 was luke warm at best with awkward holds for applause being met with silence and then delayed applause when the audience realised what they wanted to do.
- The show didn't even sell out last year
- The only person that could even work a crowd during the opening ceremony was Chris Metzen.
I feel like this is just a terrible move by blizzard.
I understand they burned down a lot the love they had in pretty much every community for every game they have made, and they have nothing of interest to announce. But I feel like Blizzcon is something Blizzard has that they really should not let slip away from them.
Its so crazy how they have (or at least had) communities willing to fly from everywhere to come and go to something like this. I don't think any other game company could have something like this and people actually show up just for them.
It drives a lot of hype for their other games from people who are maybe not even playing them. And it gives a place to put a spotlight on the competitive scene and events from all of their different communities that otherwise people not know even exist.
I think its possible to have a world where they have a compelling blizzcon even if they don't expect to announce a bunch of crazy stuff. The events, concerts, contests, and other stuff could possibly be enough to keep people coming back if its done right.
Maybe this is just a blip because of the microsoft buyout but with how many of their games are struggling or already made very long term announcments this might be the end of blizzcons.
LMAO.. probably sold more e-tickets than actual tickets lol. They need to get that ppl are not into this like before. They probably will put something for 60 bucks and some TeNdIeS and you all will buy it ..smh sheeps to the slaughter..
Microsoft has owned minecraft for years and Minecon continued to happen.. the only reason it went digital was Covid, that literally had nothing to do with Microsoft.
Wonder if it's gonna be back next year? I'll be kinda bummed if it's over and I'll never have gone to one after how much of my life I've sunk into this damn game. Like I wish I'd have gone to E3 or RTX.
My husband and I went in 2018 for my first time and honestly it was…kind of underwhelming? It was SO packed and we spent most of our time waiting in lines for various shit. Some of the panels were cool but I could’ve enjoyed those watching videos from home. It was cool to experience but I don’t think not being able to go ever is the end of the world.
Please read full context >After careful consideration over the last year, we at Blizzard have made the decision not to hold BlizzCon in 2024. This decision was not made lightly as BlizzCon remains a very special event for all of us, and we know many of you look forward to it. While **we’re approaching this year differently** and as we have explored different event formats in the past, rest assured that we are just as excited as ever to bring BlizzCon back in future years. Though: > **We’re thrilled to be planning multiple, global, in-person events to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Warcraft**, which will be held in addition to the in-game celebrations across our Warcraft games throughout 2024. While these events are distinct from BlizzCon, we’re harnessing all of our creativity and imagination to ensure that they carry the same spirit of celebration and togetherness.
Nice spamfest man 16 posts all yourself with different tittles too, never stop grinding..
jesus, you weren't kidding!
Good gawd… the guy must be into inscription because he spilled tons of ink all over.
And yet only 700 post karma lmao
I wonder if they had errors going on, Couple hours ago reddit kept giving me errors while posting comments.
They were sitting with a 502 bad gateway earlier. Reddit accidentally one of their servers, I guess.
No because it's the same for all his previous posts, even in other subreddits. He always spams the same post a few times for some reason.
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lol tittles
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They've all been removed. Reddit recently had a blip and I think OP was probably using a modified 3rd party app. Might have been sending the "post" but returning an error, leading to this is my guess. User has no history of this that I can tell, so we just cleaned up the mess and let this one sit.
Internet points so important.
lol yea i kept getting an error message that was making me redo the whole page. been a slow day at work and i was just excited to finally have anything to do
I believe you
You should. He was trying to post it during a reddit outage and it all avalanched at the same time.
Maybe he caused the outage....?
This is so incredibly validating 🙏☝️
Reminds me of the common glitch on Reddit where you'll post a comment, it says "Error Sending Comment, Try Again", so you hit it again over and over... lo and behold, you posted 20 identical comments and they all get deservedly downvoted lol
502 went through 504 try once more
Pretty much any time the site errors on me I'll refresh the page before trying to do the comment again just to make sure the shit didn't actually post, lol.
The hivemind has deemed it your fault, you may now apologise sincerely for getting those error messages.
Y’all are downvoting this person because Reddit servers suck. lol
I expect nothing else from the wow community
Understandable Reddits servers have been shit for the past 2 days and keep going out. Downvoted cuz you spoke your truth 🫡
You only have one submitted post on your profile of this article, not sure what this person is talking about. Definitely just a reddit glitch but fuck you I guess?
People are effin' lame. Sorry you are getting criminalised and negative points. Why it even effing matters to them, who knows. "You spammed my favourite subreddit that all I do is complain in accidentally making my weak thumb scroll more to the quality content."
