Looking Back at BlizzCon 2026 Day 1: An Opinion

One of the benefits I get of leading Out of Games is whenever I want to talk about video games, I have a free stage to do so, though I very rarely make use of that privilege. Today though, I wanted to talk about the opening day of BlizzCon because I have some thoughts.

Let's dive in.

Starcraft Returns

The return of one of Blizzard's most iconic franchises has been rumored for some time, but this is absolutely epic. If you haven't seen the cinematic, you've missed out and I ask you take a few minutes to watch whether you care about StarCraft or not.

Blizzard is an absolute master of cinematics and they have shown they still deserve that title. Sure, the visuals are great, that's what we should expect at a baseline of 2026, but the story that was told in this short film is incredible. StarCraft has historically been a game about large armies and a few key characters. This was different though. We got to see the evolution of a Marine. His recruitment, his training, moving up the ranks and finally coming to the real battlefield.

He didn't survive.

We don't really know much about the new StarCraft game other than the fact it is an open world shooter. There are rumors that it might be in the HELLDIVERS style of game, but truthfully, we have no idea yet and that's cool. We've got four years until we get to play the damn thing and to talk about what we want this thing to be. It's very weird to see a non-RTS StarCraft game, but honestly? That's a great thing. Blizzard could have introduced a StarCraft 3 and sold a boat load of copies but that kind of game doesn't have true staying power. RTS is not a genre for many, myself included anymore, but I am more than happy to dive into something in the shooter genre. I hope it won't feel as punishing as it feels to play Brood War or Legacy of the Void.

As excited as I may be about this, announcing the game this early does worry me a tiny bit though. Heroes of the Storm, a game beloved by many, myself included, was a flop due to the timing of release. Blizzard teased that game for so many years and what we got out of it was a great game, but the MOBA genre dried up because people were already playing other games and they were either still playing the games they already enjoyed in the genre, or they were tired of it entirely. And that's kinda wild, because we're talking about a game that took one of the gaming industry's titans and all their IPs are smashed it all together for epic, short games filled with so much flavor, and that ultimately failed.

I'm not saying that a shooter game is going to ever be dried up, that's one of the most commonly beloved genres and there are so many ways people have innovated within it, but I don't expect it being StarCraft IP to make it an incredible experience alone. Sure, they will sell copies, but will people stick around? If it's the kind of game that needs a large number of players to be successful, it might not last.

The way Blizzard has been taking games in more recent years with the insane cash grab microtransactions has also been quite off-putting, so I'm curious where they are going to land on that one. I know that games require consistent income to stay online these days in our always-only world, but that doesn't mean we need to gamble for skins like we do in Hearthstone or play the Fortnite game locking stuff away for a long time like Overwatch does to create that all too common fear of missing out. And don't even get me started on World of Warcraft's hilarious mount problem where they drop store mounts that are super cool at $25 a piece; At least with those if you keep a yearly subscription you get them for free, though I can't remember the last time I even played WoW consistently for three months.

I'm so curious what their monetization plan is going to be, I just hope it isn't the thing that puts the nail in the coffin.

Diablo V

When Diablo IV released I wrote a review about it stating quite boldly that Blizzard and Diablo no longer defines the ARPG genre. A statement I stand behind today even with the updates made to Diablo IV over the past three years. The game is in a much better spot and hell, the game isn't owned by Activision anymore, it's owned by XBOX which is going through a massive restructuring and a new vision going forward. The game is also coming in 2029 which is several years away so it will be interesting how that time also reshapes the game.

Which is exactly what they were talking about during the Diablo V What's Next Panel - reshaping Diablo. On stage they were talking about how they want to make the game that Diablo players want to play, and all kinds of Diablo players and how they've pooled together their various metrics and they have this deep understanding of what players want.

Cool.

Data means nothing if you don't take action on the written and verbal feedback from players. Diablo IV launched with a botched stash system - no ability to do a basic search query and those gems flooding the system were major pain points that were uncovered during the beta. I'm not surprised though, Blizzard has this track record of releasing expansions or games that don't fix feedback presented during beta tests; World of Warcraft has been notorious for this. Hell, WoW in Legion we had people gathering data about Blizzard messing up the legendary item drops and Blizzard said everything was okay, only coming out later going "oops". Yeah, way to really care about the time your players are putting into the game when you give them false hope. Moving goal posts over time making them easier to obtain is okay, but when you have a pool of many legendaries per class, and only a couple of them are desirable, players who were unable to get the other ones to drop because of terrible RNG and then even being straight up unable to get any more because of a bug... you're telling people to make a new character to try again and that was just insane. My Rogue friend is still salty about it to this day.

