After two years of uncertainty and great difficulty, Blizzard Entertainment is finally starting to recover. His current manager, Mike Ibarra, was even allowed to make the announcement. Interview with the Los Angeles Times This BlizzCon will likely return in the not-too-distant future. The announcement that fans have been waiting for a long time!
reign of chaos
In 2020, we learned the first terrible news that marked chaotic events for the company behind the most famous games of the last three decades: the extension of the Covid-19 pandemic, the physical release. BlizzCon 2020 has been canceled to limit the risk of infection.
To delight fans as much as possible, Blizzard has just announced its first online conference scheduled for February 2021: BlizzConline 2021! Only here at the time of the announcement, the clamor of an imaginary community and a serious lack of physical presence that players could imagine or prove were felt. Add to that the serious lack of truly over-the-top announcements, and you’re in for a massive disappointment for those eagerly anticipating the event.
And while we anticipate the return of the in-person event next year with the risks associated with the waning pandemic, it was without counting one of the most significant dramas in Blizzard Entertainment history. : Some Activision Blizzard. King’s managers, particularly those of World of Warcraft’s “Team 2”, have been (and still are) accused of sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace. Extremely serious facts, which will greatly increase the anger of a large part of the gaming community, will force the company to take measures to restore its image and show goodwill in the face of the problems that have tormented it for years.
Unfortunately (or fortunately), BlizzCon 2021 was also canceled for obvious reasons due to a very difficult internal and media situation, so finally the virtual edition was changed again. There will be no virtual BlizzCon in 2022, a first in company history.
calm after the storm
However, if the trial continues, it seems that the confidence of the players is slowly rising, in particular because of the major efforts of the developers to be more attentive to their community, especially in World of Warcraft.
If the lawsuit and the pandemic no longer seem to be keeping BlizzCon from happening in November 2022, it won’t be this year anyway. Instead of, Mike Ybarra explained to the Los Angeles Times The great return of the annual conference from 2023.
So after a four-year hiatus, BlizzCon is finally gearing up to make a comeback in 2023. No one knows yet what this “disruption” might create in this much-loved but necessary conference. To refresh you a bit. Will it save lives? Or would it be too short to allow for a real upgrade? And above all: What will be the impact (positive and negative) of Microsoft during this conference?
We also know that Diablo IV, Overwatch 2, and the World of Warcraft expansion Dragonflight will be rolling out during this event. What can this publisher do for their big comeback beyond major content updates? Any news from the popular survival game released earlier this year? A sequel to a Warcraft movie? Let’s dream even bigger: StarCraft? Or something we still don’t know about, like an “update”!
It’s going to be a long wait for this event, with many players already expecting a lot, but it’s still great news for the company and the fans. With the recent announcement of the acquisition of Spellbreak, the studio behind Proletariat Inc., where hundreds of developers have been working on the Dragonflight expansion for WoW for several months, it’s starting to bring some exciting and promising news for Blizzards!
So… See you at the Anaheim Convention Center in November 2023!
Source : Millenium