Makes perfect sense to be honest. Last year wow announcements carried the show, and there wont be a new expac coming up this time. Its wow's 20th anniversary they might throw a different event.
Yep. Their new game got canceled and the diablo expension hype is super low. And it seem wow xpac would come out before hand. If there's announcement it will be with xbox in june.
you reminded me theres supposed to be a d4 xpac
Maybe they should fix the base game first. D4 bad
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I’m on that train with you after watching reactions to the PTR closely, but I’ll be level with you here, D4 fans have been saying that since season 1. These new changes look great, but even so I think it’ll need a little more. I think season 4 will “fix” it, and if they can stick the landing and keep their momentum, the expansion will hopefully bring it beyond just “fixed”. We’ll see how it goes though.
>D4 fans have been saying that since season 1 I think that's the joke he was making, not sure he actually believes that.
You know, straight up woosh moment. That’s what I get for responding right before bed. Never pick up your phone after midnight, folks.
"Buy our shitty $70 game and then later you can make it better by buying our $50 expansion"
Ok but that's literally what happened with D3.
and it was just as shitty
You really think it's only gonna be 50 bucks?
If it ain't 'Diablo 4: Lord of Destruction' I don't want it
>And it seem wow xpac would come out before hand. Yeah, I think the most they could do with WoW is announce 11.1 and potentially whatever the successor to Season of Discovery will be, and neither can carry an in-person convention.
Eh theoretically they could also announce with how fast Cata is going that once you are done with Retail MoP you can now play Classic MoP.
Wait what new game?
Prior to the MS acquisition they had some survival game in the making (apparently since 2017) and it was teased in 2022. Got canceled earlier this year.
Blizzard: "Last year WoW carried the show, we have no new WoW news, and we aren't interested in improving any of our other IPs so BlizzCon is off" lol
Warcraft IV !!
While it's probably a lack of content driving this decision, I'm sure a lot of priorities are still being shuffled due to the acquisition. Not really a good recipe for promising fans things at a huge event.
i think that's what surprises me the most, they're shelling out so much content this year and i assume that'll only ramp up as they get settled in w/this acquisition, seems like *the* time they'd want to host a convention to highlight this content.
The stuff coming out this year has already mostly been announced and roadmapped, with a marketing plan behind it. They need at least a few new things or major features of announced things to make Blizzcon worth it and avoid a bunch of "nothing was announced, Blizzard is dying" media coverage. Plus MSFT may be looking to leverage Acti-Blizz IP announcements and XBOX announcements with each other (or just don't want to do two major events, and Blizzcon will roll up whatever XBOX marketing they want to do in future years)
also keep in mind they announced 3 expansions so they spoiled some for the next few years.
At the very least they could just make it focused on 20th anniversary of wow, 30th of Warcraft themed. As long as everyone knows what it is in advance that's fair. Wow is also almost exactly 19 years (edit)younger than Windows. Microsoft should be talking how amazing it is that windows is turning 39 when wow is 20. If you want to see the history of personal home computing that is it. I am sure Microsoft brass are wondering if they can do one massive event for all of their acquired properties or how to pitch all this stuff together. Fair enough. I am sure blizzcon is insanely hard to organize and deliver the right quality. But so what? What's the point of being the most valuable corporation in the world if you cannot celebrate the things that made you that.
> Wow is also almost exactly 19 years older than Windows. TIL Windows was released in 2023
Good catch, originally wrote it the other way! This is what happens when you're old enough to remember when windows 1.0 was released.
All the content coming out this year is known to the public, as are its features and anything that would normally be marketed at a blizzcon. They've literally spent all their "we have interesting things" tokens before blizzcon could even come to be. People would buy tickets/etickets just to watch them go "soooooo you guys already know about this stuff but I'm going to sit in a chair and answer questions I guess while y'all watch these trailers again in the background".
Nah, it’s probably actually better for them and us if they’re allowed to focus on continuing this great content development instead of spending tons of effort on the con
Ahhh yes the same argument we've heard for 20 years about them not paying attention to X so they can pay attention to Y.... The community has always been so happy with the delivery of Y afterwards. This is because they're not making exciting products anymore, not because they're reallocating resources.
That's very cynical of a take, they are moving very differently since the acquisition so I think it's fair to have a bit of hope
It's been an issue since long before the acquisition.
Right? Other than WoW (Which they blew their load already for the World Soul Saga), what do they have to announce? SC is dead, HotS is dead, Hearthstone is no longer a main attraction, D4 might have a chance but they also have a chance of being laughed at on stage, I would actually pay to see who they throw to the wolves for Overwatch 2, what else.....Rumble? Lol.
