what happens when Blizzard runs out of nostalgia?

 Despite many doomed trial characters spread across the mid-2000s, I never managed to catch up to World Of Warcraft (WoW). In the Day[9] Daily era I made an earnest effort to ‘get good’ at StarCraft 2, but quickly realised I was out of my depth online as esports boomed.To get more news about wow gold pay pal, you can visit lootwowgold official website.

Annoyed that I couldn’t find my way into this community, I went out of my way to buy Diablo III on launch day in 2012, after hearing people rave about the series for years prior. And like most early adopters, I was thoroughly disappointed.I say all this to illustrate that I have no skin in the game when it comes to Blizzcon, the California studio’s annual event where they drip-feed details about their current and future projects to an audience that has been nurtured over decades.

The 2020 edition of the show was cancelled due to COVID, but a virtual version called BlizzConline came and went this past Friday. If you missed the big reveals, I couldn’t blame you. A good chunk of it was focused on the past – and it didn’t seem too interested in looking very far into the future.One of the major announcements was that players will be able to experience WoW’s The Burning Crusade expansion precisely as it was back in 2007, through the magic of WoW Classic’s old school servers.

If you’re unfamiliar, WoW Classic is a separate, quality-of-lifeless version of WoW that recreates the feel of the game as it was back in the good old days, without the iteration. It’s a fascinating, incredibly popular simulacra that speaks to Blizzard’s prevailing business model of keeping its most devoted fans happy.

Knowing this, it really wouldn’t shock me if Blizzard kept going with this absurd trial, reviving every WoW expansion in the Classic style to appease its players. By the time the studio gets around to the latest 2020 expansion Shadowlands, I bet players will be begging to play a pristine version of that too, when the OG 2004 veterans are all geriatric.Elsewhere, we finally received confirmation of the inevitable: Blizzard is remastering Diablo II. It’s called Diablo II: Resurrected and it’s coming in 2021. There’s my proper inroad to the community, I think. I’ve heard nothing but good things about this game that was before my time – particularly in relation to its successor. As you can imagine, I’m all for wiping the slate clean, and who doesn’t love a game where you can click a button to flip between the old graphics and the new?

However, I think the problem Blizzard is running into here is that it can’t sniff its own farts forever. I’m sure Diablo II: Resurrected and The Burning Crusade Classic will be received well by the older fans who demanded them, but at some point, the nostalgia tap will run dry.

With a new generation of gamers on the way who may not have the same zealous devotion for Warcraft, the studio needs to build a bright future with some fresh new ideas. So what have they got in store?

Diablo IV looks like a gigantic bloody open-world apology, which will hopefully go down a treat when it reaches its release date, and restore some faith in the franchise. As for new ideas though, I’m not all that convinced. Beyond the inclusion of PVP, the gameplay looks like it’s still clearly clinging to nostalgia, in a genre with some fresh competition like Grinding Gear Games’ Path Of Exile. I’m hoping Blizzard will do more than just make another Diablo game here – they’re in a position to take the ARPG genre forward in a meaningful way as one of its legacy leaders.

Easily the most hip and modern game in the studio’s roster is Overwatch, which (surprise, surprise) is getting a numbered sequel in Overwatch 2. We’ve no idea when it’s coming, but Blizzard did provide a glimpse into what they’ve been working on, and out of everything, this does sound most promising.