BLIZZCON!!!!!! The seventh BlizzCon is coming to the Anaheim Convention Center Friday, November 8 and Saturday, November 9, 2013. Those who join us for this epic community gathering will experience two solid days of hands-on time with the latest Blizzard games, in-depth developer discussion panels, intense eSports action featuring some of the top players in the world, and a variety of other exciting activities and events. Further details on the show, including ticket pricing and availability, will be posted here on BlizzCon.com at a later date. In the meantime, check out the press release for more info and prepare to help us blow Anaheim's mind.
With Blizzcon, Blizzard can attempt to breathe new life into D3 as well as attempt to stir up a bit of hype and get people excited about the game again, moreso than they can with these patches IMO. I suspect we'll see our first legitimate information about D3's first xpac as well as general planned improvements for the game.
They've been doing a great job improving the game with these patches, I hope they can pick up even more momentum at Blizzcon and eventually truly transform the game into something great! (or greater, depending on your point of view)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Oh pitiful shadow lost in the darkness,
Bringing torment and pain to others.
Your damned soul wallowing in your sin.
Perhaps... it is time to die.
I would almost guarantee an expansion announcement for Diablo 3. As a CasmX posted above, improvements to this game up until then and then the announcement of the first expansion will likely create the hype again. I don't care for the hype though, the improvements made already has me sold on an expansion. Will pre order CE first day its up.
Project Titan: They will probably will announce some more information for this project, maybe even give it a name and have some test demos at Blizzcon for attendees to try out.
Starcraft 2: With the release of HOTS this year I highly doubt they are going to announce anything with Legacy of the Void at Blizzcon at all this year, if we are lucky maybe a very early alpha demo in the play test area.
WOW: Same with SC2, MOP was just released at the end of last year I know they are planning another expansion for WOW but probably not much information will come out on it.
Diablo 3: Here is the big one, at the rate Blizzard is going, 2-3 months per new patch. 1.0.7 was just released earlier this month, I suspect a 1.0.8 to launch sometime in May, possibly around the Diablo 3 one year anniversary. 1.0.9 will be sometime in late summer around August, then finally 1.1 will be around late October just in time for Blizzcon discussion.
Blizzard might actually consider Diablo 3 after 1.1 to be a "completed project" and we won't really receive any content patches like what we have been getting. Again leading towards the likely announcement of Diablo 3's first expansion, definitely not a date of course but for sure some information and possibly some Diablo 3x beta keys in the Blizzcon goodie bags :Thumbs Up:
Blizzard All-Stars: after being in an intense legal battle with Valve over the the name "Blizzard DOTA" and within it's conclusion within the last year. I suspect they might throw this in somewhere.
Not really late, just 2 weeks later than the ordinary.
On your predictions I can say you're likely very right on SCII. Unless some other project is in the works that is not exactly an expansion. Maybe a better platform for custom games. Anyway.
WoW's expansion will be announced because the lifetime of a WoW expansion is about 2 years and 1 would've already passed by the time Blizzcon is held. This is 99.9999%.
Diablo 3's expansion will most surely be announced as well. I'd give it 98%.
All Stars... I wouldn't be surprised if the game releases by then. Nope, not gonna be surprised at all.
Take those as personal speculation of course. I don't have inside info. But I'm quite confident.
I suspect (with no real knowledge other than rampant speculation) that Titan will NOT be announced this year. I remember an interview with somebody back at Blizzcon 2011 (I don't remember who it was with) where the person talked about how, in their excitement to announce new games, they were starting to find themselves as a company in a position where they release too much info too early, and then get burned by it. I suspect that was a direct reference to D3, which was already 3 years past announcement but not yet close to launch, but also sc2, which had a very long announce-to-launch time.
Most reasonable estimates of Titan's launch seem to put it at least 2 years away, possibly more like mid-to-late 2015 (of course these are all based on pure speculation). If the game really is that far away, I don't expect an announcement.
Titan: There is no official announcement regarding Titan as of yet, so "announcing more information" can't be correct logically. They'll either announce the game, or stay silent. My prediction: they'll stay silent. Blizzard got burned with announcing Diablo 3 too early, they probably learned from it. On top of that they have to sort out release dates with the other big-budget Activision MMO, Destiny, developed by Bungie, which is probably due 2014.
Starcraft: All-Stars is already late... It has been announced at Blizzcon 2011, it should be out by November (if it's not canned, that is). The Protoss expansion could be announced though, it would fit the 1,5 year expansion cycle that was planned initially.
Diablo: I'll be disappointed if they don't announce the expansion before Blizzcon. In their last Q&A they hinted at core systems changing, and the game really needs that. Things like that don't fit a live game very well though, so I expect an early expansion, one that tries to fix the deepest problems (rewards, drops and items). 1.08 and 1.09 is not a necessity, they can skip numbers to 1.1 if they feel their "real" PVP is ready. And I'd bet on it that they're deep in development of 1.1, they wouldn't have denounce team DM if they didn't have something in works already.
