Blizzard are very worried about sending their developers to public events. They have decided to not go to the 2020 Game Developers Conference.
This might mean that a Blizzcon 2020 is no longer certain to happen.
You can’t blame them though. This situation is just very unfortunate. =/
I hope they do an online event at least. Like the virtual ticket only it takes place within Blizz HQ and it’s only for the staff.
At this time it’s really way too early to be worried about that. Continue to follow Blizzard Entertainment’s Twitter feed for the latest news on when live tickets for Blizzcon will go on sale.
If the problem persists into November then we will all have bigger issues than Blizzcon being postponed.
That said, historically Blizzard doesn’t attend many public events anyway. The only consistent ones, to my knowledge, are Gamescon and, of course, Blizzcon.
I hope the OWL teams are safe. Are they still in China/Korea or did they come back to the US?
They’ve moved back to LA for now. I’ll see if I can dig up the post I saw.
Phew that’s good! I can’t imagine what the scene is like right now over there though…
Unless you have a detailed source, there is no confirmation on what will happen to the China or South Korea matches at this time. All we know is that they’ve canceled those events in those countries, and the North American teams that were scheduled to appear in the South Korea event are working to return back home.
Found it, from Dysvalence: Coronavirus: Asian OWL teams reevacuate to LA
EDIT: and here is the Washington Post original they cited: https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/esports/2020/02/28/asia-based-overwatch-league-teams-flying-los-angeles-amid-coronavirus-outbreak/
But if it were as wide spread as the seasonal flu, couldn’t one assume the percentage would be much higher? If it makes it to Florida, I suspect most of our retired population would be finalizing their Wills. 
Interesting but until we actually do hear any news from the league office, I recommend being patient on knowing exactly where they plan to play those matches.
As a reminder, to my knowledge the Blizzard Arena no longer exists.
The mortality rate is based on the number of people who have been affected and have recovered versus the number of people who have been infected and died.
So say you have 100 people who is infected by covid-19, and 100 people by seasonal flu. The number of people who have died amongst those infected by covid-19 would be 2, and those died from the seasonal flu would be 10.
The key thing that’s different is that covid-19 currently has no vaccine which is why it’s spreading so quickly, the seasonal flu does have a vaccine and therefore it’s much more easily contained.
Just linked the WaPo article they got it from, Wyoming.
Their eSports section is surprisingly quick on this stuff sometimes.
And the seasonal flu is world wide while covid is impacting a far smaller population by comparison. My point is, if it was global maybe that number would be higher than 2. Especially in parts of the world with poor health, lots of homeless, elderly, etc etc.
But perhaps none of that matters. Idk. Just speculation on my part.
In the end it is better to be safe than sorry. If cancelling Blizzcon means the safety of others then I support it.
Talk about a reach… my gosh its almost a year away… in California no less, not Beijing.
You have to understand, I’m speaking in ratios and not simply doing a head count. but I’m simply saying is if you happen to catch the flu you’re at more risk of dying than you are catching covid 19. Even then, the extremely high majority of cases of those who died, are those who already have significant medical complications already or suffered from secondary bacterial infections on set from covid-19.
In short, keep calm and use hand sanitizer. (No… masks really aren’t that helpful.)
this is GROSSLY overstating the flu’s mortality rate. CDC has it at sub 1%.
The CDC only reports US cases, and in the US it’s below 1%. According to the World health organization, The average number of infections reaches upward towards 5 million, with as much as 650,000, dying from it.
There is no way they’d do that.
There is a major content crisis at the moment, next Blizzcon is them unleashing (almost) all of their work and revealing it to the public.
Also, Blizzcon is in November, we’re in March, 8 more months buddy, that’s plenty of time for them to settle things down.