I meant to post a bunch for Blaugust and then…well, life got in the way. We’ll talk more about that another time!

Today, I want to rapid-fire some Blizzcon predictions, because I have about an hour to write and the event is in like 10 hours so if I don’t write and publish this now, who cares about predicting what already happened, right? Here goes!

The Last Titan Will Be Unveiled

There are two schools of thought here, and I think both this time, unlike most other Blizzcons, have some validity.

Since the Worldsoul Saga properly began, we have not yet seen an expansion unveiled without the primary story conclusion events having taken place already in the live game. Midnight’s proper announcement took place exactly one week after the Manaforge Omega raid launched in The War Within, which marked the proper finale to the story of that expansion, denouement chapter notwithstanding. Midnight itself is now just barely a third of the way into the 12.1 patch cycle, and we all assume that there will be one more patch in all likelihood, which means that the majority of the expansion still remains in front of us. If we just look at the recent history, this makes sense, and so sure, the argument that it could be too soon does hold some value.

However, I think I need to make some small points (and boy do I need to keep the sprawl in check) – patches in the Worldsoul Saga so far have been sharply disconnected, standalone chapters with only faint threads to tie back to the central, overarching narrative, and I think that WoW still remains enough of a gameplay and systems-driven game that you could share huge details about The Last Titan without having to say much of anything about the story to come. In fact, FFXIV, a far more story-driven game, does this with the Fanfest cycle nearly all the time, with the first two events in a three-event cycle taking place well ahead of the story conclusion of the current expansion, leading to a lot of interesting speculation and fan theories about how to connect the two stories and some fun surprises, like the eventual revelation that Shadowbringers wasn’t set on Eorzea at all. TWW had 3 patches where there was almost no movement of the central plot of the Worldsoul Saga (or what we could even identify as such given how vague and generally slapdash the whole thing has been thus far) and so far Midnight has had a launch window with a lot of plot movement followed by nearly slamming the brakes on the central narrative in favor of lightly expanding the Amani lore from that launch window and then loosely tying it back to Xal’atath at the very end, which is also very reminiscent of how Undermine was handled. You could probably even still share major lore details about The Last Titan and it would probably still leave an open window for surprises and developments to come in Midnight or even generate some excitement for them.

Lastly though, as a long-time Blizzcon attendee (not this time) who primarily goes for WoW, I have to point this out – the patch-only years are fucking boring. Sorry, it just is that way. Blizzcon 2010 was a wet fart all-around, where the biggest WoW unveil was…the login screen for Cataclysm, which had already been announced the prior year at the event and had most of its details shared there and then in the subsequent alpha and beta that were ongoing during the event. Blizzcon 2016 got ahead of this a little bit by having a lot of patch details, building out 3 patches worth of content ideas and coming close enough to the launch window of Legion that there was a hefty amount of content in the pipeline to share, but even this year was a little dry on excitement since Legion was fresh and exciting (I remember being most excited that the companion app had just recently been updated prior to Blizzcon so that I could cycle Artifact Knowledge training on mobile without needing to haul a laptop to cycle it at the hotel, haha). Blizzcon 2018 is the prototypical antagonistic Blizzcon, the year that the Diablo Immortal disaster happened and where the WoW news was…patch 8.2 for Battle for Azeroth. I think it is also important to note here that historically, Blizzard has almost always announced expansions ahead of the completion of story or major content patches for the current expansion, with TBC, Wrath, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria, Battle for Azeroth, Shadowlands, and The War Within all being announced prior to the final major patch version of the prior expansion, while only Warlords of Draenor, Legion, Dragonflight, and Midnight were announced (in full because obviously Midnight was announced in 2023 with the whole saga thing) after the major patch cycle concluded for the prior expansion, leaving us with a score of 7-4 in favor of announcing ahead of time. There’s a recency bias in that a lot of the post-completion announcements are modern expansions (none of which have yet hit Classic progression servers, as a fun trivia bit), so maybe there’s a chance, but with Blizzard no longer doing Blizzcon annually, I think it would suck the wind out of the room hugely to just show off patch 12.2 and walk off the stage for retail – maybe as much as “do you guys not have phones?” (okay, probably not that much.)

So I think safe bet is we get a rough story tease with serious system and gameplay details including showing off at least a good chunk of HD/4K remaster Northrend.

Lightning round bonus – calling my shot now based on 12.1.5 datamining and some logic that Shadowlands Remix will be our 12.2.7 diversion prior to The Last Titan. While Wrath is very popular, I think that Northrend fatigue prior to The Last Titan will be a real fear, and I think that Shadowlands has some lore hooks we are likely to see again in that expansion, along with the worst roster of annoying, long-tail, ridiculous grind cosmetics and unlocks which will make Remix appealing there, alongside a similar content foundation to that of Legion, which makes the Remix gameplay loop more fun and introduces some needed friction with scaling Mythic Plus dungeons and Torghast. My hot take that I will not explain too much further here is that Shadowlands is actually a great gameplay expansion in terms of raid and dungeon design, and the Remix smooth sanding of the rough edges (no Legendaries, no Renown grind, no Covenant bullshit unlocks) will expose a lot of the good things in the expansion – and also the awful story and iffy parts like Korthia, but hey. It also has story hooks that feel highly relevant to the Titans, and the sleeper point of Remix is to renew those bits of old lore so they can be focal points in the new content.