WoW: The last expansion got out earlier than previous ones, so an announcement in November would be late. I expect an announcement earlier in 2013.
m4st0d0n you have to take into consideration that announcing things on Blizzcon is a way better method then just announcing it on a regular Tuesday when no one cares. The announcement can be 1 month late but in development terms that's not an issue at all. Everything cool for the 6 months prior to Blizzcon will be postponed to that date likely.
Also, don't forget about Warcraft 4. If it is in development (and I suspect it is), I don't think there's a chance in hell it gets announced before SC2:LotV is out or at least announced, but if we're discussing everything on their possible future game calendar, there is this one to consider.
I'd put money on the Xpac having more content we expected from release, rehashed from D2 or "borrowed" from PoE than brand new stuff we never saw coming.
m4st0d0n you have to take into consideration that announcing things on Blizzcon is a way better method then just announcing it on a regular Tuesday when no one cares. The announcement can be 1 month late but in development terms that's not an issue at all. Everything cool for the 6 months prior to Blizzcon will be postponed to that date likely.
We've seen many kinds of announcements from Blizzard I took that into consideration, and in addition, I took into consideration that it is bad marketing to announce multiple things at once too. We've seen double announcements at Blizzcons, but no triple announcements - for that exact reason. Blizzard is busy lately, so I expect that some announcements will happen outside Blizzcon. Announcements for Diablo, WoW and Starcraft are just expansions, no big things, like new games. Totally ok to happen outside Blizzcon.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Dates for this year's Blizzcon have been announced!
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Ha. Bagstone.
They've been doing a great job improving the game with these patches, I hope they can pick up even more momentum at Blizzcon and eventually truly transform the game into something great! (or greater, depending on your point of view)
Bringing torment and pain to others.
Your damned soul wallowing in your sin.
Perhaps...
it is time to die.
Predictions:
Project Titan: They will probably will announce some more information for this project, maybe even give it a name and have some test demos at Blizzcon for attendees to try out.
Starcraft 2: With the release of HOTS this year I highly doubt they are going to announce anything with Legacy of the Void at Blizzcon at all this year, if we are lucky maybe a very early alpha demo in the play test area.
WOW: Same with SC2, MOP was just released at the end of last year I know they are planning another expansion for WOW but probably not much information will come out on it.
Diablo 3: Here is the big one, at the rate Blizzard is going, 2-3 months per new patch. 1.0.7 was just released earlier this month, I suspect a 1.0.8 to launch sometime in May, possibly around the Diablo 3 one year anniversary. 1.0.9 will be sometime in late summer around August, then finally 1.1 will be around late October just in time for Blizzcon discussion.
Blizzard might actually consider Diablo 3 after 1.1 to be a "completed project" and we won't really receive any content patches like what we have been getting. Again leading towards the likely announcement of Diablo 3's first expansion, definitely not a date of course but for sure some information and possibly some Diablo 3x beta keys in the Blizzcon goodie bags :Thumbs Up:
Blizzard All-Stars: after being in an intense legal battle with Valve over the the name "Blizzard DOTA" and within it's conclusion within the last year. I suspect they might throw this in somewhere.
Not really late, just 2 weeks later than the ordinary.
On your predictions I can say you're likely very right on SCII. Unless some other project is in the works that is not exactly an expansion. Maybe a better platform for custom games. Anyway.
WoW's expansion will be announced because the lifetime of a WoW expansion is about 2 years and 1 would've already passed by the time Blizzcon is held. This is 99.9999%.
Diablo 3's expansion will most surely be announced as well. I'd give it 98%.
All Stars... I wouldn't be surprised if the game releases by then. Nope, not gonna be surprised at all.
Take those as personal speculation of course. I don't have inside info. But I'm quite confident.
Ha. Bagstone.
Most reasonable estimates of Titan's launch seem to put it at least 2 years away, possibly more like mid-to-late 2015 (of course these are all based on pure speculation). If the game really is that far away, I don't expect an announcement.
Starcraft: All-Stars is already late... It has been announced at Blizzcon 2011, it should be out by November (if it's not canned, that is). The Protoss expansion could be announced though, it would fit the 1,5 year expansion cycle that was planned initially.
Diablo: I'll be disappointed if they don't announce the expansion before Blizzcon. In their last Q&A they hinted at core systems changing, and the game really needs that. Things like that don't fit a live game very well though, so I expect an early expansion, one that tries to fix the deepest problems (rewards, drops and items). 1.08 and 1.09 is not a necessity, they can skip numbers to 1.1 if they feel their "real" PVP is ready. And I'd bet on it that they're deep in development of 1.1, they wouldn't have denounce team DM if they didn't have something in works already.
WoW: The last expansion got out earlier than previous ones, so an announcement in November would be late. I expect an announcement earlier in 2013.
Ha. Bagstone.
We've seen many kinds of announcements from Blizzard I took that into consideration, and in addition, I took into consideration that it is bad marketing to announce multiple things at once too. We've seen double announcements at Blizzcons, but no triple announcements - for that exact reason. Blizzard is busy lately, so I expect that some announcements will happen outside Blizzcon. Announcements for Diablo, WoW and Starcraft are just expansions, no big things, like new games. Totally ok to happen outside Blizzcon.