OH MY GOD. What have I just witnessed? That was a completely mindblowing showcase of all Blizzard is working on. Take note E3 presenters: that’s how you fucking do it. Every single big announcement had a cinematic trailer immediately followed by a gameplay trailer. And we loved every single moment of it. Well, except the “apology”. They opened by “apologizing” for “not living up to the high standards we set for ourselves”, yet not once did they mention Hong Kong or China. Maybe that was planned so they didn’t come across as supporting either side, but I’m sure that Kotaku will have a 10,000-word post about how Blizzard still sucks and we should boycott everything they make. That is if Kotaku sticks around long enough…(tee hee hee, fuck Kotaku).
Let’s dive into the highlights:
Diablo IV is gonna be so fucking dark and evil
I’m gonna admit now that I’ve never played a Diablo game but I absolutely will now. That trailer was fucking sick. The animation was the best I’ve ever seen in my entire life, and the way they built up to the arrival of Lilith was perfect. The director claimed that they were taking Diablo back to its roots with blood and gore and balanced PvP and PvE, so it sounds like it’s the perfect time for newcomers like myself to jump in. No details on a release date, but my guess would be Holiday 2020. Great start to the conference.
Sauron got beat by the elf lady and she broke his helmet (World of Warcraft according to a non-WoW player)
Another franchise that I’ve never played. I respect World of Warcraft for what it is; I just never got around to playing it. So when the director got on stage and started talking about what has been going on in the game for the last few months, I was completely lost. He may as well have been trying to explain to a monkey what the whole Hong Kong crisis was in Russian. But the trailer was fucking awesome, and the crowd seemed very happy with the announcement so: yay WoW!
The Hearthstone announcements weren’t exactly received as well…
Ok now, this one, this one I’ve played. I don’t play it any more mind you because it takes up way too much space on my phone, but I have put in a solid 5-10 hours of Hearthstone. So as someone who hasn’t touched the game in years, I can’t speak much on the current state of the game. But from the crowd’s reaction to the presentation, they either didn’t give a shit or they were very unhappy. I’ve never heard such utter silence at a game’s announcements in my entire time watching these presentations. Are dragons fighting space pirates that bad? Whatever it was, I wouldn’t feel that comfortable if I was working on Hearthstone after that. Except about the Hearthstone Auto-Chess. That looked cool. I’ll play that for sure.
OVERWATCH 2 CAN TAKE ALL MY MONEY
NEW PVE. NEW PVP. NEW MAPS. 2 HEROES. 1 CUP…WRONG BLOG.
This is everything we hoped it would be. Jeff Kaplan was phenomenal. You can clearly tell that he was disappointed by all the leaks, but I think he handled it very well anyway. There’s another panel later today with more Overwatch 2 info where we’ll learn more, but here’s what we know now. First, everything you’ve earned in OW 1 will carry over to OW 2. Skins, emotes, highlight intros; it’s all coming with you. Second, all the heroes, maps, and new modes from OW 2 will also be available on OW 1. And finally, OW 2 will have a full new story with it’s PvE missions and upgradable heroes, which I have been absolutely dying for. Outside of that, I’m not sure what else will be getting, but considering both the new PvE and PvP are available at BlizzCon as demos, I think OW2 is close to complete. My prediction would be May 2020, which is Overwatch’s 4 year anniversary.