Microsoft Buys Activision Blizzard

 Well, that was unexpected.

The megacorporation Microsoft is buying Activision Blizzard for a whole lot of money.

I'm not someone who understands the kind of complexities that this means for the business. I also don't really have much of an idea of what this means for the games we care about.

Blizzard, of course, remained a somewhat independent studio after its merger with Activision, and the horrifying crap that has come out in the past year was unfortunately not some outsider-imposed culture but something that was very much part of Blizzard itself, so I'm skeptical that a different corporate overlord is going to flush out all of the problems at the company.

There is a good chance that Bobby Kotick is going, though officially he's being kept on for now.

For us Mac users, I don't think there's a ton to worry about here that we didn't already have to worry about. While Blizzard started as a Mac gaming company, we've already seen them following the trend of focusing more on PC games, such as with Overwatch. But even though Microsoft makes Windows, they've always made programs that run on Macs, and an existing game like WoW is certain to remain playable on one of its native platforms.

Anyway. As satisfying as it might be to see Kotick fired, this is also another giant corporation amoeba-ing up another giant corporation, which is another example of the kind of late capitalist hell we all find ourselves in.

Blizzard Walkout

 Today, the staff at Blizzard is doing a walk-out - an act of protest against the policies that allowed for the abuses detailed in the recent lawsuit. I suspect that any direct invitation to players to join them in this protest by not playing Blizzard games might be considered a serious offense - generally you're not supposed to actively encourage people not to use your company's products.

The video game industry is one without any major union, which would normally serve as a protection against retribution for an act like this, so what they're doing is very brave (to their credit, higher-ups at Blizzard have announced that the employees won't face any disciplinary actions for this protest.)

Other than briefly logging on to leave a message for my guild yesterday, I have been avoiding WoW. I've considered the possibility of canceling my subscription (though as I'm a 6-monther, it wouldn't actually expire until November.) I don't really know what my plans are in the longterm. It's really tough when you're emotionally invested in something that is, on a technical level, the product of a profit-seeking corporation. Just as with any commercialized art form, you have passionate artists who work on the project while there are executives who are all about profit-maximizing, and often the desires of the former get overruled by those of the latter.

It would be reassuring if we could blame all of these problems on the people with the purse strings, though as we've seen, some of the abusers were high-ranking members of the creative side of the studio. There's some examination to be had about how the casual, "we're just a bunch of fun-loving nerds" culture that had endeared Blizzard to so many fans fed into the very toxicity and abuse. But additionally, the people who abuse their power usually do so with the advantages of seniority and seeming indispensability.

This is more complex than merely blaming this all on Activision and retaining an image of purity for the actual Blizzard studio. The rot was from within.

And what also makes it complicated is that we don't know who every abuser was and who every victim was. I don't really have a great sense of the hierarchy within the company or each game team, and while I've seen a lot of prominent men from the WoW team expressing their support for the people coming forward, at the same time I've seen women working at Blizzard say that they've seen their own abusers speaking out in false solidarity, as if they are one of the "good guys" when they're in fact the problem. Again, we don't know who is who.

The secrecy here is in part to protect the victims, which is a paramount priority, but it does mean that those of us who know Blizzard only from the outside are left to wonder to what extent our enjoyment of the game(s) is the celebration of horrendous people and to what extent it is the celebration of the work of a much larger number of passionate nerds who have only ever tried to make great games.

And there are sliding scales of culpability, the proportions of which are a matter for debate and investigation.

WoW, as I've said in my previous post on this subject, is important to me. I'm invested in it. There's a sense of community to it, many very fond memories from my time playing it. I've said many times that Azeroth and the broader Warcraft cosmos is one of my favorite fantasy worlds in fiction, and that feeling doesn't get erased by these disturbing stories. That's what makes this all so heartbreaking.

I want to be able to return to WoW, to see the remaining story of the Shadowlands and what comes next. But at the same time, I want that return to be one I can feel comfortable with, in which the victims have gotten their justice, and in which Blizzard's internal culture has transformed into one in which people who don't have the privilege of being white, straight, cis men can feel an equal sense of ownership of Blizzard's beloved properties, where their voices are heard. And that means that we need some change in leadership. We need women and people of color and LGBTQ+ people, and of course people who fall into multiples of those categories, to get a chance to lead the teams, to be the authorities.

There's a reason people love Blizzard. And it's so sad to learn how bad it's been there. But I hope that that love can transform the company into something better. Again, while the news has been a shock for those of us who did not know what was going on there, the exposure of the truth that has happened over the last week is actually a good thing. The bad stuff has been there all along. Now there's a chance to do something about it.

So, I applaud the brave employees for their protest. And I celebrate the bravery of the people who came forward with the stories of the abuse they suffered. It is easy, in the moment, to just shut down and endure these problems. No one wants to have to confront them. But in the long run, ignoring the problems makes things worse, and as we've seen in this case, even led to the death of one employee. That is unacceptable. Change must come.

Processing the News about Blizzard

 If this is the first place you're hearing it, I regret to report that the State of California is suing Blizzard over a culture of rampant sexual harassment, which, among other things, led to one employee's suicide. There are more details about this in the linked Kotaku article.

I have not fully processed this news, so what I'm giving here is my best summation of my initial emotional response.

It would be wonderful if the people who created art we cared about were as morally upstanding as we hoped them to be. And we tend to give the benefit of the doubt to people who create things that are meaningful to us. Sadly, this is a fallacy, and as we've seen with increasing frequency in the past few years, our favorite things are sometimes born from creators and managers who are reprehensible.

