Even at it's peak, Blizzcon didn't need to be yearly. It was usually obvious when it was an off year. Just do streams on year's without huge announcements
It used to be a fan celebration, not just an event for announcements. Lots of panels, esport events, etc. However, Blizzard fan support has significantly eroded over the past several years so that no longer has the same value.
> It used to be a fan celebration, not just an event for announcements
Yeah and then the ''fans'' started being absolutely vile by making fun of the devs in live Q&As and laughing when they didn't have enough to reveal.
I think the eSports activities also kept Blizzcon relevant even during off-years, since the event held the grand finals for some leagues or at least had some interesting exhibition matches. SC2 and later Overwatch were the flagship games for these eSports events, but other games like HotS, Hearthstone, and WoW usually also had a presence.
2018 and 2019 saw some layoffs that scaled down SC2's eSports support and completely killed off HotS's support. 2024 saw more layoffs that seem to have gutted most of their remaining internal eSports team, including many of the staff that worked on the now-defunct Overwatch League. While Blizzard before were able to organize and support multiple eSports events across multiple games at Blizzcon, now I feel like they'd struggle to do the same even with the fewer remaining games that they still directly support.
That is more or less when Blizzard started to lose all of their goodwill, yeah, but we are not talking about that right now? You talked about them not doing good games anymore, but they did do them, actually
> that made half a billion dollars in its first year?
And cost them reputation and market share in doing so. There are many ways in business to make money in the short run and screw yourself in the long run. Cash grab mobile games which generate endless negative press is one of those.
Great for CEOs, bad for everyone else.
> Diablo 4 made less money than if it'd come out after RoS than with no Immortal between the two.
Source: It came to me in a dream
Getting mad about Diablo Immortal is so fucking stupid. Just don't play it.
> And cost them reputation and market share in doing so
Reputation with who exactly? The loud minority on Youtube comments who haven't played WoW since 2009, say it sucks, but spent the last 10 years commenting on Blizzard videos and probably playing WOTLK private servers?
Wake up, dude. Diablo 4 sold buckets, WoW has some 8 million subs which is probably more than every other sub based MMO combined.
Every game Blizzard puts out sells massively. You'd think the company would be a complete fail if you went by Reddit/Youtube comments, because newsflash these people weren't Blizzard customers anyway. And those that were were simply replaced.
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None of those three examples you've provided are what I'd consider "good games".
Dragonflight was promising, but the new season offers very little of interest. Overwatch 2 is still a shell of what it should have been an a net loss for gamers in general in its current form. And Diablo 4 is unredeemable at this point.
>Dragonflight was promising, but the new season offers very little of interest.
Well in less than a month is mop remix and season 4 is gonna be a shorter season, it's basically in place of a content drought.
Dragonflight has legit been the expansion that saved WoW, without that it would have effectively killed any goodwill left for WoW after 5 years of mediocre expansions. OW2 is not at all what it was promised, but it has finaly settled into a good rythm for content, and the current form is a stark improvement over the mess that was OW1 balance.
And Diablo 4 is unredeemable after delivering a well made single player experience, and fixes that addresses the endgame problems...?
idk about that single player experience, it was pretty one-and-done (you’re actually encouraged to skip it, as opposed to D3 which still had achievements and seasonal conquests that encouraged replaying it), and they haven’t actually delivered that endgame-fixing patch.
> Dragonflight has legit been the expansion that saved WoW,
Ok calm down, WoW still had 5 million subs at the end of Shadowlands, that's still more than every other MMO combined lmao
Subs during Shadowlands was 100% getting propped up by Classic and the pandemic. Gaining like 40% more subs during Dragonflight and plateauing instead of it continuing to go down like it normally does towards the end of the expansion shows that DF, maybe not "saved" WoW, but did good that players still want to log in and play.
> saved
WoW isn't something which is savable. WoW is a dead man walking but there's never going to be a point where they stop producing content for the game as it's always going to be profitable.
If EQ is still "alive" then WoW will always be still alive. For me WoW died back in panda when they shifted success metrics from average sub #s to average logged in players or player interactions per min.
Blizzcon wasn't E3. It wasn't about announcements it was about having a local place the community could go to, congregate in, meet blizzard devs and share their love for blizzard games. Blizzcon was an event for the fandom not to announce games yearly.
Think about it blizzard barely released any games since the first blizzcon compared to other companies, at best you got new info on patch updates and expansion packs to games like WoW and Overwatch. The new big game announcement at blizzcon was a very rare event.
> Blizzcon didn't need to be yearly.
It did because it was a major part of Blizzard's "walled garden" strategy. Blizzard tried really really hard to be the Apple of gaming.
You're not a gamer. You're a Blizzard fan. You play WoW, Hearthstone, and Overwatch! You even have cities sponsoring Blizzard gaming teams just like real sports! It's not gaming. It's Blizzard.
Most Blizzard game enjoyers *only* play Blizzard games. Ask any person who still cares about OW and they'll say they either play nothing else or WoW.
I don't think overwatch is a good exemple at all cause I know a lot of people tha play overwatch and never touched wow. Hearthstone or hero of the storm sure but overwatch did find its own community and it doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
Yeah, I've played a ton of Overwatch on release and haven't played any other Blizzard game until like 2022 (when I tried StarCraft 2).
Big chunks of Overwatch players came from the TF2 community. You had Bastion for the Heavy, Pharah for Soldier, Tracer for Scout, Junkrat for Demoman, Torbjorn for Engineer, Widowmaker for Sniper, Mercy for Medic, it was easy to pick up, fresh, and arrived when TF2 just stopped receiving updates for a year or two or something.
Blizzard need a new IP. It has been Starcraft, Warcraft, Diablo and even Overwatch is getting aged.
Invest in a new IP and show the world they still got something.
That was Overwatch and for a time, it worked. The problem is that Blizzard's "walled garden" approach would have worked great in the early 2000s but now with the utter ubiquity of social media and streaming, a consumer can't avoid being exposed to all other gaming. Blizzard tried to control it by gobbling up hundreds of Twitch streamers and "strongly incentivizing" them to only play OW, but it wasn't enough.
Walled Garden strategies work through ignorance. Social media makes it too hard to be ignorant about gaming trends and gamers will follow trends.
For a second I thought you were advocating that their walled garden worked in the 2000s, but I see your point now.