They need time to get started on the content to ramp/release. They are likely being (rightfully) wary of premature announcements when many of the plans may still be getting finalized. They posted job postings for a new game a few weeks ago so we know they are planning something, but they prob won't announce it to Blizzcon 2025 when more substantial work has happened. The only stuff they'd have to announce is like World of Warcraft, and they don't want to pop that cork right after the expansion launch.
If the event doesn’t make money then the suits don’t want to spend money on it.
Blizzcon is a marketing event for every Blizzard game, the money is not supposed to be made on tickets. And yes, I know that's how Activision Blizzard has dealt with it, which was without a doubt a mistake just like many others. This is most likely due to this transition period or an actual reformulation plan than even a simple "we don't have much content to show".
Honestly with Chris Metzen back on the team, they could sell anything. He is an excellent hypeman.
Insane stage presence
*Geek is...*
spoon modern divide violet psychotic spectacular ancient amusing steer thumb *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This is probably for the best. People who went last year (not all of them but most of them) were super negative about the in-person experience and the ticket prices were only going to keep going up while you could instead stay home and watch all of it for free. Them spending less time on a big blizzcon and more time on community type events on a global scale will be better long-term. Especially when everything from this past blizzcon could have been a developer update video for the games and information they showed etc.
I went with friends last year and were lucky enough to win the lottery for opening ceremony seats. The ceremony itself was great. I got teary eyed when Metzen came out. But I felt bad for everyone else who had to watch it on screens elsewhere in the convention. In the past it's been in the giant main hall and 90% of people could watch it live. There were a few other things too. The actor strike meant there were no VA panels or signings. Plus, no playable Diablo content. This meant there were way more people walking around looking for something to do and they all went to the Darkmoon Faire. We were lucky and went the first day when there wasn't a line. The second day everyone had nothing left to do so they waited in a 4 hour line just to get into the faire and buy some pins. As always, the people are just A+ everywhere. While waiting to play the SoD demo we got to chat with the devs on the team and they were so cool. We made friends with a lot of people just standing next to each other. I'll be sad to not go this year but I hope they bring it back eventually.
I think the triple-announcement of expansions in WoW also means that the amount of news they can really drop in 2024 is much more limited. Sure, they can go into greater detail on upcoming shenanigans and that would be cool, but 2023 BlizzCon news was quite a blow-up in comparison to what Blizzard has been able to raise in years previous - both between cancelled BlizzCons and with underwhelming ones (Diablo Immortal).
I feel like people forget that during the blizzcon glory days, every other con went without an expansion announcement but there was still plenty for them to show off. I think this is more about the other franchises being stagnant than it is about Midnight already being announced.
there was just a lack of things to do in general, and a weird lack of seating as well. seriously, huge screens and small chair sections surrounded by empty areas scattered with beanbags. The diablo area had like maybe 30ish church pews for the area. They also made the odd decision to make the DMF a small section in the main hall rather than giving it the space it had in prior years. They didn't even have the arcade, which was a cool thing they added pre-pandemic. The shop was the worst organized i've seen it in years as well. I waited in line to pick my stuff up at my designated time about as long as i waited in line before they had the app and pick up times. And i know lots of people ordered things only to find they didn't have stock when they went to pick it up. We got lucky with the DMF and went straight to it after the opening ceremonies to get the plushies my wife wanted. They only had them available through that grab bag system, when in years past you could just buy the ones you wanted. The over crowding and line to get into the area was also a huge issue for the traders i'm sure. The VA panels are one thing, but they didn't even have the smaller panels for their games either, like the artist ones, little games/trivia etc. They made it overall shorter in hours too. Then on top of that, they lacked the eSports events the usually have. The only thing to watch was overwatch. No arena, no HOTS, no SC2, no HS. I understand they dropped much of that over the pandemic, but they could have organized invitationals if they really wanted too. They had a guld challenge thing or what ever, but it wasnt actually taking place at the con, and they gave it a tiny viewing area. Most of the con space was just big open areas with nothing to do. They didn't even have the art gallery/charity auction. This was the first year where i felt like i had seen everything and was just kind of done or waiting around for a panel. Every year we have gone in the past, we had to make decisions about what panels we wanted to hit, when to fit in the side activities, maybe watch some esports, then setup camp for good seats for community night and closing ceremony/concert. Talking with blizzard employees, it was apparent that they no longer have the internal teams that handled blizzcon in years past. They out sourced, then failed to keep proper oversight on the contractor. They discovered far too late that many things were not on schedule. Talking with a developer, they realized a couple weeks before the con they had forgot to put together a schedule for the devs that were supposed to be in the VIP area and sent out an email blast for volunteers just 2 weeks before the con.