And make no mistake, the allegations in this suit are reprehensible. And I also want to clarify that I am not calling them "allegations" in an attempt to downplay their credibility. It's incredibly, incredibly rare for someone (most often women, who are so often subjected to these toxic environments by men,) to work up the courage to report harassment and other toxic behaviors, and especially if they are accusing something beloved, be it an individual or an institution, because of the inevitable backlash by a combination of the naive, the willfully ignorant, and the hatefully misogynistic.

World of Warcraft has been a major part of my life since 2006 - 15 years. My roommate introduced it to me when I was a lonely college student in New York, and its presence has been something to lean on in my battles with depression. This very blog is evidence of how I could quiet dark thoughts by letting my mind drift into Azeroth.

So it feels like a personal betrayal to find out that this has been going on.

That being said: many at the company are not the perpetrators of this, but its victims. And I don't want to belittle the work that they have done. As is so often the case, the whistleblowers lament having to damage a company at which they landed their dream jobs. I've often daydreamed about working in Blizzard's creative department developing WoW's narrative, and I'm sure that for those who get such a coveted position, it can feel like magic. More than most game companies, Blizzard has always worked to cultivate a community between its developers and the fans.

But then, I'll admit that I've always felt a little skeptical. Why, after all, in 2021, is it that every time I see a person in a leadership position at Blizzard, it's a middle-aged white guy? Obviously I'm not saying that every middle-aged white guy is a sexual predator - depending on when you count it, I'm either newly a middle-aged white guy or will be in a couple years. But it does seem that when that's your entire leadership, behaviors that make it harder for anyone who doesn't fit in that category to work tend to get ignored and, often, covered up.

There is a more optimistic take on all of this, though: the fact is that this behavior was going on already, and our learning about it did not cause it to exist. But with it exposed to daylight, there's a possibility for change.

And I really hope that that change comes. Azeroth is one of my favorite fantasy worlds, and the characters I've played over a decade and a half on it and within its larger cosmos are dear to me.

Blizzard needs to clean house. And this might mean the exposing some beloved figures, which is not going to be easy or painless. But remember, this was all going on for a long time. The bad stuff is already here. The opportunity is for some good change to come.

Unsurprisingly, Blizzcon 2020 Cancelled

In a year when gathering large groups of people together in the same place is a recipe for the spread of a disease that has killed 100,000 people in this country alone, Blizzard has made the responsible choice and cancelled their company's famed (mostly) annual convention.

As someone who mostly interacts with Blizzard through WoW (though I do also play a fair amount of Hearthstone) I wasn't all that invested in this year's convention, given that we already know what expansion is coming next.

Still, I know that it's a big event and people often go there to interact with friends they've made online in person. In our current situation, all friends are online friends.

Blizzard has said that they are looking into ways to have the content one would expect at such a convention happen online (which, to be fair, is how most people experience the conventions anyway).

Blizzcon Announcements: Diablo IV, Overwatch 2, WoW Shadowlands, Hearthstone Descent of Dragons

We got four major announcements this morning in the opening ceremonies that just closed.

In brief:

Diablo:

Diablo IV is coming, and looks to be super Grimdark, with the release of Lilith, the demoness who, with the Angel Inarius, birthed the first Nephalem and is thus the mother of humanity. Three classes are known: the Barbarian, Sorceress, and Druid. Other than just being another Diablo game, I don't know if we know much about the gameplay.

Overwatch:

Overwatch 2 is coming, and with it, there will be more single-player and PvE content to tell the game's story. In a bit of welcome news, players who are still playing Overwatch 1 will be able to play with players in 2 on the same maps, and any cosmetic rewards you've earned in the first game carry over to the second - this is a pretty great way not to divide the playerbase and to make people feel more excited for the new game.

Hearthstone:

Descent of Dragons is going to be the finale to the E.V.I.L. vs Adventurer's League story they've been doing, with a major dragon theme as well as a new multiplayer mode called Battlegrounds.

Warcraft:

The next WoW expansion is Shadowlands, and while details are still filtering in from various angles, there will apparently be a level squish (players currently at 120 will go to 50, with a new cap of 60) and there will be a roguelike-style thing called the Tower of the Damned where players can progress through a shifting dungeon. Additionally, there will apparently be four different Covenants that players can choose between to get new campaigns and even abilities, based on the different factions within the Shadowlands.

Blizzcon Schedule: Four "Coming Soon" Panels that are Free to Watch

Blizzard released the schedule for the convention coming in a week and a half, and there's some curious stuff there.

On the main stage, after the opening ceremonies, there will be four panels. None of these have been given names, but they will be free to watch, which is usually only allowed for those opening ceremonies when they do the very initial announcements - playing announcement trailers and such.

There have been rumors coming from Blizzard employees that this is going to be a very big Blizzcon, and this does seem to play into that rumor.

Here are my general predictions:

We're obviously getting a new WoW expansion, though I also wonder if it's going to be a bigger one than usual. With the conclusion of the faction war, we might see a fundamental shift to the way that the game handles its two rival sides. Indeed, if 8.3 is supposed to see the longterm (though I would never say permanent) defeat of the Old Gods, it would mean that the background villain that has been there for all of WoW (though only retroactively through all of Warcraft) has been dealt with. I don't think we're ever going to get a WoW 2 (or rather, I'd argue that we got it back in 2007 and it was called Burning Crusade) but I wouldn't be surprised if we get an expansion with a more radical redesign of the game - possibly as big as Cataclysm.

