World of Warcraft Cancels 2024 BlizzCon, Promises Future Events

World of Warcraft is celebrating its 20th birthday this year, but it’s just cancelled its biggest party.

Fans of the online game have gathered in Anaheim, California, every year since 2005 for BlizzCon.

The convention was a place to meet fellow fans of the series, dress up in your best cosplay and get a first look at what was coming next in the huge fantasy world of Azeroth.

But game maker Activision Blizzard has announced it’s called off the 2024 edition of the popular event.

It’s assured disappointed fans that the event will return in future, but hasn’t said when, and promised a series of smaller-scale events instead.

Among gamers, there’s been speculation about what the Xbox owner might do with its newly owned titles, including the household-name franchises Call of Duty and Candy Crush.

Most of the talk has centred around whether Microsoft would bring some of its new titles to Game Pass – its Netflix-style subscription service seen as an increasingly important part of its gaming business.

These were reported to have largely affected Activision Blizzard staff, and the developer also cancelled work on a survival game project widely known as Odyssey.

But when BBC Newsbeat spoke to two of World of Warcraft’s most senior bosses earlier this month – and before the BlizzCon announcement – they insisted they weren’t expecting any major changes for the franchise.

They revealed that they had Microsoft’s “full support to do everything we’ve got to deliver for our audience” and that the merger deal was seen as a positive thing for players.

According to the Vice President and Executive Producer, Holly Longdale, exchanging ideas with other studios owned by Microsoft, such as Minecraft and RPG The Elder Scrolls, was viewed as a “very rare special benefit” which increases the potential for the Warcraft team.

However, it remains uncertain whether the franchises will have a crossover in the future.

Nevertheless, some changes inspired by other studios have already been incorporated into Warcraft, such as a new setting to accommodate players with severe arachnophobia by allowing them to remove spiders from the game, a feature brought over from Grounded, a co-operative survival adventure from Microsoft studio Obsidian.

World of Warcraft has seen adaptations to attract more casual gamers by adding new gameplay elements that appeal to those who prefer shorter play sessions and prefer not to engage in player-versus-player combat or engage in long leveling up processes.

However, a major challenge in attracting new players lies in combatting the toxicity that some online games have been associated with.

Blizzard, the company behind World of Warcraft, has been trying to address this issue, but acknowledges that completely eliminating it may be a challenge.

Representation has also been a topic of concern in the games industry, and Warcraft has been criticized for including characters deemed by some players to be racist or misogynistic.

Blizzard has shown commitment towards avoiding similar situations in the future by bringing in external diversity consultants to improve representation in the game.

In a landscape where games compete not just for monetary value, but also for users’ time and attention, the gaming industry faces fierce competition, including streaming services like Netflix.

Holly expresses optimism about the future and believes that World of Warcraft, now backed by Microsoft, has boundless potential to expand its reach and attract a larger audience.

For now, the cancellation of BlizzCon 2024 marks a setback, but the return of the event in the future is eagerly anticipated by fans.

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