Blizzard Entertainment’s BlizzCon is arguably one of the biggest gaming conventions held every year. However, last year, BlizzCon joined the plethora of conventions and trade shows that opted to not have their physical event. It looks like this year is the same.
The Executive Producer if BlizzCon, Saralyn Smith, made the announcement on a post on the official BlizzCon website. The main reason for the cancellation? The pandemic. Smith noted that the evolving regulations and situations surrounding the current pandemic have cause significant setbacks due to uncertainties. In the events industry, the uncertainties can be the largest pain to deal with.
“Building an in-person BlizzCon is an epic and complex affair that takes many months of preparation—not just for us, but also for the many talented production partners, esports pros, hosts, entertainers, artists, and other collaborators we team up with locally and globally to put all of the pieces together. The ongoing complexities and uncertainties of the pandemic have impacted our ability to properly move forward on many of these fronts, and ultimately we’re now past the point where we’d be able to develop the kind of event we’d want to create for you in November.“
Saralyn Smith, Executive Producer of BlizzCon
However, the cancellation of BlizzCon 2021 isn’t as sombre as it may seem. It looks like the conference will be taking a form similar to BlizzConline which took place earlier this year. Saralyn Smith notes that the team is already at work planning for the event to take place early next year. She also noted that the team is exploring having smaller, more contained in-person gatherings in addition to the online press conferences and sessions that BlizzConline had this year.
It looks like the community has to wait a little longer for news on Blizzard’s IPs which include Diablo, StarCraft, WarCraft and Overwatch. This year’s BlizzCon was anticipated to have updates for Diablo IV, Diablo Immortal, Overwatch 2 among others. While we have about another 10 months to wait for updates, Diablo fans have Diablo 2 Resurrected to look forward to this year.
