Let's take a short break from the Endwalker hype and look at the other important gaming event. BlizzConline. Arguably it will be the larger event. As big as the Showcase was, it was a few hours long whereas BC will be two days. In scope it will be more like the Fan Fest All Around the World which Yoshie will host in May.
Of course it is needed, considering BlizzCon is not just for one game. And in fact this time we will likely hear from all the major IPs. Just think about the situation.
World of Warcraft In retail we are after the launch of Shadowlands which was proclaimed the best expansion since Legion. A faint praise if there ever was one, since BfA was worse than a shotgun blast to the dick, although it also got much worse and more disappointing as time went by. Shadowlands on the other hand only had release so it can go either way. And here's the thing. SL was released in November 23. It will be a few days short of three months old when BlizzConline arrives and all we know about the future of the game is a 9.0.5 patch that is expected to release in March and comes with system changes. Now I'm no stranger to content delays especially during the pandemic and everyone would rather wait several more months instead of a repeat of Cyberbug 2077. However a subscription based MMO still needs content regularly. Or at the very least promise content regularly. They don't even need much. Just have a panel where they say Kel'Thuzad will free the soul of Arthas in 9.1. That's it. That's fucking it. All the fans still bemoaning the game progressing from WotLK will be in hype mode for the next year. A promise of the return of the good old days will feed them even if the wait will be painfully long. Some response has to be given to the Endwalker reveal.
And there is Classic. They already reached the last patch of Vanilla so it is time to move forward. We could be wondering what will happen now, but let's be honest. Classic will move into TBC. Everyone treats it as confirmed already, but an official confirmation wouldn't hurt.
Hearthstone The other WarCraft game. Let's just say that 2020 was not kind to Hearthstone. Even if we don't go political, the inclusion of the Demon Hunter was met with a lot of disdain, the new reward system is almost universally despised and neither of the two game modes feel finished. Band aids like the introduction of the Classic set (seeing a pattern here, guys) will not help with the core problems like the game being pay to win, keywords being relevant for one expansion before being phased out or the same archetypes seeing play since forever. We need huge things for Hearthstone this year if the game is to remain popular. Its main selling points where being easy to understand and using WoW characters. But that can only take you so far.
Diablo The dark and gritty franchise. Or rather used to be dark and gritty. Now don't get me wrong I'm not one of those fans who get constipation from seeing a rainbow in a Diablo game, but back in the games companions didn't crack jokes and we had less pop culture references. The Diablo franchise was the serious cousin of the WarCraft franchise. But I digress. We are here to talk about Diablo at BlizzCon and if even half of the rumors are true, this will be the year of Diablo.
The award for worst kept secret in the industry goes to the Diablo 2 remaster. Now I personally don't know if we really need remasters as I was always willing to forgive outdated graphics if the rest was amazing (cough Final Fantasy VII cough), but many are super excited to play D2 with actually recognizable faces.
Next is Diablo IV. From all the dev updates it truly seems that the team is putting a lot of love and care into onstructing a great game. I don't always get the impression that they know what makes a Diablo game good, but that is a discussion for another time. It has been a year since tha game was announced so it is time for another big info dump. The devs said that they will show "a new version of the campfire scene". This is of course a cheeky way of saying: New class reveal. I can't guarantee I won't slit my wrists if it is another Diablo 2 class, but so far each revealed class had a very different playstyle, I'm interested to see what the new one will be. Plus if there is any live gameplay footage it will be nice to see how things progressed.
And there is Diablo Immortal. Now I'll say something very weird here, but out of these three games I'm most excited about Immortal. Sure the reveal was super tone deaf but just looking at the alpha footage gave the impression of this being a much better Diablo 2 sequel than Diablo 3 was. D3 was a sequel to Diablo with very little ties to connect it to the second game. And it promptly began to kill off characters to make sure the next game will have zero ties to anything. In Immortal we have not only half the Rogue Encampment back, but also the D2 Necromancer and the Countess. It's a much needed dosage of nostalgia with small polishes to the D3 gameplay, like a much better paragon system. Also the game had a very limited alpha release so far, so it might be time to broaden the test a bit. And perhaps add you know what as a playable area.
That was six titles already and we haven't talked about Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm or StarCraft. Granted they will have a more limited presence. HotS will have no panels dedicated to it and StarCraft will have a single streamer battle with the lenght of three Diablo panels. I guess they needed time for the one hour lenght panel about Thrall and the cooking workshop.
Anyrate while the panel list concerns me a bit, I still firmly believe, for the above mentioned reasons, that we will be seeing plenty of interesting news from all the large IPs this year. You have the ball, Blizzard, Show us something amazing!