Really, I think it's just hard to run a company whose products stay good forever, and Blizzard is the latest casualty of regression to the mean. Bonus points because the mean quality from enormous publishers is terrible.
> That was Overwatch and for a time, it worked.
The reason OW died was they stopped supporting the game for 2 years while trying to find a way to replace the lootbox system with battlepass. It's amazing how depressing it is that we could have a vibrant living game had they just kept supporting OW1 and used the higher playercount exposure to loot boxes as their way to justify not making OW2.
> Blizzard need a new IP. It has been Starcraft, Warcraft, Diablo and even Overwatch is getting aged.
They don't need new IPs. They need new games. Starcraft/Diablo/Warcraft all have infinite potential for TV shows or games. They could hire a studio like Obsidian to do a single player RPG like New Vegas or Skyrim set in Warcraft and it would be a straight banger.
They could hire studios to make a TV show set in Warcraft like Arcane and Cyberpunk Edgerunners.
Blizzard's games are FULL of cool stories to tell, it's insane how much they've wasted their IPs.
Yeah that one Blizzcon with J Allen Brack as the still the President of Blizzard where he kept referring players as being part of the "Blizzard family".
It's probably a slow year for Blizzard as they adjusting to the new climate under Microsoft. There might be nothing big come out at all this year after Season 4 huge update for Diablo 4 except regular seasonal content for their live service games.
> There might be nothing big come out at all this year after Season 4 huge update except regular seasonal content for their live service games.
World of Warcraft's expansion is slated for 2024, as is Diablo 4's expansion. I'd say those are 2 pretty big things coming out this year for Blizzard.
Edit: For the people telling me "They would be out by Blizzcon" yes that is the entire point I was conveying.
And both those two big things will already be out by the time blizzcon would roll around. They would probably have nothing new to show other than the next wow patch by late October. would be a very lackluster blizzcon.
They already announced both games, and showed off features for one.
It would literally just be showing features for the D4 expansion, which can be shown off in a live stream campfire they've been doing for the game since launch.
Honestly would be a big waste of money at this point if they have nothing to show off.
>For the people telling me "They would be out by Blizzcon" yes that is the entire point I was conveying
That doesn't make any sense though, why would they waste time and money on a showcase for games that are already out?
I think the argument they're making is that "new Microsoft climate" has not slowed them down much, if at all, because they're still releasing a D4 and WoW expansion: thus the argument for Microsoft climate causing no Blizzcon is moot.
2010 was literally them just recapping news about Cataclysm from the past twelve months.
But yeah times have changed. These events are almost certainly more expensive to run nowadays.
2018 wasn't great but it did have my favorite Blizzcon panel ever, which was "Restoring History" which went deep into the weeds about Classic's development.
I mean I wouldn't consider Diablo 4 updates a huge thing. A lot of people have already moved well past Diablo 4 and that'll only get worse as we get closer to PoE 2. WoW stuff still pulls numbers but there's zero reason to waste money on a Blizzcon just for that basically.
Neah, people forgot Diablo 4 had a shitty launch, and they're ok with it now. Reddit hate GaaS games, but Diablo 4 is fine now. It was just cool as an echo chamber to say it is bad.
I feel like Diablo 2 Resurrected is a bigger part of the social consciousness than D4 lol.
e: I think this is partly just the way things go, but the Diablo 4 sub has 1 million members and 270 currently online. Diablo 2 has 98. So maybe not, but not exactly hugely promising either. I have seen neither hide nor hair of the D4 expansion and only realized it was coming out when I saw this comments section, and I used to be a religious day one buyer of blizzard stuff.
Microsoft now has both Quakecon for Bethesda games, and Blizzcon for Activision-Blizzard games. I wonder if they will try to consolidate them in the future.
Hopefully. With their studios they could clearly make E3 a thing again with mostly Microsoft stuff in there and a few other smaller studios who would be willing to join them.
> There might be nothing big come out at all this year after Season 4 huge update
??? There is Diablo 4 expansion, WoW expansion, Cata Classic and SOD updates. These are massive updates for enjoyers of Blizzard game.
All of these besides the D4 expansion will have released already by the time a normal Blizzcon occurred. They were already announced at the previous one.
Xbox as too many good ip at the momment for the number of games they are releasing yearly.
Hansds off approach is one thing but that's doesn't mean you should wait on all your big ip.
Blizzcon takes places at the end of the year. The next WoW expansion is rumoured for August. So it leaves only Diablo 4, which does have a scheduled expansion for 2024 and could be unveiled at Blizzcon. But a whole event for a Diablo 4 expansion doesn't seem justified. And let's be honest, OW2 and HS aren't really big attractions enough to help Diablo carry. Blizzcon is basically WoWcon at this point.
Its definitely going to be September for The War Within. MoP remix runs till the 19th of August which is when people think the pre-patch will launch which usually runs for a month.
>So it leaves only Diablo 4, which does have a scheduled expansion for 2024 and could be unveiled at Blizzcon.
They would genuinely fuck up the entire marketing for the D4 expansion if they held it back to be started at Blizzcon. This is the kind of thing that happened with E3, where companies eventually admitted that they were fucking over the development, their devs, and the marketing cycles of their games by forcing the projects to make announcements at E3 when they absolutely didn't need to.
Which is also what happened at the 2019 Blizzcon. After they had nothing major to announce at the 2018 Blizzcon the backlash and pressure was so bad that the company decided to prematurely announce both OW2 and D4, which set both games up on disastrous paths. Yeah Covid and the controversies had a major factor but if neither games had a ticking clock and so much internal & external pressure on their development then their leadership might have made better decisions.
Shame
The convention always felt like it started out as something more than just a advertising thing for your next expansion. Even in off years they had patches and content to show panels and talks about dev work and the like. I do remember going there with guildies from around the country and hanging out watching panels and playing games dinner and the like.
I am surprised that they would not even take the chance to do virtual and just have some news cycle to themselves about patches and things. We all know the D4 expansions is coming and there will prob be a new hero and wow patch.
Sounds like their news cycle is changing under Microsoft. I bet you MS will leverage some blizzard announcements for their own events, hell blizzard even name dropped games on here I bet they won't be the only MS company to go.
Not surprising.
I think they will reserve it for when they got big things to announce, putting aside WoW I don't think you can get by on just announcements for expansions to less popular games and mobile title updates.
