We saw BlizzCon 2020 canceled and replaced with an online-only event due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the same fate has befallen Blizzard’s planned BlizzCon 2021 event, too. Up until now, the company has been fairly quiet about its plans for this year’s event, but now citing “ongoing complexities and uncertainties of the pandemic,” we know it’s not going to happen. In a new post on the BlizzCon website, show executive producer Saralyn Smith outlined what the company is planning instead of an event later this year. “As guidelines in California around in-person gatherings continue to evolve and the status of the pandemic fluctuates around the globe, the teams across Blizzard have been discussing what this means for one of the events we miss the most: BlizzCon.” “We know some of you might be wondering about your own plans to potentially cross the country - not to mention oceans - and meet your friends, family, and fellow community members in California, so today, we wanted to give you a heads-up that we’ve decided we will not be holding BlizzCon this year.” Smith noted that Blizzard is in the planning stages of an event that’ll be held during the “early part of next year,” and unlike the online-only BlizzCon event we saw take place in February 2021, this next event will tackle both an online digital presence, as well as a real-world physical event. “Building an in-person BlizzCon is an epic and complex affair that takes many months of preparation,” Smith continued. “The ongoing complexities and uncertainties of the pandemic have impacted our ability to properly move forward on many of these fronts, and ultimately we’re now past the point where we’d be able to develop the kind of event we’d want to create for you in November.” Blizzard promises to share more information as it becomes available.
