They -must- be announcing a game though right?

I mean how could they possibly not? The biggest collection of Blizzard fans in one place ever, and they -don't- announce a new game? The stuff you listed certainly isn't worth $120 seeing. Not that a new game announcement would be either (not like you can't see it on the net). Be good if they announced it and had a small playable demo, but given Blizzard's style, I doubt that.

I mean, didn't they always announce games at ECTS? Not sure about WoW, but they did with War3, right? That's in September, so perhaps they're keeping their time-frame the same but moving it to US from the EU to keep the costs down (and no longer going to ECTS), and then blowing it into a massive show and raking in the cash while they're at it?

Looking at the development cycle of WoW, it's entirely possible that that brief game skeleton you saw when you last went to BlizzN will have grown enough to be announced in Oct?

 

It's a reasonable bet on the timeline, and since ECTS seems to have pretty well vanished as an important gaming event. Bliz is also way overdue to announce something new (they had half their team working on project X as soon as they finished D2, and then everyone else went on to that and project Y once D2X was out, and that was back in 2001) from Blizzard North, though it obviously set them back a long way when virtually everyone who made D2 quit.

They also avoided announcing stuff at E3 since everyone announces there (witness this year's musical announcement dates as Sony and MS kept moving up the date for their next generation console announcement). So ECTS is gone, and they want to announce something new in the fall... why not hold their own event to do it at?

I do wonder why they aren't teasing that though, even if it was just "and a special announcement!" or something like that, on their bullet points page. Just to give us rumor mongers something to work with.

"...it's entirely possible that that brief game skeleton you saw when you last went to BlizzN will have grown enough to be announced in Oct?"

Perhaps, even on Bliz's never-hurried time frame. The somewhat fleshed out skeleton we saw 2 years ago wasn't D3 though...

 

Elly tells me that there's a big gaming trade show in Germany next month, and that rumors are Bliz will announce a new title there, in their tradition of announcing new stuff in the fall in Europe. If they do pop out something new they'll obviously have it (Diablo 3 or whatever) at BlizzCon also. Which still wouldn't make it worth $60 a day.

Blizz is also still practicing their complete "you're going to cover it anyway" ingratitude towards fansites, and not offering free passes to those who do the most for them for free, while you know Gamespot and Gamespy and other general info gaming sites that will throw in a paragraph about their convention have all the free passes they want.

 

Yeah, I know it's not D3, but it's still -something-. I doubt they'd make an RTS up at BlizzN, and I'd be interested in any kind of RPG they did, so it's all good in my books.

Although Hellgate: London is supposed to be released at like the end of this year or start of next, so that'll keep me busy for a while hopefully.


As for the "and a special announcement!" thing, perhaps they're not quite sure how much they're going to have ready yet, and don't want to bill it as something big when it might only be something small (say, not getting their playable demo finished in time or something). It -does- say more details to come, you'll note.

Wonder if any Flagshippers or Castaways will drop by the show? Might be too much animosity around though.