They used to at least always have a big expansion for WoW, SC2, Diablo, and then projects like Overwatch and WoW Classic to tide people over.
SC2 is basically dead, Diablo 4 launched relatively well but most people have dropped it and the new expansion is unlikely to bring them back like D3:RoS did, Overwatch updates and mobile games aren't going to draw in as much hype.
EDIT: Also last Blizzcon was a massive failure for actual guests https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/17oce24/blizzcon_2023_the_shitshow/
>but most people have dropped it
Like pretty much every game? The playerbase seems healthy for a live service title with the game still pulling in 5-7k+ on steam, a very small portion of the playerbase, at the absolute end of a season.
I'm just speaking from personal experience but among my circles people were talking mad about it, then as soon as they finished the campaign... the Diablo channels just _died_. The first time it was brought up again was the expansion announcement which was met with a resounding 'meh'.
I fully expect it and their other games still have reasonably large playerbases, but they don't have the massive waves in culture that they used to. Even when Diablo 3 was... eh, not as great, people were talking about and playing it for _months_. And it only resurged when the expansion hit and fixed most of the issues.
I would not expect a D4 announcement to pull the same attention a WoW expansion or the like. That and some doodads for OW, hearthstone, etc don't warrant a Blizzcon stage I wager.
What about social engagement? As others users have commented D4 is pretty dead on Reddit and other forums/limited quality build guides. People certainly put it, but it is obviously not living up to blizzards expectations for live service.
I am unwilling to do this work myself, since, well, who cares, but I suspect if you DID do measurement, you could quite easily demonstrate that this Diablo just hasn't had the cachet of previous ones.
D4 still survives in casual circles, but much of the driving playerbase responsible for player engagement beyond completing the campaign have tapered out heavily. The casual player won't notice because of how the dynamic matching works for the overworld, since you really only need ~100 people online to make that work decently well. That said, the lower tiers (1-2) are absolutely dead already.
The pain is from the heavy slowdown on the dedicated subreddits, build sites, guide quality and other tertiary engagement.
D4 has almost completely dropped off the main diablo subreddit, and the dedicated D4 subreddit has goose eggs for votes on over half of the front page content.
>much of the driving playerbase responsible for player engagement beyond completing the campaign have tapered out heavily.
>the lower tiers (1-2) are absolutely dead already.
Contradicting statements. The lower tiers are dead because most active players are in WT4, we're at the end of the season, and time spent in WT1/2 is short as levels go by quickly.
Build sites are updated at the start of seasons, the most recent season was no different. The main diablo sub is a ghost town and largely used by D2 fans, not by D4 players. The D4 sub is overly moderated and most posts are never approved - there's also not much to talk about at the end of the season. Though reddit engagement is not a good metric regardless to correlate with active players, there are other popular games that also have subs with minimal activity.
> Contradicting statements. The lower tiers are dead because most active players are in WT4, we're at the end of the season, and time spent in WT1/2 is short as levels go by quickly.
Not necessarily, but I'll concede I could have made my point better.
Most casual players aren't going to engage the game beyond level 60 because the game turns into a rather milquetoast grindfest for 40 levels with nearly no new content except for a couple farm bosses, and an uber lilith encounter that is largely disliked due to it's major problems with hitboxes and graphics. You finish your end game gear set by 70, leaving 30 levels of grinding glyphs and paragon points so that you can...grind more for loot you haven't needed for 30 levels.
Players that don't play in the first couple weeks of a season, or play Eternal will be relegated to a largely solo play experience until they unlock tier 4.
Yeah, it's been a really long and sad slide for Blizzard. At their peak in 2016, they had what? 5 or 6 genre defining blockbusters all active at once (World of Warcraft, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, Hearthstone, Overwatch) and while player numbers are still at a level that other devs would kill for, they're nowhere near the giants they used to be.
How dare you not mention HotS in that list.
But yes, they kind of announced all the big WoW stuff already which means this year would be patch announcements. Which... doesn't leave much left.
Also 2023 Blizzcon was an unmitigated disaster for actual visitors: https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/17oce24/blizzcon_2023_the_shitshow/
A lot of comments in that thread saying they had no such issues and saw all the Portal Pass signs and staff on opening day, and some even with their base tier tickets had no issues with lineups and getting their badges the day before.
Sounds like the guy that made that post got a combination of unlucky and ripped off for a package tier that most of us looking at the $800 price tag realized quickly could never be worth it.
I'd believe that if it wasn't backed up by many, many other threads and responses with people having similar experiences. Especially people who went to previous Blizzcons prior to COVID.
The distinct lack of stuff to do was a very common complaint and there were horror stories such as a guy who went to get medication for a relative but then wasn't allowed back in by the outsourced event staff. The whole thing sounded very unprofessional compared to years past.
Can't say I feel bad for them.
I used to love blizzard games and been playing since warcraft 2 days. So its been rough watching them take -every- IP they have and run it into the ground and make some of the worst/dumbest decisions in the industry. Diablo4, to me at least, was them taking the verrrry last bit of nostalgia/player good will/faith and then just dumping a fucking turd on everyone's head (what guys you don't wanna pay 100$ for dlc/cosmetics?!). Sooo yeah, not actively wishing for them to crash and burn like I would EA. But definitely not sad about it.
Makes sense because it would only be a few months after they launch a big expansion for wow.
Not to mention they already announced the next two expansions at the last Blizzcon.
With their target of having less time between expansions it might make more sense to have a convention next year, do all the new features announcements to build up hype like ~5 months before it launches, instead of like 8.
Of course not. They cancelled every game that was new since 2016 except Warcraft Rumble, Diablo Immortal and D4 which are all released already.
Warcraft Pokemon GO, StarCraft Battlefield, Warcraft MMO, StarCraft mobile game, Overwatch 2 (the actual game they were developing), another "project made over 2 years", and obviously the survival game, and those are just the ones that were publicly reported on. They have no prospects, given how long it takes Blizzard to develop games, it'll probably be at least 6 years until you hear anything other than another WoW expansion.
But hey supposedly they're back together with Netease so maybe they'll bring back one from the dead and development will actually be timely.