Classic Plus Will Be Announced, Classic Fans Will Remain Divided and Insufferable (oh, and maybe Warlords too)

Oh sorry, that was editorial a bit, haha.

Classic Plus is the worst kept secret, and some this-week teases from Blizzard seem to paint a basic picture even prior to Blizzcon – a shaded Dark Portal and the word “forever” seem to imply a timelock to Vanilla gameplay design and philosophy, at least to my reading of that tease. I say this will be divisive because Classic Plus as it stands now is a fun thought experiment – it can be all things to all people because the version you acknowledge in your mind’s eye is the one you want and can discard the other ideas, but as a real product, Blizzard has to thread the needle on a deeply-divided community expectation. If Classic Plus is all new zones and world content, raiders and dungeoneers are pissed and PvPers are maybe a bit salty, if it’s primarily raid content with new what-if raids and story scenarios, then the world enjoyers and PvPers are pissed, if it’s dungeons in that Classic style, new battlegrounds, or a left-field other option, then other segments are unhappy. Finding the right balance to make a majority happy will be tough, and I think that no matter what Blizzard does, there will be elements of the fanbase deeply unhappy with the resources spent on “that other thing” they don’t like.

I think a fair few fans will be happy too, to be clear – certainly I’m riffing about a vocal minority of people who are extremely annoying online, but there is a real challenge to balance here with what “plus” should mean. Season of Discovery, it could be argued, was Classic Plus in a form, and while it had some popularity, it certainly didn’t maintain it before riding off into the sunset. Even the fan-developed modified Classic versions like Turtle WoW or Ascension had disagreements about the right ways to advance the Classic philosophy with new content, with systems like cross-classing being one approach and new dungeons which look from the outside like a meme I would make to clown on Classic players (did you know that making a dungeon really long and putting a bunch of bosses in it is all you have to do to tickle the Classic cerebellum? wow!) being another feature. All of this coming at a time when there are so many flavors of Classic already on the menu and the Classic ecosystem as a whole seems less popular seems kind of bad, like there might already be a saturation point we are beyond. New content is an interesting idea and I am keen to see what that might look like, as the one thing I think that could grapple me into playing Classic would be content that is new and reasonably compelling for me.

Also, I think people overstate the case for not releasing “the bad expansions” into Classic. Cataclysm did well enough, Mists has done well(Mists was a banger to be fair, but perception was definitely mixed back in old 2012), and I think that a Warlords of Draenor Classic without the long content gaps and delays would do well too, so I think we’ll absolutely see it at some point. I’m not sure if it fits into this Blizzcon, but I could see them hitting a blurb about it while putting the big focus onto Classic Plus. Classic Plus can be so many things that I’m not gonna speculate further, so on we go.

StarCraft Gets A New RTS?

This is based on the website hype Blizzard has been generating, but there seems to be a lot of motion towards a new StarCraft RTS, and hey, I would be here for that. StarCraft and Diablo II are my entry points into the Blizzard universe so I’m game for that.

My long shot is that I would love to see them bring back StarCraft Ghost and just kind of workshop what was made 20 years ago into a releasable state. I actually got to play it at the first Blizzcon (which was…21 years ago oh god) and it had something to it that I liked in that small slice. A new RTS would be my actual favorite thing, but Ghost getting a runback would be cool just to see what was there. It is also, categorically, nearly entirely unlikely to happen, so I am wishcasting to fill this section out as more than just “new RTS.”

Diablo IV Gets A New Expansion (Maybe)

Diablo IV just had an expansion launch this year, but it was long enough ago now that the time to announce new development is upon us, and I think an early look feels possible. How long they continue to expand on Diablo IV is an open question, because the track record is 1-2 expansions before moving on (maybe you could stretch to 3 expansions if you count the Necromancer DLC for Diablo III as an expansion) and D4 is already 2 expansions deep, so we’re in uncharted waters now. Live services being what they are, I fully expect Diablo IV to be the torchbearer for the foreseeable future, although the Warlock addition for Diablo II Resurrected was an interesting wrinkle and something we could potentially see more of in the future (so also a dark horse pick for this Blizzcon for me!).

The Leftovers

There’s a Heroes of the Storm demo area set up at Blizzcon this year, which is very interesting. Hearthstone and Overwatch are games I am quite disconnected from, so the best I can do here is shrug my shoulders and say, I dunno, they’ll get…content.

In terms of meta bets, I think it would be funny to have the current Xbox division leader on stage say something about AI and get booed, so I would enjoy that, and I think the types of people who like AI are ignorant enough to how they are perceived (especially at that level) so there’s a non-zero chance it actually happens. Metzen will likely wax poetic about the WoW lore (and maybe he shouldn’t, but I’ll hold off on this thought haha), and I think we’ll hear a lot about the history of Blizzard and these games as even Overwatch crossed the 10-year mark this year.

And that’s all I got!