And like a broken record, Blizzard inevitably comes around with an announcement for one of their games talking about how much they care about the community and that they know they haven't been taking action in recent times or been very communicative... but it's convenience they bring that up when they are ready to sell us something again. The Hearthstone team is a prime example of this, saying at least once a year they can do better and then not really taking action on it.

I'll believe it when I see it. If you are trying to develop a game with the community, then actually engage with people and develop more in the open. If the Diablo team is communicative and the game looks like it's going to be different than Diablo IV, like, maybe they don't just nerf everything because people are having fun, maybe I'll give it a go in 2029.

Heroes of the Storm

Please. Nothing tells us that they are going to be returning to active development of the game. If they were, they would have made a commitment inside of the opening ceremony. However, Xal'atoes and another new hero who has not yet been named coming to the game? Hell yeah!

Heroes of the Storm is one of those games that just made its debut too late so it didn't have a lot of momentum. It was different than what League of Legends and DotA offered in a very great way; The games didn't last an hour long! That plus well designed heroes in IPs that many of us had been enjoying for years, getting to play as a singular hero instead of having to also control an entire RTS army like one would have to in Warcraft III if you wanted to live out the life on Thrall the Warchief or Jaina, well, that's pretty amazing.

I played Heroes for years, I covered it on a website as the community manager, and I talked to people at Blizzard on the regular about the game. I loved it. I wanted to see it do the best it could, it's just a shame it never really took off because it was special.

Blizzard, maybe you aren't ready today, but Heroes of the Storm is an incredible battleground and I hope you will continue to grace us with random patches and ninja content drops. It's okay if it takes some time, but I genuinely believe they will eventually get back to some kind of cadence with the game. Hell, get controller support in, because it would work very well in most cases, and you can get this thing launched on the XBOX opening up the player pool massively. That would also port over well to mobile, which, Heroes already has the huge bonus of being fast games which is exactly what people on mobile want to play with.

Yeah, Blizzard has reignited a spark within me with their new Hero announcements and I'm super pumped to see where this goes.

Hearthstone's Old Gods

I started covering Hearthstone the day is was announced at PAX East on March 22, 2013. To say that was a life-changing moment is a bit of an understatement. Prior to that I had been involved in various WoW communities and took on other volunteer roles within the gaming community at large and this was a way for me to get back into card games more and I was so thrilled. The game looked incredible, and it was, and I got a chance to also play within the Warcraft world which is huge because of my lifelong love for it.

Whispers of the Old Gods was the peak of Hearthstone. I don't mean from a gameplay perspective or from how active the developers were or how incredible they were at marketing the game. No. It was legitimately the most traffic that Hearthstone had on the web. I wish I had screenshots that I could share of the data that I have seen, but this is a moment in the game's history when players were the most engaged online with the game. We don't see that same enthusiasm for the game online like we used to.

Google Trends data shows their search queries for Hearthstone specifically peaked before Old Gods, in 2015, but believe me, if you weren't around back during Old Gods, that was a very special moment in the history of the game.

Websites for the game don't get the kind of engagement that we used to; Hell, Hearthstone Top Decks had to remove their staff and shut down. We're not doing great either on the Hearthstone front which is why we started to evolve the website into talking about more than just Hearthstone; Players simply don't need these external resources as much. The game is more figured out than it once so the questions aren't there.

Nothing wrong with that, it's a natural evolution of games when they are so singular. The biggest boost we saw to Hearthstone was when Battlegrounds and Mercenaries dropped and people had questions. Remember when we leaked Mercenaries? Oh boy was Blizzard pissed off about that one!

Okay enough rambling, what about BlizzCon's new Old Gods announcement. It makes me wonder if this is Blizzard trying to pull players back in, to go back to the big hitters, the Old Gods. Anytime the Old Gods show up, people tend to lose their minds. These are some of the most iconic Warcraft characters and if they didn't sell well, we wouldn't see so many skins and concepts for them.

