Celebrate the origins of Blizzard Esports! StarCraft, StarCraft II, Warcraft III, and Heroes of the Storm are coming to the BlizzCon stage.
🎟️ Secure your tickets on November 7th and see your favorites up on stage!
What form this will take, is not yet known. But after years of having none of the RTS games (much less Heroes of the Storm) at Blizzcon, the idea of having all of them return at once should be exciting even if it's only in a limited way.
On November 06 2025 13:23 Toshinou-Kyouko wrote: Yeah, this seems sus.
There isn't even any concrete plans yet. But hey at least we're getting some "love" from blizzard, right?
Eh, I think this is pretty cool/fine. There's definitely some warranted bullying of Blizzard for how they've treated StarCraft 2, but I think some expectations fans have are unrealistic for a game this old.
On November 06 2025 13:23 Toshinou-Kyouko wrote: Yeah, this seems sus.
There isn't even any concrete plans yet. But hey at least we're getting some "love" from blizzard, right?
Eh, I think this is pretty cool/fine. There's definitely some warranted bullying of Blizzard for how they've treated StarCraft 2, but I think some expectations fans have are unrealistic for a game this old.
Agree with this. I didn't have any negative reactions to this when I read the news until I saw user comments. I mean yeah... starcraft2 is not that popular anymore, and its been away from blizzard's eye for so long; not sure what people expect. I am just glad it is getting attention again and am looking forward to watching the event. I see the format as more of like how GSL vs World team format was where like players drafted and there was Team Serral, Team Dark. I imagine it will have all those cool players again but it will just be Team Artosis vs Team Demuslim or something. (but the pro players still being the focus of the matches.) I think it is awesome, and I expect maybe they will announce how the StarCraft project with Nexon is going. Perhaps a cinematic trailer? It could sort of be like the Diablo Immortal announcement but for starcraft and hopefully a cooler game. (though when I check diablo immortal reviews a lot of people seem to like it actually and the critics are just a vocal minority who want PC ports or are never happy.)
Hopping on the 'better than nothing' train. It's cool, even if we don't get to see actual high-stakes competition, but having been treated and neglected like the unwanted stepchild by Blizzard for so long definitely took its toll on the community, I can totally see how they first need to rebuild some of that lost trust and goodwill and might want to gauge the reaction by starting out slow.
But for the future I still have a couple of things on my wishlist:
- bring official 2v2 ladder support for Brood War - create SOME new content for any RTS title (be it skins, announcers, small campaigns, an official arcade map, ANYTHING), think what Microsoft has been doing for AoE 2 over the years - release maybe ONE new hero per year for Heroes of the Storm
Well, seeing as other unloved children such as Heroes is featured too, I can't help but wonder if they really put together a decent prize pool. Nonetheless, the news itself is amazing I have to say! Can't wait for more news!!
On November 06 2025 13:23 Toshinou-Kyouko wrote: Yeah, this seems sus.
There isn't even any concrete plans yet. But hey at least we're getting some "love" from blizzard, right?
Eh, I think this is pretty cool/fine. There's definitely some warranted bullying of Blizzard for how they've treated StarCraft 2, but I think some expectations fans have are unrealistic for a game this old.
There are some things that i am concerned about. i.e. who will be these "community captains?" how will they be selected? same with the all star players, how will they be selected? If someone selects, say flash or soma for broodwar, or serral for sc2 does that team instawin?
Hopefully these will be clarified in the next few months leading up to blizzcon, but until then I will remain skeptical.
Just hand Wardi the marketing budget for SC2 and tell him half must go to prize pools. Let him create the entire SC2 competitive scene. Perhaps direct Wardi to create a live event division? Give the man a budget and let him cook.
On November 06 2025 19:21 Creager wrote: but having been treated and neglected like the unwanted stepchild by Blizzard for so long definitely took its toll on the community, I can totally see how they first need to rebuild some of that lost trust and goodwill and might want to gauge the reaction by starting out slow.
i think Brood War esports was better without Blizzard involvement. I think SC2 esports has also been better without Blizzard involvement. James Naismith is a genius who invented Basketball. That doesn't mean he has the skills to run a pro basketball league like NBA. I prefer Blizzard out of esports completely.
On November 06 2025 17:46 ETisME wrote: Even heroes of the storm? Interesting. At least it's a start somewhere
I'm the weird one here, but I'm excited for Heroes. I still play the game a ton and think it's very under appreciated. The last patch came out just recently and was massive.