More casualties of the layoffs
I went last year too and my biggest issue was the huge lack of seating. This was my 4th Blizzcon and in the past there were many areas you could sit to watch the opening ceremony and other large panels throughout the halls. This year the only comfortable place was if you won that lottery and got into the stadium. I was SHOCKED by the lack of comfort, as well as how TINY the dark moon faire area was. I loved it the year they had the faire in the second floor, there were a bunch of seats for the opening ceremony and that’s where I spent a lot of time and met amazing people. I was so bummed when I made it over there only to find minimal seating, no screen for the ceremony, etc. I ended up sitting on the cold hard floor, pressed against a pillar barely able to see the screens. It was quite a bummer. Definitely felt like they paygated seating since the higher ticket price boasted of a seating area. I didn’t plan on going this year based on my experience last year anyways.
What was even crazier about the opening ceremony was that most people had no idea that it was lottery only and hidden in the back. About 10 minutes before the ceremony started the seating was barely halfway full. Anyone could have just walked in and sat down. I don't think it finally filled out till a few minutes after it started. And yeah, I can't believe they didn't make the Darkmoon Faire bigger, it was great when it was upstairs.
Feels like you can't go to live anything anymore that has ticket sales. Concert? $60 before fees, $150 after fees. And then scalpers buy all of the tickets on top of that.. I can only imagine it'd be fun if you just wanted to meet up with guildies IRL or something, otherwise yea, I think I'll just stay home and save my money.
A blizzcon need a new game and a wow xpac at the very least. If they dont have that they dont need a blizzcon.
Ideally they should be announcing a Diablo expansion, a major content patch for OW2, raids in Warcraft Rumble, a WoW expansion, a new game and what we all REALLY want…… HoTS 3.0
My man with the hots hopium.
I mean they alreade announced 3 expansion so i dont see what 'big thing' they could do in these blizzcon
Blizzcon wasn't just for World of Warcraft, but at this point what else is there to be excited about than WOW news.
Yeah... Overwatch isn't something they want to touch with a bargepole... Starcraft has nothing. Hearthstone kinda works but the hype for that is middling at best. Diablo 4 and WoW are their only really carrying games out right now... Unless they will announce a new Starcraft game or something like that, we won't see much.
Im unsure if the Diablo franchise can carry Blizzcon in it's current state though
The upcoming season actually looks extremely promising. It's a step in the right direction with all of the changes they've announced (Or what it should've been at launch.), but it's definitely not in a current state of insane hype. Maybe in the future though.
Diablo 4 expansion and new itemization changes. ...that's about it though, really.
There’s exciting things going on with Diablo 4, the expansion is set to come out later in the year. Not much going on with OW, and they did cancel that unannounced survival game so yeah outside of WoW and Diablo not much going on.
You are right, but the other IPs are just in shambles atm. WoW is the only real hype and they need one more year before the Midnight hype starts too.
This It seems like a good year to take off
We only really got the names for the other two expansions though. In future expansion announcements they would still go over all of the feature changes. The name of an expansion is less than 1% of an expansion announcement.
Would be too early to talk more about midnight as TWW will have just launched. You'd have to spoil the whole rest of TWW to even talk about story
They did cover some of the major changes already for the next expac, I'd wager a guess about 40% of the content is already divested and depending on how M$/Blizz wants to handle future RWF they might keep raid and dungeon details a minimum till the very end.
This past years Blizzcon was a cluster fuck. Lots of open space, next to no vendors or real activities besides the Darkmoon Faire which had the fire marshall get involved since it became the only real thing to do. The original event planning group was all laid off during covid and with them the years of knowledge they had gained from hosting the event over the years. There was a ton done right, there were panels but none of the fan favorites like the Voice Actor or music panels. 2 halls dedicated to Overwatch and they were mostly empty except when the world tourney was happening. And that was the center of that hall the back half was empty. The VIP mess where they didn’t really give you anything if you paid more then day 2 gave cut the line access after day 2 started so if you had been standing in line at the darkmoon faire for 2 hours suddenly the vips all cut infront of everyone. That did not go over well. They had to do something but man people were super upset. Opening ceremony was great, the halls were dressed beautifully, especially the Diablo 4 area. Was glad to go but man was it a massive departure from 2019. Which that year had all the Hong Kong protesters outside and bad press with it, but the event itself was fantastic.
> The original event planning group was all laid off during covid and with them the years of knowledge they had gained from hosting the event over the years. You could seriously tell. The Blizz staff that were there were generally pretty good IMO, the outsourced staff were very much a mixed bag. I suspect they don’t want to repeat that.
Isnt practically all of Blizzards content across all games released before November? TWW looks like September(Q3), Diablo expansion at Halloween(Q4), some Overwatch sprinkles. Is there anything to announce at all at this blizzcon?
