There was nothing on the schedule for Blizzcon that gave you that hyped up experience you wanted. They didn’t have any real panels listed. It was hard to get into the spirit of things this year, especially when the digital ticket loot was lacking this year. There was the excitement of potentially seeing some interesting protests, and of course the Overwatch World Cup. When the schedule was finally announced after the opening ceremony, there was still so much secrecy around the closing act(s). Then when it was announced, the digital ticket holders got frozen out of the only decent closing act playing. That was a slap in the face to digital ticket holders, who were able to enjoy much bigger acts in the past with our ticket. Aside from that complaint, let’s see what there was to talk about.

The biggest event was what happened with Overwatch for me. The announcement of Overwatch 2, with PVE was really exciting for me. I’m a huge fan of the lore and story of Overwatch. The PVE modes were some of the coolest things in Overwatch. To have a game primarily centered around these story modes? I’m pretty excited about that. It seems so early in production though to really know exactly how cool this will be. Hopefully next year there will be a beta to get into. On the competitive side of Overwatch, the World Cup was a really exciting event this year. I like that Team Korea had competition this year. I especially like that they didn’t take home the title again this year. Even more exciting than the fact that Team USA took home the gold was how exciting these matches were. Team China deserved their spot and they were insane. Just not as insane as Team USA.

Then, there was the World of Warcraft announcement: a new expansion called “Shadowlands”. I wasn’t too hyped about it, until watching the cinematic. Blizzard knows how to do a good cinematic and this was no exception. Watching it was exciting, but would the xpac live up to the hype? Judging by the Deep Dive panel, I think so. Going back to certain things that players missed, such as being a shadow priest but able to actually heal yourself with something more than the disappointing shadowmend. The storyline seems like it could be really amazing. Then again, so did “Battle for Azeroth” and we know how that ended up. I like the idea of Covenants and the new zones look stunning. I can’t wait to learn more about it at next Blizzcon. Or getting into the beta. Either way works for me.

The other exciting thing was the new Diablo announcement. Diablo 4 looks pretty awesome, but I was really disappointed with Diablo before and I don’t want to get burned again. Sure, it’s fun to play on the Switch when you’re bored, but it’s not something I actively go for when I want to game. I like the changes, the visuals are beautiful, and the new customization features could be awesome. It will be interesting to see how this game turns out.

There were some really great things out of Blizzcon this year, but I feel as a digital ticket holder the whole thing was disappointing. I hope that next year they bring it back up to the awesome level it was last year.