Honestly: Nothing bad can come from this. Like...nothing. Even if it is a 4-player invitational for 50 bucks - that's an improvement of 50 bucks compared to before. In none of these games there is anything that could be hurt from this. At the worst, it is a bad tournament that's not fun or exciting - still an improvement to nothing.
So I hope people give it a fair chance. Don't hate it, don't be worried about it, just look forward to it...or ignore it if you want to go the "buck flizzard"-route. But don't kill the potential excitment this could bring before even anything of value is announced
I was hoping this would be like a small,20k tournament for each game like prior pre 2010 Blizzcons.
But this kinda gives me the vibes of Nintendo World Championships, where instead of the focus on the pros in each specific game, its more like whos the best blizzard classic gamer, mastering several different discplines.
Beggars cant be choosers though, im glad the old games got thrown a bone. Especially from the WC3 side where it got completely overshadowed by both Starcrafts and a bad remaster.
On November 07 2025 12:56 breaker1328 wrote: I'm surprised so many people are complaining about this.
I went to bed after seeing the announcement it was coming back to Blizzcon and woke up to the details. It was pretty disappointing. But yeah, better than nothing. With a patch, this, and fingers crossed for EWC it's not too bad.
Btw: Should this really be "just" a cross-game competition between influencers or whatever...something like this has been done earlier this year in China:
Essentially they assembled teams for all the games from the "Golden Age", aka. WC3, BW, DotA1 and Counterstrike and then those players had to play all games against each other. Atleast a fun idea
On November 07 2025 03:18 Balnazza wrote: Honestly: Nothing bad can come from this. Like...nothing. Even if it is a 4-player invitational for 50 bucks - that's an improvement of 50 bucks compared to before. In none of these games there is anything that could be hurt from this. At the worst, it is a bad tournament that's not fun or exciting - still an improvement to nothing.
So I hope people give it a fair chance. Don't hate it, don't be worried about it, just look forward to it...or ignore it if you want to go the "buck flizzard"-route. But don't kill the potential excitment this could bring before even anything of value is announced
It is hard to trust blizzard given their track record in the past few years.
On November 07 2025 13:53 Balnazza wrote: Btw: Should this really be "just" a cross-game competition between influencers or whatever...something like this has been done earlier this year in China:
Essentially they assembled teams for all the games from the "Golden Age", aka. WC3, BW, DotA1 and Counterstrike and then those players had to play all games against each other. Atleast a fun idea
awful idea to be honest since those players are obviously terrible at games they dont play and they are not going to practice whole new games specifically for this tournament/challenge.
On November 07 2025 13:53 Balnazza wrote: Btw: Should this really be "just" a cross-game competition between influencers or whatever...something like this has been done earlier this year in China:
Essentially they assembled teams for all the games from the "Golden Age", aka. WC3, BW, DotA1 and Counterstrike and then those players had to play all games against each other. Atleast a fun idea
awful idea to be honest since those players are obviously terrible at games they dont play and they are not going to practice whole new games specifically for this tournament/challenge.
They are definitely not going to do that... I think people are inferring a lot here from what reads more inherently like the draft formats we've seen in starcraft before like from Team Serral and Team Dark etc at I think it was the GSL vs World intermittent event.
On November 07 2025 03:18 Balnazza wrote: Honestly: Nothing bad can come from this. Like...nothing. Even if it is a 4-player invitational for 50 bucks - that's an improvement of 50 bucks compared to before. In none of these games there is anything that could be hurt from this. At the worst, it is a bad tournament that's not fun or exciting - still an improvement to nothing.
So I hope people give it a fair chance. Don't hate it, don't be worried about it, just look forward to it...or ignore it if you want to go the "buck flizzard"-route. But don't kill the potential excitment this could bring before even anything of value is announced
Yeah that’s how I’d see it. Hey you might not have top billing but it’s nice to be back in the tent again
On November 07 2025 01:06 BisuDagger wrote: I'm the weird one here, but I'm excited for Heroes. I still play the game a ton and think it's very under appreciated. The last patch came out just recently and was massive.
you aint bad, Dagger. hOTS one of the more underrated games. One of my favorite of all time. No idea what the competitive scene is like right now, I never followed it tbh. But the game itself is so good and deserves continued development. I actually wanted to make a whole project around why it should be developed and push for it, but no time.
i do have to take issue with 1 thing you said tho, and it's a mistake a lot of people make. Calling something massive when they mean big. The patch does not have mass, it is digital. Let us all please follow this rule and be better Englishers OK. Thank you for volunteering for this lesson on usage. And just remember how much i agree w/u about HoTS
While some of the my best SC2 memories were around the past Blizzcon events, without a yearly Circuit and qualifying matches, I'm not 100% this will have the build up/story of the older events. That said there are players at their peak now who probably never even attended a Blizzcon. While I'm on the "better than nothing" train, I'm not sure how is good for Sc2 besides exposure and maybe some game development, as I can't see this being big enough to fund several pros and caster for the whole year?
