Over the weekend, fans from around the world gathered at the Anaheim Convention Center to celebrate Blizzcon; an annual celebration of the revered video game developer's various franchises. Like always, the company had plenty of updates to share on the state of their roster of games. Here are some of the most noteworthy reveals from the event.
Coming into the weekend it's safe to assume that Overwatch was the one Blizzard game on everyone's radar. The upcoming online shooter is Blizzard's first new franchise in close to 20 years so naturally, many were curious about what the company had in store.
At the event, Blizzard revealed that Overwatch would be a full-priced title instead of a free-to-play game like many had predicted. In an interview with Polygon, game director Jeff Kaplan said the company made the decision to ensure that gameplay wasn't compromised by players having too few heroes to choose from.
He said, "A lot of the free-to-play models that we were exploring involved people not having access to enough heroes to make those team compositions actually viable. We really didn't want to change the core gameplay and limit it in some way just to make the game free-to-play."
The game is coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on or before June 21, 2016.
Blizzard's online collectible card game Hearthstone also had a huge unveiling during the show. A new adventure add-on entitled League of Explorers is coming next Thursday, November 12. The new update, which is centered on the titular group of adventurers, brings with it 45 new cards spread across 4 playable wings. Like previous Hearthstone adventures, players can choose to acquire the new content with in-game gold or real money.
Aside from these announcements, Blizzcon also had two huge trailer reveals. The first was the first full length trailer from Duncan Jones' upcoming Warcraft movie. The second was the opening cinematic for World of Warcraft's next expansion, Legion, which is scheduled for a summer 2016 release.
