A History of Recent BlizzCon Opening Ceremonies

As we're quickly approaching BlizzCon 2023, we thought it would be appropriate to take the time and revisit some of BlizzCon's past events, taking a look at their big announcements, their controversies, and everything in-between. A BlizzCon has been held every year since 2005, with four notable exceptions / cancellations:

• 2006: not held, with no reason stated.
• 2012: not held as Blizzard felt they didn't have much to announce. Several major titles had already launched that year:
  • Diablo 3
  • Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's fourth expansion.
  • Heart of the Swarm, Starcraft II's first expansion was already revealed and set to launch early 2013.
• 2020: cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
• 2022: cancelled due to the company's major cultural and legal problems after being sued by the state of California over sexual assault allegations.

Now, things were going pretty great until 2017. Every year would come with a lot of exciting announcements, juicy CGI trailers and Blizzard seemed undefeatable. This era came to and end in 2018, where scandals and controversies related to the company started casting a shadow over the convention almost every year.

Our story will begin with BlizzCon 2018. It was this year that things started feeling a little sour, and exploring all conventions in the 2018-2021 period is important in understanding why, for seemingly the first time in forever, BlizzCon tickets aren't sold out. Before we talk about how much is riding on BlizzCon 2023, however, let's see what BlizzCon 2018, BlizzCon 2019 and BlizzCon 2021 looked like.

BlizzCon 2018 - Do You Guys Not Have Phones?

Looking at popularity by meme, this is perhaps the most well-known BlizzCon in the history of the convention. Remember when Blizzard cancelled BlizzCon 2012 because they didn't really have much to say? The same should have been done in 2018. So much of what was announced during this opening ceremony has haunted Blizzard to this day:

• Warcraft III: Reforged was announced. The following year, it launched with more bugs, less features, visual clarity issues and an extra 25GB of data even for people who didn't buy the 'remaster'. It is still missing features to this day and 'boasts' a user score of 0.6 on Metacritic.
• Diablo: Immortal, a mobile game, was the 'crown jewel' announcement for a convention of PC gamers, many of which were expecting a Diablo IV. It launched in June 2022, four years later, and has a user score of 0.5 on Metacritic.
• World of Warcraft: Classic, which is actually the result of a previous haunting when future Blizzard president J. Allen Brack confidently stated no one wanted Classic servers.

Funnily enough, the Diablo: Immortal PR nightmare turned out to be a hit Blizzard could take, since it earned $500 million in revenue in its first 11 months. That's about $2 million a day.

Other BlizzCon announcements included the usual new hero reveal for Overwatch, a new expansion for Hearthstone and a new, original, hero for Heroes of the Storm, Orphea. At least thing were looking up for those three games, eh? Wrong!

A little more than a month later that same year, Blizzard announced it was axing most development for Heroes of the Storm, as well as cancelling the entire e-sports branch for the game (and leaving lots of people without jobs right before Christmas). Members of the game's e-sports community stated they were surprised by the announcement, as they had been told during BlizzCon 2018 that HGC (Heroes Global Championship, the game's official tournament) would continue into 2019.

Right, so not exactly a fun time for Blizzard or for people who attended that year. Surely next year's announcements would fare better both at the convention itself, and their subsequent releases when they were ready, right?

BlizzCon 2019 - Gaming & Geopolitics

Things were looking well for BlizzCon 2019 - there was something in the air that just screamed "they'll announce Diablo IV this year!", and thankfully Warcraft III: Reforged was set to release three months later, in January, so its awful state was still unknown to the community at large.

Well, about 25 days before BlizzCon 2019, during one of the final legs of the Hearthstone Grandmasters tournament (that would culminate with the finals at BlizzCon), one night of matches was being held in Taiwan. Following his match, Hearthstone player Blitzchung - a resident of Hong Kong - was being interviewed by the Taiwanese casters when he donned a mask akin to those used in the 2019-2020 Hong Kong protests and stated "Liberate Hong Kong, the revolution of our times". Wikipedia has a detailed page talking about the protests of the time.

In response, the stream was stopped very quickly and the following day, Blizzard had announced that Blitzchung has been banned from the tournament and his currently earned prize money (~$4000) would be forfeit. This was in accordance to a tournament rule that prohibited players from offending the public, making political speech or impugning Blizzard's image. Additionally, Blizzard terminated the contracts of both streamers, believing the two had encouraged Blitzchung to express his message. Both streamers stated they knew of the statement mere moments before the interview started, and both casters had ducked their heads under their desk during the statement.

Now, this is bad. Bad from a whole lot of angles. This is also the sort of thing you expect to happen when you're a big company and you're trying to play both sides: Getting caught between a rock and a hard place where you have to juggle Western sensibilities against a communist regime's influence over your profits, because you really wanted to get some of that Chinese money, like, real bad.

Corporate interests triumphed that day and Blizzard sided with Communist China's efforts to strengthen its grip on Hong Kong. This absolute shitstorm even caught the attention of the U.S. congress, with the entity issuing a letter to Bobby Kotick requesting a full reversal of the ban on Blitzchung. Several people and companies that were in cahoots with Blizzard took action in protest, such as Brian Kibler dropping out of casting for the Hearthstone Grandmasters event as BlizzCon, and Mitsubishi Motors withdrawing its e-sports sponsorship.

