BlizzCon 2023: The Good, Bad, and Ugly
by JR Cook - 5 months ago show comments
Check the end of the article for a chance to win a BlizzCon 2023 loot code.
BlizzCon 2023 has been over for over a week now. Every BlizzCon I always try to put together a “Good, Bad, and Ugly” post about that BlizzCon and just acknowledge the things that Blizzard did really well at the convention, what they could improve on, and what just went terribly bad and I hope Blizzard completely fixes for the next time. BlizzCon has always been one of those events that always feels like something Blizzard just iterates with each year and they always seem to knock something out of the park and then completely foul up on something else. It always seems though they definitely learn from those mistakes and fix those problems. It’s never an absolutely perfect show but it’s a pretty great show that you can tell the employees put a lot of love and effort into.
This BlizzCon was really no different from that either. The employees definitely did their best with what they were given, and honestly, they weren’t given much this year. It really felt like Blizzard starting over with BlizzCon, as most of what they learned seemingly went out the window. This of course is likely credited to them no longer having an entire events team employed that manages these events, and it really showed. It was a 3rd party this year, and I have some unconfirmed reports that the 3rd party didn’t even make it to the finish line before Blizzard stepped in to take over near last minute. This is 100% an issue with Activision Blizzard brass that I think will definitely start seeing some change now that the Microsoft acquisition has started. Now that Phil Spencer and the Xbox team has told Blizzard to run the studio the way they want to instead of whatever the F*** Activision has been doing to this studio for the last 5 years since Mike Morhaime stepped down, I think we’re going to start seeing a new era and trend for Blizzard. Honestly, the way this BlizzCon is themed, it felt like Blizzard is pushing that same narrative as well.
I came into this BlizzCon feeling anxious. I did not feel good about it at all and sort of didn’t even want to go. I told multiple friends “I’m expecting nothing at this BlizzCon and still expect to feel disappointed” and that was my attitude going in.
Honestly though, that’s not how it went. It definitely wasn’t the best BlizzCon I’ve ever been to. But I’m also not sure I’d rank it as the worst. It really felt to me like the early BlizzCons with some bizarre decisions. But I came away from this BlizzCon feeling optimistic about the future when there has definitely been recent BlizzCons where I did not feel that way. In fact I feel like if they had their old events team and their organization, this could have quickly been one of the best BlizzCons of all time.
So let’s dive in
The Good
WoW Announcements
I have not played World of Warcraft since Warlords of Draenor. That is closing in on 10 years. I have followed the game roughly and the storyline throughout, but just MMOs in general I just hit a point in my life where they were a bit too much for me to continue giving my time to. Even with that, there hasn’t been too much that has excited me about the story of WoW and I haven’t really felt that since… Mists of Pandaria, really.
However, seeing Chris Metzen come out on stage and just doing Chris Metzen things just really amps up the crowd. I kind of wish the opening ceremony wasn’t in the arena (more on that later) as I think it would have been hair standing electricity if it was elsewhere.
But the fact that we have a whole trilogy coming with 3 new expansions revealed with a cohesive story surrounding them? Holy cow.
It made me immediately want to pick up and start playing WoW again.
Then I went back and watched the panels later for WoW to see what was coming down the pipe – and the fact they’re making things more alt-friendly, play the way you want, have end game content if you just wanna be solo or play with a couple friends without worrying about what role you are. I’m yeah… I’m playing WoW again. I already bought the next expansion and I already have plans to start playing again. Shared bank across your warband, being able to craft from those banks, cross realm guilds, the idea of Delves for end game content. Yep, you pulled me back in.
That’s not even including what I feel was a bombshell announcement with Season of Discovery. It’s just really cool that WoW can continue to iterate and bring these new ideas to a almost 20 year old game and keep it fresh. I’m not a fan of classic WoW and will never play it, but I’m excited for those who are excited for Cataclysm, those who love the hardcore mode, and those who are going to get really into the Season of Discovery and what that brings. WoW fans are eating good right now and it looks like they will be eating good for a long while.
In the end, it really comes down to everything announced makes me want to play WoW again. And I’m not the only one, I have heard lots of similar stories from others who haven’t played WoW in a long time are talking about coming back now because of what was shown. Huge win for Blizzard and the WoW team.
