There Will Be No BlizzCon in 2021

This is another case of one of my articles giving me déjà vu. I remember the day it was announced last year that a hold would be placed on any in-person festivities organized by Blizzard Entertainment due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That led to this past February’s so-called “BlizzConline event.” It seems we’re in for a similar situation that will stretch from this November (when a physical BlizzCon would normally take place) to sometime early next year.

This news comes from a blog post penned by Saralyn Smith, Blizzard’s Executive Producer of BlizzCon. “The ongoing complexities and uncertainties of the pandemic have impacted our ability to properly move forward on many […] 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,” Smith explained. Within this post, Blizzard acknowledged that various aspects of their community and player base need to come together in order to get all the pieces of a typical BlizzCon experience to fit together.

“So in the meantime, we’re planning a global event for the early part of next year, combining an online show along the lines of our recent BlizzConline with smaller in-person gatherings, and we’ll share more as our plans come together,” added Smith. This sounds to me as though it’s quite a bit like “BlizzConline: Round 2,” but I doubt that’ll be such a bad thing. Last year’s BlizzConline was alright in my opinion, even if most of the big info Blizzard had planned to reveal leaked a day before the event began.

I know this news may be disappointing for any among our readers who hoped to once again be able to gather with their fellow Blizzard fans (or fans of Blizzard’s individual games, more likely), but who knows? Maybe Blizzard will have something huge up its collective sleeve when the described event takes place sometime next year. Heck, maybe they’ll announce that they’re completely reviving Heroes of the Storm and adding Tirion Fordring as a playable hero! Okay, probably not, but let a man dream.