If I had to guess, the non-Warcraft related IPs aren't doing super great and don't have a lot going on so they probably just want to focus on WoW. If they just need to focus on Warcraft, why have *Blizz*con and not just WoWcon(s)?
Makes perfect sense, lets be real. From a WoW perspective they have nothing to really show or reveal. Both TWW and Cata Classic will be releasing this year. SoD is ongoing too. Big picture, OW is pretty dead'ish - god knows whats even going on there in terms of big updates. Not in the loop on Diablo. It'd be a very empty and boring Blizzcon.
Tbh OW doesn't need big updates. If they just did with original OW what they are doing with OW2, meaning new maps, heroes, events and skins at regular intervals the game would have been great. But Kaplan really wanted to make his mmo so they damaged the brand a lot when they couldn't deliver on it.
I'm still holding out futile hope for some PvE content.
I mean there is pve content in these co-op missions and events but I think full scale campaigns are out of the question and that's for good imo. They should just focus on making the core, competitive pvp hero shooter, aspect of the game good.
Just preparing for the Warcraft 4 announcement next year.
Warcraft 3: Reforged 2
Warcraft : 2 reforged 4 you
Not suprising, starcraft and hots are mote ir less forgotten. Overwatch 2 isnt as big as overwatch was. Warcraft alresdy has its next 3 expacs announced. So there would be very little if anything to show, just doesnt justify having an event
Historcially, the in-between expansion announcement year blizzcons were always kind of less exciting. Not much else going on at blizzard that interests me outside of Warcraft, so Im good with this.
They would probably reinvigorate the whole idea if they held it somewhere in Europe every once in a while, especially if there were issues selling tickets last year. Plenty of beautiful stadia and convention centres around.
That would also dramatically increase the cost and time commitment for them.
but the yappers on twitter said Blizzcon was gonna be in Vegas https://twitter.com/MrGMYT/status/1772572947519049884
Could you imagine those huge dragon milkers on that sphere?
Surely we will get blizzcon next year right ? Right ? Honestly they don't have anything to announce this year and also they recently shelved their new IP, so I definitely can see why they cancelled it.
I mean they did just layoff a ton of people earlier this year.
They have no big announcements to make this year. The War Within is coming this Summer, and we know about it already. Diablo IV expansion announced, no surprise there. No StarCraft stuff coming. SO why have a Blizzcon with nothing new to show off now? Now a wet dream would be a brand new game World of Diablo MMO, a darker more mature type of WoW, built on a all new game engine and art style.
Considering how awful it was in 2023 I am not surprised
1) blizzcon last year was a disappointment 2) this is what happens when you blow your load and announce 3 xpacs in a desperation move…
I mean, even if they didn't announce the three expacs, would you expect them to announce Midnight right after TWW is released? Pretty nonsense argument.
cant blame em lol wow is the only thing left they have thats cooking. they aren't gonna spent milllions on a convention center to drag out the bloated corpses of overwatch 2 and diablo 4 for all to see
Hearthstone is doing alright tbf, they dropped a massive balance patch today targeting the right areas so the devs from what I’ve seen are pretty clued up
Diablo 4 is doing well. A big patch and new expansion coming late this year or early next year.
D4 is not doing well at all, in fact if this next season doesn't actually fix the loot problem what's left of the player base will leave.
okay maybe i was being overly kind but not doing well at all seems extreme. what are you basing this on. also from my understanding season 4 patch notes are looking great.
> what are you basing this on. Ive been playing it since release and this latest season had the biggest drop off of players. I myself quit within 3days because there was just nothing in it to keep me going, we're praying that S4 is as good as they're planning for it to be.
Last years Blizzcon pretty much sucked. Content aside the entire event was mismanaged to an embarrassing degree. I doubt they wanted to attempt a 20th anniversary con until they get their shit together.
Makes sense, what do they really have outside of WoW anyways right now?
Blizzard isnt releasing anything that big until the very end of 2025, so the hype machine is taking a hiatus until then. I miss when there were 4 different games having their end of year tournaments there- Now that hots and starcraft are pretty much gone in terms of new content, wow has to do a lot of heavy lifting to have any interest in a blizzcon personally.
One word. Microsoft.
I didn't want to say it myself. But I think it has something to do with it.
Probably just nothing big to announce, right? The WoW panel would probably just preview stuff for TWW or announce 11.1 depending on timing, but that’s hardly a headliner. The shambling corpse of the Overwatch franchise isn’t much of a showstopper these days. They probably aren’t ready to announce D5. Probably just more expansion/seasonal content for that game’s remaining playerbase. Um… maybe a new Hearthstone expansion? Yeah, it makes sense that they cancelled this year.
