It seems most of the usual opening ceremony fanfare for BlizzCon 2023 will stem from titles in the Warcraft franchise! In a response to a Twitter / X user conflating floorplan distribution per franchise with the amount of focus they would be given during the event, Mike Ybarra, President of Blizzard Entertainment, confirmed the Warcraft franchise and WoW will have the most news this year:
While this does not in any way point to which Warcraft games will have announcements, we can probably safely expect the following:
- The reveal of the next expansion for World of Warcraft, likely launching around this time next year.
- The reveal of the next expansion for Hearthstone, and whatever "spell locked" content was teased in the Year of the Wolf roadmap.
- Some more info on Warcraft Rumble, although with how Diablo Immortal's segment in the 2018 ceremony was handled, I wouldn't expect spending more than a few minutes on this one.
That's not to say we can't account for some out-of-left-field surprises! Here's our list of hopium announcements:
- Warcraft IV (hah, right!)
- Warcraft III Reforged goes free in a bid to win some good faith points.
- WoW pet battle mobile app.
- Some new flavor of WoW Classic realm - Cataclysm, Hardcore TBC, Vanilla Remastered
Quote From Mike Ybarra It's just the way the team did the graphic. I understand your point. But Warcraft, and WoW, have the most news this year. We're excited to see you all!
What are you most hopeful to see from the Warcraft franchise at Blizzcon? Let us know in the comments below!
Comments
Warcraft IV would be cool. But are RTS games popular nowadays? I honestly asking 'cause I wasn't paying attention and don't remember any major releases lately.
They may experience a resurgence if Stormgate will be successful once it releases, otherwise it's still a fairly niche genre atm that isn't exactly the kind of investment ActiBlizz would generally make.
There are rumors that once MS acquire ABK, they will boot up the Starcraft or Warcraft franchise again coz MS aren't shy of RTS games seeing as they recently did AoE IV
I'm hoping we can experience another Chris Metzen "What's up Blizzcon!" moment. Other than that, another bold prediction would be... WoW II...
I get chills everytime I think about his openings.
It really isn't a good BlizzCon unless Chris Metzen presents it. Who knew charisma would be so hard to find in the gamedev industry?
Or this is just an attempt to not disappoint wow fanbase and keep the hype of the event. Surely they're not going to say: "you're right, wow is just our side project at this point".
Considering the internet sentiment around their two other [currently] main franchise games, D4 and OW2, I'd argue WoW is currently their best basket to put the proverbial egg in.
While Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2 are... having problems (D4 is basically on life support on Twitch) and Hearthstone seems to be struggling to even further monetize or innovate (basing this off of anecdotal information like the recent layoffs, stopping work on Mercs etc.), Dragonflight has somehow pulled WoW out of, arguably, its lowest point (Shadowlands), and is generally viewed as a good expansion so far. Sure, the subscriber count is probably still pretty low after the disaster that was SL, but I think retention is very good and DF can serve as a "bridge" expansion to buying back customer trust - if expansion after it also delivers.
I couldn't agree more.
Dragonflight is possibly the only expansion that seems to have "universal" love. Even Legion, which had countless numbers of people praising it during the cycle was met with pockets of hatred when it came to the legendary system with its horrendous RNG. I know plenty of people who quit because of legendary nonsense (who came back for BFA) but I haven't encountered anyone that has left Dragonflight. That's not to say no one has, my pool of closeish friends is certainly not reflective of the player base as a whole, but it is interesting to see that and the overall positive attitude towards DF.
I regret not playing Dragonflight much. I'll login occasionally to do some of the limited-time stuff, but I actually feel like I missed out on so much stuff and the huge backlog of story quests doesn't really help with that. WoW creating FOMO is not a feeling I have had in a very long time and I cannot wait to see where they are planning to take it for the next expansion. If the leaks are true and we're looking at a Dwarven expansion, I might need to get a crew together.