https://blizzcon.com/en-us/news/23655116
Relevant portion:
Originally Posted by Saralyn Smith, Executive Producer of BlizzCon
Wouldn't be surprised if Blizz and other companies used pandemic excuse to completely ditch live events to cut the costs and reduce hassle.
Sometimes, the light of the moon is a key to other spaces. I've found a place where, for a night or two, the streets curve in unfamiliar ways. If I walk here, I might find insight, or I might be touched by madness.
Well, let's hope this means 9.2 takes place (partially/completely) on Azeroth.
I could see this as some kind of blended reality where the Shadowlands have rifts throughout Azeroth, breaking the veil. That's where you basically enter or leave the "living world". Or it could be like Legion portals that brought us to other planets.
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I think Blizzcon always was a very lucrative event. Ten thousand fans attending for $100+++ should be good money for the kind of stuff they're doing there. Plus online ticket revenue.
MAGA - Make Alliance Great Again
"Seamless World Transition" was probably for testing the flying between zones in Shadowlands.
Though I wonder what "Living World" means for Classic. Are they maybe trying to revamp how dying/corpse running works across retail and classic?
FFXIV - Maduin (Dynamis DC)
I will be surprised if industry events like E3 ever return with the scope they had before the pandemic, but fan events like Blizzcon or anime conventions will return.
That said, it would require there would be any attendees left. Blizz might not be feeling too hot on that front after these past few years of constant dumpster fire.
Sometimes, the light of the moon is a key to other spaces. I've found a place where, for a night or two, the streets curve in unfamiliar ways. If I walk here, I might find insight, or I might be touched by madness.
Yeah, but that's still a single map with just flight points, I don't think that'd need multiple maps to test it with (like in the image). It might be an iteration of that though, where taxis can go between continents and maybe like you say have a somewhat merged feeling of maps. That would be really cool.
We had Blizzcon online details on late September last year, still no news about next one. So it's not like February is a given. Maybe first they planned smaller online event early 22 and real Blizzcon late 22, but after July new people said: "yeeeaaah.. it will be better to skip live audience Blizzcon this year as well".
Of course if they plan to release expac in 2022 (which I don't think is super likely), March/April is deadline for revealing stuff - with assumption Alpha start literally days after reveal.
EDIT: Still not Mage Tower this week? November release for 9.1.5 start looking more likely than 19th October.
Last edited by Dracullus; 2021-10-05 at 08:29 PM.
I definitely would not expect a Blizzcon live event in 2022, maybe not even in 2023. A live event means there will be protestors at the venue and a live event means Blizzard can't control what's going on / the narrative.
MAGA - Make Alliance Great Again
Sometimes, the light of the moon is a key to other spaces. I've found a place where, for a night or two, the streets curve in unfamiliar ways. If I walk here, I might find insight, or I might be touched by madness.
Please, you are just proving my point that this is how every expansion is. The Mag'har are a completely irrelevant sideplot, Blood Elves and Draenei are only important because Blizzard arbitrarily picks them to be the "group" doing shit. You could have put anyone on Isle of Thunder or Suramar Horde side and changed a few lines of dialogue. The Draenei don't even make sense in Legion, the only place they were really important, because the expansion already had the Illidari, a force specifically bred to fight demons.
Being a thing that can be used later doesn't make any expansion more or less filler, because every group is that and ever expansion has those groups, see the explorer's league being constantly involved in world-ending shit, or Khadgar, or Tyrande and the Night Elves. It's all just arbitrarily picking what groups they want involved, and until that point things are just introduced and left in limbo, like the Mag'har who were introduced and then were completely unimportant until what, vague relevance in the last patch of MoP? the Blood Elves who were unimportant after BC until basically Suramar, or the Draenei who never really became important again, because besides Velen, the only important Draenei are a completely new group introduced specifically for Legion.
SL details what happens after passing on, establishes what guided the cosmic powers into existence and expanded on their relations to one other, that is far more fundamental to lore than anything at all that happened in most expansions.