No BlizzCon in 2012 - Battle.net World Championship

[Deleted]

....... strange

[Deleted]

I thought Blizzcon was for/about the fans and not just to pimp the latest Blizzard product? Guess this puts that notion to rest.

That's a damn good point actually.

Myth busted.

[Deleted]

Nooooooooooooo!!1 I thought we'd have a titan announcement on this years Blizzcon :´(

[Ethas]

Well It would be cool if they outbeat Valve at top money prize. If they don't, It's going to be the waste of time.

[Farora]

Are they too ashamed of MoP?

[Lielandri]

I can't see the source posts behind this. Suspicious! o.o

[ElementalThreat]

Shouldn't all 3 of those games be out by the time Blizzcon rolls around??

[Byniri]

At first, this worried me, but then I realized that maybe this is good.


This means they're probably working on Diablo III, MoP, Starcraft II expacs, and Titan.



Also, anyone else think that this could possibly hint at MoP release date around this time?

[ZenX]

People fail to both remember that Cata beta took longer due to an entire-game content being rehashed, hence, required to be tested. Therefore, for a healthier comparison and speculation, WotLK and TBC beta cycles should be taken into consideration.TBC beta - TBC release: ~3 monthsWotLK beta - WotLK release: ~4 monthsYou figure out the rest.

[Trexxen]

What was buggy at Cata release? I cant remember anything being bad at all.

Primarily the raids; I remember entire fights not working as intended, especially once the heroic modes were hit - remember when Sinestra was almost one-shotted? =P To be fair, Blizzard caught most of them quickly.

[WyvernVin]

They want to avoid wasting time and money in case the world truly ends this year.

[Deleted]

I too was expecting something regarding Titan. Ah well, I guess they don't want to present the new cow before the old one has been milked dry.

[Deleted]

Maybe BioWare should have a SWTOR-con next year instead!!! :P

I thought Blizzcon was for/about the fans and not just to pimp the latest Blizzard product? Guess this puts that notion to rest.

Can't it be both?
I mean come on, of course Blizzcon is always a good way to make sales, get products to the people and advertise your games, but it's still always a place for fans and developers to come together and celebrate Blizzard games. Those two things don't exclude each other.

But more to the point, the reason why they aren't doing it this year, according to Blizzard, which I think some might agree is the most reliable source in this matter, is because they've got too much stuff to do. Diablo 3, Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria. So I have no problem believing that.

[WrathDksCataFrostPandaFtl]

Typical PR nonsense. That's obviously not the real reason.

"We seek honest feedback and use it to improve the quality of our work. At the end of the day, most players won’t remember whether the game was late -- only whether it was great."

"we’re committed to making ethical decisions, always keeping our players in mind"

Blizzcon is at its base, a convention all about the fans. What does it show now that Activision Blizzard has decided to skip it?

Beside the fact that since Activision merged with Blizzard, the ticket price has magically gone up 75% in just a few years. While actual inflation, is about 8.5% during that same period.

Perhaps they realized, that the $25 price increase each year would start pissing people off, and many less people would pay $200 for just 3 days of Blizzard's crap.

Perhaps they didn't feel that running Blizzcon was as profitable as pumping out games that people have to buy. It's already well known that Diablo will have III separate games, even though they have decided not to announce that as of yet.

It is time for all of you to admit, Blizzard isn't the same company they used to be. It used to be, quality over quantity.

Nowadays, it's "screw you" over quality. They'd rather sell a few million (about 4.5 million copies of SCII as of December 2010) $60 games, than hold a convention a significantly smaller number of their fans (less than 30,000 last year) will pay them for.

So, foregoing the simple math here, that is $270 million for releasing StarCraft. Or $4.55 Million for Blizzcon, which obviously costs them a lot more to produce.

Since they'll be releasing the pandaria game ($40 +$80 CE) the $40 and $80 CE swarm game, and $60 and likely $100 Diablo game, they are looking at possibly $600 million or more, in profits, compared to under $10 million. If you look at the history of the ceo of activision, you will see this is a clear pattern for his games.

I think it is clear to say, that Blizzard is no longer a company that is based around what it's customers needs are. Especially when they're cancelling Blizzcon just so they can rush out a few more titles before WoW is dead.

R.I.P. the old Blizzard that actually gave a fuck about anything besides just making more green.

[Laikaa]

At first, this worried me, but then I realized that maybe this is good.


This means they're probably working on Diablo III, MoP, Starcraft II expacs, and Titan.



Also, anyone else think that this could possibly hint at MoP release date around this time?

I think that MoP will be released already by time Blizzcon is typically held but, it will be much to soon to preview the next xpac. I think this is great news personally not only for WOW players but Diablo players as well.

[chaley]

Blizzard sure is making it hard for me to get excited about what they're doing. D3 may just be the last game I get from them because without major hype I probably won't be all that interested in the stuff they do. They already lost me in WoW, and no Blizzcon means that after I get the last SC2 game they put out there won't be anything making me want to know more. Guess this means goodbye to Blizzard. It was a fun run while I was here.