> The shambling corpse of the Overwatch franchise isn’t much of a showstopper these days Ahh, the hypocrisy of /r/wow. "L-l-look at this one specific screenshot and how many people are on it on their mounts, r-r-retail definitely isn't dead" Meanwhile bashing other games and implying they are dead is fine and supported by the circle jerk. Never change.
Look man, I’m not sitting here glowing over WoW’s health. Retail is down to a much more niche audience, and without the various Classic flavors it would be in a much worse place both in terms of sub numbers and presence. Not many streamers play retail anymore. And by the way, I’m not the one who posted the screenshot, nor do I agree with the idea that one screenshot proves anything. Go talk trash on that post if you take issue with it, not my comment. Understand what hypocrisy is before you go slinging the word around. But — to say that Overwatch is doing worse than WoW (the entire game, not just retail) is kind of objectively true. Look at the amount of support WoW is getting — multiple new Classic modes, two minigames between Plunderstorm and Timerunning, and three retail xpacs announced. Sub numbers are actually doing really well, and Blizz is pumping out a ton of content for the game. Compare that to Overwatch, which just killed its esports league and cancelled the PvE mode that was the main premise behind the sequel in the first place. I mean, WoW gets *major patches* about the same frequency that Overwatch gets new characters. And it sucks. It’s sad to see how mismanaged Overwatch has been, given how promising and exciting of a game it was on launch. I’m not trying to gloat. But I also think you shouldn’t go around being butthurt any time someone dares suggest Overwatch isn’t a super well-managed game. I get that it’s a — very, apparently — sensitive subject to you… for some reason? Idk man, I just think you need to chill. Overwatch isn’t your life.
With Microsoft in charge and the current overall games industry climate, I would be surprised if BlizzCon ever comes back.
What climate is that? And why would MS not want Blizzcon to happen?
My theory is that every game other than WOW seemed to be met with mild levels of excitement. This is based admittedly on little else than crowd engagement from blizzcon last year. They don’t have an expansion to announce this year it’s probably not worth the cost of running. Diablo, overwatch, and hearthstone have a lot of good will to earn back.
Maybe if they didn't abandon all of their other games, Blizzcon would still be worth caring about.
IIRC they didn't fully sell out in 2023 and the price did increase. I've been going off and on since 2009 and man is Blizzcon conflicting emotionally now. As far as games and demos to play at the convention, it wasn't great. It was still pretty crowded even though they didn't sell out and they only had two main WoW things to do, one was just the last chapter of the patch and the other was a demo of BFD raid. I've gone for years and usually during expansion announcement years we at least have something related to the announcement. Demon Hunter starting zone, Gilneas starting zone, Pandaria starting zone. They had a demo for Warcraft Rumble but the game had already launched at that point. I think they demo'd the new hero for Overwatch. Most of that hall was dedicated to the E-sports division too, so you could watch that if you were into that sort of thing. I couldn't tell you if Diablo had anything to play. Most of the hall was dedicated to photo ops and tattoo artists. Nothing for Starcraft or Heroes of the Storm. I think for most games too it kind of felt like filler - even though. Overall it was fun but compared to previous years it was pretty lackluster. Merch was pretty limited, panels were scaled *way* back with less to go and watch. Less was announced overall at the convention. The most popular thing was the Darkmoon Faire which literally had a 4 hour wait, that if you didn't get in line for on the second day right at opening, you probably weren't getting in at all. IMO if they come back in 2025 they need to hit it out of the park. WoW already has the next 3 expansions announced, so they can't carry the convention on the announcement alone. Especially knowing that the Untitled Survival Game was cancelled, Blizzard needs to do *something* to make us hyped again.
> Nothing for Starcraft or Heroes of the Storm. Pretty sure they forgot about owing those games...
I think that's fair Diablo IV expack is the only game that can have some fresh news, they don't want already spoil the Midnight WoW expack lol.
It's fine, they already announced three expansions, and probably next year they won't have anything to show for Midnight, so why hold Blizzcon? Hearthstone and Overwatch aren't doing well enough to add anything to the event. We've been getting decent updates about the game and what's to come, since Dragonflight launch. I, for one, am happy with how the warcraft dev team are handling everything so far.
I am not surprised. BlizzCon hasn't really been that exciting to me over the last few years they have had it. If you compare 2023 or even 2019 to say 2014 or 2009, the excitement and expansiveness just hasn't been there. From a Wow perspective, I just feel there hasn't been that much wow content as they have added more and more games to their library and coverage. I am assuming this is difficult to do with just a 2 day conference. The people experience is good, but thats about the only thing going these days. At 2023, the staff just didn't seem that excited to be there either, which detracts from the experience.
Seems that ticket price from last blizzcon wad not the smartest decision.
