No BlizzCon 2012 this autumn

By Robert Purchese Published 25 January, 2012

Focusing on Diablo 3, WOW Pandaria and Heart of the Swarm.

Annual fan convention BlizzCon will not happen in 2012, Blizzard has announced.

The event will instead be moved to 2013.

Blizzard pointed to its "jam-packed" development schedule as the reason why.

"We're also heavily focused on getting Diablo 3, [World of Warcraft expansion] Mists of Pandaria, and [StarCraft 2] Heart of the Swarm into players' hands as soon as possible. In light of our jam-packed schedule, we've decided to hold the next BlizzCon in 2013," Blizzard explained.

Neither of those three games have a release date. Presumably Diablo 3 and Heart of the Swarm will be released before BlizzCon 2013, which we presume will be held in autumn 2013. But where will their release dates be announced? At E3 2012?

Satisfying your hunger for all things Blizzard will be the 2012 Battle.net World Championship in Asia towards the end of the year.

Specific timings and locations will be revealed at a later date.

Yes, do hurry up and finish Diablo 3 please Blizzard.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (20) Latest comment 4 months ago

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  • Tyranix #1 4 months ago

    Very glad to hear it. To be honest, what could they announce this year? They've got three big releases this year (a record for Blizzard), and wouldn't want to sabotage any of those by announcing Project Titan or something else.

  • repeater #2 4 months ago

    "We're also heavily focused on getting Diablo 3, [World of Warcraft expansion] Mists of Pandaria, and [StarCraft 2] Heart of the Swarm into players' hands as soon as possible. In light of our jam-packed schedule, we've decided to hold the next BlizzCon in 2013,"

    Their programmers, designers and artists do double duty as organizers of BlizzCon? :|
    Edited by repeater at 25/01/12 @ 15:18

  • hippyjump #3 4 months ago

    diablo 3 not out due blizzcon 2012 lol.
    fucking lol :)
    start over again

  • hippyjump #4 4 months ago

    @repeater yup while the ceo swims in sad nerds money ;p:

  • blicko #5 4 months ago

    "2012 Battle.net World Championship in Asia ... specific timings and locations will be revealed at a later date."

    Hint: The location will be one of the Koreas.

  • geeza2020 #6 4 months ago

    Battle.net World Championship - North Korea host confirmed! ;)

  • bigjimbeef #7 4 months ago

    @repeater If it's anything like E3, then not having Blizzcon this year saves just having another milestone to have to push towards. The move towards E3 demos being a standard in the industry is a real pain in the arse for a lot developers. Having to create a vertical slice of polished gameplay can really screw up a schedule.

  • MaxiSleep #8 4 months ago

    Sorry fans, cant be arsed.

    Just like Cataclysm so.

  • disusedgenius #9 4 months ago

    @blicko

    Depends on whether they've patched things up with KeSPA, which might be possible what with the recent rumbling of Brood War teams switching over to SC2. Otherwise they may try to aim for the Chinese market.
    Edited by disusedgenius at 25/01/12 @ 16:47

  • swills #10 4 months ago

    It's funny how Blizzard claimed that their merger with Activision would change nothing.

    Then a year or two later we see many ways for Blizzard to earn more money, and now things that cost them money mysteriously being cancelled.

    Their games are still great, but the corporate greed mentality that never really seemed to be there previously is definitely seeping through now.

  • curtlikesmeat #11 4 months ago

    Would anyone moaning about it have actually gone? It might as well be on Mars and as much as I like WoW I wouldn't have gone if it was next door.

  • KKRT #12 4 months ago

    Translation: "We dont have anything to show for 2013, so we wont be doing Blizzcon"

    BTW they dont know how to manage moneys, Crytek with much less founding opened and merged 6-7 studios that are working hard and expanding on different IP, but Blizzard cant buy/make two new studios to make new IPs, since 2000 ...

  • jimr9999us #13 4 months ago

    @curtlikesmeat
    It just seems like a strange shift for what has always seemed a very community focused corporation.

    I guess after they lost 1-2 million WoW subs they had to start answering to the brass.

  • Agent_Orange #14 4 months ago

    Ahaha pandas.

  • suzakuseven #15 4 months ago

    I've been to the past 4, it's become a yearly holiday for us so I'm rather sad about this news. Still, there's plenty of other things to do in California.

  • CaptainTrips #16 4 months ago

    I''ve been to three Blizzcons, and the one two years ago (when they had nothing to announce) was fun, but nowhere near the atmosphere of when they have a big product launch to plug.

    I'll be happy to save my money and wait for what will hopefully be the Project Titan announcement in 2013, whatever that is.

  • rob_of_the_robots #17 4 months ago

    It's time for pandamonium!

  • Okamiwolf #18 4 months ago

    Oh no, what ever will we do???

  • iamtheoneneo #19 4 months ago

    I cant believe the amount of people moaning about this on YT, its mental - people need to get out more and I mean more than just once a year to attend this.

  • drhickman1983 #20 4 months ago

    The best thing is when Blizzcon 2011 came around, on the WoW forums at least there were a small number of posts exclaiming "why are you wasting money on Blizzcon?"

    Now the same forums have a small number of posts exclaiming "why Blizzard? You don't care anymore!"

    Probably from the same people.

    Oh, and strictly speaking Activision did not merge with Blizzard. Activision merged with Vivendi Games, which was the holding company of Blizzard, and Blizzard Entertainment still exist as a seperate entity (Activision Blizzard is now the holding company). Not saying there's no influence coming through at all, but I'm a pedant.