Next, I think Diablo IV is looking more and more likely, especially after a German magazine seemed to spoil that announcement. Diablo players have been waiting for a new game for a long time, and I think part of the reason Blizzard was caught off guard by the uproar over Diablo Immortal was that they would never have thought of it as "replacing" a true sequel because they already knew the real sequel was in the works. What Diablo IV is going to be like, however, remains to be seen - Reaper of Souls ended on a scary note - is Tyrael going to turn on humanity, or perhaps are the Nephalem going to be the new villains?

Another big speculation/rumor is that we could get a sequel to Overwatch. The real hope for that would be one that has a single-player mode. Overwatch has a deep well of lore that, frustratingly, is almost entirely absent from the game itself. Having a game where we could play through the story and also allow said story to evolve would be pretty exciting.

Now, the fourth panel could be for another one of Blizzard's major franchises. Or, it could be for a new IP. Blizzard is of course very conservative in creating new franchises - Hearthstone is really part of the Warcraft brand and Heroes of the Storm is just a Smash Bros.-like mishmash of their brands. That means the gap between their two most recent IPs, Overwatch and Diablo, was over a decade. Meanwhile, their most iconic one (except perhaps if you live in South Korea) is 25 years old this year.

Anyway, the rumor mill should be kicking into high gear.

Two Weeks Until Blizzcon: Hopes and Thoughts

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.

Capitalism, Authoritarianism, and the Games we Love

Blizzard recently banned a competitive Hearthstone player after they spoke out against the violent crackdown on protests in Hong Kong by the Chinese government.

I would not claim to have a deep understanding of all the issues at play, but the initial spark of these protests appears to be the that China wants to institute an extradition law that would allow Hong Kong residents to be tried for acts that are considered criminal on the mainland even if they are not in Hong Kong - which would essentially gut the autonomy of the city that has existed since the "One Country Two Systems" policy was adopted after the UK returned Hong Kong to Chinese control.

The history of Hong Kong is something I feel even less qualified to exposit on than the protests, but while its position as a U.K. territory is very obviously the result of an imperialist system that has generally fallen out of favor in most of the world, the U.K.'s values of liberalism (small-l liberalism, to specify) and democracy took root there. Meanwhile, China has never had a liberal democracy, and instead, since the mid-20th Century has been under an authoritarian Communist regime.

In the past, the U.S. has defined itself as a promoter of democratic ideals, valuing freedom and civil liberties. But it has also, particularly starting with the Cold War, defined itself as a promoter of capitalism.

Capitalism is one of those words that now means very different things to different people. It could mean just the right to choose your own job and build your own business, allowing ideas to succeed or fail based on their own merits (as opposed to having a planned economy,) but there's also a version of capitalism that is preached in the West (and throughout much of the world) that considers the pursuit of profit to be the most important goal for any business person.

Through much of the Cold War, the American theory was that capitalism was intrinsically linked to liberal democracy, and so we championed it in opposition to Communism, which was both authoritarian and socialist.

Now, the irony is that Communism in China today is very good at this hard-line capitalism. There is a massive amount of money to be found in China, and it's on track to become a larger economy than the United States.

And companies stand to leave a massive amount of money on the table if they don't court China's market. But unlike in the US, where we have the first amendment, in China there is no enshrined freedom of speech. And thus, nothing bars the Chinese government legally from terminating a business' right to do business in China if someone who in some way represents that company (such as a professional e-Sports player) says something critical of the Chinese government.

So you could make the argument that Blizzard had no choice - that they stood to damage or potentially lose their business relationship with China if they did not ban this guy.

But you could also make the argument that an American company should honor American values, and that the loss of profit - even a substantial amount of profit - should be worth it if means standing up for freedom and democracy.

Perhaps Blizzard was well within their rights to do this. But we, as players, are also well within our rights to register our disappointment with our wallets. I cannot tell anyone what to do in response to Blizzard's actions. I don't even know what my own actions will be. Given the vast number of massive corporations that we now deal with on a daily basis, could we even keep track of all the ethical misdeeds that they've all committed? But also, is looking at the tangled mess that is our corporate complicity and just throwing your hands up, saying "well, what are you going to do?" just lazy? Ironically, it's harder to make a choice like this when it's not something like your grocery store or your gas station - when it's something you've opted into as opposed to a staple of modern life.

Because while Blizzard is a company that makes games in order to make money, games are a medium, like any art form, that can bring people together. I have people I've played WoW with for ten years, and I've also got characters I've lived in for over a decade (13 years at this point) that mean something to me.

It can be an embarrassing thing to feel such emotional resonance with something that was created for profit, but such is the nature of art in a capitalist society.

I would much rather simply be speculating about WoW's next expansion or whether we'll get a Diablo 4 announcement at Blizzcon than weighing the ethics of paying a company that buckled to authoritarianism in order to enjoy my video games. But I guess that's the world we live in.

Blizzcon 2019: November 1st and 2nd

Blizzard has just announced the dates of this year's Blizzcon, and it'll be the first two days of November.

So, what do we expect, announcement-wise? Let's go franchise by franchise. Obviously, they could start a new one - Overwatch was a big expansion of their brand (and weirdly inspired a whole genre of animated porn, which... congrats? Maybe?) But Blizzard is fairly conservative with its IPs, and so I'm going to assume we'll see updates by existing franchises.