Battlegrounds Duos
A little over 10 years ago I was sitting in a conference room at Blizzard headquarters. Seated in that room was myself, 4 other content creators for Hearthstone, a PR representative at Blizzard, Eric Dodds, Ben Brode, and Jason Chayes. Hearthstone had just been announced to the world at PAX East earlier that year in 2013. The game was not in closed beta yet and no one in the public had played it yet. We got to sit down and play the game for 2 hours, and then give our feedback in that conference room.
This is a core memory of mine and to this day I still can’t believe how honored and lucky I was to be put in that position. The conversation was about our experience with the game along with questions that we had regarding it and the game play. I remember very distinctly the question I had – “will you be offering any co-op modes for this?” and the answer I got was a running theme for the answers that day “if it’s something the community wants, we will try to make it happen”.
I was on a podcast for 5 years – the Well Met! Podcast. Most of my listeners would know, I continued to push that – “when are we getting co-op in Hearthstone?”. I feel like it’s been one of the lacking things is that when I play Hearthstone, it’s just a very solo thing for me to do and when I hop on and play games, sometimes I just want to play and chill with my friends and my friends ALSO love Hearthstone. But it’s not really fun trying to play Hearthstone with your friends!
Now over 10 years later, we finally have SOMETHING! Is it quite what I wanted? Not really, but is it fun? Absolutely.
Battlegrounds Duos was easily the best demo on the BlizzCon show floor, and it wasn’t even close. As soon as the Opening Ceremony was done and I got to use the restroom and got some quick lunch after sitting in an uncomfortable arena seat for nearly 4 hours – we immediately went to the Battlegrounds demo. It was at that point of time was the shortest we had to wait to play – about 15 minutes. After word got out on how good the demo was – the rest of the convention the wait was always 45 minutes to an hour plus. I got to play it 6 different times throughout the weekend and I got to play with friends who have never played battlegrounds before and those who have played battlegrounds before, and the consensus amongst us all is this was easily the best demo of the convention and it wasn’t even close.
I have an article planned for later this week where I will dive more into my experience with Battlegrounds Duos and what I liked and didn’t like about it. But from a high level view, this was a definite win. As was the “catch-up packs” announcement!
In the end, just the idea of now I have a game mode in Hearthstone where I can hop on discord with a friend and we can BS for a few hours while playing the game together, is something I have wanted forever and I’m finally getting it at some point in 2024.
The Vibes
I said this in my last BlizzCon article with the predictions and if you follow me on social media you’ve probably heard me comment about it, too. I was really worried about how BlizzCon would feel this year. We are 5 years removed from Mike Morhaime stepping down and the last BlizzCon in 2019 at least had the Diablo IV announcement going for it which helped shadow the weirdness of J Allen Brack leading Blizzard. But then after that, lots of things happened. We had scandal after scandal at Blizzard, people and executives being removed, stories we’re finally hearing from employees and how women and other minorities were being treated at the company – and that created a lot of reflection on my own about those past BlizzCons and how much of a fraternity atmosphere they were really were. Not to mention just how disgusting it felt after seeing some of those employees who were let go and seeing how they acted at those BlizzCons and putting 2 and 2 together… and yeah.
Was I happy for a dry event at BlizzCon though? Not really. Did I understand why they went the way they did? Absolutely.
Alcohol being available or not isn’t what I was really afraid of though, it’s just the fact that we have spent the last 3 years of PR fail after PR fail from Blizzard into the community. Once again, a Blizzard fail from the top of the top and management letting this happen. We all know what went down, I don’t want to completely re-hash it in this article.
But the online cynicism of anything Blizzard related has been real. Everything feels negative, Blizzard hasn’t been able to do anything right, and I was afraid this was going to show itself at BlizzCon.
It didn’t.
The vibes were just like every other BlizzCon. People were passionate. People were excited. There were definitely things that had some people down (and I’ll get into those later) but the overall vibe was “I am happy to be here again”. And there were even a LOT more people that were like “this is my first BlizzCon and it’s the best thing ever”. That is not hyperbole either, these were things I had heard people say over and over again through the event. There were a lot of first timers who were pumped to be there. There were a lot of people like me had been going for years and years and were excited to see all their friends again.
This felt like an early BlizzCon without the frat club vibes and I am excited to see that continue.
The Bad
Hall Layout
I had fears with the hall layout when I saw it on the map. I stated as much in my BlizzCon prediction article and I hoped to be proven wrong, but the Opening Ceremony and having all the panels in the arena, was just not great. But what sucks is, that was not the worst of it. I expected there to be a Diablo demo – there wasn’t. So we had an entire Diablo hall of while some pretty cool art pieces and things to see, with really nothing else to do in that area at all.