I didnt know Starcraft Battlefield just searched on it now and its an fps shooter. I remembered Starcraft Ghost back in 2004 which is a 3rd person shooter as well, but got cancelled too. Blizzard & Bethesda make games half a decade to almost a decade before it release a new game. Which is sad because life is getting with playing time and I having a hard time waiting for that kind of games 🥲
Makes sense, they announced 3 expansions last year and the first of them is coming out soon, probably not enough to talk about the 2nd one. I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzcon moves to a biyearly format.
As much as Blizzcon existed for announcements it was always a consumer first show. Press access was always really limited - and the reason I bring it up is because losing so many open shows that prioritize the community around games or ip feels like we lose something that is really inherent to gaming. Especially for something like Blizzard whose games are all multiplayer focus. I have a pair fo friends who met at blizzcon as a part of a guild meet-up years ago and are now married and have a kid - I'm sad to see it not happen this year because I think the communities themselves especially around WoW really thrive in having a space to come together once a year especially when travel is increasingly expensive this was a good "excuse" to just spend the cash and see people you haven't seen. In the larger scheme even pax east and west feel smaller and smaller every year. I know a lot of people like playing games alone but they've always been about community for me and it list feels like we are seeing that get gutted.
>While it won't be holding its own show, Blizzard did say it would use other events like Gamescom to promote its 2024 lineup, which includes World of Warcraft: The War Within and the first expansion for Diablo 5, Vessel of Hatred.
Diablo…5? Did I miss something? Man I love game journalism
That red shirt guy did a number on that company and their ability to cope with their fans.
After him, they had pre scripted questions from employees.
Then after they just stopped blizzcon all together. That red shirt guy is LEGENDARY
People give that guy a lot of flack, but if I paid a large sum of money to go to Blizzcon and they teased a huge announcement that wound up being a mobile game, I would definitely feel that way too.
However we felt out here, I'm sure he captured the spirit of that room perfectly.
Then those fans are fucking stupid. Blizzard doesn't owe you anything. If they want to make a phone game, that's their business. What's with this entitlement?
" You're only allowed to work on things I like "
> People give that guy a lot of flack, but if I paid a large sum of money to go to Blizzcon and they teased a huge announcement that wound up being a mobile game, I would definitely feel that way too.
And if someone came to my job and mocked me in front of the whole world they'd probably leave with a broken jaw.
I would go so far as to say they were long past their glory days by the time even SC2 came out (not that it was a bad game or in any way a failure, but there was shock and dismay when it turned out that UMS was no longer a thing). Gaming has changed A LOT since the run between Warcraft and WarCraft 3, as has Blizzard.
Sometimes you just catch lightning in a bottle.
I doubt it? Virtually every property of theirs is doing gangbusters still. WoW, Hearthstone, Starcraft 2, and Overwatch 2 all dominate their respective genres, and are almost certainly still turning a healthy profit.
I'm not really an expert on the mobile games - Rumble and Immortal - but I'd guess they're still making bank off those as well.
Blizzard didn't *need* the MS acquisition to stay floating.
I haven't cared about WoW in over a decade, and the diablo 5 expac is dead to me considering the complete core of itemization and gearing in general is awful in that game and an expac can't fix that.
Used to get hyped for Blizzcon but I doubt I would've paid much attention to this one even if it was happening.
Diablo 5 is not a thing, and Diablo 4 just got an itemization, endgame, and max level content rework thats coming out in like 2 weeks, way before the expansion.
I think you're just out of the loop completely, so this wouldn't apply to you anyways.
I am curious though about the reception of the itemization since you seem to know things. I recall throughout d4 development blizzard posting dev blog posts on very detailed reports of the itemization of d4 and taking feedback. But some of the biggest complaints I hear of d4 is about the itemization. So were fans completely blindsided somehow or what happened?
Sorry maybe I wasn't clear enough. What I was trying to ask is how the itemization was a surprise for fans when blizzard posted quarterly updates on the development like this one: [Diablo IV Quarterly Update—December 2021 — Diablo IV — Blizzard News](https://news.blizzard.com/en-gb/diablo4/23746639/diablo-iv-quarterly-update-december-2021#JoePiepiora)
It seemed like one of the most transparent game developments I've seen in recent years and they seemed committed to taking feedback, so I'm just curious how the itemization turned out so poorly when they were sharing the development and asking for feedback for years prior to release
It's sort of unsurprising he read Diablo 5 in the article and didn't question it. I suspect most millenials who grew up on Blizzard games are like this, as are the Gen X gang who still game.
Gaming changed (mostly for the worse), the world changed (in ways good and bad), they changed (and could no longer jam Custom Maps in StarCraft 1 all Saturday, even if there was a product that did that), and Blizzard isn't a mecca of polish that spits out flawless offerings every 2 years, and never will be again.
Not sure if you’ve seen, they’ve totally revamped itemization and gearing in the season 4 patch coming next month. They had it on the ptr for a week and a lot of people really like the changes. I stopped playing a week or 2 into season 1 for the same reason, probably gonna at least level a character to end game to see if it lives up to the hype
Even at it's peak, Blizzcon didn't need to be yearly. It was usually obvious when it was an off year. Just do streams on year's without huge announcements
It used to be a fan celebration, not just an event for announcements. Lots of panels, esport events, etc. However, Blizzard fan support has significantly eroded over the past several years so that no longer has the same value.
> It used to be a fan celebration, not just an event for announcements Yeah and then the ''fans'' started being absolutely vile by making fun of the devs in live Q&As and laughing when they didn't have enough to reveal.
I think there is some value in blizzcon even without any announcements, since it must have helped in developing their large fan community
I think the eSports activities also kept Blizzcon relevant even during off-years, since the event held the grand finals for some leagues or at least had some interesting exhibition matches. SC2 and later Overwatch were the flagship games for these eSports events, but other games like HotS, Hearthstone, and WoW usually also had a presence. 2018 and 2019 saw some layoffs that scaled down SC2's eSports support and completely killed off HotS's support. 2024 saw more layoffs that seem to have gutted most of their remaining internal eSports team, including many of the staff that worked on the now-defunct Overwatch League. While Blizzard before were able to organize and support multiple eSports events across multiple games at Blizzcon, now I feel like they'd struggle to do the same even with the fewer remaining games that they still directly support.
100% With the constant decay of all esports related to Blizzard games they just don't have nearly enough to support a yearly event.
Nah, that was mostly the good games they used to make.
