Well that's the thing. I could understand a WOWcon if it was like that. But creating a convention to showcase new stuff when your output usually is best described as 'probably a couple of games this decade' then it's no wonder it's a loss-making venture.

More or less, the games they've been releasing lately might have been good a decade ago, but these days they mostly feel like games that were released way too late. It's almost as if nobody at Blizzard even plays other games in the genres they're working in.

From what I remember: Blizzard never really did innovate anything

The reason why their games were so good is simply because they took existing ideas and polished the everliving hell out of them, hence the long development cycle

However...I think that at this stage...even the "Polish x1000" is starting to fade away from their games

It'll be interesting to see how Diablo 3 and the new WOW expansion turn out...

Apart from Warcraft 1, Diablo, Starcraft (I consider the three totally unique races innovative) and the Three Vikings ...

That sounds about right. I think at this point the polish isn't just wearing off it's actively hurting the games. SC2 feels like a game that should be a decade or so old, as it seems to completely ignore all the subsequent innovations and doesn't even manage to captured the spirit of the original.

Diablo 3 looks like the only thing keeping Torchlight 2 from kicking its teeth in is the legion of fanbois. We'll see how bad it is, but Blizzard has pretty much vowed to remove just about everything vaguely Diabloish from it.

my money for "why Blizcon 2015 was cancled" is on:

"it would have been too embarrassing, sine half the people there would have shown up dressed as Jedi."
you've never heard of Dune, Rouge, or Command and Conquer?

I stand corrected on the Lost Vikings, I thought they were the first on that concept. But I still think that Diablo was pretty damn innovative. There is a reason that many games of the late 90s were called "Diablo clones".

And I also thought that Warcraft was older, I knew it was older than C&C. Still, especially with the Warcraft and Starcraft series Blizzard has made a very strong mark on the RTS genre.

You could always e.g say that Wolfenstein predated Splinter Cell, as many core elements are seen in both, yet I still wouldn't call Splinter Cell a polished version of Wolfenstein.

And, in general Blizzard was on the forefront of multiplayer for "casual gamers". Diablo and Starcraft were among the first truly massivley multiplayer games.

In recent year (well, since WoW) nothing really breathtaking was done by them, but that shouldn't throw a negative light on their earlier accomplishments.

And they made the first game were I could shoot orcs with a shotgun!

Warcraft 1 was a carbon copy of the Dune RTS by west wood (technically we are talking about "Dune II" by name, but Dune 1 was totally different so most just refer to this game as "Dune"), it innovated everything that Blizzard is credited with in regards to Warcraft and RTS titles.

Rouge was a procedurally created dungeon crawler, it probably would have been a point and click game similar to what Diablo popularized ... except it was released in 1980 and used ASCII graphics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike

Command & Conquer is another Westwood title that expanded on the formula developed in Dune and laid the ground work for the multiple factions / multiple forces / multiple players style of online RTS multiplayer featuring more than one two players on the field and each controlling their own force .... which Blizzard then mooched up for Warcraft 2.

also: Dune was the first RTS to "innovate" the three distinct factions with unique characteristics for each factions units, not starcraft. Blizzard dropped that element when cloning Dune because it was simpler to develop two sides instead of three.

not saying that Blizzard doesn't do what it does very well, Blizzard's still kicking while Westwood is quite dead ... that says something.

Innovate however is not something Blizzard does.

Don't forget that Warcraft essentially created the "tower defense" genre as we know it. I'm not sure how much that really counts for, though, honestly. After SC2 and the changes towards the end of WLK+Cataclysm, I've pretty much lost faith in them as a company. The D3 rumors aren't helping matters either.

They have no new info to show to the public, so there's really no need for another BlizzCon. They have three games which are under heavy development, and everything that could have been presented about them, already has. Besides, it was never a yearly event. When they had to announce something new, they even set up another event, called Worldwide Invitational.

Titan is still in development, but not much is known about it, other than the fact that it is supposed to be a MMO game.

Diablo 3's expansion's story is currently being sorted out, and they're still working on completing D3's features and game mechanics.

Legacy of the Void's story is currently also under development, but they still haven't released Heart of the Swarm.

I don't see them making another conference unless they have a new game to reveal (besides, they did create an extra conference to reveal Diablo 3).

its all about this retarded dance competition man, its all about imitating a 3 step dance rip off a game that ripped it off pop culture.

The chance to play against WoW / SC2's best players, the chance to meet and talk to people working in Blizzard, the chance to form relationships and connections that could help you in your future job searching, the chance to have fun with fellow WoW / Diablo / SC players, and so on...

Instead of BlizzCon this year, they're starting their first ever Battle.net World Championship.

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=306396

Actually, it boils down to one thing: $$$$$$ Blizzcon is about making money whether that be directly or indirectly through customer relations.