In a not-so-surprising turn of events, Blizzard has canceled its BlizzCon event for the second year due to the pandemic, despite the growing progress the US has made to squash it. While the news shouldn’t shock most, it is still a major blow to fans who were looking forward to checking out the latest Blizzard has to offer while getting back to normalcy.
Saralyn Smith, the Executive Producer of BlizzCon took to the official Blizz Blog to post the following statement:
As guidelines in California around in-person gatherings continue to evolve and the status of the pandemic fluctuates around the globe, the teams across Blizzard have been discussing what this means for one of the events we miss the most: BlizzCon. We know some of you might be wondering about your own plans to potentially cross the country—not to mention oceans—and meet your friends, family, and fellow community members in California, so today, we wanted to give you a heads-up that we’ve decided we will not be holding BlizzCon this year.
Building an in-person BlizzCon is an epic and complex affair that takes many months of preparation—not just for us, but also for the many talented production partners, esports pros, hosts, entertainers, artists, and other collaborators we team up with locally and globally to put all of the pieces together. The ongoing complexities and uncertainties of the pandemic have impacted our ability to properly move forward on many of these 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.
But we don’t want to let too long go by before we connect with everyone again. 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.
We very much look forward to celebrating with you all again. Until then, we’ll see you in Azeroth, Outland, Sanctuary, and all the other worlds we call home.
–Saralyn Smith, Executive Producer of BlizzCon
While the above is copied and pasted from their website, you can check out the official blog post here for yourself if you would like.
First held in 2005 in Anaheim Convention center, BlizzCon has been a major yearly event, typically taking place in the fall in sunny southern California. However, as the looming health crisis still threatens much of the globe, Blizzard isn’t taking any risks. However, it appears they are looking ahead to 2022 and planning to host multiple smaller-scale events, including a potentially larger “global event” early next year. Whatever that means.
Can’t wait for us to beat this thing. Hang in there, y’all,
