Blizzard is gearing up for a series of new Warcraft reveals in the coming months, including a new expansion for World of Warcraft and a Warcraft mobile game announcement.
On March 15, details for the new Hearthstone expansion will be revealed. About a month later on April 19, details for the new WoW expansion will be revealed. The last World of Warcraft expansion, Shadowlands, was released in 2020, meaning it’s about time for a new adventure in WoW.
The potentially biggest surprise comes in May when the long-rumored Warcraft mobile game is set to be revealed.
The next expansion is on the horizon.
Join us. April 19.
✨ https://t.co/u5mEMf2WYj pic.twitter.com/dOIyAFBjcM
— World of Warcraft (@Warcraft) March 7, 2022
Blizzard has long been rumored to be working on a mobile game related to Warcraft. Blizzard confirmed that the mobile game would be released in 2022 back in February after finally confirming it was in “advanced development” on a Warcraft mobile experience in 2021.
Previous rumors stated Blizzard was developing a Pokemon Go-style AR game set in the Warcraft universe. But since the release of Pokemon Go in 2016, there have been many new genres that have become popular in the mobile space including battle royales, auto-battlers, and even open-world games like Genshin Impact.
Warcraft as a series has been impacted by several outside factors since the launch of Shadowlands in 2020. Reception to the latest expansion wasn’t as positive as it could have been and developers have been working to clean up World of Warcraft of old references following the lawsuit by the State of California over Blizzard’s workplace gender discrimination.
Blizzard will also be absorbed into Xbox as part of the Activision Blizzard acquisition, which will no doubt have some impact on the biggest MMORPG in the world.
Matt T.M. Kim is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.