We then had an Overwatch 2 area for esports, which if you are really into Overwatch esports, then great for you – you had your arena (which could have been done in the… arena). Otherwise, there was nothing else in that hall at all to do.
So then we go to the next hall which is ALSO Overwatch 2 themed, with a very large empty demo area and nothing else to do in the hall. I will admit, I did not pay a lot of attention to the demo and if there were lots of people in it or not throughout the weekend, but the handful of times I walked by – I didn’t see anyone playing.
Then we had the Warcraft themed area, where I think 80% of the convention was crammed into. Because that was the area you could actually do stuff. We had 2 different Warcraft demos, one for Season of Discovery and the other one for the new content patch in retail I think? I never ended up trying it so please excuse me if I’m wrong on that. It also had the Battlegrounds Duos demo (which should have been given a much bigger space). You had the Warcraft tavern with duel a dev, the Warcraft Rumble area, artists signings in the back, and then the Darkmoon Faire crammed in the corner.
Based on all that information, I’m sure you can see how the played out. People flocked to the area where there was actually things to do.
Moving all the panels to the arena meant there wasn’t a lot of seating in the show floor. It meant less panels and no interesting little panels like voice actors and artists and things like that. Things that I didn’t really plan for, but might see and sit down in for 30 minutes and be entertained. There wasn’t any real events, like I remember one year they had this cool thing where you could voice act yourself in a small WoW cinematic with you and your friends and get a 1:30 video of it completed. Or the make yourself into a Hearthstone card photo op, or the 3D video Overwatch photo op, and just cool little things like that were just completely missing. There’s a reason I went back and played Battlegrounds Duos as often as I did, because it felt like the only thing to do at BlizzCon. Unless of course you’re a pin trader/collector or other type of collector than the DMF was 100% for you… but even that being in a small corner of the convention also in the Warcraft hall instead of it’s own thing also led to overcrowding and looooong lines to even get in.
That all being said, definitely in my opinion scrap this plan. Bring back panels throughout the show floor. Help crowds not be all in one place. Give people something more to do. Let the Darkmoon Faire cook again.
Communication
Being on the media side, I will say communication has never been a strong point from Blizzard. I’ve just learned to accept it at this point. But this year, it went further than that and affected everyone else.
It all started with AXS where you got your tickets from. If you bought an extra ticket and re-sold it on AXS. You ended up being the one getting the BlizzCon codes and if you won the Opening Ceremony raffle, well you were also the one who got access to it and not the person who bought the ticket from you. Also, you had no contact information of who bought your ticket, so you couldn’t even forward this to them even if you wanted to.
Not very many people understood or knew how the Opening Ceremony raffle even worked, and even the night before, hardly anyone really knew either. Ended up you found out if you had an extra ticket sitting in your AXS account for it and most the time it didn’t even seem to email to let you know. Most people I talked to at BlizzCon seriously just had no idea how to even know and Blizzard did not make it clear at all. Not only that, but with the raffle being just a crap shoot if you got in or not, and the Opening Ceremony being something you want to EXPERIENCE WITH YOUR FRIENDS, most people opted that even if they got in, their friends probably wouldn’t, so they just agreed to watch it elsewhere and didn’t even give it a try.
The communication was even worse outside before the event. I know people who just gave up on trying to figure out where they even needed to be to line up because no one really seemed to know that they just went back to their hotel rooms and watched it there. Whatever was happening outside with the orange umbrellas and the few discord groups I was sounded absolutely chaotic and I could understand how people just got fed up at that point. I got a little lucky that as I was walking toward the event I had a DM from the Hearthstone community team with a quick map of where to go, and I was able to forward that on to my fellow content creators and we ended up with no issues because of that. But anyone that was general admission or portal pass that didn’t get that kind of privilege, that just feels pretty bad from a communication stand point.
Also, can we talk about how hard it was to find information about the show? There was no BlizzCon mobile app this year – and I found myself trying multiple times to find out when exactly the show opened and closed for that day and it took way longer to find that information than it ever should have. Blizzard really needs to step this up for sure for next year. This was my 13th BlizzCon and if I’m struggling, I don’t even want to know what it feels like for someone in their first year.
