BlizzCon 2018 Wrap-Up: The Opening Ceremony

If you weren’t under a rock or missing from a 1st world country this past weekend, you’ve probably already heard and watched all that you could coming from BlizzCon 2018. However with all the white hot Immortal nerd rages and Zerg stage rushes with pitchforks plaguing you from seeing clarity, and you are finally ready to calm down and see what else the con had to offer, allow me to give you a simple run down of what was shown!

The opening ceremony… ah what joys and nostalgia. Its quite a thing to take in. Finally after months of waiting to see whats going to happen to your precious Blizz titles, you’re flooded with news and updates galore, welcoming you home with open arms and wallets. (Your wallets, not their’s). The stage opens to Mike Mortyface, officially swearing in the “UthinkUdoButUDont” guy, as the new head honcho of Blizzard Entertainment. Tears are shed, bad game puns are made, and I die a little on the inside from the cringe… You think we want this, but we really REALLY don’t. MOVING ON!

After the hugging, loving, and more hugging, (seriously they hugged for like a full minute; like that’s not even a joke. Go look at the footage.) “UTUDBUD” guy, J. Allen Brack, now made official, approached the stage and jump started things off with the achievements and progressions that Blizzard had made throughout the year, with a few brief mentions of Destiny’s new expansion Forsaken, and the success of the breast cancer awareness Mercy skin promo. He finally closes with heartfelt ‘thank yous’ and pushes forth into the first game, who only really got a mention.

StarCraft, known as one, if not the greatest, Real Time Strategy game of all time, is the first in Blizz’s lineup of updates and announcements. Leading it, J. Allen Brack discusses the reaching of a milestone in gaming history, with Starcraft celebrating its 20th Anniversary. Here at Lorehound, I think I speak for everyone when I say, MY LIFE FOR AUIR! Allen Brack goes on to discuss the new CoOp Hero playable at the Con, Zeratul, and then something about Google Deepmind, which is apparently an AI being built to be smarter than humans so it can enslave all of us, and finally closes. No, I’m not joking, after a minute and fifteen seconds. So much for the ONLY REASON I EVER STARTED PLAYING BLIZZARD GAMES IN THE FIRST PLACE!

Up next, after the logo of StarCraft fades from the giant screen behind “UTUDBUD”, for the apparent more important, Heroes of the Storm busts through with some actually cool looking stuff. The first of this years theme with white haired/red eyed female heroes is announced, and Orphea is introduced with a glorious cinematic. The pseudo cartoon-like style, looking oddly close to the way Riot presents their League of Legends trailers and reveals, compliments the new hero well, and the plot preceding it disseminates an interesting new twist to the series. Orphea is the first original playable hero for the Nexus. I recommend watching the trailer in full if you want to see for yourself the temple scratching lore behind her as it is both fitting and intriguing, and it involves the sex voice that makes every man/woman get moist with excitement, the Raven Lord, fleshing himself (pun intended) as the still maybe antagonist figure that he is. It is also with brief mention, that I must express my feelings on the similarities between R.L. Sexvoice and Dr. Orpheus from Venture Bros…. more to come on that in a future post.

Warcraft follows up at HotS’ heels, and J. Allen Brack repeats recent history, just like Battle for Azeroth is doing with Sylvanas, and gives his own passing of the torch from his former seat as its Overseer, I mean Executive Producer. John Hight, the new Warchief of Warcraft, graces us with his presence and sparkle shirts, and officially inherits the “UThinkUDoButUDont” title from J. Allen Brack, marking yet another historic and iconic passing of the peripheral torch, which at this point I’m extremely sick of. After a bit of cringe and faction pride, recapping what we’ve done and seen in BfA so far, and then some more faction cringe, Tides of Vengeance is made finally surfaces from its dark watery abyss, and reveals the coming tale of the never ending epic. We will face off against each other in the new raid Battle for Dazar’alore, and all the other silly stuff we already knew that was coming with it, and fifteen years later we’re still playing this damn game. When is a better time to start talking about WoW Classic? The full version will be slated for Summer 2019 and your current WoW subscription will include the subscription to Classic realms as well. There’s then a plug-in with a new charity pet, and a final cinematic of how Anduin is a baby and can’t fight his own battles, so he hires a badass Orc that he captured that enjoys a good cleaving, to help him.

