@theangzt @cm_nevalistis @tyvalir D3 won’t have a presence at gamescom, and none of us are going. WoW is gonna rock, though!
— Grimiku (@Grimiku) July 29, 2015
Doesn’t surprise me. This design team has some issues they are going to need to resolve; namely Paragon levels gone wild (and is only going to be exasperated with patch 2.3) and how that is going to impact balancing the campaign play through for the expansion content. Furthermore, they have to develop for console (at least the control systems part) simultaneously since they’ve been consistent in recent patches with launching them at the same time on both desktops and console platforms.
There’s another ulterior reason for this simultaneous release; this way, it makes it more difficult to extrapolate the unit sales number for desktop and console platforms (since Blizzard does not break out those numbers, and has instead used total units sold to date across all platforms as a means to obfuscate the platform specific sales numbers).
Another key business decision they are going to need to make (with regards to an expansion announcement) is microtransactions (MTX) in existing regions. If they end up turning cosmetic MTX on, that will make more sense to be rolled out with the expansion. Patch 2.3 and Season 4 are clearly meant to hold players for 3-4 months once it goes live so I don’t expect any major marketing push to begin until the tail end of that season.
Additionally, the actual release date for Legacy of the Void hasn’t been nailed down yet except for a Winter 2015/2016 timeframe (so basically from December 2015 through February 2016). Based on recent 10-K filings, ATVI has favored staggered launch dates for their biggest franchises as a way to offset revenue dips between those respective franchise releases. WoW has an aggressive content schedule with expansions since it drives both revenues for those expansions as well as subscriptions (which is booked under a separate category). Thus they announce and hype those regardless of the other franchises release schedules.
Basically, the next Diablo III expansion will not overlap this closely to the final StarCraft II expansion. Thus it would not surprise me to see that pushed out to the 2nd half of 2016 at the earliest (depending on the finalized LotV launch date) with actual details coming out after the launch of LotV. One key unknown is the business model for Overwatch as well as its beta (I would think that they will be using BlizzCon to launch into a closed beta of sorts as it makes sense for them to release this game some time in 2016).
If anything, BlizzCon might be used to provide some teaser material but also possibly no major announcements so as to not steal away attention from LotV’s imminent launch (as well as any news regarding Overwatch which will have its hype tuned up to overdrive).
