In a sad bit of news for fans of in-person events, Blizzard has decided to skip Blizzcon this year. Instead of holding their usual convention, the company seems to be focusing on diversifying their presence in other places, with Gamescom and Dreamhack in particular getting name-dropped (maybe the Xbox Showcase in June?).
This decision comes in a year with a large number of Warcraft anniversaries, making it quite an odd one. Despite this cancelation, Blizzard says they'll bring the con back in later year and mention exploring different formats in the past, so they're likely trying to figure out a different structure for it.
Quote From Blizzard After careful consideration over the last year, we at Blizzard have made the decision not to hold BlizzCon in 2024. This decision was not made lightly as BlizzCon remains a very special event for all of us, and we know many of you look forward to it. While we’re approaching this year differently and as we have explored different event formats in the past, rest assured that we are just as excited as ever to bring BlizzCon back in future years.
Over the next few months, we’ll be sharing more details about our launches coming later this year, including World of Warcraft: The War Within and Diablo IV's first expansion, Vessel of Hatred. To celebrate these upcoming releases and to bring our communities together in new and special ways, we will soon share some exciting plans for other industry trade shows and conventions like Gamescom. We can’t wait to tell you more about those plans soon. We’re also looking forward to the Overwatch Champions Series’ stops at both Dreamhack Dallas and Dreamhack Stockholm. And we’re thrilled to be planning multiple, global, in-person events to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Warcraft, which will be held in addition to the in-game celebrations across our Warcraft games throughout 2024. While these events are distinct from BlizzCon, we’re harnessing all of our creativity and imagination to ensure that they carry the same spirit of celebration and togetherness.
Our hope is that these experiences – alongside several live-streamed industry events where we’ll keep you up to date with what’s happening in our game universes – will capture the essence of what makes the Blizzard community so special.
No matter how you choose to connect with us at these events this year – whether it be in person or virtually – we can’t wait to see you there!
What do you think of this decision? Do you think Blizzcon will return in the following years? Let us know in the comments below!
Comments
Honestly the more I think about it, the more this move makes sense. Last year I noticed the Blizzcon tickets weren't sold out at all (prior to Covid, they'd be sold out in hours). The price of the tickets also went up I think*, could be wrong though. Also when watching the main presenation, when they'd pan over the audience, you could see a lot of empty seats, even though they did some raffle thing for seating arragements. WRT the presentations themselves, I feel only the WoW presentation had real excitement purely coz of Chris Metzen. Super sad we got to this point but Covid wasn't the only factor why last year's Blizzcon didn't do so well.
If it isn't hapenning on 30th anniversary of Warcraft, it won't happen anymore.
I guess microsoft pulled the plug. It was so much investment for so less gain and so little people to adress. It might be microsoft's saying to blizzard "know your place" too like an internal feud as they want blizzard to be like any other game company and go to the "general game expo" (Gamescom) instead of holding your own and just adress their own community.
Seems like microsoft wants them to adress all gaming community instead of fanboys and tries to expand it (which is ideal instead of an echo chamber). They just don't want Blizzcult.
Just a speculation tho.
Yeah, no BlizzCon for WoW 30 feels so weird. I get it though:
World of Warcraft seems like the only game that actually has anything going on, so doing WoW-specific events does make sense and if they can truly do global Blizzard-run events, then that's even better for more players as BlizzCon is quite out of reach.
WoW Classic has two big things coming up for that November area though. By the time we get there, Season of Discovery should be close to being done if it isn't already. It would be a great time to announce their next seasonal endevours. For Cataclysm on the Classic-proper timeline, we're talking about Rage of the Firelands making its debut in October so it could be time to announce Mists of Pandaria, even though the later Dragonflight patch isn't coming until January.
WoW proper, we don't have an exact release date yet for The War Within but it should already be out by then so talking about the next couple of patches would make for great BlizzCon content. However, with that said, I don't think you'd get people as hyped as we all were for when the trio of expansions was announced last year. That's the biggest problem with BlizzCon; You just can't time all the games around it to have a really killer show.
Which sucks because covering BlizzCon is always a ton of fun. Chaotic fun.
I don't think any of this has any direction from Microsoft though. Their communications have been that Blizzard needs to be allowed to be Blizzard and honestly, it would be really bad to not allow that to happen and BlizzCon, and the overall Blizzard community is a very important part of that. Yes, BlizzCon is expensive to run, but it's run as a marketing tool. The reach online is massive. If people aren't at the show they tune in online, if not on streams then they consume all the news through social media, Blizzard's blogs, other gaming blogs and channels. Having one big show about all things Blizzard turns the weekend into seeing Blizzard everywhere, which can be very powerful for a brand.
I think about all the posts I see places and how you'll see maybe a dozen articles come out in a 10 minute period in the afternoon, how many people never actually caught the first ones that went up for some indie title and how had they of just scheduled their release better, they could have had a better timeslot of promotion. It blows my mind how people hit that same 12-1pm area (eastern). It's certainly friendly for of North America and Europe, but everyone else has the same train of thought so it's less noticable.
BlizzCon though? That's their weekend! Everyone is going to see Blizzard.