[BlizzCon 2023] Feedback Megathread

General Discussion
22

Have to completely agree with all points.

I look forward to Blizzcon every year to see friends and enjoy some awesome new announcements.

This felt like it was half the size, 1/4 of the content, double the attendance. Blizzard should really be embarrassed and compensating people.

Also, security had to be some of the most miserably rude and aggressive peoppe I’ve ever dealt with, to the point where they actively were verbally rude to people without any reason to even engage.

It was an absolute lackluster cluster cashgrab and I’m not sure if i’ll attend Blizzcon in the future after experiencing this.

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23

Blizzcon is not for the fans. It’s for the shareholders.

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24

Feedback for the online Blizzcon experience, this new Youtube/Twitch streaming event completely missed the mark. Not enough to watch, and unless you watched it LIVE you don’t have the option to watch most of the panels at all.

Nov 3. there were six panels, only the Opening Ceremony and the two Warcraft: What’s Next panels are available to watch.

The Overwatch 2, Hearthstone, and Warcraft Rumblings panels are not available to watch on either the WoW or Blizzcon Youtube pages.

Nov 4, content had 5 streaming panels, only the Warcraft Deep Dive is available to watch.

This was never an issue with the old Blizzcon streaming service, you could watch any panel immediately after it was filmed and could catch up on all the stuff you missed later in the weekend or during the night.

As of Sunday Morning nearly 2/3 of the Blizzcon content is not available to watch. I understand this is provided this year completely FREE but I would have gladly paid normal Blizzcon streaming price to have the old system back.

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25

Hello guys ,

I came all along with my wife from Marseille France. For my first blizzcon I can’t no tell that is wasn’t good experience because when you flew over here I guess you enjoyed differently from citizens or local or for people that attended this several time.

But for all the things I read through the thread I’m kind disappointed to see that for all of it wasn’t a good blizzcon. Did I came here for my first time ever to the worst Blizzcon Ever that’s frustrating , was planning to get the portal pass hopefully I only get the general admission.

But I guess even for my first blizzcon i felt it too , because after getting all souvenir stuff. On my way to going out my wife asked if i have enjoyed it . I said of course , but something is missing , I guess I expected more . I guess that’s all we are missing the “more” .

See you next time maybe…

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26

Actually this year was primarily 3rd party staff whereas previous years it was mostly Blizzard employees. Some staff still worked, or had the option to work, but that vast majority didn’t work it.

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27

It felt so…bland I guess is the word? You’d think for the first one after 4 years away that they would’ve gone hard and had so much ready but it just…wasn’t. OW2 got a new hero as expected and then they talked about how much fun they had working on art. Diablo teased a new expansion with extremely little to talk about on it and shared virtually no details. “We have a new class and its a class. its a class we haven’t done before and its new”. Warcraft felt like way too much shoved into one. I hope they do better and be better for next year because this Blizzcon did not sell out at all and you could tell that despite the downsizing. The people who didn’t buy tickets this year and kept it from selling out are absolutely not going to look at next year as something they should do. As soon as I saw the schedule and how barren it was I got worried and the fact that 2 of Blizz’s IPs had literally nothing is very telling of the state of the company right now. I really want to be optimistic especially as a WoW player and fan but this was not it.

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28

Really!?

I thought most of the folks helping out with the store were third party? The employee I spoke with said they still have folks working (like him). I thought the those helping out with lines and exhibits were blizzard staff.

Just figured the blue shirts were blizzard folks. Was that not the case?

29

I think most of the blue shirts was 3rd party because a lot of them didn’t know what was happening and when I asked a question I got a “I don’t know”

30

Wait, why do they have to be in costume both days? Can’t they just attend the con normally on Day 1 and then dress up on Day 2?

On-topic: It amazes me at how the on-site/Blink Shopping store has never been resolved despite them having the shop every time. You go to pickup an order and even when you get there you end up having to wait 30+ min - where’s the “blink” part?

It’s just amazing how poorly organized picking up orders really is. I had one with a simple lanyard + 2 murloc shoulder buddies (apparently all of them were held up in customs). Never got the email to pickup the lanyard at the appointed time (4PM Sunday) so I went to customer service at 5PM. It took over an hour to wait in line AND get someone who actually find the lanyard, but the person retrieving it took at least 20 minutes because they weren’t aware of the murloc situation. And the email to pick it up arrived at 8:25PM Sunday…

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31

I agree. 90 percent of my time was in lines, 10 was was actually doing anything blizzard related. Want to do a demo, an hour wait, want to see an event, 1-2 hour wait, wait to go into Darkmoon, 1 hour wait, then stand in another line for tokens, then to stand in another line to use said token. Want meet a dev for 45 seconds, hour line. Not to even touch on the 2 mile line day 1. This was my and my son’s first BlizzCon and it was not worth the money or effort to come. Nor would i reccomend it to anyone else.