Similar statements, conjured up in protest to Blizzard's handling of the Blitzchung situation, popped up in places such as the end of a Hearthstone Collegiate Champs match, which made Blizzard remove cameras from the event's coverage and replace the space on the screen with images of the game's characters. Player interviews were also cancelled for the rest of the competition, and the r/Blizzard subreddit went private. At BlizzCon, then-president J. Allen Brack started with a whole speech about the company "not living up to the high standards we set for ourselves", but viewers quickly noted that was no specific mention of "Hong Kong" in his apology - make of that what you will.

Ok, ok, let's get to the actual BlizzCon now that we understand the dark cloud that was hanging over the entire convention, as well as the soon-to-be-materialized dark cloud of Warcraft III: Reforged that was soon to come. This BlizzCon announced the following:

• Overwatch 2, which promised to launch with a PvE mode but officially launched this year as nothing more than a visual upgrade with a different monetization strategy.
• World of Warcraft's Shadowlands expansion, the second lowest-rated WoW expansion (personally it should be THE lowest-rated) to date on Metacritic, with a whopping user score of 2.6.
• Diablo IV was announced, with one of Blizzard's best trailers ever made (embedded below). I'll stop linking Metacritic scores, because it's much of the same, really. Metacritic user scores aren't an amazing, accurate metric by any means, but I can personally vouch that most of these games I've listed so far have a lot of big problems.
• Hearthstone's Descent of Dragons expansion was announced, as well as a new game mode, Battlegrounds.

Compared to its predecessor, you could argue BlizzCon 2019 was pretty good content-wise, if we ignore the global Hong Kong controversy. Blizzard announced a bunch of games, and we couldn't have known if they'd turn out to be good or bad back then.

BlizzCon 2021 - Going Through Grandma's Belongings

As previously stated, BlizzCon 2020 was cancelled due to the ongoing covid-19 pandemic, and BlizzCon 2021 was held virtually. Yes, it meant pre-recorded videos of people on a weird set, trying to hype an inexistent live audience while their charisma stat was 0. Just like BlizzCon 2018, we... really didn't need this one either. This BlizzCon was held in February instead of its usual November slot. Here's what the limp BlizzCon 2021 opening ceremony had for us:

• The announcement of Diablo II: Resurrected, not a new game, but an old new game, which actually turned out pretty great but people weren't too hopeful after the disaster that became Warcraft III: Reforged.
• The announcement of World of Warcraft Classic Burning Crusade servers, so, uhm, the announcement of being able to once again play an old old game you'd already paid money for once, but was locked out of legally enjoying for more than a decade.
• Some more information on Overwatch 2 and the infamous Diablo: Immortal, which was somehow still in development for just a mobile game. Also a trailer for Diablo IV's Rogue class.
• The Blizzard Arcace Collection, a bundle of three ancient Blizzard games becoming available on PC, Xbox One, PS4 and Nintendo games.
• Hearthstone's Year of the Gryphon, launching alongside the Forged in the Barrens expansion.

Right, so, BlizzConline was really less of a BlizzCon and more of a weird, online garage sale where Blizzard just went to the back of the shed and pulled out whatever they found rotting there.

BlizzCon 2023 - A Chance to Return to Form

With all this context laid out, it's understandable that BlizzCon 2023 isn't sold out. For the first time in a long time, Blizzard doesn't actually seem to have any huge controversy hanging over their heads this time in October. One could argue Microsoft's buyout is actually good PR, so why aren't people rushing to get to BlizzCon?

• The Microsoft buyout is good PR, but we can only really start to see what the 'new' Blizzard will look like starting next year. BlizzCon announcements are decided a long time in advance.
• Just like in 2012, Blizzard released two games this year: Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV. Unlike in 2012, they aren't cancelling the event because there's not much to announce. Additionally, both these games have had troubled releases.
• A new World of Warcraft expansion announcement doesn't generate the hype it used to after the horrors of Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands' game design, and even though Dragonflight is pretty great, people are still cautious to return to the franchise.

So then, what is BlizzCon 2023 for? It's a chance for Blizzard to start over. Most of their past controversies are behind them. Fan-favorite boogeyman Bobby Kotick is departing the company after Microsoft finishes absorbing Activision-Blizzard. Fan-favorite green Jesus Chris[t] Metzen is back at the company. Things are looking up. If Blizzard can host a controversy-free, old-school BlizzCon with a few cool, fresh announcements and no bullshit, expect BlizzCon 2024 to sell out.

Let's just hope nothing goes wrong, eh?

If you've been watching BlizzCon for a bunch of years now, I'm sure you'll agree with me it's been a rollercoaster of emotions. You might've gone from filling out BlizzCon Bingo cards that were hopeful for crazy announcements ("wow island expansion", "starcraft 3!!!"), to filling out BlizzCon Bingo cards with grimmer conditions ("presenter stutters on stage", "vapid sentences that include the words passionate, community").

It can be just as fun betting on BlizzCon going well as it is on going wrong. What's your take on this year's BlizzCon? Will it work out, or will it flop? Let us know in the comments below.