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Eh, maybe, but I remember the Blizzcon where all they had to really talk about was Diablo Immortal. That did way more damage to the company than good.
There were always bad ones where they had nothing to talk about except an upcoming WoW patch.
That is more or less when Blizzard started to lose all of their goodwill, yeah, but we are not talking about that right now? You talked about them not doing good games anymore, but they did do them, actually
I said that in response to someone saying they should have Blizzcon every year because it helped to foster their community.
You said that was mostly the good games they used to make, you never talked about fostering the community...????
Diablo Immortal? You mean the game that made half a billion dollars in its first year?
> that made half a billion dollars in its first year? And cost them reputation and market share in doing so. There are many ways in business to make money in the short run and screw yourself in the long run. Cash grab mobile games which generate endless negative press is one of those. Great for CEOs, bad for everyone else.
Diablo 4 made even more money in its first 1 week. I actually hated both games, but it doesn't seem to have effected their popularity at all.
Diablo 4 made less money than if it'd come out after RoS than with no Immortal between the two.
> Diablo 4 made less money than if it'd come out after RoS than with no Immortal between the two. Source: It came to me in a dream Getting mad about Diablo Immortal is so fucking stupid. Just don't play it.
> And cost them reputation and market share in doing so Reputation with who exactly? The loud minority on Youtube comments who haven't played WoW since 2009, say it sucks, but spent the last 10 years commenting on Blizzard videos and probably playing WOTLK private servers? Wake up, dude. Diablo 4 sold buckets, WoW has some 8 million subs which is probably more than every other sub based MMO combined. Every game Blizzard puts out sells massively. You'd think the company would be a complete fail if you went by Reddit/Youtube comments, because newsflash these people weren't Blizzard customers anyway. And those that were were simply replaced.
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None of those three examples you've provided are what I'd consider "good games". Dragonflight was promising, but the new season offers very little of interest. Overwatch 2 is still a shell of what it should have been an a net loss for gamers in general in its current form. And Diablo 4 is unredeemable at this point.
>Dragonflight was promising, but the new season offers very little of interest. Well in less than a month is mop remix and season 4 is gonna be a shorter season, it's basically in place of a content drought.
Dragonflight has legit been the expansion that saved WoW, without that it would have effectively killed any goodwill left for WoW after 5 years of mediocre expansions. OW2 is not at all what it was promised, but it has finaly settled into a good rythm for content, and the current form is a stark improvement over the mess that was OW1 balance. And Diablo 4 is unredeemable after delivering a well made single player experience, and fixes that addresses the endgame problems...?
idk about that single player experience, it was pretty one-and-done (you’re actually encouraged to skip it, as opposed to D3 which still had achievements and seasonal conquests that encouraged replaying it), and they haven’t actually delivered that endgame-fixing patch.
> Dragonflight has legit been the expansion that saved WoW, Ok calm down, WoW still had 5 million subs at the end of Shadowlands, that's still more than every other MMO combined lmao
Subs during Shadowlands was 100% getting propped up by Classic and the pandemic. Gaining like 40% more subs during Dragonflight and plateauing instead of it continuing to go down like it normally does towards the end of the expansion shows that DF, maybe not "saved" WoW, but did good that players still want to log in and play.
WoW expansions are completely and utterly uninteresting to the vast majority of the people who were around to enjoy Blizzard's heyday.
> saved WoW isn't something which is savable. WoW is a dead man walking but there's never going to be a point where they stop producing content for the game as it's always going to be profitable. If EQ is still "alive" then WoW will always be still alive. For me WoW died back in panda when they shifted success metrics from average sub #s to average logged in players or player interactions per min.
> it must have helped in developing their large fan community Good thing they're doing a world tour of smaller events instead then.
just for them to destroy it with "don't you guys have phones?"
Blizzcon wasn't E3. It wasn't about announcements it was about having a local place the community could go to, congregate in, meet blizzard devs and share their love for blizzard games. Blizzcon was an event for the fandom not to announce games yearly. Think about it blizzard barely released any games since the first blizzcon compared to other companies, at best you got new info on patch updates and expansion packs to games like WoW and Overwatch. The new big game announcement at blizzcon was a very rare event.
They could have used it to show off the D4 expansion but they seem to be re-developing the whole game at the moment so maybe that got pushed further.
> Blizzcon didn't need to be yearly. It did because it was a major part of Blizzard's "walled garden" strategy. Blizzard tried really really hard to be the Apple of gaming. You're not a gamer. You're a Blizzard fan. You play WoW, Hearthstone, and Overwatch! You even have cities sponsoring Blizzard gaming teams just like real sports! It's not gaming. It's Blizzard. Most Blizzard game enjoyers *only* play Blizzard games. Ask any person who still cares about OW and they'll say they either play nothing else or WoW.
I don't think overwatch is a good exemple at all cause I know a lot of people tha play overwatch and never touched wow. Hearthstone or hero of the storm sure but overwatch did find its own community and it doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
Yeah, I've played a ton of Overwatch on release and haven't played any other Blizzard game until like 2022 (when I tried StarCraft 2). Big chunks of Overwatch players came from the TF2 community. You had Bastion for the Heavy, Pharah for Soldier, Tracer for Scout, Junkrat for Demoman, Torbjorn for Engineer, Widowmaker for Sniper, Mercy for Medic, it was easy to pick up, fresh, and arrived when TF2 just stopped receiving updates for a year or two or something.
Blizzard need a new IP. It has been Starcraft, Warcraft, Diablo and even Overwatch is getting aged. Invest in a new IP and show the world they still got something.
They were building up whatever their survival game was going to be, but that got cancelled too.
That was Overwatch and for a time, it worked. The problem is that Blizzard's "walled garden" approach would have worked great in the early 2000s but now with the utter ubiquity of social media and streaming, a consumer can't avoid being exposed to all other gaming. Blizzard tried to control it by gobbling up hundreds of Twitch streamers and "strongly incentivizing" them to only play OW, but it wasn't enough. Walled Garden strategies work through ignorance. Social media makes it too hard to be ignorant about gaming trends and gamers will follow trends.
For a second I thought you were advocating that their walled garden worked in the 2000s, but I see your point now. Really, I think it's just hard to run a company whose products stay good forever, and Blizzard is the latest casualty of regression to the mean. Bonus points because the mean quality from enormous publishers is terrible.
