BlizzCon: What To Expect

World of Warcraft fans have every reason to look forward to this year's BlizzCon event. Last year, despite many WoW tournaments and activities such as the dance and costume competitions and a playable version of Wrath of the Lich King, there was a lack of any substantial announcement.

There were numerous developer panels and plenty of information to be had about WoW's latest expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, which was close to launch by then, but no real shockers. However, this year WoW players have high hopes, very high hopes in fact, that something particularly juicy will come out of BlizzCon for them this time. Persistent rumours of a new expansion announcement have been around since the discovery of the trade mark application for the name Cataclysm recently. However, will this be a new WoW expansion, or something to do with Starcraft? Perhaps it's one of the top-secret new games Blizzard are working on. The WoW community has has a little while to think about this, and everyone is now pretty sure it's going to be the new expansion name, but what could 'Cataclysm' refer to? Fans have their suspicions about that too...

If their theory is true, World of Warcraft is in for one hell of a treat, content-wise. Eagle-eyed players spotted a map in one of the game's dungeons, showing the shattered continent of Kalimdor, indicating what sort of disaster we might see. With phasing technology, which was used extensively in WotLK, Blizzard could quite feasibly make 'another' Kalimdor for players who have adventured through the disaster, leaving the original content intact for low level characters.

But it's not all about WoW, with BlizzCon 2009 hoping to be a hit for Diablo franchise fans too. There has been a "Diablo drought" since the last BlizzCon in October 2008, and many anticipate, at the very least, a new class to be revealed. We got a pretty detailed picture of the game so far, despite fans' complaints, and since the team has had quite time to develop it even further we might even see the second unannounced class as well as new environments and new monsters dying in spectacularly bloody scenes.

Before last year, Blizzard fans who only were interested in the Diablo franchise were left disappointed at every Blizzard event. The conventions mainly consist of World of WarCraft players anyway, but with the Diablo III announcement at Blizzard's World Wide Invitational in Paris last June, fans of all three Blizzard titles became an army 20,000 strong, with tickets selling out in eight minutes. Saying eight minutes is actually not quite accurate since the queues to buy a ticket both filled up in 15 seconds flat, and anyone aiming to buy a ticket one minute after lines opened was turned away.

From what we know, we are expecting Blizzard to release Diablo III in the second half of 2010, or the first half of 2011. We know this because Diablo III's lead developer, Jay Wilson was asked if the expansions for StarCraft II would come out before Diablo III. He said it would come out before the first expansion, which will in turn be released around a year after StarCraft II itself. Knowing Blizzard, however, we know it's more than likely that expansion could be delayed a bit.

One thing that speaks for an earlier release of Diablo III is that Wilson also told us Diablo III was unveiled much later in its development cycle. StarCraft II developers we have spoken to mentioned they felt it was a bit early to announce the game in 2007, and it's likely the reason Diablo III was announced later on. There will be, no doubt, more information at BlizzCon, and we'll see just how much progress the team has made in a little less than a year.