It's pretty cool though and the new cards also look pretty fun. The assemble keyword has a curated pool of 250 minions that lets you augment them and just break the game? Dope.

Redoing the entire Hearthstone main interface? Okay that's a very cool change too because it has been the same old bottom forever and it exposes features better than before.

I think where Blizzard really hits Hearthstone hard though in the excitement department is their willingness to bring in a couple of very cool Tavern Brawls that compeletly change the way the game is played.

2v2 is one of the formats players have been asking for and theorycrafting for years. Almost 5 years ago the game director at the time, Dean Ayala, was talking about wanting to do a multiplayer constructed format and now they are finally coming out with a test for two weeks inside Tavern Brawl. Please play this and give Blizzard your feedback. This is a way to make Hearthstone more of a social experience rather than the loneliness that it is outside of Battlegrounds. Constructed, friendly play would be a great core addition to the game, or, even a great regular event to do. Being able to pass cards between players and having cards that hit all players actually hit all players breaks the games in ways previously not considered. Huge.

That wasn't the only cool thing though. Magic the Gathering Commander is a format that took over that game and Blizzard experimented a bit with the idea of singleton decks all the way back in the League of Explorers with Reno Jackson, but now we're going to see a 99-card format via the Warchief brawl. You pick a Warchief, which haven't been spoiled yet, and you get to play decks with an absurd number of cards. It will be interesting to see how this one plays out and whether or not it has the staying power to become a new format.

I believe Blizzard is going in the right direction here. Mercenaries was a cool test but ultimately was a flop because the cards didn't matter. Letting players use their actual card collections is the most important thing you can do in a collectible card game and these two formats give me confidence that they are setting the game up for the future and not being afraid to try things.

Oh the Monk announcement was cool too, even if they didn't say anything other than to stay tuned for next year. I don't know how they're going to balance the game with yet another class, but I suspect when Monk does arrive we'll either see it being super overpowered like Death Knights were requiring quick patches to nerf them, or they'll show up weak and require immediate buffs. I hope when they do add Monk though they find a better way to give them a larger card pool. Death Knights to me always felt a bit on the awkward side with how they handled their smaller card pool. Maybe the class sets is the answer, hell, Death Knights are getting two of those inside the Black Empire patch schedule!

I can't say that I'll return to Hearthstone, I haven't even opened my card backs from Sunken City that I pre-ordered nor did I ever open my Mercenary packs because I was wanting to wait until they added more content to chase better perceived value... oops. But I will definitely be checking out the new formats when they hit Tavern Brawls and that's exciting.

World of Warcraft: Forever

When they announced the name, my brain went:

1. Oh my god they're doing it this is amazing.

2. What a stupid name.

3. Zandalar, foreva!

But seriously, I understand they want to communicate that this is a version of the game that is going to be around forever, however, you could have found a better name. Obviously Classic Plus is a terrible name in itself, and this is very different than Classic entirely, but Forever? Who was a part of the branding meeting where this was approved? What were the other options?

I can think of better names.

• WoW Origin: Illustrates we're going back to the beginning of World of Warcraft and gives us that feeling that we're going to stay there.

• WoW Azeroth: Maybe not as interesting but we aren't going anywhere; No space goats. This is the core World of Warcraft experience and it's the Azeroth we know and love and there aren't any huge swords stuck in the ground.

• WoW Frontier: Even better than Origin. This is a new frontier of the base game that we get to explore and I think it goes great with that camping concept.

• WoW Reforged: This is a bit of a joke but it's so much better than Forever and like Warcraft III, WoW Forever is hitting a lot of those same points. Optional HD improvements, new content, new story. This is reforged.

Poor naming choice aside, I'm excited about it. A new race, more dungeons, new zones, new raids, reworked itemization, camping, profession changes, and so much more. Blizzard should have explored Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms in the post-Cataclysm world several times at this point and they just didn't. The massive size of these two continents and their barren areas where they were void of dungeons and raids alone was something we should have seen a push to include. There is something special about these old places and I'm so happy they are finally going to explore them more. Or rather, that we get to explore them more.

