Blizzcon this year is going to be a big one for WoW players, though to be fair, you can say that for most Blizzcons that come in odd-numbered years, as we typically get the announcement of the expansion to come the following year.
First off, let's talk briefly about what is sure to be a very large elephant in the room:
Blizzard has walked back some of its punishments of Blitzchung for speaking out in favor of the Hong Kong protestors after winning a Hearthstone tournament, giving his prize money back and cutting his ban to six months rather than a year.
Still, there is still a punishment. While I'm certainly more sympathetic to Blitzchung's stance and Hong Kong's desires for democratic autonomy than China's ruthless oppression of free speech and free thought, I can understand a general attitude of wanting to keep gaming tournaments a realm that is free of divisive politics. As someone with grandparents who survived the holocaust (though I hope having a personal history with this wouldn't be the only thing qualifying me to have this view,) I'd totally understand and laud Blizzard banning a player who used their platform to advance an ideology of white supremacy or some other horrific political stance.
That being said, I think one of the big challenges we face as a liberal democracy is the balance between political even-handedness and identifying those core political ideas that define us, you know, as a liberal democracy.
International capitalism, however, straddles countries that have different core political values. There was hope, when we established diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, that opening them to Western markets would also open them to liberalism (small L, to be clear, though big L Liberalism is one facet of that.) That clearly hasn't worked out as well as we hoped.
So Blizzard, being a big company with some immensely popular brands, has enjoyed profits gained by doing business in China, and are thus disincentivized to do things that would get on the Chinese government's bad side. Blizzard claims that their harsh actions toward Blitzchung were not based on a desire to bow to pressures from China, but that assertion has been met with some healthy skepticism from public.
It's sad, because the game designers and community managers that we gamers interact with had nothing to do with the decision, and it's their work that we're eager to find out about and celebrate at Blizzard's annual convention.
So, putting that massive elephant to the side, let's talk a bit about what I'm hoping to see.
I'm not going to go franchise-by-franchise here, because I honestly don't really know if all of them are going to get a major focus.
But we will go with franchises I am very curious about.
Diablo: The unveiling of Diablo Immortal was basically a marketing nightmare - you don't usually get new entries in a beloved franchise booed on stage. Of course, the upset over it (expressed in not really the most mature way) was based on a fear that there would be no more Diablo as we knew it - PC-based with all the complexity one expects of the franchise.
Reaper of Souls was a fantastic release that basically fixed Diablo III, but that came out a good long time ago, and players have wanted more. If Blizzard announces Diablo IV, and it looks enough like Diablo as we know it, people will be very happy.
WoW: Given that this blog is mostly a World of Warcraft one (admittedly with a whole lot more D&D in the past few years) I won't go into full detail here. We're almost certainly getting a new expansion announcement - and frankly if we don't, you're going to see an even worse reaction than Diablo Immortal got. That being said, what that expansion is going to be remains to be seen.
With 8.3 put on the PTR just weeks before Blizzcon, it's clear that they wanted not to have to spend too much time on the final patch of Battle for Azeroth, and so I think we're going to get a fair amount of info on the new expansion. Major features, like a new level cap, new zones, and any sort of new class or race are going to be the big headliners here.
If there is to be some revolutionary change to the game, my big suspicion is some fundamental shake-up to the breakdown of the two factions. I'll admit this is partially wishful thinking, but I suspect we're going to see a relaxation of the division between the factions, likely allowing cross-faction grouping at the very least. A "level squish" is also a possibility.
Overwatch: Overwatch is still quite popular. That being said, I could imagine, given that popularity, that they might finally release the single-player game that it could have been - whether that will be as add-on content for Overwatch itself or a new release (I would think the latter) is unknown.
We could easily see new heroes announced (likewise in Heroes of the Storm,) but it would be fun to get a bigger story.
A New IP: I haven't heard anything about a new IP. Overwatch, back when it was Titan, was in the works for many years (a guild member claimed to have done some concept art for it back during Wrath) but we haven't really been hearing about anything like that. Could be cool, but I'm not holding my breath.
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