• Home
  • Speculation: What’s Happening at gamescom 2015?

Speculation: What’s Happening at gamescom 2015?

by - 9 years ago

Here’s what we know.

Blizzard is throwing a media event at gamescom 2015. Some fansites have been invited to the event, so it adds fuel to the fire that Blizzard is going to announce something notable. However, there’s a few other pieces to that:

  • The event is happening on the 5th, which is a press-only day. This is consistent with the announcement of Reaper of Souls back in 2013.
  • Filming the press conference has been banned. There were livestreams of the 2013 conference.

Now maybe there’s some kind of explanation for why they’d ban filming the media briefing, but it’s a key difference between the circumstances when Reaper was announced and what’s happening right now. That alone isn’t enough reason to confirm or deny the possibility that Blizzard could announce WOWX6, however; recall that immediately following the announcement of Overwatch at last year’s BlizzCon, there was a closed-door blacked-out media press conference where the devs gave some more information about the game, most of which ended up being revealed at panels throughout the rest of the con. Giving the media lead time on some bits of news isn’t unusual behavior.

PSA: Don’t Ride the Hoax Train

There are a lot of hoaxes that are getting thrown out right now as people try to ride the hype train. If you see anything about “Eye of Azshara” or “The Dark Prophet” or “Council of Glades” then they’ve all already been debunked; none of the trademarks exist, and many of the feature lists that people are listing for those titles are either old hoaxes or just cut from whole cloth. If you see anything new that shows up, and if the poster doesn’t have a reproducible method for generating the proof, then it’s probably fake.

With that said, let’s add some evidence:

The Carpenter Tip

Back in 2013, VP of Cinematics Nick Carpenter tweeted that they had just wrapped a cinematic at the end of July, three weeks before the gamescom event where the Reaper of Souls cinematic trailer was played as part of the announcement. Just two days ago, he tweeted this:

Yes, a VP coming in on a Saturday isn’t as clear an indicator as Carpenter gave two years ago, and yeah, Blizzard has got enough other projects in the pipeline that Carpenter could be working on anything: Legacy of the Void, Overwatch, something for an unannounced Diablo expansion, some other unannounced project. It could even be as innocuous as he took a day off earlier in the week and is just making up time on Saturday rather than taking PTO. There’s dozens of different possible explanations… but the fact that Carpenter chose to put something out there in a similar timeframe to what he said two years ago certainly lends some weight to the idea. The guy doesn’t tweet often.

The eSports Connection

A few weeks ago, we talked about the evidence suggesting that a WoW announcement at gamescom was likely due to the fact that it was the only product that was going to be playable at gamescom that didn’t have some kind of recent announcement to justify its presence there. Every other team will be there (except Diablo III), and the only other common thread is the part where all of those games have an eSports presence of some kind; Starcraft 2, Heroes, Hearthstone and WoW all have competitions that are building up steam ahead of championship events at BlizzCon. While nothing about eSports has been announced in relation to Overwatch, the fact that a press event featuring professional Team Fortress 2 players took place back in March indicates that the team is at least considering the possibility, and having playables of it on the show floor is just another way to keep building overall hype for the game.

So could the announcement be eSports-related instead of specifically a WoW expansion? That’s possible too, but given the “eSports” is a pretty non-specific term, it seems weird that Blizzard wouldn’t state that they’re going to talk about eSports, since that alone wouldn’t really give anything away.

Speculation Land

Here’s what I expect to see at gamescom 2015:

  • Hearthstone’s new Grand Tournament will be playable on the show floor. Expect to see some card reveals come out in advance of Blizzard’s official revelation of the expansion’s contents, which will help drive sales for the pre-purchase of the expansion.
  • An announcement regarding the Overwatch beta feels likely. This week might hold some clues if the teaser campaign kicks up again (last week’s imgur link felt like the start of something very subtle) but given that everything with Soldier:76 feels wrapped up, I don’t think there’ll be another character reveal.
  • An announcement of a solid release date for Legacy of the Void is possible, but might also be premature. We know from the pre-purchase page that the release window is Winter 2015, which doesn’t start until late December. Assuming a release date announcement comes six weeks before a release date, it’s too early for them to announce that. Overall, not sure what to expect from the Starcraft team.
  • The Eternal Conflict is ongoing in Heroes of the Storm, but the only character associated with the Diablo-themed expansion who hasn’t been showcased yet has been the Monk hero. I expect to see him get a full reveal at gamescom, with a release to come shortly thereafter.
  • While I’ve got no idea what the next expansion for World of Warcraft will consist of, I feel like the sixth expansion is definitely on the block to get announced at gamescom. It changes up long-standing patterns of the product announcement/release cycle for Blizzard, it gives a sense of when we’re going to get out of Warlords of Draenor, and allows something else to be the centerpiece of the opening ceremonies at BlizzCon itself.

This week is when we’ll start to get more clues if a big announcement of some kind is incoming. As soon as we know, you’ll know.


JR Cook

JR has been writing for fan sites since 2000 and has been involved with Blizzard Exclusive fansites since 2003. JR was also a co-host for 6 years on the Hearthstone podcast Well Met! He helped co-found BlizzPro in 2013.


Comments are closed.