Warcraft:

This will be the main event - it's an odd-numbered year, meaning that we're due to get the announcement of a new WoW expansion to be released about a year later. By then 8.2 will have been out for a while, and we'll either be in the middle of 8.3 or it'll be coming soon. I think it's hard to judge BFA given how overwhelmingly popular (and in this player's opinion, superlative) Legion was, but it's pretty clear that WoW is holding to its pattern of kind of alternating between really good expansions and not so good ones. If that pattern holds, the next expansion will join the ranks of Wrath, Mists, and Legion. Where it stands among those (and again, if it does fit that pattern) remains to be seen, and its announcement is not going to tell us that. Legion was announced at Gamescom to a stereotypically dispassionate German crowd, and enthusiasm was probably tempered by the real disappointment of Warlords of Draenor, but wound up being what I think a lot of people consider WoW's best expansion.

An expansion announcement is coming - the question is what we think it will be about - I'm crossing fingers for a Death/Shadowlands expansion, but we'll see. Could be anything from Dragon Isles to a risen Black Empire.

Outside of WoW, if WCIII Reforged isn't out yet, we'll probably get updates on that, and possibly hear about similar treatments to the earlier games.

Overwatch:

Overwatch is one of the games they have that has pretty regular updates, so I'd expect more heroes and maps and events, probably with a new animated short. We'll also probably get more of the eSports angle with Overwatch League (to be honest, I'm about as interested in eSports as I am in regular sports, which is not very much.)

Heroes of the Storm:

While it's slowed down, HotS will, like Overwatch, probably get some continuing updates. New heroes, new map, maybe.

Hearthstone:

Again, a game that gets regular updates, so I'd expect a new expansion announcement.

Starcraft:

Big shrug here. I think this franchise, despite being one of its most historically popular, is kind of in stasis. The story was finished pretty emphatically in Starcraft II, or at least seems that way. I really don't follow this one, so apologies if I've forgotten something.

Diablo:

Ok, here's the interesting one: I've never seen such a negative reaction to a game announcement as Diablo Immortal, the anger over it seeming to shock the developers who announced it. I get that it wasn't the game people wanted, but it's especially bizarre that, according to Kotaku, Blizzard has actually been working on a Diablo IV, yet did not announce it.

Announcing that it's in development - even if it's a super-early stage - would probably be a good move and give players something to look forward to. I think Blizzard underestimated how skeptical old-school gamers are of the microtransaction-fueled mobile gaming market. Anyway, if there is to be a new main-series Diablo game, giving players something to look forward to would probably be good. Hell, I'm still feeling the high of hearing Elder Scrolls VI announced and I don't think we've gotten a single detail about that game in over a year.

Mass Layoffs at Blizzard and What It Might Mean For Future Games

Blizzard has worked hard to be a company that people have a certain loyalty to. While WoW has always remained my primary interest with them as a company, I've tried out Diablo, Starcraft, and other titles of theirs largely due to the sense of their commitment to quality.

Eleven years ago, Blizzard merged with Activision, and many worried this would mean the exact sort of thing we've seen recently, with as many as 800 people losing their jobs despite the fact that the company had record profits in the last fiscal year.

I don't pretend to know how to run a game development/publishing company, but that seems backward and does not do much to dispel the sense that there's a mercenary level of corporate greed at work here.

Blizzard's success of course ebbs and flows, and different titles have their days in the sun. My concern for their titles is of course based more in a critical approach rather than raw numbers. They stopped publishing subscriber numbers for WoW after they started to dip from their late-Wrath/early-Cataclysm high, but from a subjective point of view, I think that Legion was the best expansion they ever came out with. As a player, even if I find Battle for Azeroth a lackluster follow-up to Legion (which, to be fair, was a hell of a tough act to follow, and it's still a hell of a lot better than Warlords of Draenor) I have had faith that we'd continue to get interesting stuff that makes the game worth playing.

The staff cuts have been primarily in marketing, it appears, and other "non-developmental" roles. This is admittedly a fuzzy subject for an industry outsider to comment on. But I do think that the identity that Blizzard has built is largely due to the efforts of some very skilled marketers.

It also appears that much of the games' support staff is being cut as well, and that to me is a huge red flag.

One of the reasons for my loyalty with Blizzard has been their fantastic customer support. It might take a while, but when I've had issues with WoW, GMs have always been incredibly helpful and responsive and willing to stick with the problem until it is solved. Beyond the quality of the games, this is one of the things that has always given me a positive impression of Blizzard as a company.

I don't think they're going to be cancelling any of their major titles as a result of this, but I do really worry that one of gaming's legends is putting short-term profits ahead of long-term quality, and that's never a good strategy.

My heart goes out to the people who have lost their jobs. I know for many of them it was probably a dream to work for a company that has earned such good will from its fans, and getting canned for no good reason must feel like an intense betrayal.

This blog started as a WoW blog, and while it has diversified (largely as I've learned to obsess over other games) I still want WoW and Blizzard in general to be something I can root for and enjoy playing. Seeing stuff like this adds a bit of bitterness to that experience.

Blizzcon 2018 Opening Ceremony Roundup

Ok, let's get a quick and dirty list of announcements!

WoW: Classic is going to come with your normal WoW subscription and releases next summer! More 8.2 and beyond news coming this afternoon.

Warcraft: WCIII will be remastered in Warcraft III Reforged. Models and terrain are getting ground-up rebuilds, giving us pretty gorgeous looking units.

Starcraft II: Zeratul will be a new co-op commander.

Diablo: Diablo Immortal will be a new mobile game that they claim will be a full action-RPG set between Diablo II and III.