[WrathDksCataFrostPandaFtl]

Typical PR nonsense. That's obviously not the real reason.

"We seek honest feedback and use it to improve the quality of our work. At the end of the day, most players won’t remember whether the game was late -- only whether it was great."

"we’re committed to making ethical decisions, always keeping our players in mind"

Blizzcon is at its base, a convention all about the fans. What does it show now that Activision Blizzard has decided to skip it?

Beside the fact that since Activision merged with Blizzard, the ticket price has magically gone up 75% in just a few years. While actual inflation, is about 8.5% during that same period.

Perhaps they realized, that the $25 price increase each year would start pissing people off, and many less people would pay $200 for just 3 days of Blizzard's crap.

Perhaps they didn't feel that running Blizzcon was as profitable as pumping out games that people have to buy. It's already well known that Diablo will have III separate games, even though they have decided not to announce that as of yet.

It is time for all of you to admit, Blizzard isn't the same company they used to be. It used to be, quality over quantity.

Nowadays, it's "screw you" over quality. They'd rather sell a few million (about 4.5 million copies of SCII as of December 2010) $60 games, than hold a convention a significantly smaller number of their fans (less than 30,000 last year) will pay them for.

So, foregoing the simple math here, that is $270 million for releasing StarCraft. Or $4.55 Million for Blizzcon, which obviously costs them a lot more to produce.

Since they'll be releasing the pandaria game ($40 +$80 CE) the $40 and $80 CE swarm game, and $60 and likely $100 Diablo game, they are looking at possibly $600 million or more, in profits, compared to under $10 million. If you look at the history of the ceo of activision, you will see this is a clear pattern for his games.

I think it is clear to say, that Blizzard is no longer a company that is based around what its customers needs are. Especially when they're cancelling Blizzcon just so they can rush out a few more titles before WoW is dead.

R.I.P. the old Blizzard that actually gave a fuck about anything besides just making more green.

[greyghost]

Pretty gutted to be honest. Out of all of the gaming conventions out there, Blizzcon is the one I really get excited about.

Then again, would 3 big blizzard releases in 2012 make up for it? Err, yes :P

Pretty much my thoughts.

There will be anti-WoW Fanboys jumping all over this, of course. "LOLOL BLIZZ IS DYING". No, Blizz is busy making stuff so mindblowing that Blizzcon 2013 will probably be an absolute blast. Plus, Titan info will probably be announced then. :P

Maybe BioWare should have a SWTOR-con next year instead!!! :P

I thought Blizzcon was for/about the fans and not just to pimp the latest Blizzard product? Guess this puts that notion to rest.

Oh look.

It's pretty obvious that you don't know what goes into Blizzcon, but I'll lay it out honestly, blatantly and factually to you. Blizzcon has panels that are run by its actual gamemakers. The programmers, artists, modellers, writers, so on. These guys are exhausted at the panels. I've been to Blizzcon. I see it in their faces. The 2008 Blizzcon where Ghostcrawler made his first appearance, at the eve of the WotLK launch? He looked TERRIBLE. Like he hadn't slept in 3 weeks, because he was busy finalizing systems, posting non-stop on the WoW forums and having to set up 5 developer panels for a 2-day convention.

Conventions take an insane amount of work to set up, and an even more insane amount of time. And this I can state for an absolute fact as someone who has friends who are cartoonists and attend 6 conventions a year, hosting panel discussions + whatnot... even one panel where you discuss what your job is takes an agonizing amount of time to prepare to make it professional and worth the time of the hundreds-- if not thousands-- of people who are going to attend it. At least once in your education you have likely had to do a group presentation on some subject that you had to research with others. If you got an A on it and had to do slides and recite information without going "err" and "ummmm" every 6 seconds, I can wager you had to invest a lot of time preparing it.

Take that knowledge, and apply it with that the many panel discussions at Blizzcon are manned by the actual artists, writers and coders that make Blizzard games (I absolutely must emphasize this). That they had an absolute non-negotiable deadline to get this presentation ready. Then they also have their job, the deadlines that they have at Blizzard that we may not see reported with minute detail on fansites or reported on by Blueposters. While the whole company probably acknowledges that everyone has to take a break to do Blizzcon, there's still the games to be made and finished that they were likely working on either way each day leading up to Blizzcon, and the deadlines that they still have to follow the day after Blizzcon.

They are human beings. They can't do 92723 things at once, especially not to even bay down on "NERF/BUFF PLZ" whining. Cut them some slack.

[akaTheDude]

lol....talk about blizz aiming at the asian market.

Couldnt agree more....I mean Pandas, Pokemon....now this Kinda makes me wonder

[NuclearSoda]

They are busy working on their games huh... and here I thought programmers just programmed games and didn't set up conventions.Yeah that is a typical PR response, this has nothing to do with taking development teams away from their work.