The Midnight presentation at Gamescom 2025 left me completely disappointed. I’m not even talking about the new content itself – some parts looked interesting. What really upset me was how poorly the presentation was organized.
Chris Metzen didn’t appear at Gamescom, even though early promos listed him as a speaker. For many WoW fans, this was the biggest disappointment. He was the face of The Worldsoul Saga reveal and gave players hope for the revival of Warcraft, but then he just vanished – no interviews, no community presence, no explanation from Blizzard about his absence. It really felt like he was used as a PR move, nothing more.
The event itself lacked the excitement and atmosphere of past BlizzCons. Everything was dragged out with timegates over several days – apparently Blizzard loves timegates so much they even used them for an expansion reveal. Instead of showing the cinematic and then immediately presenting the main features and details on Day 1, everything was stretched into a week of awkward couch talks and interviews.
Blizzard could have simply followed Apple’s approach: record a polished presentation in advance, reveal all the new features, interviews, and announcements in one clean and exciting online event. That would have been professional and worthy of the Blizzard name.
As it was, the whole week looked awkward and uninspired – definitely not Blizzard quality.
Microsoft 9000. Blizzard did not escape this fate either. With staff cut back, people had to take extra duties they were not prepared for and their appearance had to go on as planned.
Blizzard was at the mercy of Gamescom. And plus atleast they shown what they had about midnight. And that was enough for me and why it feels light due to the fact that they have dropped all borrowed power and external controversial design philosophies.
Its almost like lay offs and outsourcing to people/companies that dont know the game and who rely on outdated ai to do the work is the reason this gamescon and midnight info release didnt work.
But hey what do i know ive only been playing for 20 years
Seriously, we’re trying to find all the information and it’s scattered to the four winds.
The thing that pisses me off most, is how they made Amani trolls look- they’re not right at all.
The art team never messes things up, but I might actually sit this one out if they don’t fix my forest troll bros and gals- Trolls are the race I played first!
The trolls they showed us have no noses or chins like they’re supposed to.
Many of you folks seem to forget that Gamescom is NOT a Blizzard event! With E3 gone, Gamescom is now one of the biggest industry events, but it is an event for EVERYONE! This isn’t Blizzcon. Everyone is there to some degree:
Nintendo
Sony
Microsoft (yes, they own Blizzard now, but they have other companies too!)
Square Enix
Bandai Namco
Capcom
CD Projekt Red
Must I go on? One company and/or game cannot take over an entire day at such an event. Even if Blizzard wanted to be there for one big day and bounce, I doubt the event organizers would have allowed them to eat up so much time in a single day.
Disappointing? Oh, by all means it certainly was. Here’s the thing however:
We DON’T know what could have happened behind the scenes. Could Chris have had an emergency that forced him out at the last minute? It’s possible. Do we need to know the exact nature of it if the situation was personal? No, we don’t. That’s his business, and a bunch of obsessive fanboys is the sort of thing that makes people LEAVE companies.
I get it’s natural to ask questions, especially after he was advertised as appearing earlier on, but for now let the man have some peace and a personal life.
Once again, this was NOT a Blizzard event! The sheer fact that you cannot grasp this honestly has me wondering if you’re just a troll trying to argue about it in bad faith. What you apparently wanted to happen is literally not how such events work. Had this been E3, you would’ve seen the exact same thing.
No matter how much you say it and want it to be true, a third party event such as this one will never be a mini Blizzcon. The organizers are NOT going to let a single company monopolize the event when EVERYONE is willing to throw money at them for a spot and the organizers need to balance out who is appearing when. Hell, even when E3 was around, Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo may have all had their own stages, but as far as overall time was concerned, they all generally got equal time. Even some of the third party companies would sometimes split time between these three stages at various points for the same game.
Try to imagine a Resident Evil fan doing what you’re doing simply because RE9 didn’t get a three hour long block dedicated to it. How about if Square had something to announce for FF14? Do you honestly think they would have gotten five straight hours to go over an expansion, the story, the new systems, new features, etc?
You’re acting like this was the first time they didn’t have Blizzcon. It certainly is NOT the first time they’ve skipped a year. Generally speaking, it seems like Blizzard needs big announcements for at least two franchises for them to even consider doing Blizzcon, otherwise running the convention for a single IP is likely going to cost them far more money that it’s worth.