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32

Agreed. Me and my friends had a mostly good time because we got incredibly lucky to get in the panels we wanted (and waited very early), but as someone who went with a group of first timers we all agreed never again because of all the points you mentioned.

Also, I won a prize from DMF and waited in three total lines between getting coins, using them and the prize itself just to have them tell me they ran out of products. What???

Going to try to reach out to Blizzard support on that because that was a huge scam. Other than that I’ll take this as a one time experience and move on. This was not as fun as I would have hoped.

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33

Your points are so great. You hit on all my similar pain points - I didn’t partake in the Portal Pass and I am glad i didn’t. A friend came this year whose first time it was and he was like, “Oh its normally not like this?” I had to keep explaining how it was just absolutely not the norm and it was insanely poor planning.

The first day line almost made me turn away immediately. The line went down Katella, wrapped through the hotel parking lots, and then into the entrance. I found out about the back entrance with Registration. Walked right in and ate food during the opening ceremony. This felt like a lucky moment.

It was mind boggling how many people there were this year and less space available to do things. The DMF Line was nuts. Just insane. It should have been on its own level as mentioned in other posts. The Season of Discovery playthrough needed more stations. Deleting the Starcraft presence, which is one of the penultimate IP’s within the company, was mind boggling. No E-Sports outside of Overwatch was an oversight.

Was a weird event.

Also, am I missing something… did we get no in game rewards this year? Just that backpack? I am so confused about this part.

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34

You got a code for in game goodies and it should have been emailed.

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35

Thanks a ton! For some reason I missed this email!

36

YES, the very same in game goodies anyone else could buy “virtually” online. What happened to the exclusive gifts for BlizzCon only? Pay hundreds of dollars to see the same things and get the same goodies as the people online except a small backpack.

BlizzCon 2023 was done so poorly that heads should literally fly.

(4) seperate halls.
Diablo IV hall - Ghost town… Who thought you needed an entire hall for Diablo 4? 1/2 or 1/3 would have sufficed.
Overwatch 2 - Even with the tournament why did you need 2 halls? One hall was always empty while the other full… One would have worked…
Wow and Darkmoon Faire Hall - Where to start… SLAMMED elbow to elbow. Wow needed 1.5 halls and the Faire alone needed 1/2 of its own hall.

And not to mention WHY WOULD YOU REMOVE ANYTHING SC2?!?!

Over $2,000 spent for two portal pass tickets to spend hours and hours in unorganized lines in halls packed to unsafe numbers. Only to be told later there are “portal” lines which don’t exist. Staff sends you to a normal line EVERY TIME.

Line to buy pins and patches… 60-120min.

3 hour Line to get random adopt a pet stuffed animals.

Line to buy COINS (On Day 1= 150 minutes) THEN A NEW LINE TO CASH YOUR COINS (Day 1 120 minutes). Day 2… Oh boy… Lines into another hall entirely. 4+ hours for each line. So poorly planned that the coin cashing line was so long that they had NO coins to sell to the coin line… MORE COINS… MORE MACHINES… How hard is it to comprehend Blizzard? You had like hundreds upon hundreds of people in line and what 12 prize machines?!

Pin lines… 45m to swap pins. Badge lines 20m (by far shortest line).

1.5 hour pickup line to pickup my Diablo IV bomber jacket which had one of its arms sewn shut at the cuff… Only to be made to wait another hour in the customer service line to get it exchanged…

And lets not forget to mention the horrid Mountain Dew contest. Trying to yell the winning number to a crowd of like 2,000 people? How did you think that was going to work?

The Diablo 4 boardgame setup was ok but we lined up to get on a mailing list to not even see a product? And all the figurines were damaged in shipping so they were all broken in multiple pieces…

Food prices were not bad, actually cheaper than I expected at a convention but charging $5 for a water should be criminal.

Lets see… Sold 25k tickets at least and had an opening and closing ceremony that could seat 7.5k people??? With a line that was no joke, maybe a mile long to enter. And that is not an exaggeration (wrapped completely around the convention center and into a residential neighborhood. Why pay all this money when you can watch online for free? We were basically forced to sit in the halls and watch the events on the large screens because the arena is so packed there was no open seats.