EWC was great as the prize pool still pulled in the very best players even with the limited circuit, but unless this ends up being a qualify for that, I can't see Blizzard bringing everything in house as good thing until we get some details this is a funded year long event.
Sc2 actually have it worse than wc3 and hots, they receive patches and there're sometimes even words, heck I still cannot upload maps on eu..
Blizz have so much bad faith right now and for good reason that they're probably advised not to communicate. So, I really have got to wonder why they even announce a blizzcon, mb they have smth big to make ppl come crawling back, and sc2 being announced as a classic game for the first time, as far as I know, could mean some kind of starcraft announcement, though it'd probably be 3 years away in terms of release. I kind of wish ppl just had enough of blizz and wouldn't show up, but that would be naive of me to think would come to pass. Also, there's no way they would do a normal blizzcon since ewc sets an impossible high standard.
On November 07 2025 03:18 Balnazza wrote: Honestly: Nothing bad can come from this. Like...nothing. Even if it is a 4-player invitational for 50 bucks - that's an improvement of 50 bucks compared to before. In none of these games there is anything that could be hurt from this. At the worst, it is a bad tournament that's not fun or exciting - still an improvement to nothing.
So I hope people give it a fair chance. Don't hate it, don't be worried about it, just look forward to it...or ignore it if you want to go the "buck flizzard"-route. But don't kill the potential excitment this could bring before even anything of value is announced
It is hard to trust blizzard given their track record in the past few years.
There is literally no expectation to have "trust" in them. It might just be a fun little event for the Blizzcon, nothing more. If you expect a million-dollar championship and then it doesn't come that isn't betraying your trust, that's just you expecting something that was never announced nor implied.
hOTS one of the more underrated games. One of my favorite of all time. No idea what the competitive scene is like right now, I never followed it tbh. But the game itself is so good and deserves continued development. I actually wanted to make a whole project around why it should be developed and push for it, but no time.
Competitive HotS is dead since Blizzard pulled the rug under them (which btw was probably the one big scum-move Blizzard did to its competitive games, players literally lost their livelyhood without warning over night). Khaldor tried to keep it somewhat running, but as far as I now, from the four games in the Classic Cup it is by far the one that does not have any real kind of competitive scene anymore. Basically just community cups.
On November 07 2025 23:52 ejozl wrote: Sc2 actually have it worse than wc3 and hots, they receive patches and there're sometimes even words, heck I still cannot upload maps on eu..
Blizz have so much bad faith right now and for good reason that they're probably advised not to communicate. So, I really have got to wonder why they even announce a blizzcon, mb they have smth big to make ppl come crawling back, and sc2 being announced as a classic game for the first time, as far as I know, could mean some kind of starcraft announcement, though it'd probably be 3 years away in terms of release. I kind of wish ppl just had enough of blizz and wouldn't show up, but that would be naive of me to think would come to pass. Also, there's no way they would do a normal blizzcon since ewc sets an impossible high standard.
SC2 does receive patches aswell...
They announced a Blizzcon because it has been ages since they had one and they probably have a new round of stuff to announce. Blizzcon in the years before Microsoft clearly suffered from being a yearly event and the pressure of announcing something great every time limited their freedom. Not to mention that I believe we near the end of the 3-Addon WoW-Cycle, so there should be something new in thar regard anyway.
But please people: They didn't announce a Blizzcon Esports Event here. They announced the event Blizzcon and just said that one part of it will be the Classic Cup. For now, it is just a tiny part of the like 10+ panels they announced, nothing more. So don't expect a World Championship, it will not be one. Otherwise that would have clearly be announced, like the Overwatch World Cup.