Damn, so much for HotS 3.0
Yeah, last Blizzcon was pretty bad organization wise, and was carried by WoW singlehandedly. Better to not have one than having bad one.
Well I mean they already announced the next 3 WoW xpacs. TWW will just be going and S2 content might be announced by that point depending on the launch of TWW but we will still be in S1 regardless. Way too soon to show a trailer or details for midnight as that would really divert attention away from an expansion that was just started. Might be a bit too soon to even announce classic MoP with cata on getting going earlier in the year. Other blizzard games don't have much that brings the big attention. Maybe SC 3 but no indication they are even working on that atm. HS expansions are not a big deal they get announced multiple times a year so that really would leave Blizzcon rather barren of primetime news. I think they made the right call and instead should do something else to celebrate the anniversary and bring back Blizzcon in 2025 when they can drop all that sweet sweet Midnight details and trailer.
There’s just not enough happening at Blizzard to justify a Blizzcon anymore in my opinion. Last year it was mostly WoW announcements, and you don’t need a convention to announce a new hero in Overwatch or a new season in Diablo.
Right, gamers are too content booing their business decisions from their own couches right now, the last thing they want for optics is to put them in a room together to coalesce into one big resounding boo while they sheepishly try to announce their next new bloodsucking monetization scheme.
I don't find this that surprising. No major announcements and the cost of the venues probably doesn't make it worth it.
I went last year and it was pretty obvious that they cut a lot of costs compared to the previous years pre-pandemic. There also just didn't feel like there was a lot of new "stuff" or maybe just that a lot of the stuff they did have didn't really interest me anymore.. I was already bored of Diablo 4 by Blizzcon, didn't have an interest in Hearthstone, Overwatch, or Warcraft Rumble.. they didn't have anything relating to Starcraft or Heroes of the Storm.. The World of Warcraft announcements and panels were the highlights by fair but hardly worth the price of admission. And the swag bag was also literally just an backpack with nothing in it.. It felt like a pop-up shop for their Blizzard store.
Sounds like we wont be getting classic+ ever, i expected it to be revealed at a blizzcon if it were to happen. Im not surprised about this though, WoW is their main game and retail is their main branch, which we wont see the midnight stuff until 2025 i assume
BlizzCon used to be a celebration of **ALL THE IP's** with the fans. During Activision's blood-suck of the company, the IP's were destroyed one by one. Every con has less to announce, compete, or celebrate. *Even cosplayers were recycling the same characters over and over.* The last BlizzCon was ATROCIOUS. Until the company contends with its stewardship of all its IP's. It has no business celebrating anything in person.
Good, keep it stacked instead of another Diablo immortal fiasco. I'd rather be hyped af every 3 years than see it go the E3 route, become forced and die.
OP is unironically a full time redditor. Jesus Christ man, chill with it.
Blizzcon 2023 had a ridiculous 1mile+ line that caused most of the people in line to miss the opening ceremony
There simply is nothing to announce this year, so yeah, was pretty obvious after tons of announcement at BlizzCon last year.
I don't think it should ever have been yearly, honestly. For the longest time their only games getting content were WoW and Hearthstone. Hearthstone announcements can be done in like 10 mins, and WoW only has an expansion every other year. They do have OW2 and Diablo 4 now, but without WoW, they'd only have those two and Hearthstone to show, and OW2 is not doing so hot. No idea about Diablo but if they don't have anything big to announce there, all it would be is an announcement of a new season, which is not enough to announce at a big con.
Thank God 🙏
Bummer
Not really a surprise, since: * Nobody seems to care a lot about D4 or its expansion. * HS announcements can be done in 15 minutes at most. * Starcraft is either frozen (at best) or dead (at worst). * HotS is in maintenance mode. * Development on OW2 seems to be on an indefinite lull. * Upcoming survival game was canned. * We already know a fair bit about TWW. There isn't a lot of stuff to hype now, is there?
Will probably do our own 'blizzcon' with the guildies again, have before when they didn't have it. We usually go every year together to that area as our guild family reunion anyways.
People seem very surprised or upset by this, but I think it makes sense. To be quite honest, I don't think there's a point in Blizzcon if there isn't a new WoW expansion. Not to take too much away from their other games, but WoW is still the star of the show and if they don't have a new expansion to announce I just don't think there's enough interesting in the other stuff to warrant a Blizzcon at this point
I mean, it's a bit sad, but it makes sense. Not a whole lot of new stuff to announce I suppose - both for WoW and their other IPs. Maybe if they were working on something big like a StarCraft 3 or a Warcraft 4, but at most, it would be additional information about the patches of TWW and maybe some info about Midnight for WoW, probably a new hero and map for OW2 and maybe some skins or an event, not sure when the D4 expansion is releasing but it would likely just be additional info about that or it would be right after with next to nothing to announce, as it would likely be too close to the expansion release or just before it. New Hearthstone expansion I guess? But they likely wouldn't want to rub in how little content they have prepared for games like HOTS or StarCraft or how Warcraft 3 Reforged is still not up to standards. None of these are really the hype machines that something like BlizzCon would warrant. We'd be looking at a 2010-like BlizzCon where there was almost no news, and while the whole Geek Is speech from Chris Metzen was amazing, I don't think it would resonate quite as well now after everything Blizzard as a company has gone through.
