Blizzard’s Extensive Extended Universe

December 12, 2016 iTZKooPA General, MOBA, Mobile Gaming, Other MMOs 11

Last update: December 2016

Many people spent Martin Luther King Jr’s holiday schlepping around their house, possibly at work or, and this is the really good-natured people out there, donating their time to a charity. Me, well I spent my time re-organizing my gaming shelves (due to in-home construction).

During the shuffling of games, the mingling of HDDVD (fail) and BluRay and coupling of previous and current generation peripherals I stumbled across a “lost” form of entertainment, the tactile sensations of books, board games and graphic novella. During the organization of this unconnected form of entertainment I realized one important fact: There’s a lot of Expanded Universe material to Blizzard’s universes.

Hit the Continue Reading stub to have your mind blown by the vast amounts of novels, board games, manga, comics and trading card game paraphernalia that have been created to extend one of Blizzard’s four universes. Did we miss something? Let us know in the comments!

Naturally, the growing Blizzard Store offers additional physical items from the games, from keychains to plushies.

Jump to:

Diablo is easily the least licensed universe that Blizzard has created. One can only assume that this will dramatically change as Diablo III’s release date slowly approaches. At the very least, expect a tie in novel. Welp, that assume certainly came to the cliche conclusion. At least we did get the expected novels.

Comics:

Games:

Novels:

Shorts & Novellas:

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StarCraft took the crown of the most licensed universe until World of Warcraft began to dominate the universe, all of them. The franchise is seeing its expanded universe rekindle thanks to the continued success of StarCraft II domestically and abroad.

Board Games:

Comics:

Games:

Manga:

Novels:

Web Stories (free):

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Warcraft is the leader in Blizzard’s licensing war with dozens of items spread across all forms of nerdy entertainment. The comic, trading card game, manga and miniatures endeavors have each seen a bit of turmoil, but the novels garnered Blizzard and Christie Golden their first New York Times Bestseller honors.

Board Games & RPG Books:

Comics:

Games:

Manga:

Novels:

Trading Card Game & Miniatures:

Web Stories (free):

Leader Web Stories (free):

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Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is a spin-off to Warcraft that is deserving of its own category. Sure, said category is sparse, but that’s because it’s a free-to-play behemoth. Check out the Warcraft section for more from the universe.
Games:

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Heroes of the Storm takes all the individual universes in this posts and smashes them together. There may only be a few dedicated items for HotS below. Thankfully, anything from the exhaustive list will do the trick. Pick your target’s favorite universe and grab something.
Games:

Figures:

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Overwatch is the latest universe from Blizzard. Honestly, it’s the first since StarCraft debuted oh, so long ago. Rising from the ashes of a follow-up MMORPG comes the 2016 Game of the Year.

Games:

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That took way longer to research and compile than I expected…

Notes:
When available, compilations are listed instead of individual pieces.
* denotes upcoming or on-going releases.

11 Comments

  1. I think I hear my credit card squeling. Had no idea there was THIS MUCH crap released by Blizz.

    PS diablo 3 pic is badass

  2. Didn’t know I had acquired so much of their stuff. I think i have everything on that list. TCG cards the only exception because I don’t have every individual card. Damn thats still alot of stuff. Not even adding in all the individual clothing and accessories.

  3. Wow theres a LOT of gear there…

    I’d love to ‘read’ the Warcraft novels, but don’t know whether they do them in audiobook format. Or if they do, I haven’t found anywhere that sells them, otherwise I’d have the whole set. I have a hard time reading normal boooks, as my sight isn’t great.

    Seeing as a 7.99 book can be sold for between 25.00 and 50.00 (insert currency here) in audio format, I feel whomever is publishing is missing out on a rather large cash injection.

    :)

  6. @Twong

    I definitley agree.

    @Mordil

    So would I

    The closest I have heard so far is a guy called Total Biscuit, who is reading the short stories from the official WoW website on his youtube channel. His reading of ‘Lord of his pack’ is rather good.
    :)

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