Collector's Edition has already been pre-ordered. You will see me on the beta next week taking a look around and I'll almost certainly have more thoughts on it. This is something I need to sink my teeth into though and we're just a few days away so it's worth the wait.

The name is dumb, but don't let that make you not give it a shot when it comes out November 4. Which, yesssss, what a great release date it's just 7 weeks away!

WoW: Classic

Was quite absent from BlizzCon. Blizzard hasn't told us about the future plans post-Pandaria and I believe that is not a good thing.

Mists of Pandaria, and even Cataclysm and Wrath of the Lich King, all haven't had the momentum of the original Classic release. Each subsequent expansion has seen lower player numbers after that initial boost and really, are we surprised?

The expansion after Mists is Warlord of Draenor, one of the most universally despised expansions due to its void of content and empty feeling world since everyone just sat inside their Garrisons. I've been of the opinion there is no chance Blizzard releases WoD again and I feel like I might be right about that.

Will Blizzard move to Legion, a more critically acclaimed expansion? Or will Mists of Pandaria be the end of this generation of WoW Classic? Both are great questions that have some negativity around them so it makes sense to keep it out of BlizzCon which is supposed to be a positive moment in time.

Personally, I'd like to see them stop WoW Classic and focus on the anniversary edition. Move everyone's characters to the live servers and if the need is there, bring up new classic realms in the future to start another era of it. I think Blizzard is looking for data to see how WoW Forever does though before they make any major announcements for Classic and that's smart. Why shoot yourself in the foot if Forever fails to gain a hold over the Classic elite? Blizzard has the data at this point to understand how their players engage with their various lines of the game. Every player is almost certainly tagged internally by which game they most engage with and through that, they can see how Classic purists handle new main WoW updates and now, how they engage with Forever.

Good call to omit it from the show, but damn have there been a lot of questions online and I feel as if Blizzard could have just said we'd hear more in the Spring after WoW Forever.

Warcraft III: New Expansion

WHAT?

Yeah, this one was a damn good reveal and even cooler than it dropped today. I'm not going to lie to you, I almost alt+f4'd my coverage of BlizzCon to go and download and play it but I resisted and I'm glad I did because there were so many other great announcements.

Blizzard ninja-dropping an entire expansion for WarCraft III: Reforged felt like a gift from the heavens. WarCraft III is an absolutely iconic game and jumping into an entire 30 hour campaign about the Forsaken, one of my favourite races, sounds like an amazing time.

We're also getting the Forsaken Paladin, which is also arriving in both WoW Midnight and WoW Forever which is a nice touch.

A new graphics mode making it the definitive edition of the game? The new HD look is a large improvement over with the updates that W3R launched with and I'm kinda happy I didn't fully play through the campaign back when it dropped because now I get to go through so many dozens of hours of content with a look that, in my opinion, feels more WarCraft.

23 years after The Frozen Throne, guys. Bonkers! I know we got that wild Warlock addition to Diablo II earlier this year, so it isn't like Blizzard couldn't have thrown us some more stuff for WarCraft III, but I expected a Warcraft IV before we got an entire new expansion in WarCraft III.

I do think this was the right call though. We don't need a WarCraft IV. Tell us these WarCraft stories within an already established engine and keep building up playable lore outside of what World of Warcraft can offer us. WoW has always required you to read books or engage with random video content to get extra bits of story, so using the RTS as an avenue for stories is simply great. I hope this is the start of something greater coming to WarCraft III.

BlizzCon Day 2 starts later today and although we aren't going to see wild name drops, it should be a great day of fact exploration. I didn't touch on the WoW Midnight announcements because, honestly, who cares? I certainly don't at this point because I find the main WoW game to be an unplayable disaster though I will definitely be back to enjoy The Last Titan's opening story.

I can see why Blizzard didn't hold BlizzCon in previous years though. When they said they had nothing worth announcing and then come out and hit the ball out of the park with this year's convention return, it makes so much sense.

Next year? Probably a solid focus on Diablo V, StarCraft will almost certainly get another teaser for the open-world shooter, and I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard at least gives us a little tease for the future of WoW since The Last Titan will be capping off the trilogy of the Worldsoul Saga and already have been released; It sounds like Blizzard has huge plans post-Worldsoul Saga so the earlier they let us know what we can expect, the better.

What did you think about this year's announcements at BlizzCon?