Presented with little comment:
Original can be found here: http://us.battle.net/blizzcon/en/blog/4338369/2012_Battlenet_World_Championship_Event-1_25_2012
Two things:
1 – What are my friends supposed to get me for my birthday this year? Everyone chipping in for my BlizzCon Virtual Pass has become a bit of a tradition.
2 – This means there won’t be a 2012 BlizzCon pet or mount or anything! /whiiiiiiiiiiiiiine
The Daily What – Geek mentioned some of the heat that happened last year with some of the Alliance bashing. It was bad enough that Mike Morhaim apologized for the whole mess. (You saw it here: http://clearcasting.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/blizzcon-2011-day-2/) And while yes, that was undoubtedly a PR nightmare, I don’t think it had that much to do with skipping a year of BlizzCon.
What’s odd is the announcement was hidden in an eSports article. I enjoy watching people beat the shit out of each other in a game of SCII when it’s on at BlizzCon, but I don’t follow any of the related news. If it weren’t for The Daily What and MMOChamp’s Blue Tracker, I would have missed this little tidbit entirely.
BlizzCon takes place in late October.
Diablo III has been pushed to sometime after Q1 this year. Patch 10 on the beta was supposed to go live this week but a major bug prevented that so we won’t see anything new until next week. Assuming things go well, perhaps we can get an April or May release of D3. (Yeah, right.) Then a series of patches to fix everything that went wonky in the release and they can consider it stable by August.
Mists of Panderia they want to get to us “as soon as possible.” I have a recollection of standing outside in the cold for the past two expansions so I imagine they’ll be shooting for a Q4 release – if it can make it at all this year. This means that all of us Annual Pass holders should be hearing something in the next couple of months about beta. 6 months sound about right for beta testing period? Meaning they’ll be busy dealing with us trying to break the beta all summer and fall.
So between stabilizing D3 and getting MoP ready for action, there isn’t much time to devote to prepping for a BlizzCon. Toss in Heart of the Swarm (which I can’t recall seeing anything about recently in terms of development) and you have a potentially overloaded calendar.
They better have an awesome pet and a kickass band in 2013.
Hopefully yhis means MoP will be out sooner. no new content till MoP may hurt WoW imo
MoP is supposedly slated for Q2 release, but as a long time Blizzard fan, I laugh at the notion. I’ll be impressed if they get it out before 2013. Ditto for Heart of the Swarm.
I do expect to be playing Diablo before too long. You’re in the beta, so you probably have a better idea than me, but I expect to see it by May or June at the latest.
Q2 2012 is out of the question for MoP, we haven’t even seen a hint of any form of beta. I’m hoping for late 2012 but would not be surprised if it moves to 2013.
D3 was officially moved back from Q1 2012 to “sometime after Q1.” I’ll get back in to the beta after the reset, but if the cash AH hasn’t been significantly overhauled I won’t be holding my breath for an early Q2 release.
Heart of the Swarm exists… but they aren’t saying anything. I don’t think we’ll even hear anything worthwhile on it until the middle of the year or later.
I dunno but this feels more like an “Activision Cost Cutting” thing to me than a “We are too busy”. Would not be surprised if it stopped being yearly.. or even faded out.. dunno…
I did find a blue response that indicated it was never truly intended to be a yearly event in the first place. They just happened to have exciting things to present for 5 years running.