Overwatch: New McCree-focused cinematic introducing Ashe, the leader of the Deadlock gang as a new hero for the game (plus a new Omnic character who is likely to come later.)

Hearthstone: Rastakhan' Rumble will be the next expansion, based around Trolls, Loa, and fighting at the Gurubashi Arena.

Heroes of the Storm: The first HOTS-original character is getting added: Orphea, the daughter of the Raven Lord, will use a bunch of spooky gooey shadow magic (with teeth!) and walks around with a massive coffin on her back.

I'll go into more details as we get them.

Blizzcon Expectations

Blizzcon 2018 is coming in less than a month. What might we expect to see?

I'll put this caveat here that I'm less of a Blizzard omnivore than I used to be - I haven't played much Diablo or Heroes of the Storm in a while. But I can speculate!

Overwatch: While perhaps not as steady a stream as it had when the game was newer, Overwatch does tend to get new characters over time. I suspect that we'll get some new reveal, probably another one of their gorgeous story cinematics, and likely updates on how the Overwatch League is going. They might also announce a new character.

Heroes of the Storm: HotS gets a pretty steady stream of characters, so I'd expect two or three to be announced at Blizzcon. New events and maps would also be welcome. Given their experiments in Nexus-specific stories, we might see that expanded with perhaps fully original characters, though that's pretty broad speculation.

Hearthstone: A new expansion's announcement would be pretty well-timed, given that the Dr. Boom cards have been out for a while.

Starcraft: I don't really know what the plans for the future of the Starcraft franchise are. I suspect that they'll focus primarily on new multiplayer options, but this franchise has shuffled its way to the back a bit.

Warcraft: With 8.1 likely coming either right before or right after Blizzcon, it's time for us to find out more about where the expansion is going. Two years ago, we got a big preview of the Broken Shore and Tomb of Sargeras, with a last-second cliffhanger-offhand-comment being that in the patch to follow, we'd go to Argus. I suspect we'll get a big preview for 8.2 and possibly a similar hint to 8.3, which I'd assume is BFA's capstone patch. The Blizzcon to follow will presumably be to announce the next expansion, so this is when we can expect a big focus on BFA.

Diablo: A week ago I might have said that there's something massive, like Diablo 4 or a second Diablo 3 expansion. But Blizzard has attempted to calm the hype after building it up, so what I suspect is that we're going to get more of a promise than a preview - I would bet that they don't really have the project in a state that's ready to show off, but that we might get a title or basic announcement and then a promise that we'll get a big preview to follow. We might also get word on a rumored Diablo Netflix show, which would be a pretty big deal.

Speculating on the Blizzcon Schedule

Well, Blizzard released the schedule for Blizzcon. Let's take a look and speculate wildly!

I'm going to focus on WoW stuff here, as I get a sense that it'll be the big franchise this time around. Unfortunately for Diablo fans, it doesn't look like there's anything going on with them (something a Blizz representative already posted about earlier.)

It's an odd-numbered year, so we're due for a WoW expansion announcement. I believe these have all been announced at Blizzcon except for Legion, which I think they pushed earlier to Gamescom because Warlords had basically finished in early summer, releasing it's 6.2 patch without any third raid tier coming.

There are six separate panels (not counting the Blizzcon opening ceremony, where the announcements proper are generally unveiled.) These are What's Next, Voices of Blizzard: The Powerful Women of Warcraft (which is apparently going to be a panel for voice actors, specifically the women,) a Deep Systems Dive, and then on the second day The Art of Warcraft, World of Warcraft Q&A, and a Boss Design Workshop.

A "What's Next" panel is usually about new expansions (though not always.) I'm curious about the systems deep dive, which I'd guess means we're going to see some very different new gameplay features coming with expansion seven. Many have speculated for a while now that the next expansion could be a nautical adventure, and some have speculated that the Vindicaar might be a dry run for ships we might command from like a Garrison or Class Hall.

While I'd be happy for them to simply give the spotlight to the female voice actors and characters of WoW (even though I get the sense that the creators of the franchise began as a real boys' club, there are quite a few memorable women in the Warcraft cosmos who aren't defined by their relationships with men, much to Blizz's credit) I also wonder if this could be pointing to an expansion where a number of women play very prominent roles. The theoretical nautical expansion would likely involve both Jaina and Azshara as key figures, and if it also ties into N'Zoth and general Old-God-ness, I could see Alleria also playing a big role in bridging the expansions.

Again, the Gameplay Deep Dive suggests to me some big system changes. I think that most specs are pretty good where they are in terms of gameplay - maybe some tweaks to the new (or essentially new) specs like Havoc, Vengeance, Survival, and Outlaw, but I don't think we need yet another overhaul. But plenty of other systems could see changes, and I never put it past Blizzard to do something wildly unexpected. One key thing I could see them looking at is level scaling - using that tech to allow players of wildly different levels to play together or maybe even doing a level squish along with an almost inevitable stat squish.

Art of Warcraft will probably showcase art for the new expansion. Meanwhile, the Q&A will be whatever it is. I'm curious about the Boss Design Workshop, but I imagine this will be less about unveiling new stuff than just talking about their philosophy and showing the steps it takes to come up with boss mechanics.

I'm sure we'll find out about new Heroes for Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch and new expansions for Hearthstone. But it looks like there's not a ton for the other franchises. As someone who favors WoW over the other Blizzard stuff, though, I think this Blizzcon's for me.

Blizzcon 2016 Happening Now

Yes, it's Blizzcon!

