BlizzCon 2023: All the news from Blizzard’s opening ceremony

Whenever a new movie prequel is announced, even the core audience that loved the original work sometimes responds with a resounding ugh. Who can blame anyone for dismissing out of hand the marketing formulation that gave us 2007’s Hannibal Rising, 1979’s Butch and Sundance: The Early Days, or 2004’s Exorcist: The Beginning? Prequels tell stories where the end has been predetermined, often without beloved key actors, prompting unflattering comparisons to inimitable classics. (Like what happened with the Star Wars prequel movies.)

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Nintendo’s latest Indie World showcase featured more than a dozen new (and new to Switch) indie games coming through 2024, with some of those titles dropping on the Switch eShop today.

I went into BlizzCon expecting big World of Warcraft announcements, and we certainly got a bunch of them, but I can’t rightfully say I was right about any. However, I still think Iridikron will remain an antagonist throughout the next expansion, and it won’t be until Midnight that we’ll actually deal with him for the last time. I did not expect to get three expansion announcements, and some of the features coming with The War Within were also surprising. Additionally, 10.2 went live, and I have some thoughts about how that is progressing. Let’s jump in!

Each year at Blizzcon, attendees experience the exhilarating rush of the crowd, special events and panels, and of course, as many photo ops as you want — and this year, the Diablo 4 presentation in Hall A had some incredible ones! A strange sight was beheld by those attending BlizzCon 2023; common folk from all across the lands gathered — to be sacrificed. It is not yet known as to whether it be the work of some afflicted spell of compulsion, or if these people came so willingly out of some twisted malevolence or perhaps even some promise of power.

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After more than a decade, Rockstar Games will finally deliver a sequel to Grand Theft Auto 5, the multi-generational open-world crime spree that has sold more than 190 million copies. In December, GTA fans will get their first official look at the next Grand Theft Auto in trailer form, Rockstar has confirmed.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is perhaps one of the most divisive, if not the most divisive, expansion that has graced the wildly popular MMORPG. With it came a plethora of new dungeons, two entirely new races (one for the Horde and Alliance, respectively), and a drastic change to the world map. But Blizzard Entertainment is dedicated to preserving the nostalgia that’s integral to the success of World of Warcraft: Classic while also keeping modern sensibilities in mind to cater to players who may have missed these pivotal moments in the MMORPG’s history. This includes some user interface revamps, the inclusion of new systems like the Season of Discovery, and more that the Classic team is working on delivering once Deathwing soars back into Azeroth to wreak havoc for a second time.

Epic Games admitted this fact in court.

World of Warcraft: The War Within is the next expansion set to release for the decades-long-running MMORPG. Touted as during the BlizzCon 2023 Opening Ceremony part of the culmination of nearly twenty years of Warcraft history, The War Within is the first of three chapters that will see the resolution to narrative threads that have been dangling for years. And like any expansion, it will feature new areas for players to discover, along with more than a handful of dungeons and encounters they can tackle at varying difficulties.

During BlizzCon 2023, the World of Warcraft team announced that the next few expansions would be releasing at a faster pace than players are used to, highlighted by the fact that the MMO developer showcased the next three expansions on stage. The team's development process to do so apparently is a result of feedback from Shadowlands' glacial pace of content releases, according to the developers in a group interview over the weekend.

BlizzCon 2023 has ended but we have the latest World of Warcraft  news coverage right here.