The Blizzard Catastrophe: Blizzard Cancels World of Warcraft Event in Taiwan

The end just straight-up isn’t in sight for Blizzard, who continues to face (well-earned and extremely heartening) backlash for their crappy decision regarding former Hearthstone Grandmaster “Blitzchung”, who was punished for daring to support a free and independent Hong Kong during one of their streams.

Lately, it seems Blizzard has taken to canceling any planned gatherings of fans, fearful that they would use the opportunity to (gasp) express themselves. The latest such canceled event was the 15th-anniversary party for World of Warcraft in… Taiwan. Which was canceled for reasons I don’t really think to need elaborating. Those people’s relationship with China is pretty… rocky. To say the least.

Anyway, Blizzard themselves refused to elaborate on why it postponed the event, not even going as far as explaining when it’s been postponed to. But one look at the Taiwanese World of Warcraft Facebook page, which is absolutely swamped with memes and comments supporting the protests in Hong Kong, and it’s not hard to guess what the reasoning might be.

This follows after Blizzard canceled an Overwatch launch party at Nintendo’s New York City store.

However, all of this is just a preamble to the big event: Blizzcon, which is set to start early next month. Already people have made no secret of their plans to protest outside the event, and there’s little question that people who already have tickets are planning to stage their own little protests. Blizzard must be acutely aware of this at this stage, and I think with the momentum these protests carry, it would be unrealistic to hope they would peter out before the show.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s realistic for Blizzard to cancel Blizzcon in anticipation of this protest. However, I could easily imagine a situation where they refund ticket-holders and hold the whole thing digitally, like a Nintendo Direct.

Which would be a weird kind of victory, I guess.