I'll confess that I haven't been quite as invested in this one this year as I have been in the past, given that most of Blizzard's games have been updated rather recently. Legion launched about two months ago, Legacy of the Void isn't that old. Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm get regular small updates.

With the opening ceremonies happening now, any huge announcements are imminent, so I'll post anything really big that's coming.

Blizzcon 2016 Schedule Released

Blizzard's mostly annual proprietary convention is coming next month, and they have just released the schedule. Of course, these schedules can sometimes give you a good clue to where their various games are going and if there's something exciting to anticipate.

There are several "What's Next" panels, which frequently imply expansions, though I've learned to take that with a grain of salt after being very confident in a new Diablo III expansion for previous Blizzcons. Also, the World of Warcraft "What's Next" panel specifically refers to World of Warcraft: Legion, and given that the company has made it clear that they're going to focus on really ensuring that Legion has legs, I honestly think even hinting at the expansion to follow Legion would not be met by a good response - something that they're aware of.

So let's break it down by franchise.

Hearthstone:

Hearthstone gets updates at a pretty good rate and is a huge cash cow for Blizzard. We just got a new adventure, so I'd expect to hear about a new expansion this time around. No hints as to what that will be so far, as far as I know.

Heroes of the Storm:

Heroes just added new maps (which I haven't actually played yet) and new characters. Much like Hearthstone, though, additions to the game come at a pretty regular pace, rather than big bursts. So I'd expect them to announce a couple of new heroes and possibly a map, as well as new skins of course.

Diablo:

Diablo's 20th anniversary is coming up. Diablo III is also very much ready for a new expansion, or perhaps we're ready for Diablo IV. I don't see a ton of Diablo panels, though, so I'll remain skeptical.

Starcraft:

Starcraft has a "Foundations for the Future" panel. Obviously the grand Starcraft II trilogy has come to a conclusion (and frankly, the plot really seems tied up in a definitive way) so I am curious about what their plan for the future of the franchise is. Granted, the original Starcraft persisted as a popular multiplayer game basically until Starcraft II came out (and may even still be played) so I would bet that Blizzard's focus is going to be on tending to the multiplayer side of things.

Overwatch:

Like Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone, Overwatch is a game that gets frequent updates, and so I wouldn't expect to see a huge thing like an expansion or sequel yet. Instead I'd expect to maybe hear about new game modes, maps, and characters that will filter in over time.

Warcraft:

Legion just came out a month and a half ago, and they're also making it clear that they're going to stick with this expansion for the long haul (fingers crossed they succeed at that) and so the idea of hearing about the next expansion is basically a 0% probability. In fact, I'm not even sure that we're going to hear about the second raid tier, as I imagine that the Nighthold raid won't even be open yet at that point, given that we'll be getting Trial of Valor in between Emerald Nightmare and Nighthold. 7.1 will probably come out some time before the end of the year, but not necessarily before Blizzcon. Still, if they wanted to reassure players, announcing content to follow the release of Nighthold would be very welcome.

Blizzcon Announcement Leak - Nov. 4th and 5th

Blizzard briefly put up an announcement of this year's Blizzcon, but quickly took the announcement down. However, it's no shock that the company would have it this year. So what kind of predictions should we expect?

World of Warcraft:

Legion is going to launch some time in the middle of the year - my guess is mid-to-late June, so at that point we will have been on the Broken Isles for a few months. At most I think we might be getting ready for whatever Legion's second raiding tier will be. Assuming that they're continuing with the Warlords model (as disastrous as that might be, it's possible they started planning Legion before they realized what a bad idea a two-tier expansion is) that's probably going to be the Tomb of Sargeras, but I'm hoping that it will be a middle-tier - though given what we've seen of the Legion alpha, I don't know what that middle tier would entail.

Anyway, it's extremely unlikely we'll start hearing about the expansion that comes after Legion until 2017.

Starcraft:

Starcraft just completed its Starcraft II trilogy. I honestly don't know what's in store for the series. The ending of Legacy of the Void really closed off the vast majority of the storyline. There's still room for conflict, certainly, and new characters might arise to carry forward, but I think after the long rollout of Starcraft II, we're probably going to see the series take a breather at the very least.

Diablo:

There was apparently some hiring call for people to work on a new Diablo game. The question then is whether it's a new expansion or Diablo IV. I'd wager more on the former, as Diablo III has gotten fairly popular, especially with the console version. A new class and a new act would work pretty well, and perhaps a bunch of new ideas brought into the seasonal system or the bounties/exploration mode. There's also a few story hooks that would carry directly from what's happened in DIII so far. I just hope they don't turn the Nephalem evil or something.

Hearthstone:

Hearthstone has been getting pretty regular periodic updates, so I don't expect to see anything terribly radical. Probably a new solo adventure and maybe a new expansion announced (by then, Whispers of the Old Gods will have been out for several months.)

Heroes of the Storm:

Like Hearthstone, Heroes is built for periodic small updates - throwing in a hero or map every now and then, and of course skins and mounts. I'm hoping we see more unusual maps like Towers of Doom (both the unique tile set and objectives.) Still, major shifts are probably going to be rare, so I'd simply look for these periodic update announcements.

Overwatch:

Overwatch will have officially been out for a while by then. Given that it's a general-admission type game, we won't see individual new characters introduced. We might see a big chunk brought in as DLC, though. It'll be way too early to announced a full sequel though.

Something New:

Blizzard has been expanding its franchises recently, so I wouldn't be shocked to hear them coming up with another major project to work on. Personally I hope we get something a little more solo/story-driven. As enjoyable as I'm finding Heroes of the Storm, I tend to prefer games with a solid solo campaign, and finding that "Project Titan" was scrapped in favor of making Overwatch a multiplayer-only shooter was pretty disappointing.

