BlizzCon 2017: Overwatch, WoW, Hearthstone, StarCraft 2 Updates!

Last night or early morning for most of us, Blizzard dropped major announcements for (almost) all of their games. We have new maps, servers, heroes, and so much more!

We have them listed down here, so go read it and watch the videos while I go watch the Overwatch World Cup. Betting on South Korea to win, since Koreans and Blizzard go hand-in-hand ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

New Overwatch Hero and Map

Meet Overwatch‘s newest support hero: Moira! She’s a Talon Geneticist who plays like a Reaper-Zendaya hybrid with a giant healing-damage beam as her ultimate. Really excited to play her but will have to wait a while since she’ll be released in the PTR.

We also get a new map with the next major update: Blizzard World. What is basically a Blizzard theme park, this new map is a new hybrid map much like Eichenwalde, King’s Row, and Hollywood.  I’m a lore-guy so I wonder how they’ll fit this map into the Overwatch lore. We had the Doomfist being delivered in Numbani, but what do we have here? I guess we’ll just have to wait for a few months before we casuals get to play.

Also, no Overwatch update will be complete without the best part of the game: skins! We’ll be getting new skins based on the other Blizzard franchises, and a bonus is that these won’t be in limited event boxes, this will be permanent additions to the regular loot boxes. Butcher Roadhog, Magni Bronzebeard Torbjorn, and Crusader Reindhart are what I personally want to get.

World of Warcraft Major Update

The 13-year old game has some major announcements with their newest expansion: Battle for Azeroth. Along with the usual increased level caps, we get new zones to explore and more missions where the Horde gets to beat up those Alliance losers.  The Horde gets to go to the islands of Zandalar while the Alliance gets to see Kul’Tiras. Newer players get treated to a new vanilla server: World of Warcraft Classic. From my understanding, this is the game as it was in 2004 with many features optimized. Would be great to see how the game plays way before, expect to see me there too!

Heroes of the Storm: Hanzo and Alextrasza

Hanzo’s known for his giant Shimada dragon ultimate so it makes sense (kinda maybe) for him to join Heroes of the Storm with another dragon: Alextrasza, the Queen of Dragons! Blizzard’s major announcement this time will come into the game next year during the next major update for Heroes of the Storm too.

Hearthstone: Kobolds and Catacombs

Hearthstone‘s major announcements are plenty. Kobolds and Catacombs is a new expansion that is coming for the mobile card-game. This expansion has us exploring dungeons and finding tons of loot. The announced cards will also play with these themes like the new Mage legendary weapon, Aluneth. This basically gets you unlimited draw at the end of your turn which fits with the finding loot theme of Kobolds and Catacombs. (This also marks the return of the MVP tech card award )

New cards also include: Marin the Fox, a free legendary for anyone who logs in next week; we also get a new keyword: Recruit. Cards with this keyword allow the player to summon another minion card from the deck into play, great for tempo plays maybe? We’ll see. Kobolds and Catacombs also come with a new game mode called the dungeon run. You create a deck and fight eight random bosses, when you lose you can’t use the same deck again. Fun for those with a flair for deck-building!

StarCraft 2 Goes Free to Play!

And what seems to be the biggest of the major announcements from Blizzcon is that Star Craft 2 is finally free-to-play.

Starting on the 14th of November, Star Craft 2: Wings of Liberty will be free for all players to play. Those who already paid for this expansion get the Heart of the Swarm expansion for free. With this, new players can get on the ranked ladder and try to beat Korean elementary kids with 500 APM ㅋㅋㅋ Other single-player campaigns are still locked behind a paywall costing around 15$ each. Still, you get the base game and can get on ranked which is more than we can ask for!

Did I miss any updates? Is there anything you are excited for? Wanna 1v1 me in any Blizz game? Leave a comment below or send us a tweet @whatsageek!