That being said: I'm just fucking thrilled. I'm not big on christmas and the holidays, but Blizzcon was always my personal holiday. Even when I started to play less Blizzard games regularly, I still enjoyed the Opening Ceremony every time, it was just always magical. And yes, I know, I'm a Blizzard-Simp in that regard, but the last few years, whenever we reached the first weekend of November, I felt kinda sad that there isn't a Blizzcon to look forward to. So even if this Classic Cup is just the PR-ist PR-Joke of all PR-events...I don't really care. I'm just pumped for Blizzcon and the new direction Microsoft might take the company to.
Totally strange to me that some people's initial reaction was hate. I still play and watch SC2, WC3, and HotS and think this news is incredible. I don't care if they aren't going to be the greatest tournaments ever with the biggest prize pools or what not; the fact that blizzard is involving itself in the tournament scene at all for these IPs (even if it's really small) is wonderful news.
in a parallel universe there would be a surprise announcement for sc3/wc4 and it would be up there with some of the greatest new game announcements of all time.
On November 07 2025 03:18 Balnazza wrote: Honestly: Nothing bad can come from this. Like...nothing.
Oh yeah? It's Blizzard. They could use this as an opportunity to announce sequels for all of those games, make them all shit and then try to kill the remaining competitive scenes of those games featured in this event to establish their new games.
On November 07 2025 03:18 Balnazza wrote: Honestly: Nothing bad can come from this. Like...nothing.
Oh yeah? It's Blizzard. They could use this as an opportunity to announce sequels for all of those games, make them all shit and then try to kill the remaining competitive scenes of those games featured in this event to establish their new games.
You mean like what they did when starcraft 2 came out? I wouldn't worry, brood war is fine, and I doubt they will ever try to kill something as hard as they tried to kill bw.
On November 07 2025 03:18 Balnazza wrote: Honestly: Nothing bad can come from this. Like...nothing.
Oh yeah? It's Blizzard. They could use this as an opportunity to announce sequels for all of those games, make them all shit and then try to kill the remaining competitive scenes of those games featured in this event to establish their new games.
There is literally nothing to kill for Blizzard in any of the games. Also if they announce a new RTS in 2026, it will still be 2-3 years until it is released. By then ASL can be played in a nursing home...
On November 07 2025 03:18 Balnazza wrote: Honestly: Nothing bad can come from this. Like...nothing.
Oh yeah? It's Blizzard. They could use this as an opportunity to announce sequels for all of those games, make them all shit and then try to kill the remaining competitive scenes of those games featured in this event to establish their new games.
You mean like what they did when starcraft 2 came out? I wouldn't worry, brood war is fine, and I doubt they will ever try to kill something as hard as they tried to kill bw.
Yes and I will never forgive them.^^ I know it's unlikely but at this point I just wouldn't put it past them to come up with something terrible. That might be a tad cynic but in the past 15 years they have proven to come up with unimaginable shit to screw the players/fans again and again.
On November 07 2025 03:18 Balnazza wrote: Honestly: Nothing bad can come from this. Like...nothing.
Oh yeah? It's Blizzard. They could use this as an opportunity to announce sequels for all of those games, make them all shit and then try to kill the remaining competitive scenes of those games featured in this event to establish their new games.
There is literally nothing to kill for Blizzard in any of the games. Also if they announce a new RTS in 2026, it will still be 2-3 years until it is released. By then ASL can be played in a nursing home...
On November 07 2025 01:06 BisuDagger wrote: I'm the weird one here, but I'm excited for Heroes. I still play the game a ton and think it's very under appreciated. The last patch came out just recently and was massive.
you aint bad, Dagger. hOTS one of the more underrated games. One of my favorite of all time. No idea what the competitive scene is like right now, I never followed it tbh. But the game itself is so good and deserves continued development. I actually wanted to make a whole project around why it should be developed and push for it, but no time.
i do have to take issue with 1 thing you said tho, and it's a mistake a lot of people make. Calling something massive when they mean big. The patch does not have mass, it is digital. Let us all please follow this rule and be better Englishers OK. Thank you for volunteering for this lesson on usage. And just remember how much i agree w/u about HoTS
It was massive emotionally for me and I know you know emotions carry weight my man.
On November 09 2025 13:24 TeamMamba wrote: Amazing some people still found a way to shit on this event.
This is a huge improvement than “nothing” that the scene been getting
I can't agree more, nobody knew if anything was going to happen, if there even would be a blizzcon event and now we're getting all these tournaments as well in a celebration of the blizzard's epic games. I'm so happy to see this is being organized and i hope it will be executed well with the most passionate community members.
EPT
