BlizzCon?

This week Blizzard posted a somewhat tentative note about the prospects for BlizzCon this year.

BlizzCon in Blue

The post reflects a lot of the uncertainty we all face currently.  Blizzard is continuing to plan and prepare for BlizzCon, along with some alternatives to the traditional annual gathering, as it is unclear what the world will be like come early November.

It isn’t as though Blizzard won’t have content for the event.  There will be something more concrete about Diablo IV certainly and some celebration of the Shadowlands expansion for WoW, which should have gone live by that point.  I also hope that they will be able to show us something about a plan for The Burning Crusade in retro server form.

So there is a foundation on which to build a BlizzCon.  But are we going to want an event with 40,000 people packed into the Anaheim Convention Center come the fall?  Other events, not to mention major league sports, have been hoping to resume normality come the summer, but it isn’t clear if that is a realistic expectation.  There is no vaccine yet, there is no cure, and the latest news seems to indicate that even if you’ve had COVID-19 you might not have immunity.

We may get a virtual BlizzCon instead.  Quite possibly an abbreviated version as well.  Perhaps Blizzard won’t put it behind a paywall?  That would be nice.

Of course, I might not care about BlizzCon come November.  Right now our family is lucky to be doing okay.  I still have a job, but my wife is on the shelf for the moment, as is my daughter.  And my daughter is expecting to go away to college in August.  There is a lot of uncertainty.