“We’ve talked about different paths we could take, and how each one could be complicated by fluctuations in national and local health guidelines in the months ahead,” they said. “Ultimately, after considering our options, we’ve come to the very difficult decision to not have BlizzCon this year.” Blizzard don’t plan on skipping BlizzCon 2020 altogether, though. Like many other events that have seen cancellations, they want to take it online. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the online celebrations will take place this year: “We’d want to do this as soon as we could,” they wrote. “But given that this is new-ish territory and the different factors involved, it will most likely be sometime early next year.” They’re also looking at alternatives for the esports events that are usually held at the show - like the Overwatch World Cup and Heartstone Grandmasters event - so we can probably expect updates on those in the coming months. At this year’s BlizzCon we were likely set to find out more about Diablo IV, Overwatch 2 and World Of Warcraft: Shadowlands, all of which had big announcements at the 2019 event.
The cancellation doesn’t come as a huge surprise though, as last month Blizzard made a post discussing their concerns about holding BlizzCon 2020 in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak. I’m glad they settled on the decision to cancel it pretty quickly, stopping any events that thousands of people gather at just seems like the best idea at this point. Plus it saves fans, journos and event staff alike from having to cancel plans last minute if they were to leave it too late. So then, BlizzCon has joined the ranks of the many cancelled gaming events - including the Tokyo Game Show, Gamescom, and our very own EGX Rezzed. It seems most cancelled events are planning some online shenanigans though, just like EGX’s Rezzed Digital, which RPS did lots of lovely streams for.