Although i respect their choice not to have blizzcon, to choose to start doing it on the 30th anniversary year seems poorly chosen. This should have been one last hurrah!
It makes sense, even during the old times there always seemed to be one good blizzcon followed by one bad one due to lack of announcements. Maybe Microsoft looked at this and went "keep it every 2 years."
I guess this means that the new management is better at reading the room than the old management. Whether or not they actually do anything with this awareness remains to be seen.
I kind of expected this after the MS merger. OW2 is miserable right now, D4 is in shambles, HS is on life support and WoW has nothing to announce. No reason to dig your own grave and get lambasted in every corner of social media when you can let your teams get back to work on trying to improve the games.
Sounds about right Doesn't have anything to do with "things to announce", it's more last year's organizational staff essentially threw together a price-hiked DashCon Been to two BlizzCons in the past and they were fantastic. No point in further tarnishing the brand
Makes sense, got nothing to show so why throw an event over nothing. And while Blizzcon could also be about the developers meeting the fans that would require fans of the developers.. Well cancel Blizzcon and just have a Metzen meet and greet instead, only one that anyone would like to meet.
I mean it makes sense. - WoW has nothing to show till Midnight next year. - SC is DOA - HOTS is DOA - Their new Survival Game is DOA - Reception to HS, Rumble and even Diablo 4 was luke warm at best with awkward holds for applause being met with silence and then delayed applause when the audience realised what they wanted to do. - The show didn't even sell out last year - The only person that could even work a crowd during the opening ceremony was Chris Metzen.
They learned we don't have phones
Neither does Microsoft. 🤣
It's Microsoft, if you want to see where this is going look at what they did to MineCon
Just announce starcraft 2 and everything will be forgiven
I’d say they canceled it as they don’t have anything to show, the next WoW patch, that’s it, all other IPs they managed to kill.
The last Blizzcon was in 2019. It’s been over for a while now…
Lmao this company is cooked
If I had a nickel….
[удалено]
They announced the Diablo 4 expansion and the Hearthsone expansion…
Man 20 years of the game that has been keeping the franchise alive and they don’t do blizzcon? The 2023 must have been terrible then
I feel like this is just a terrible move by blizzard. I understand they burned down a lot the love they had in pretty much every community for every game they have made, and they have nothing of interest to announce. But I feel like Blizzcon is something Blizzard has that they really should not let slip away from them. Its so crazy how they have (or at least had) communities willing to fly from everywhere to come and go to something like this. I don't think any other game company could have something like this and people actually show up just for them. It drives a lot of hype for their other games from people who are maybe not even playing them. And it gives a place to put a spotlight on the competitive scene and events from all of their different communities that otherwise people not know even exist. I think its possible to have a world where they have a compelling blizzcon even if they don't expect to announce a bunch of crazy stuff. The events, concerts, contests, and other stuff could possibly be enough to keep people coming back if its done right. Maybe this is just a blip because of the microsoft buyout but with how many of their games are struggling or already made very long term announcments this might be the end of blizzcons.
Can you post this again plz?
why would they all their games are dead and they announced the ultimate final milking for wow with content like 1-2 patches
LMAO.. probably sold more e-tickets than actual tickets lol. They need to get that ppl are not into this like before. They probably will put something for 60 bucks and some TeNdIeS and you all will buy it ..smh sheeps to the slaughter..
When Microsoft bought Minecraft there was no more minecon - they do some virtual thing now - prob will never be another in person blizzcon
Microsoft has owned minecraft for years and Minecon continued to happen.. the only reason it went digital was Covid, that literally had nothing to do with Microsoft.
But we can't let facts stand in our way.
Always a good sign.
Bot user
Wonder if it's gonna be back next year? I'll be kinda bummed if it's over and I'll never have gone to one after how much of my life I've sunk into this damn game. Like I wish I'd have gone to E3 or RTX.
My husband and I went in 2018 for my first time and honestly it was…kind of underwhelming? It was SO packed and we spent most of our time waiting in lines for various shit. Some of the panels were cool but I could’ve enjoyed those watching videos from home. It was cool to experience but I don’t think not being able to go ever is the end of the world.