I hope Blizzard really reads all these comments and comes back and makes it right to those who spent hundreds upon hundreds and in some cases thousands. Give exclusive items to attendees like the old days.

Add other small things to do, other games to play. More stations to reduce 1-2 hour wait times just to try new things. Paying so much money to wait in 6-8 hours worth of lines only to be able to do things for 30-60 minutes is not fun, its just insane.

I know this is a huge rant and I am sorry. I expected so much more from a multi billion dollar company. A company I have loved and worshiped over the years. It is just so sad and disappointing to see something so fun as BlizzCon turn into what appears now to just be an unorganized money grab.

Blizzard. Please send EVERY single one of your employees to SD Comic Con 2024 to learn how a real convention is managed. And please, please, please, fire whomever ran BlizzCon 2023.

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37

I agree with OP this was my third blizzcon and my wife’s first, we couldn’t even do the darkmoon fair because of the 4 hour wait, felt bad I couldn’t show her that. DMF is one of the best parts for patches and pins especially when they do a backpack. Biggest disappointment ever for blizzard… makes me sad.

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38

Also the fact they only raffled off one Lilith statue for the mtn dew quest blows my mind, like for the millions you made just in ticket sales you couldn’t raffle off at least 5-10 lol.

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39

I wish it was 7.5k. I heard it was 5k.

They clearly took the airline route here and oversold the event.

40

The OP and others have covered most of the issues I experienced as a repeat con attendee. It was disappointing to have such short days and so few panels, which instead pushed people into standing in lines for other content, making those lines intolerably long. While I love reading Wowhead articles for info, I can’t help but wonder if it might not have been more enjoyable to have some of those interviews be live at the con so people could watch them as they happened instead of reading about them while standing in line. Personally, I also wish that there had been clearer markings on the map showing the location of the screens running the simulcasts from the arena or events. It was annoying to be standing in line for WoW dev signings for over an hour and only be able to see screens that replayed cinematics over and over again, rather than being able to see the guild clash or even the overwatch matches.

I will add that it was not all bad. I did appreciate the meet & greets since there were no official sanctioned parties and otherwise it was just a nightmare of trying to see if you might spot someone cool at the con or the Hilton lobby. I loved seeing the cosplayers again and i cannot overstate how awesome it was to have Metzen back and pumping us all up in a packed house for WoW. The game news is really good and that makes me excited to be at a point where I can play again more. The security did not do individual bag checks and moving through security was much faster than 2019, with bag checks only if you got flagged for something coming through. Some folks were able to bring in water bottles without an issue. While there was no alcohol inside, I know some were pre-gaming before coming inside the con, for better or worse… as others have noted elsewhere, some folks came in hung over from the night before and that has happened in previous years so it is hardly new.

Blizz could not control the voice actors being absent in solidarity with the actors strike, but it did really hurt the con experience overall and I suspect that it is the reason why they waited so long to post the detailed map and schedule, since I imagine they were hoping to be able to include the panels. I have a feeling some of the weird open spaces people mentioned were related to reworking the spaces without the panel setups.

But it felt like the people allocating space were thinking about OW being their big game for subs, not paying attention to the fact that WoW being a 20 year old game means that WoW players are the ones with more disposable income and they comprise a larger proportion of congoers. Similarly, SC2 and HOTS being completely absent also snubbed some of the long-time Blizz game players who have been repeat con attendees. Instead of “What Sword?” t-shirts, they should have worn SC2 “What Game?” t-shirts…

Having the arcade set up in some of the wide open spaces would also have given folks other things to do besides stand in line or post on social media about how frustrated they were to not be able to get into the darkmoon faire or get the merch they wanted to buy. Fun experiences help mitigate the disappointing ones, and I wish there had been a few more options for fun.

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41

Been to a lot of Blizzcons. Always had a blast. This one was… rough.

They had the same floor space as they did back when they only sold 20-25k tickets. There were easily 40k plus there. On the low end. I’m talking about back when they announced Overwatch at the con with a playable demo, and you still only had about a 30 minute wait to play - and that was the longest line at the convention.

We left early both days just to go watch the con at the airbnb. At least then we could be comfortable while watching them as opposed to standing shoulder to shoulder to watch a corner of a screen. Abandoned a friend there temporarily who ended up being in line for Darkmoon faire for 2+ hours since they pointed everyone there to submit WoW questions after the deep dive.

Won’t be going to another blizzcon for a while. It felt like the event was set up for streaming rather than attending, so going to just lean into that.

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