A Largely WoW-less Blizzcon

It's pretty clear that Blizzcon '14 will be remembered as the Blizzcon of Overwatch - that was really the big announcement, and it certainly has the potential to be a huge project and a big part of the Blizzard brand. It's not really an area of gaming that I'm all that familiar with (I tend to prefer story or exploration-based shooters, like Fallout 3 or Bioshock,) but given that Blizzard has a pretty strong place in multiplayer gaming, and clearly wants to get more into eSports (even though they've been a huge part of it thanks to Starcraft for a long time now,) and I think it looks like it will probably do well.

But it's not that surprising that WoW took a back seat this time around. With Warlords of Draenor coming out in less than a week (holy crap, Warlords of Draenor comes out in less than a week!) there's just not a lot left to tell. The Item/Classes/etc panel is largely reiterating stuff that we've known for a while, and I think the best thing they can really say is "there's new stuff. It's coming really soon, and not Blizzard soon, but six days soon."

This does raise some interesting questions, though. I had expected to at least hear about the future patches of Warlords - much as we learned about Ulduar when Wrath was announced and ICC after they had announced Cataclysm (for anyone who's a new player or just doesn't remember, it was actually really unusual - unprecedented, in fact - that we got the final raid tier of Mists before we heard about Warlords.) Barring some surprise tomorrow, it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

Here's the interesting thing, though: Blizzard claims that adding a bunch of people to the WoW team will result in faster content generation. I have no idea if it really will, but the goal is apparently to try to get out expansions faster - something they've talked about for a super long time, but this is the first time I've seen them do something to actually achieve it.

If they expect expansion six to actually come out a year from now, or even a year and a half, they're going to have to announce it before next year's Blizzcon, or they're going to have to move Blizzcon from its customary late-summer-through-autumn position and up to late-winter/early-spring.

For now, if anyone's feeling disappointed that there was no new expansion announced, I'd recommend considering that we haven't even gotten to play Warlords proper. Focus on getting that Highmaul gear. Chances are, we're going to be hearing something in just a few months, and absolute worst-case scenario, a year form now we'll know what comes next.