BlizzCon - part 2

So we already covered World of Warcraft and Diablo III. But BlizzCon had so much more to offer. And this is when the real vrow eating has to begin on my part.

For starters StarCraft II didn't end, The main campaign might be over with Legacy of the Void but the story will continue with character focused DLC campaigns. The first of these is Nova covert ops,
which is basically StarCraft: Ghost with a different camera angle. We happy, Vincent?

Heroes of the Storm meanwhile got a new map, a new game mode aaaand four new heroes. A Driad, Genn Greymane king of werewolves and everyones favorite doomsday cultist and team rocket fan: Cho'Gall. Funny thing about Cho'Gall is that he will be controlled by two players. It will either be loads of fun or a complete disaster.
And the fourth hero? Tracer. The cheerful time traveling girl from Overwatch whose backside reached memetic status impressively quickly even by time traveler standards.

And it is at this point that I would like to mention another thing that Blizzard is a master of along with ways to make a fortune out of free to play games. And that is cross promotion. Before we discuss anything else regarding Overwatch's reveals, and there was quite a lot revealed for a game already in a beta phase, we should talk about Overwatch Origins edition. As it turns out Overwatch won't be free to play. Honestly this surprised me, but that is beside the point now. There will be a normal version and a slightly more expensive Origins edition. This version will come with a few exclusive character skins that give us a glimpse of a select few soldier's origins, hence the name. But that is not all. The pack will also contain in game goodies for every other Blizzard game. Yes, every single one. Well every current one. HotS will get Tracer, StarCraft II will get portraits, Diablo III will get cosmetic wings, WoW players will get a pet, aaand Hearthstone will get a new cardback. More on Hearthstone later.
Going back to Overwatch: we got three new heroes. Wohooo. Two of them are girls. Double yaay. The two girls are chinese and korean while the one guy is japanese. Triple yaaaay. Oh yes, they are a geologist, a professional StarCraft player riding a mecha and a robot ninja respectively. Crazy awesome doesn't even begin to describe it. Oh, we also got a new map for good measure.

And there is Hearthstone. Remember how I said that it received a new expansion not long ago so there is no chance something comes here. Well, dang. Not only will we get a new expansion this week, but it will be the biggest one yet. So far we either got new adventure modes with a few new cards, or new card packs with one or two new mechanics introduced. League of Explorers will combine the two. Unfortunately I am two wings behind on Blackrock Mountain. The massive RNG factor is a big turnoff so I am always short on gold. Oh well, the Realm Reborn servers are down for pre-patch maintenance.

Last but not least there is the movie. Warcraft: The Beginning. I don't want to be a spoilsport, but the movie doesn't do it for me yet. Sure it looks good, but I don't know how well the retcons will fit. In this version Anduin Lothat hooks up with Garona and joins forces with Durotan, Draka, and maybe Orgim Doomhammer against the evil Gul'dan and Medivh to settle the war peacefully and grant the orcs their permanent land on Azeroth.
The canon ending is this: Khadgar is cursed, Garona kills King Llane, Stomwind is burned to the ground with only Lothar and young Varian making it out alive, Gul'dan survives but falls into coma when Medivh dies, Durotan and Draka dies, Orgim kills Blackhand for being a week minded puppet of Gul'dan, assumes leadership of the Horde and continues his conquest to kill all humans and conquer everything.
So either the end will involve lots and lots of crying or the movie will completely change the established canon at the risk of not being able to adapt Warcraft II, III and everything that follows.
Yikes.

All in all it was a pretty good BlizzCon. In fact it was probably one of the best,