Tomorrow - Game Systems and Q&A Panel. For now: Other news from Blizzcon!

Tomorrow we'll be getting a panel dedicated to game systems. Given the massive work that they'll be doing for level scaling in Legion, I think there's a good chance that that will be the main focus.

Still, we could find out some stuff about class changes and maybe even professions. We also need some more info on how the artifact weapons will work.

The Beta is supposed to launch within weeks (which could mean mid or late December for all we know) so I wonder if they don't really want to bother getting into the nitty-gritty of class details until the Beta patch notes are up.

We'll get some tidbits out of the Q&A, but to be honest, we usually don't learn a ton of big info from those, as they generally like to announce that stuff on their own terms.

Still, I'd say that this Blizzcon had some pretty big surprises up its sleeves, so I'm not disappointed. I really did not expect to see the cinematic this early.

While I'm 99.99% certain I'm going to be getting Legion at this point, I still can't really bring myself to pre-order a game until it has a release date. I can't imagine Demon Hunters will be available until the 7.0 patch, and I'm sure there will be a date by then. And then, well, Futurama Fry money meme etc.

Also, I still have a level 90 boost. Wonder if that will stack with a 100 one?

Oh man, there's a ton of other stuff from other games.

Heroes of the Storm is getting three warcraft characters. These are Genn Greymane, who transforms from wolf form to human in combat (that might be a real-money purchase for me,) a Dryad whose name I can't remember, and Cho'gall, who's the weirdest hero yet. See, one player plays as Cho while the other plays as Gall. Also, Cho'gall will be gained not through money or gold, but through playing with people playing Cho'gall. (Guess I should play a bunch tonight to try to get that.)

There's also a new battleground called Towers of Doom, some cool new skins (including an Arthas as Castlevania-style Dracula one) and also a hint that the Headless Horseman might be coming as well (though he could be a map feature for the new battleground.)

There's also a new Arena mode, which I assume is more of a deathmatch.

Hearthstone is getting a new expansion/adventure set called League of Explorers, which seems to be, well, Adventure-Movie-themed.

SCII is getting Legacy of the Void in a few days, so not a lot of news there.

Diablo III doesn't have an expansion to announce, but there is a new patch with new areas coming.

And Overwatch will be buy-to-play, with all 21 heroes available from the start and all maps. There's a special addition with cosmetic rewards. It'll also be available for Xbox One and PS4. Also some new heroes were announced.

And that's about it, as far as I know. Phew.

Blizzard Taking Another Crack at Voice Chat

Until the unnamed 6.1 patch, the gold standard for patches that players totally forgot even happened was Burning Crusade's 2.2. 2.1 had brought the Black Temple, the Battle for Mount Hyjal, and the Netherwing daily quests, while 2.3 would later bring Zul'Aman, the Engineering Flying Machine and Turbo-Charged Flying Machine mounts as well as the first awesome epic goggle armor, and the town of Mudsprocket in Dustwallow Marsh, complete with several new quests in the zone.

2.2 brought Voice Chat. Yep, WoW's had an in-game Voice chat since Burning Crusade. Have you used it? I actually did, I think twice.

Players have instead typically opted to use other programs like TeamSpeak, Ventrillo, Mumble, or whatever the kids are using these days.

Well, guess what?

Blizzard is at it again.

This time, Blizz is trying to create a pan-Battle.net voice chat system. They'll start testing it with the Overwatch beta, which starts next Tuesday.

Good luck Blizzard!

Blizzcon Schedule

Well, Blizzard has now officially (as opposed to earlier leaks) released the schedule for Blizzcon next month. As it stands, World of Warcraft: Legion could really be the headliner, with four panels. Likely, because of the Gamescom announcement, we aren't going to have the same comprehensive set of panels we've gotten in previous odd-year Blizzcons, as we already know the headlining features.

WoW will have a "World and Content Overview" panel, a cinematic panel, a Game Systems panel, and a Q&A. My hope for the first of these is that we'll get a better sense of the patch release cycle for Legion. I don't think it's a terribly controversial statement to say that Mists of Pandaria handled patches a whole lot better than Warlords. Giving us a roadmap for the future of the expansion (preferably a big one you've got to unfold a bunch) would do wonders to mitigate fears that the future of "short expansion cycles" means anemic expansions. The cinematic panel should be fun, though not really about in-game stuff. Game Systems, on the other hand, could extend to a ton of features. I expect we'll be learning about how the Demon Hunter will function as a class, and also what's going to happen with the various class revamps, like Survival Hunters going melee. Personally, I'm very interested in seeing how Demonology adjusts to the loss of Metamorphosis (which is currently the heart of the spec) and also how much they'll lean into the "pirate swashbuckler" archetype for Combat Rogues, as that might actually get me interested in playing the spec.

There is no specific class panel, though, so it's possible this panel will focus more on larger systems, and we'll just have to wait for the beta patch notes to see what's in store. Given that Blizzard announced Legion will go into beta this year, I'm hoping we'll get a beta start date, though if it has to start in January, I won't be terribly surprised (no later than January though, I hope.)

On the Diablo III front, there's not much. I actually expected there to be a new expansion at least announced by now, but it really doesn't seem like there's enough to support that this time around, with just one panel called, generically enough "Dev Talk." Reaper of Souls did a ton of good for Diablo III's systems (and Westmarch is a really cool setting) but I think it's time for a new story/setting and hopefully class.