After a small patch of technical difficulties, the tech team horribly cuts to the Hearthstone stage, and nobody was able to hear anything at all. I expect, since disaster ensued, tech decided to start off Papa Jeff for Overwatch. Whether it was intended or not, Jeff actually queries to the arena around him if they could hear him properly. LOLOLOLOL. Papa Jeff makes some jokes, he calls out all the progress Overwatch has made over the year, with maps and heroes, and includes his own mention of the Mercy charity skin. After his final plug-ins to buy a themed cereal, the new Overwatch animated short “Reunion” is shown, introducing the second in the themed heroes of Blizzcon2018, Ashe. (And lets face it, this is another shot at Riot isn’t it?) With locks of white and eyes of red, the heart-throb Ashe, is a beautiful addition to the roster, and I love her. B.O.B is cool too!

Overwatch comes to a close with some more future plans, and then passes it back over to the main stage where an old classic is reborn again. Warcraft III Reforged, and its gorgeous looking renders, is announced. A fun little side note not shown in the reveal, some of the maps have been remade such as “The Culling”, the purging of Stratholme, to mirror what it looks like in WoW.  A nice little touch to something that has bothered me for years. Warcraft III Reforged will be released 2019. Pre-purchasing will include a bunch of goodies across all Blizz games, including a Meatwagon mount for WoW, which I have personally wanted ever since I started back in BC. Warcraft III Reforged will include both the main game and Frozen Throne expansion and some cool new additions, such as skins for skirmish play.

After the tech team finally decided that it was pointless to try to get things fixed at the Hearthstone stage, Ben Thompson sprinted to the main stage and then with out any narcissism at all, announcing the smash mobile hit’s new expansion. With another unsurprising new show tune that Hearthstone is now known for, “Rhastakan’s Rumble”  busts down the door with a new set of stuff to pack into your virtual decks. I’m certain that KooPA will cover this in hard detail as I really can’t DEAL with the frustration that comes along with playing this game.

In a grand finale of disappointment, Wyatt Cheng is introduced to talk about what’s new with Diablo… and boy howdy does he. With warnings and red flags, Wyatt paraded onto the stage. His over the top energy and ability to “Slay” words instead of demons, was the first of many ques that “Oh no’d” the crowd that sat before him. Tiny words breached his lips that made his audience uncomfortable for the first time since the beginning of the entire presentation, as words such as “Modern” and “Connected” leaked from his orifice. Fans of the Diablo series sat with unease, as their hearts became frozen with fear when the final verdict of diction drove them into their graves. Wyatt mixed the deadly concoction before the world’s very eyes and thus beheld made a great exclaim when he said just one deadly word that put them all into a state of dread… Our Mobile Devices… Diablo Immortal, quite literally Hell in a Hand-basket, is the rumored new Diablo title that Blizzard has been working on, and boy oh boy does it look… well it looks… okay look its a mobile game. I’m not going to be excited about a mobile game. Yes, it’s a nice place in the timeline to put a story for Diablo being five years after Diablo II, but seriously… I don’t want microtransactions being a focus on my Diablo. Screw that…. Disappointment Immortal is still in early development so a release date is still in the air. Expect it soon, and don’t pretend that you’re not going to even try the game. I may not like it, but I’m at least going to try it, and I will be crying tears of sadness the whole time too.

So that’s it. A great way to ruin what was a pretty decent set of reveals. Oh well. 7.5 out of 10, too much water…. from the tears and sweat of a bunch of nerds.