Last but not least, this probably affected media more than the normal crowd, but the Diablo team did something a little odd this year. Yeah, we got the Diablo announcements with the upcoming expansion (with no demo which I think is a Blizzard first), but their first panel wasn’t until the end of the second day. Which may not seem like a big deal, except that it made it really difficult to talk to any Diablo developer or employee about the plans for Diablo because you just kept getting answered with “we’ll cover that in our panel”. So for Diablo fans wanting to talk with other Diablo fans during the convention about Diablo and talking about the reveals, well, they didn’t really get a chance to because it wasn’t until the end of BlizzCon when they got their information.
That should be a pretty easy fix though, people are there to talk to to you about your games! Let them be able to do it after the beginning of the show without restricting information. It should make everyone’s experience that much better!
The Ugly
Portal Pass
Blizzard, you all did Portal Pass buyers dirty this year. You owe them a refund or some kind of compensation. This is the worst I have seen a loyal Blizzard customer ever treated by Blizzard. I’m not exaggerating here.
I had several friends who bought the Portal Pass this year because they are die hard Blizzard fans who love BlizzCons in the past, and not a single one of them was happy with the purchase afterwards. In fact, they just started calling their orange wristbands as a sign that they are chumps who paid $500 more than anyone else for the exact same experience. Hearing their stories and what their experiences are, there was no way I could let that slide without mentioning it in an article with the hopes that someone from Blizzard reads this, probably already knows about it honestly, and champions to do something for these people.
So let’s first look at what was included in the Portal Pass
Let’s start with the separate registration line and security line? Did they exist? Yes. For registration it didn’t seem to matter as that is something Blizzard was SUPER ready for, so ready in fact I don’t think I saw a line for registration all day on Thursday. Those that came on Friday might have a different story. The separate security line existed, but was not being utilized at all. Remember the confusion I talked about in communication? Yeah, the mess was so bad outside, no one was telling Portal Pass where they needed to go or we just flat our ignored or told the wrong way. The opening of the show was literally the only time that separate line mattered, and they failed hard on it. This also meant the early convention entry for Friday – didn’t really happen either.
The exclusive pass lounge? Yeah, it existed. The private concessions sounded like there were some but then also not, the gameplay experiences seemed non existent from what I was told, the concierge support wasn’t a thing, the blizzard meet and greets did not happen. And there was certainly not “more”. From my understanding there was a huge food debacle in the private lounge where Blizzard and the convention center weren’t on the same page about. And there was absolutely nothing up there to do unless you wanted to sit down for a bit by yourself.
So Portal Pass literally did not get anything special.
I heard Saturday to try and make up for it being so bad there was some employees up there handing out free plushies in the lounge, but there was no communication about this so all my friends who had given up on the lounge being nothing missed out on that. So I do think Blizzard realizes they messed up badly for this – but I think they need to do something collectively to these fans that put out that kind of money.
I feel like guaranteed access to the opening ceremony with special seating should have been a perk. Guaranteed access to the panels with special seating should have been a perk. Maybe there was “gameplay experiences” but my friends didn’t see them and were just told to go down in the demo area. There maybe should have been a separate line for Portal Pass in those areas and have them treated like some kind of fast pass system maybe? The meet and greets if they happened were not advertised at all.
I feel like Blizzard should have been communicative with the Portal Pass buyers and given them complete information on what they needed to make sure they got the value of what they paid. In the end though, they didn’t – and Blizzard needs to do something about it.
Conclusion
All in all, was this the best BlizzCon? Not even close. Was it the worst BlizzCon? No.
I think my best take I can have with this BlizzCon is optimism and hope. We’re going into a new era, and this BlizzCon kind of matched that. There are definitely things that Blizzard needs to improve on for next BlizzCon and 1 major thing I think Blizzard needs to make right for some of their customers still for this BlizzCon. But overall, I came out of this BlizzCon more excited about the future of Blizzard than I thought I would. Which honestly I think says a lot.
The Giveaway
I have a legendary BlizzCon 2023 code to give away. I had an extra one from my media badge I am not using so I’m going to give it away to the community. Just simply fill out this form which is just asking a simple question along with your email address.
Now I will be using these email address ONCE to send out a sign up for an upcoming email newsletter I am planning on starting up for BlizzPro. The email will simply be a “here is where you can sign up if you are interested” link and you absolutely don’t have to sign up for it if you don’t want to. After I send out that email I’ll be deleting them all. The email will probably be out in a week or 2, I still need to do some set up stuff on the newsletter. The winner for the giveaway will be contacted by email on Friday when this giveaway ends.
Winner will be selected randomly.
