BlizzCon came back this year after another long gap, and the show floor answered a lot of questions at once. World of Warcraft Classic is being rebuilt into something Blizzard is calling World of Warcraft Forever. StarCraft is returning as an open world shooter. Diablo 5 exists. Two of those three come with dates that sit years out, which set the tone for the whole weekend.
Squeaks and I were both there, and we recorded a full episode breaking down every announcement plus what the event itself was actually like this time around.
World of Warcraft Forever Is the Real Headline
The elevator pitch is simple. Classic stays capped at level 60 with the old graphics and the old pace, and Blizzard starts adding content to that version of Azeroth instead of pushing it forward through expansions again. New races, new zones, new dungeons and raids. The Horde finally gets paladins, and the undead paladin models shown at the show look great.
The beta starts next Thursday, and the full thing launches November 4.
I played the five man dungeon demo on the floor, and the thing that stuck with me was not the loot or the pacing. It was the talking. Mobs hit harder, pulls take planning, and you drink between fights, so I spent the whole run coordinating with a healer sitting two seats away and calling sheep targets out loud. That kind of back and forth barely happens in modern World of Warcraft, where everyone already knows the route and the run is a sprint.
Squeaks has never played Classic and went in expecting to bounce off it. He came out planning to roll a warlock for Forever. His group got one boss down before the timer cut them off, which he insists is the same result as my group getting one boss down and starting a second. It is not.
Retail Got Eclipse, and a Bigger Question
The retail side got the Eclipse patch, with the fight for the world soul continuing and a Titan sized threat waiting at the end of it. Fans pulled a detail out of the presentation that I missed live: the tip of Sargeras’ sword is visible peeking in on the world soul.
The more interesting part was the language Blizzard kept using. The culmination of twenty years. The end of this part of the story. Squeaks and I both came away thinking the next expansion closes the book on the current version of the game.
His read is a reboot handled in story, closer to what Marvel did with Secret Wars, where you walk through a portal and end up in a refreshed Azeroth. Mine is that a story reboot cannot fix a client that has been bolted onto since 2004. If Blizzard wants Azeroth rendered at 2026 fidelity on an engine they can keep upgrading, that means World of Warcraft 2, with the original servers left running and the current story wrapped cleanly. Set it 200 years later, make our characters legends people tell stories about, and let players walk through Icecrown Citadel as a ruin that somebody else has since moved into.
StarCraft Is Back, in 2030
The StarCraft trailer was the best-looking thing at the show and the biggest gut punch. It is an open world shooter set 100 years after StarCraft 2, you play a Dominion marine, and the cinematic sells exactly how disposable you are. The soldier trains, suits up, walks out, and the suit comes back with the blood pouring out of it.
Then 2030 hit the screen and the air went out of the room.
Squeaks is holding onto the fact that StarCraft is alive at all, and he wants it to be closer to Destiny than to Warhammer. My worry is the faction question. Terran, Protoss, and Zerg beating each other in a rock-paper-scissors loop is the identity of StarCraft. A shooter where you only ever play a Dominion grunt gives that up. Three playable factions with their own starting zones would make this enormous.
Diablo Is Everywhere Now
Diablo 5 is targeting spring 2029, which surprised both of us given how recently the last Diablo 4 expansion landed. Hell’s Legacy fills the gap, bringing Deckard Cain back as the storyteller and resurrecting bosses we have already killed so we can kill them again. Deckard Cain is the reason I will reinstall. Squeaks is already playing it and has been running a warlock he likes more than his current main.
The announcement I am most confident about is the Diablo animated series at Netflix. Netflix has Castlevania and Cyberpunk Edgerunners on its record, and Diablo fits that shelf perfectly. Overwatch and Warcraft adaptations got teased behind it with no format attached. Overwatch is the one Blizzard seems least sure about, and it is the easiest sell of the three, since the characters and the art style are already built for a family audience.
Overwatch, and the Panels Worth Walking To
Overwatch introduced a vampire healer, and the origin is better than the usual hero drop. Blizzard cast the voice actor first and then built the character around him, matching his background and his language. Hearing him tell that story on the voice actor panel did more for me than the announcement did.
That panel also quietly revealed Wrath of the Lich King Remix, which never made the main stage. Rewarding people for walking to the smaller rooms is a good instinct, though Overwatch also dropped a new silhouette on social media during the show instead of on stage, which is the opposite instinct.
The Crowds Were the Problem
Past BlizzCons drew somewhere around 40,000 to 50,000 people. This one felt closer to 75,000. Saturday morning meant two hours in line just to get into the convention center. The store ran three hour waits. So did the Darkmoon Faire area, which sits in one of the smaller buildings and turned into a choke point.
The aisles were easier to walk than 2023, so the floor plan improved. The ticket count did not. Capping sales the way Blizzard used to means less money and a better weekend, and that tradeoff is worth making.
Everything else about the place still works. It is dark, lit from the floor up, with fog machines running constantly, and no other convention feels like it. The best part remains sitting in a room with people you have known online for twenty years through Warcraft. Watching someone experience their first BlizzCon makes it better, not worse.
What We Are Playing
Squeaks recommends Diablo Immortal, specifically the Blood Knight class, which he named Squeaks Belmont because it plays like Castlevania. My recommendation is World of Warcraft Forever. The beta starts next Thursday, launch is November 4, and we are rebuilding the guild across both Classic and retail. If you want in, let us know.
Full episode is out now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
gfpods.com 
Leave a comment