Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Expect a BlizzCon announcement soon


Earlier this morning during a chat with a friend and fellow Blizzard enthusiast, we both were left wondering whether there was any precedence for not knowing if BlizzCon is or isn't going to happen at this point in the year. To me, it feels pretty late in the game. I was lucky enough to attend BlizzCons '11 and '13, and swore Blizzard announced the dates early on in the year. After some very light wiki-research, I discovered it's really not that late at all. In fact, we should expect to hear the official word any day now.

Thanks to Entropia for supplying the event months
While in recent years Blizzard's been in the habit of announcing BlizzCon in the first quarter, we haven't yet reached two of the dates on that list, and we're not far past March 25th. So really, just under half of all Blizzcon announcements happened right around this point in the year. So fret not, we'll have an announcement soon. However, there's a distinct possibility the announcement will entail the reasons why they've elected to not hold a BlizzCon in 2014.

Part of me would not be completely shocked if they decided to skip this year given everything Blizzard is working on. There's Warlords of Draenor to finish up and get out to players in a timely fashion, likely meaning the event would be rather light on WoW news. Heroes of the Storm is in the Alpha stages and seems to be a few months away from full release. Surely they're continuing to work on new assets and expansions for Hearthstone, Diablo and Starcraft. That's not to mention the new trademark they recently filed.

At the same time, when I had the chance to speak with Mike Morhaime at BlizzCon '13, he mentioned that the event is a highlight for them and that they don't like skipping years. Given that Blizzard actually wants to do it, combined with the fact they're celebrating the 10th anniversary of World of Warcraft as well as the 20th anniversary of the Warcraft franchise, I don't see how they could skip 2014. Plus, if they weren't planning on BlizzCon this year, I can't imagine what reasons they'd have to wait this long to tell us it's not going to happen.

What's your hunch?



5 comments:

  1. BRING IT TO EUROPE. We had one before.

    /justsaying

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  2. In addition, remember that the 2012 cancellation announcement happened very early in January. This lends us to think that an outright "no blizzcon" would have already occurred.

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  3. That's a really good point I hadn't even thought of...

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  4. Another thing to consider is the Warcraft movie. What better time to show the official trailer?

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