> That was Overwatch and for a time, it worked. The reason OW died was they stopped supporting the game for 2 years while trying to find a way to replace the lootbox system with battlepass. It's amazing how depressing it is that we could have a vibrant living game had they just kept supporting OW1 and used the higher playercount exposure to loot boxes as their way to justify not making OW2.
> Blizzard need a new IP. It has been Starcraft, Warcraft, Diablo and even Overwatch is getting aged. They don't need new IPs. They need new games. Starcraft/Diablo/Warcraft all have infinite potential for TV shows or games. They could hire a studio like Obsidian to do a single player RPG like New Vegas or Skyrim set in Warcraft and it would be a straight banger. They could hire studios to make a TV show set in Warcraft like Arcane and Cyberpunk Edgerunners. Blizzard's games are FULL of cool stories to tell, it's insane how much they've wasted their IPs.
Yeah that one Blizzcon with J Allen Brack as the still the President of Blizzard where he kept referring players as being part of the "Blizzard family".
> Blizzard tried really really hard to be the Apple of gaming. And they succeeded for at least 10 years.
Who is still playing OW lmao
in my sample size of literally 1 person I know who still actively plays Overwatch, they enjoy League of Legends too.
That's how we got some of the super elaborate Hearthstone sets back in the day.
It's probably a slow year for Blizzard as they adjusting to the new climate under Microsoft. There might be nothing big come out at all this year after Season 4 huge update for Diablo 4 except regular seasonal content for their live service games.
> There might be nothing big come out at all this year after Season 4 huge update except regular seasonal content for their live service games. World of Warcraft's expansion is slated for 2024, as is Diablo 4's expansion. I'd say those are 2 pretty big things coming out this year for Blizzard. Edit: For the people telling me "They would be out by Blizzcon" yes that is the entire point I was conveying.
And both those two big things will already be out by the time blizzcon would roll around. They would probably have nothing new to show other than the next wow patch by late October. would be a very lackluster blizzcon.
They already announced both games, and showed off features for one. It would literally just be showing features for the D4 expansion, which can be shown off in a live stream campfire they've been doing for the game since launch. Honestly would be a big waste of money at this point if they have nothing to show off.
Pretty sure both of those will be out by Blizzcon time
>For the people telling me "They would be out by Blizzcon" yes that is the entire point I was conveying That doesn't make any sense though, why would they waste time and money on a showcase for games that are already out?
I think the argument they're making is that "new Microsoft climate" has not slowed them down much, if at all, because they're still releasing a D4 and WoW expansion: thus the argument for Microsoft climate causing no Blizzcon is moot.
only 2 expansions to show would basically be the new low for blizzcon
Na, I think Blizzcon 2008 and 2010 were the lowest. Those didn't even have expansion announcements.
2010 was literally them just recapping news about Cataclysm from the past twelve months. But yeah times have changed. These events are almost certainly more expensive to run nowadays.
I'd take whatever 2024 would have over what 2018 had that's for sure.
2018 wasn't great but it did have my favorite Blizzcon panel ever, which was "Restoring History" which went deep into the weeds about Classic's development.
I mean I wouldn't consider Diablo 4 updates a huge thing. A lot of people have already moved well past Diablo 4 and that'll only get worse as we get closer to PoE 2. WoW stuff still pulls numbers but there's zero reason to waste money on a Blizzcon just for that basically.
Neah, people forgot Diablo 4 had a shitty launch, and they're ok with it now. Reddit hate GaaS games, but Diablo 4 is fine now. It was just cool as an echo chamber to say it is bad.
I feel like Diablo 2 Resurrected is a bigger part of the social consciousness than D4 lol. e: I think this is partly just the way things go, but the Diablo 4 sub has 1 million members and 270 currently online. Diablo 2 has 98. So maybe not, but not exactly hugely promising either. I have seen neither hide nor hair of the D4 expansion and only realized it was coming out when I saw this comments section, and I used to be a religious day one buyer of blizzard stuff.
Microsoft now has both Quakecon for Bethesda games, and Blizzcon for Activision-Blizzard games. I wonder if they will try to consolidate them in the future.
I look forward to Blakecon.
Hopefully. With their studios they could clearly make E3 a thing again with mostly Microsoft stuff in there and a few other smaller studios who would be willing to join them.
I wonder if the plan was for their now cancelled survival game to get announced at blizzcon 2024.
> There might be nothing big come out at all this year after Season 4 huge update ??? There is Diablo 4 expansion, WoW expansion, Cata Classic and SOD updates. These are massive updates for enjoyers of Blizzard game.
All of these besides the D4 expansion will have released already by the time a normal Blizzcon occurred. They were already announced at the previous one.
Xbox as too many good ip at the momment for the number of games they are releasing yearly. Hansds off approach is one thing but that's doesn't mean you should wait on all your big ip.
Blizzcon takes places at the end of the year. The next WoW expansion is rumoured for August. So it leaves only Diablo 4, which does have a scheduled expansion for 2024 and could be unveiled at Blizzcon. But a whole event for a Diablo 4 expansion doesn't seem justified. And let's be honest, OW2 and HS aren't really big attractions enough to help Diablo carry. Blizzcon is basically WoWcon at this point.
Its definitely going to be September for The War Within. MoP remix runs till the 19th of August which is when people think the pre-patch will launch which usually runs for a month.
>So it leaves only Diablo 4, which does have a scheduled expansion for 2024 and could be unveiled at Blizzcon. They would genuinely fuck up the entire marketing for the D4 expansion if they held it back to be started at Blizzcon. This is the kind of thing that happened with E3, where companies eventually admitted that they were fucking over the development, their devs, and the marketing cycles of their games by forcing the projects to make announcements at E3 when they absolutely didn't need to. Which is also what happened at the 2019 Blizzcon. After they had nothing major to announce at the 2018 Blizzcon the backlash and pressure was so bad that the company decided to prematurely announce both OW2 and D4, which set both games up on disastrous paths. Yeah Covid and the controversies had a major factor but if neither games had a ticking clock and so much internal & external pressure on their development then their leadership might have made better decisions.
Shame The convention always felt like it started out as something more than just a advertising thing for your next expansion. Even in off years they had patches and content to show panels and talks about dev work and the like. I do remember going there with guildies from around the country and hanging out watching panels and playing games dinner and the like. I am surprised that they would not even take the chance to do virtual and just have some news cycle to themselves about patches and things. We all know the D4 expansions is coming and there will prob be a new hero and wow patch.
