Another year, another BlizzCon! Blizzard Entertainment's chance to celebrate their products and their community around them while showcasing new stuff! In the leadup to this years BlizzCon, however, Blizzard did a lot to temper peoples expectations for announcements this year, with some suspecting that it was because Blizzard either didn't have a lot to show this year or was hiding some giant announcement. It turned out that the former was much more true and it left some fans with a sour taste in their mouth. But more on that later. Lets dive into the announcements that were made, shall we?
The keynote kicked off with the announcement that the PC version of Destiny 2 is free for all players with a Battle.Net account from now until November 18th! Thats right, you can get the base game of Destiny 2 for absolutely free for the next two weeks. Happy 1 year anniversary on PC, Destiny 2! With the latest expansion, Forsaken, now including all of the previous DLC as well, that makes the $40 overall investment well worth it!
Starcraft II is getting a new commander, Zeratul! Unfortunately, that was the only Starcraft related announcement.
The next Heroes of the Storm hero was announced! Orphea is an entirely new hero to the Blizzard universe, born in the Nexus, and she is an absolute bad ass! As a bonus to all BlizzCon attendees and Virtual Ticket holders, Orepha will be a free hero.
World of Warcraft got some exciting announcements as well. First, the long awaited World of Warcraft: Classic Edition will launch Summer of 2019. All players who have an active World of Warcraft subscription will be able to play the Classic edition for free. A new WoW charity pet was also revealed, keeping with Blizzard tradition. Whomper is available for purchase in the Battle.Net store. Finally on the WoW front, we got the latest cinematic to set up Patch 8.1 - Lost Honor which saw Anduin talking to Saurfang in the Stockades about Sylvanas and the Horde's future.
Overwatch got two huge reveals! The first, a new cinematic dubbed 'Reunion' followed by the announcement that the newest playable hero is a shotgun wielding badass named Ashe. Her debut Cinematic can be seen below.
A surprise announcement of a Warcraft III remaster took place. Warcraft III: Reforged will release in 2019 and is available for pre-order now. It is an entire remaster of the original game from the ground up with new animations, new map textures, and more. It looked stunning.
Hearthstone's latest expansion, Rastakhan's Rumble was revealed, and it looks to continue the loa story line started in World of Warcraft's Battle for Azeroth expansion, which is something I personally am really looking forward to.
Finally, Diablo. This is the one that had everyone quivering with antici...pation, and the one that saw the most SHOCK! HORROR! Reactions from the audience in the theater, and online.
Diablo Immortal, a new mobile game, was announced by Blizzard. To say the reaction to the next Diablo game being a mobile title was one of complete shock for some is an understatement. Initial fan reaction was rife with criticism and Twitch Chat was screaming/spamming 'DIABLO 4!!!!!' endlessly. It was a bit of a mess, to be honest.
But alas, Diablo Immortal is here to stay. A new mobile action based RPG set between the events of Diablo II and III. 6 hero classes will be available, with new abilities, new zones, new stories, new dungeons, and more. It is the first stab at a true MMO type experience for Diablo and I think Blizzard might be able to pull this one off. You never know until you try.
That wraps up the major announcements from Blizzcon's 2018 Keynote presentation. If you want us to go into a deep dive of other announcements during any of the panels, let us know in the comments or on social media!