Checking Out

And it seems such a waste of time

If that's what it's all about

Mama, if that's movin' up

Then I'm movin' out

--from Movin' Out by Billy Joel

By the time you read this, I'll be on my way to Milwaukee to spend a weekend up there visiting my oldest and her partner.

I had to explain to the members of my amateur
radio club that Ham Radio Outlet having a store
in Milwaukee had absolutely NOTHING to do
with our trip. (Honest!)

We'd set this weekend up before I even realized it was also the weekend of BlizzCon, so I guess I'll be out of the loop regarding what'll be going on over in California. Probably for the best, if you ask me, considering I expect this to be the last BlizzCon for a few years, if ever. 

Microsoft isn't a company that will throw "extra" money into brand building unless corporate purchasing is involved, and even their ongoing Copilot debacle didn't get much in the way of actual face-to-face interaction with their corporate partners beyond the C-suite level. The costs involved to put on a BlizzCon, from renting the convention space to all of the physical items, come straight out of the XBox budget, and you can imagine that Asha Sharma isn't thrilled about losing money for a physical convention when they could simply give you some digital assets and do a virtual dog-and-pony show instead.*

So, if there's anything prediction-related about this year's BlizzCon from me, it'll be that you'll not see another physical BlizzCon for quite a while after this one.

Oh, and I'd also expect another Dan Olson video in a few months, especially if there's another debacle like last time.

***

Wilhelm Arcturus had a post that provides you a link that creates your very own BlizzCon Keynote Bingo Card, based off of a bunch of potential predictions that he inputted into the site.

Here's a graphic of the Bingo Card I got when I clicked on the link:

Generated on September 6, 2026.

I did print out a hard copy just for reference, so we'll see how I do when I find out the various summaries of the Keynote Speech.

What, you expect me to listen to the replay of the Keynote Speech? I haven't listened to a Keynote speech for anything --no matter what convention or topic-- in at least a decade, and I likely will continue to do this until Jensen Huang stops wearing his leather jacket.

As far as the rest of BlizzCon is concerned, take a gander at the Graphic on the Battle.Net Main Page, snipped for this post:

Here's the BlizzCon 2026 logo on the Battle.Net Main Page.
Looks like (in clockwise order from the left): Diablo, Starcraft,
Hearthstone (judging by the cards), and Warcraft.
Missing: Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm.

Pretty safe to say that these four franchises will be represented at this BlizzCon. Also missing from the above: Arthas, Xal'atath, and Lilith.

*Wizards of the Coast, and their corporate masters Hasbro, haven't really done much in Gen Con for several years since it's a lot cheaper to farm out management of their floor space and whatnot to third party companies. So, beyond the presentation they put on annually for D&D, WotC doesn't have that much of an official presence at Gen Con these days. It still feels kind of weird to be saying that, given that Gen Con was founded by D&D co-creator Gary Gygax back in the 60s, and it was officially owned and operated by TSR (and its descendants) for decades until it was sold to WotC founder Peter Adkison in 2002.