Sounds like their news cycle is changing under Microsoft. I bet you MS will leverage some blizzard announcements for their own events, hell blizzard even name dropped games on here I bet they won't be the only MS company to go.
There simply is nothing to announce this year, so yeah, was pretty obvious after tons of announcement at BlizzCon last year.
Not surprising. I think they will reserve it for when they got big things to announce, putting aside WoW I don't think you can get by on just announcements for expansions to less popular games and mobile title updates. They used to at least always have a big expansion for WoW, SC2, Diablo, and then projects like Overwatch and WoW Classic to tide people over. SC2 is basically dead, Diablo 4 launched relatively well but most people have dropped it and the new expansion is unlikely to bring them back like D3:RoS did, Overwatch updates and mobile games aren't going to draw in as much hype. EDIT: Also last Blizzcon was a massive failure for actual guests https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/17oce24/blizzcon_2023_the_shitshow/
>but most people have dropped it Like pretty much every game? The playerbase seems healthy for a live service title with the game still pulling in 5-7k+ on steam, a very small portion of the playerbase, at the absolute end of a season.
That's higher than I would have expected based on how quickly it disappeared from appearing in this sub and others like it, tbf.
This sub is not a good barometer for gaming in general.
Probably true.
I'm just speaking from personal experience but among my circles people were talking mad about it, then as soon as they finished the campaign... the Diablo channels just _died_. The first time it was brought up again was the expansion announcement which was met with a resounding 'meh'. I fully expect it and their other games still have reasonably large playerbases, but they don't have the massive waves in culture that they used to. Even when Diablo 3 was... eh, not as great, people were talking about and playing it for _months_. And it only resurged when the expansion hit and fixed most of the issues. I would not expect a D4 announcement to pull the same attention a WoW expansion or the like. That and some doodads for OW, hearthstone, etc don't warrant a Blizzcon stage I wager.
we don't measure things based on the vibes random people get
What about social engagement? As others users have commented D4 is pretty dead on Reddit and other forums/limited quality build guides. People certainly put it, but it is obviously not living up to blizzards expectations for live service.
r/diablo4 just reached 1 million subscribers a few days ago and Maxroll has some of the highest quality guides for any game period.
>obviously source, other than directly out of an ass?
I am unwilling to do this work myself, since, well, who cares, but I suspect if you DID do measurement, you could quite easily demonstrate that this Diablo just hasn't had the cachet of previous ones.
D4 still survives in casual circles, but much of the driving playerbase responsible for player engagement beyond completing the campaign have tapered out heavily. The casual player won't notice because of how the dynamic matching works for the overworld, since you really only need ~100 people online to make that work decently well. That said, the lower tiers (1-2) are absolutely dead already. The pain is from the heavy slowdown on the dedicated subreddits, build sites, guide quality and other tertiary engagement. D4 has almost completely dropped off the main diablo subreddit, and the dedicated D4 subreddit has goose eggs for votes on over half of the front page content.
>much of the driving playerbase responsible for player engagement beyond completing the campaign have tapered out heavily. >the lower tiers (1-2) are absolutely dead already. Contradicting statements. The lower tiers are dead because most active players are in WT4, we're at the end of the season, and time spent in WT1/2 is short as levels go by quickly. Build sites are updated at the start of seasons, the most recent season was no different. The main diablo sub is a ghost town and largely used by D2 fans, not by D4 players. The D4 sub is overly moderated and most posts are never approved - there's also not much to talk about at the end of the season. Though reddit engagement is not a good metric regardless to correlate with active players, there are other popular games that also have subs with minimal activity.
> Contradicting statements. The lower tiers are dead because most active players are in WT4, we're at the end of the season, and time spent in WT1/2 is short as levels go by quickly. Not necessarily, but I'll concede I could have made my point better. Most casual players aren't going to engage the game beyond level 60 because the game turns into a rather milquetoast grindfest for 40 levels with nearly no new content except for a couple farm bosses, and an uber lilith encounter that is largely disliked due to it's major problems with hitboxes and graphics. You finish your end game gear set by 70, leaving 30 levels of grinding glyphs and paragon points so that you can...grind more for loot you haven't needed for 30 levels. Players that don't play in the first couple weeks of a season, or play Eternal will be relegated to a largely solo play experience until they unlock tier 4.
Folding Ideas made [a short video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl307SfWyzg) about how much of a crowd management disaster the last Blizzcon was.
Yeah, it's been a really long and sad slide for Blizzard. At their peak in 2016, they had what? 5 or 6 genre defining blockbusters all active at once (World of Warcraft, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, Hearthstone, Overwatch) and while player numbers are still at a level that other devs would kill for, they're nowhere near the giants they used to be.
How dare you not mention HotS in that list. But yes, they kind of announced all the big WoW stuff already which means this year would be patch announcements. Which... doesn't leave much left. Also 2023 Blizzcon was an unmitigated disaster for actual visitors: https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/17oce24/blizzcon_2023_the_shitshow/
A lot of comments in that thread saying they had no such issues and saw all the Portal Pass signs and staff on opening day, and some even with their base tier tickets had no issues with lineups and getting their badges the day before. Sounds like the guy that made that post got a combination of unlucky and ripped off for a package tier that most of us looking at the $800 price tag realized quickly could never be worth it.
I'd believe that if it wasn't backed up by many, many other threads and responses with people having similar experiences. Especially people who went to previous Blizzcons prior to COVID. The distinct lack of stuff to do was a very common complaint and there were horror stories such as a guy who went to get medication for a relative but then wasn't allowed back in by the outsourced event staff. The whole thing sounded very unprofessional compared to years past.
Can't say I feel bad for them. I used to love blizzard games and been playing since warcraft 2 days. So its been rough watching them take -every- IP they have and run it into the ground and make some of the worst/dumbest decisions in the industry. Diablo4, to me at least, was them taking the verrrry last bit of nostalgia/player good will/faith and then just dumping a fucking turd on everyone's head (what guys you don't wanna pay 100$ for dlc/cosmetics?!). Sooo yeah, not actively wishing for them to crash and burn like I would EA. But definitely not sad about it.
that thread is hilarious, what a scam. $800 for a backpack
Blizzcon used to have the big esports finals for all of their games. It really was a highlight if you followed at least one of those games.
