I Love the smell of Speculation in the morning!

So with Blizzconn on its way in a matter of days i have decided to postpone my intended post about pets in favour of some speculation. The build up to Blizzconn always feels very Christmas like to me. Not simply because they both occupy the same general region of the year. The whole you want to know what your going to get, yet if you do find out it spoils the surprise. This year Blizzard have done a grand job of keeping everything under wraps. Though to be honest the only game that has been pre announced is the Wow Expac so technically a lot of stuff has been spoiled. But at the same time its worked well. All i know about the game that formerly was Blizzard All Stars is that it has a new name and logo. I am massively excited just to see what they are going to show us. After the cut i will outline my wish list for things i want to see/hope to see. :)

Ok so still here?

Then on with the show, Firstly i want well expect really to see a new iteration of the annual pass. In my opinion the annual pass seems like a no brainer its a good way to get people subbing into Wow for twelve months, that covers the pre expansion lull. The only reason for this to not happen is if they are optimistic that they can roll content and games out fast enough to meet demand. Though if anything i would love to see the annual pass expanded to include a option for the free game, so you could pick Legacy of the Void or Reaper of Souls. To be fair that last point is unlikely but i can always hope. Though it would increase the number of people who the pass appeals to maybe.

Second up we are going to go a bit crazy here, i want to see them announce a legacy/veteran system to reward long term players. Nothing crazy and game changing just something purely visual similar to how both the HoS wings and D3 CE wings work in |Diablo but across all of there games. Or maybe something similar to D3 paragon system whereby your portrait that appears across Bnet changes the longer you have been playing. I like the idea of a veteran system as i feel the longer Wow the biggest challenge it faces is not grabbing new players from the multitude of new games on the market including F2P games. But trying to keep the existing player base still playing, 10 years is a long time for many people to play and there comes a inevitable changes to lifestyle/habit that reduce and eventually prevent people investing the same time they used to. While a veteran system wouldn't solve this issue it would be a nice way to reward people for the time and energy they have invested.

Thirdly, Betas lot and lots of Betas. i would expect news of beta for Both LoV and RoS for sure i peg RoS for a march release when the AH's shut down so beta know would be right. But also i expect Beta for the Wow epxac. Despite the fact we know very little about the next expac, the nature in which Mop has rolled out with the quickness of patches the more coherent story lines. MoP feels like it was Wow 2.0 changing the way we play the game. Offering more varied option and massive new features. Pet battles, Flexi raids, Scenarios, Proving grounds, Challenge modes, Catch up mechanics and more. I think of MoP as the game getting a massive game play overhaul setting it up for the next expansions. Coupled with the massive size of the Wow Dev team at the moment, as well as there continued drive to decrease release times. I get the feeling that the 5th expansion is nearing completion, and they are going to blow us away at Blizzconn on Friday. As i mentioned above Wow is really the only game being Announced we know what all the others are all ready.

Finally ..... Heroes of the Storm. I expect a lot form this, it massive development time coupled with all the E-sports people blizzard has hired. As well as the fact that All Stars was playable last Blizzconn, lead me to the point that this one may be a lot closer than we know/think. I agree with the guys at Gamebreaker, i don't think Heroes is just going to be a LoL clone they are going to try and bring something different to the genre. It wouldn't surprise me if there was a Alpha somewhere if you were going to make a New Dota style game it would make sense to invite some of the best players in the world to test it privately before you announce it to the world. As they can provide the best feedback. So maybe news of a Beta here possibly June/July after RoS has possibly released.

One quick note i do not really know what to expect from Hearthstone at Conn, a release date is probably very likely. But after that i dont know what they can offer other than the live tournament, which will be awesome. I Wonder if they may delve into future development options for the game. I can think of several new game modes that i would love to see in Hearthstone,  a speed game with really quick turn timers would be cool. Also i would love to see a LoL style vote option about people conduct after you have played someone, something simple just thumbs up and thumbs down. With people getting increased matchmaking times if they amass massive amount's thumbs down. At the moment i feel its a little to easy to troll people and waste there time. Also it would be nice to be able to reward a player for being a good opponents.Finally a angry emote would be handy because sometimes you just want to vent in a match, normally at myself because i have done something silly.

Here's Murky!!!!

So there we go, a few things i want/hope to see this weekend. Obviously i will no very soon if i am right or wrong and i am sure there will be a lot of things that take me by complete surprise. But i will do a follow post on Monday maybe, that will attempt to dissect what we learnt. Though to be honest this may take more than one post.