Starcraft II has a couple panels, but the intriguing one is "The Future of Starcraft II." The SCII model was to basically have oversized campaigns, but effectively really only cycle of campaigns between the three releases. The Future might simply be to talk about Legacy of the Void, but I imagine they want to keep the SC train rolling, given how big an esport it is.

Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone are both on a much faster cycle, so I suspect we'll just get a preview of what the next few months will bring us. New card expansions, new heroes, and new battlegrounds are what we'll see. I don't know if we're going to be getting any world-shaking announcements.

The Overwatch beta is coming relatively soon, I think, but I wonder what we'll be seeing for that. There are two panels, one that's just "What's New" which I think is basically "the whole game." The other is the "World of Overwatch," meaning I think we'll be seeing more of the lore behind the game.

Personally, what would attract me to Overwatch is some kind of single-player or at least PvE content. I'm ok with Heroes of the Storm given that it's kind of in that Smash Bros. category - it's all about smashing your toys together. Given that Overwatch is this whole new intellectual property, I'd be much more interested in exploring it through a campaign, rather than reading stuff outside of the game that kind of contradicts my having Tracer fight alongside Reaper.

Obviously the thing I'm most excited about is WoW news, and hopefully the imminent start of the Legion beta. We've still got over three weeks to wait, though, so sit tight.

What to Expect at Blizzcon 2015

We're now two months away from 2015's Blizzcon. This is the Blizzard-only convention where they tend to make their biggest announcements, but also, because it's only Blizzard's show, they get to go into nitty-gritty stuff that wouldn't really fly at a regular convention, like having an entire panel dedicated to professions or something like that.

Blizzard has been pushing a lot of game-synergy, with rewards in one game earned by playing another - and it's been a pretty effective strategy. Heroes of the Storm is basically the embodiment of this philosophy, especially with all the goodies you get in-game for playing their other games (I have a Dire Wolf mount and Malthael's Charger in HotS because of what I've done in WoW and Diablo III.)

So, franchise by franchise, what might we see?

Diablo III:

It might be time to introduce a new expansion. Diablo III was massively improved by the Reaper of Souls expansion, and they've further iterated on the game to make various forms of gameplay more rewarding. Still, many of the old locales, and even the areas from Act V have perhaps started to get old. We've dealt with most of the remaining problems, of course (it was so, so satisfying to kill Adria after what she did to Leah,) but new ones have arisen (like the fact that Malthael freed the souls of the seven evils during our fight against him.

Adding a new class would also be fun, as usual. To be fair, the existing ones do cover a pretty satisfying gamut of RPG archetypes, though perhaps some kind of nature-themed class could work.

It'd also be nice to find some way to salvage Leah's soul. Pretty much the most innocent and likable person to be transformed into the embodiment of evil. I actually wonder if they might end Diablo III with one of the series' classic dark endings, having us fall to corruption in order to save Leah. Though I'd rather see the rebirth of the Nephalem have a much larger impact on the Diablo universe than just sweeping our heroes under the rug as monsters.

Starcraft II:

Legacy of the Void is being tested, I believe, so I suspect we won't really find out much earth-shattering news about that. It remains to be seen what they're going to do with the Starcraft franchise once Legacy of the Void completes the Starcraft II trilogy. Future expansions will have to exist outside of the obvious Terran-Zerg-Protoss trifecta. Perhaps there will be an expansion with smaller campaigns for each faction. Still, I doubt we'll hear about it any time soon.

Hearthstone:

They just released a new expansion, but these seem to be quick to make, so we might even hear about another one coming up. Alternatively, they could release another solo adventure.

Heroes of the Storm:

With the Eternal Conflict event ending tomorrow (no treasure goblin portrait for me, though I think the mount will still be purchasable through October,) they might be gearing up for a new themed event. I think a Starcraft event with new maps would be great - so far all the maps are fantasy-themed (well, Luxoria Sun Temple might have a steampunky feel to it) so it would be cool to have some high-tech forts and minions to blast.

New heroes have been released on a pretty regular basis (we're getting Rexxar tomorrow,) so I expect this will just continue. Still, if there's a special event, we might see more from a particular franchise (I believe Johanna, the Butcher, Leoric, and Kharazim were all in a row and meant to be part of the Eternal Conflict event.)

Overwatch:

I don't really know what to expect, but I think they might start talking about a Beta for the game. And perhaps some new characters.

World of Warcraft:

The Gamescom Legion announcement was, I think, to reassure us that there was something cool coming next for WoW. Still, while we did get the major points - Burning Legion, Broken Isles, Demon Hunters, Illidan, Class Halls, Artifact Weapons - the announcement didn't really go into fine details about what they were working on for the expansion (though in fairness, we got way more than what I expected. I really thought we'd get at most a "this is the title, this is where it will be, this is the new race/class.")

We know that big changes are coming for a lot of existing classes and specs - Survival's going to be a melee spec, Shadow Priests are getting "Insanity" as a resource, etc. Still, at the moment, we just know that they are getting changes, not how those changes are going to work. Some of that we'll probably still not get fully until the Beta is up (and even then, things will be subject to change. For a time, Shuffle was a Brewmaster ability that you'd channel and be unable to do anything else while it was going,) but some of the really huge changes, as well as some of the details on the mechanics of the Demon Hunter class, will be clarified.

And if Blizzard is really on top of their game, they'll announce the start of the Legion beta. Preferably followed by "this coming Tuesday!"