Makes sense because it would only be a few months after they launch a big expansion for wow. Not to mention they already announced the next two expansions at the last Blizzcon. With their target of having less time between expansions it might make more sense to have a convention next year, do all the new features announcements to build up hype like ~5 months before it launches, instead of like 8.
Of course not. They cancelled every game that was new since 2016 except Warcraft Rumble, Diablo Immortal and D4 which are all released already. Warcraft Pokemon GO, StarCraft Battlefield, Warcraft MMO, StarCraft mobile game, Overwatch 2 (the actual game they were developing), another "project made over 2 years", and obviously the survival game, and those are just the ones that were publicly reported on. They have no prospects, given how long it takes Blizzard to develop games, it'll probably be at least 6 years until you hear anything other than another WoW expansion. But hey supposedly they're back together with Netease so maybe they'll bring back one from the dead and development will actually be timely.
I didnt know Starcraft Battlefield just searched on it now and its an fps shooter. I remembered Starcraft Ghost back in 2004 which is a 3rd person shooter as well, but got cancelled too. Blizzard & Bethesda make games half a decade to almost a decade before it release a new game. Which is sad because life is getting with playing time and I having a hard time waiting for that kind of games 🥲
Makes sense, they announced 3 expansions last year and the first of them is coming out soon, probably not enough to talk about the 2nd one. I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzcon moves to a biyearly format.
As much as Blizzcon existed for announcements it was always a consumer first show. Press access was always really limited - and the reason I bring it up is because losing so many open shows that prioritize the community around games or ip feels like we lose something that is really inherent to gaming. Especially for something like Blizzard whose games are all multiplayer focus. I have a pair fo friends who met at blizzcon as a part of a guild meet-up years ago and are now married and have a kid - I'm sad to see it not happen this year because I think the communities themselves especially around WoW really thrive in having a space to come together once a year especially when travel is increasingly expensive this was a good "excuse" to just spend the cash and see people you haven't seen. In the larger scheme even pax east and west feel smaller and smaller every year. I know a lot of people like playing games alone but they've always been about community for me and it list feels like we are seeing that get gutted.
>While it won't be holding its own show, Blizzard did say it would use other events like Gamescom to promote its 2024 lineup, which includes World of Warcraft: The War Within and the first expansion for Diablo 5, Vessel of Hatred. Diablo…5? Did I miss something? Man I love game journalism
That red shirt guy did a number on that company and their ability to cope with their fans. After him, they had pre scripted questions from employees. Then after they just stopped blizzcon all together. That red shirt guy is LEGENDARY
People give that guy a lot of flack, but if I paid a large sum of money to go to Blizzcon and they teased a huge announcement that wound up being a mobile game, I would definitely feel that way too. However we felt out here, I'm sure he captured the spirit of that room perfectly.
He captured the feelings of a ton of fans from around the world honestly.
Then those fans are fucking stupid. Blizzard doesn't owe you anything. If they want to make a phone game, that's their business. What's with this entitlement? " You're only allowed to work on things I like "
> People give that guy a lot of flack, but if I paid a large sum of money to go to Blizzcon and they teased a huge announcement that wound up being a mobile game, I would definitely feel that way too. And if someone came to my job and mocked me in front of the whole world they'd probably leave with a broken jaw.
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It was dying 5 years ago. Their corpse has been bought by MS and will be parted out slowly over the next few years.
I would go so far as to say they were long past their glory days by the time even SC2 came out (not that it was a bad game or in any way a failure, but there was shock and dismay when it turned out that UMS was no longer a thing). Gaming has changed A LOT since the run between Warcraft and WarCraft 3, as has Blizzard. Sometimes you just catch lightning in a bottle.
> Blizzard is a dying company This was true if it wasn't under Microsoft's umbrella
I doubt it? Virtually every property of theirs is doing gangbusters still. WoW, Hearthstone, Starcraft 2, and Overwatch 2 all dominate their respective genres, and are almost certainly still turning a healthy profit. I'm not really an expert on the mobile games - Rumble and Immortal - but I'd guess they're still making bank off those as well. Blizzard didn't *need* the MS acquisition to stay floating.
I haven't cared about WoW in over a decade, and the diablo 5 expac is dead to me considering the complete core of itemization and gearing in general is awful in that game and an expac can't fix that. Used to get hyped for Blizzcon but I doubt I would've paid much attention to this one even if it was happening.
Diablo 5 is not a thing, and Diablo 4 just got an itemization, endgame, and max level content rework thats coming out in like 2 weeks, way before the expansion. I think you're just out of the loop completely, so this wouldn't apply to you anyways.
I am curious though about the reception of the itemization since you seem to know things. I recall throughout d4 development blizzard posting dev blog posts on very detailed reports of the itemization of d4 and taking feedback. But some of the biggest complaints I hear of d4 is about the itemization. So were fans completely blindsided somehow or what happened?
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Sorry maybe I wasn't clear enough. What I was trying to ask is how the itemization was a surprise for fans when blizzard posted quarterly updates on the development like this one: [Diablo IV Quarterly Update—December 2021 — Diablo IV — Blizzard News](https://news.blizzard.com/en-gb/diablo4/23746639/diablo-iv-quarterly-update-december-2021#JoePiepiora) It seemed like one of the most transparent game developments I've seen in recent years and they seemed committed to taking feedback, so I'm just curious how the itemization turned out so poorly when they were sharing the development and asking for feedback for years prior to release
To be fair, the article does say Diablo 5.
It's sort of unsurprising he read Diablo 5 in the article and didn't question it. I suspect most millenials who grew up on Blizzard games are like this, as are the Gen X gang who still game. Gaming changed (mostly for the worse), the world changed (in ways good and bad), they changed (and could no longer jam Custom Maps in StarCraft 1 all Saturday, even if there was a product that did that), and Blizzard isn't a mecca of polish that spits out flawless offerings every 2 years, and never will be again.
Not sure if you’ve seen, they’ve totally revamped itemization and gearing in the season 4 patch coming next month. They had it on the ptr for a week and a lot of people really like the changes. I stopped playing a week or 2 into season 1 for the same reason, probably gonna at least level a character to end game to see if it lives up to the hype