BlizzConline 2022 Event Cancelled - Reimagining Future BlizzCons

[Zmagoslav]

Blizzard turned out to be just another cautionary tale of how not to "corporate".

The whole fiasco pretty much reminds me of the myth of Oedipus, and his self-fulfilling prophecy.

[Beefhammer]

Any mobile game they announce will get instant flack, thats more or less a given. OW2 is a title we probably will see launch in 2022. D4? 2023, no way they squeese that game out in 2022. D3 & Starcraft is left to rot, especially SC. I freakin love SC and its so sad Blizzard dont bother with it anymore. Its probably not lucrative enough anymore(hard to monetize), so they tossed it in the bin.

Whatever the next wow xpac is, its got to be something mindblowing and awesome that gets the blood pumping. It better be something relateable and awesome, or they are going to get flacked early on. Knowing Blizzard, its probably going to be something cosmic-lazer-alien-spaceship-timewarping ubermegabad villain we gotta stop in the Voidlands.

Dont get me wrong though - I agree with you that they have stuff coming, but non of them are exciting and great on its own. Can we really expect anything groundbreaking from OW2? We know so little. D4 is the last hope for that IP, if that goes the same route as D3, its probably the end.


In any case - cancelling Blizzconline highly indicates they dont have much, if anything, to showcase. Atleast not a game coming out soon. If theres nothing to showcase, theres really no reason to do it.

It's more it's bad timing with all the stuff going on.

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What do they have to show? What is this "plenty" they have to show that you know about?

Read 7 more posts from the one you quoted.

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I think this was a missed opportunity for Blizzard. They could have used Blizzcon as a venue to make some powerful statements about their changed management philosophy and their commitment to providing engaging and top-quality gameplay. They need to get in front of the world and say "we fully recognize we have failed our employees and are committed to change, and we have failed our customer base and are committed to change, this is how we are going to do it" and then move on to the fun. It would be good turning point to redirect the news to be about fun again and not failed employee management and failed game design.

I for one have faith that Blizzard will eventually rise from this mess and be top notch again, and Blizzcon could have been the milestone signifying that change.

They haven't finished getting things straightened out yet.

[cface]

Hope Blizzard just gets destroyed. They fuck up in their workspace, then prune jokes and achievements, putting the finger on their playerbase. How dumb can you get? How can anyone have faith in such a company?

[Scabb]

I don't understand people blaming this on "cancel culture" or "wokeness'". "Corporate culture" did this. Literally no one was asking for them to remove the things they've been removing: They're doing it specifically so they can tell their investors they're doing something about "the boys-club culture"

I actually don't believe this is the case and it has been denied by a Team 2 member. This is appeasement of the 'woke' elements of the remaining workforce or, if you're to believe the likely alternative, the team forcing their wishlist of changes in game at a time where Blizzard can't do anything about it.

It's not about to fire what's left of its development staff and risk a massive backlash so we have what we have.

[Warning]

Not really surprising, they're up to their neck in lawsuits. Blizzcon was always fun to watch and it's a shame a few people couldn't handle the position they were put in. Personally hope they clean house and fire the abusers as well as these creepy puritan censors and get back to making some actual good and novel stuff again, but realistically it won't happen so I guess I'm done with Blizzard for the foreseeable future.

[jazen]

Must be to focus on improving game play....only reason I can think that they'd cancel it.

[tromage2]

Must be to focus on improving game play....only reason I can think that they'd cancel it.

Haha keep dreaming that has not happend for over 5 years now.

They are to mutch focused on have talking groups at blizzard hq on what way they can turn WoW into a diverse safe space for all and remove everything from the game one of those blue haired devs find offensive.

[MoanaLisa]

Well it makes sense. In 2005 internet wasn't really a thing and hardly anyone had internet connection 16 years ago. Nowadays internet is better way to share information.

I'm not sure how you square that statement with WoW's early success. The availability of broadband at just that moment is one of the things that made WoW take off. It wouldn't have happened if everyone was still on a 56k modem.

[rrayy]

The general opinion is so toxic nowadays, anything they potentially say will probably be interpreted in the wrong way, and someone will take a 10 seconds video out of context and blow it out of proportion.

This is a case of whatever they do, they will be wrong.

And I bet no one left at the office wants to be the sacrificial lamb going to the front.

I totally understand why they are pulling the plug. Nothing good can come out of this. It is just bad publicity, and hosting an open mic for tough questions is not a good thing to do right now.

They haven't had an "open mic for tough questions" for awhile now. They totally control what questions are being asked.

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Not really surprising, they're up to their neck in lawsuits. Blizzcon was always fun to watch and it's a shame a few people couldn't handle the position they were put in. Personally hope they clean house and fire the abusers as well as these creepy puritan censors and get back to making some actual good and novel stuff again, but realistically it won't happen so I guess I'm done with Blizzard for the foreseeable future.

The abusers are already gone. Long gone in fact.

[czarek]

Dear Blizzard. RIP.

[Machismo]

This is a classic example of corporate retraction. I get that people want to try and blame this on them getting rid of /flirts, but this is about a company who is consistently putting out mediocre products, and has simply fallen behind the times.

[DavidJones123]

Nice Work done

[crusadernero]

Must be to focus on improving game play....only reason I can think that they'd cancel it.

its because they have nothing to show, nothing of big value anyway. This was supposed to be online, so there wouldnt be alot of issues to deal with along the way. They could have just pre-recorded most of it and showcase whats going on and whats being released.

It also releaves them of pressure when it comes to having something ready for a fixed date. With Blizzconline cancelled, they dont need to have anything finished. Now they can just announce whatever they want, whenever they want. Since its cancelled, they can announce literally anything whenever in 2022.

[exochaft]

I actually don't believe this is the case and it has been denied by a Team 2 member. This is appeasement of the 'woke' elements of the remaining workforce or, if you're to believe the likely alternative, the team forcing their wishlist of changes in game at a time where Blizzard can't do anything about it.

It's not about to fire what's left of its development staff and risk a massive backlash so we have what we have.

It can technically be both, but I agree that corporate likely has very little to do with these decisions. If anything, corporate is just letting the lunatics run the asylum because they need said lunatics to keep the company from completely falling apart. In reality, everyone in this scenario is basically pandering with no adherence to any sort of grounded morality, because either they're nuts or are in self-preservation mode for the immediate future. There's a ton of parallels to this in politics and social events outside of gaming, but they all stem from the same source and enable the worst of human nature to thrive (but that's another long discussion).

Long-term, such a trend at ActiBlizz cannot last with repercussions because despite all the pandering, none of their decisions at any level in Blizz appear to reflect the needs and/or wants of their customers. While some people have their kinks to pay someone to spit in their face and treat them terribly, I highly doubt his is representative of the vast majority of ActiBlizz customers. If it is... well, we got more serious problems than what a gaming company is doing.

[Kazlehoff]

We’ve decided to take a step back and pause on planning the previously announced BlizzConline event scheduled for early next year.

"We've devided to cancel Blizzcon because we realized people would use it to speak out against our shit behavior recently, and we couldnt have that. Additionally, it would give people a metric they could use to show how many subs we are hemmoraging. And we have no Diablo 4 news, just Diablo Immortal news. so we figured we better nip this shit in the bud"

I fixed your quote for you, Blizzard.

This was a tough decision for all of us to make, but it’s the right one.

Well, You're half-right at least.

[Pacster]

its because they have nothing to show, nothing of big value anyway. This was supposed to be online, so there wouldnt be alot of issues to deal with along the way. They could have just pre-recorded most of it and showcase whats going on and whats being released.

It also releaves them of pressure when it comes to having something ready for a fixed date. With Blizzconline cancelled, they dont need to have anything finished. Now they can just announce whatever they want, whenever they want. Since its cancelled, they can announce literally anything whenever in 2022.

I think the same. They know that they got nothing to show and players would just use it to vent their anger....and that can get pretty ugly given the current reputation and legal situation of Blizz. It feels like Blizz is in a downward spiral for years already when it comes to public relation and this would possibly just have marked a new low. So they chickened out. The rest is marketing reframing.

[Kyphael]

Blizzard nerds Disney the way a crackhead needs Jesus. I almost hope Activision tries to sell the IP off as it continues to lose value and tries to distance itself from it. With the corporate PC cleanup, might as well be under the Disney umbrella, and at this point, Disney might be the only company that might be able to restore value to it.

Fuck it, I want to see Lich King on ice in a crossover with Frozen.

[Varodoc]

To be honest it's hard to have a news convention when you don't have anything to reveal.

They are super behind schedule with Shadowlands even though 9.2 will be the last patch.

Overwatch 2 is in development hell and it's really just a reskin of the base game.

Diablo 4 gets one quarterly update like a dad coming every once in a while to give some money to his wife and son.

They already saw what happened when they tried to talk about Diablo Lolimmortal.

SC2 and HOTS are dead.

There's really not much to reveal.

[cateran100]

Well it makes sense. In 2005 internet wasn't really a thing and hardly anyone had internet connection 16 years ago. Nowadays internet is better way to share information.

Are you drunk? Do you understand WoW is an ONLINE game therefore internet usage was so widely spread it was worth to release it?
"Worldwide, the number of internet users rose from 1.02 billion users in 2005"
https://www.statista.com/statistics/...great-britain/

[vashe9]

lol who even cares about blizzcon anymore ?

They have nothing new to show except random 1min trailers. The fan contests are long gone. The fun is long gone. Blizzard is long gone.

I played D2R for a bit, then came the server problems as always. Already quit. Playing something else...

I've been playing wow since day 1. I dont think I'll ever come back to this game.