BlizzCon 2023: All the news from Blizzard’s opening ceremony

polygon.com:

Blizzard Entertainment’s BlizzCon is back and in-person for the first time in four years. BlizzCon 2023 runs Nov. 3-4 in Anaheim, but Blizzard fans can watch the show from anywhere, with two days of live broadcasts.

The biggest newsmaking event took place Friday, when Blizzard held BlizzCon’s opening ceremony, a nearly two-hour event that promised “exciting announcements” for World of Warcraft, Diablo 4, Hearthstone, Warcraft Rumble, and Overwatch 2. Blizzard delivered, revealing multiple new heroes for Overwatch 2, Diablo 4’s first expansion, a staggering three expansions for World of Warcraft, and Cataclysm for World of Warcraft Classic.

Here’s everything Blizzard has announced at BlizzCon 2023, so far.

Blizzard revealed the next hero coming to Overwatch 2, the Samoan tank Mauga, on Friday. The dual-chaingun-wielding Mauga is coming to Overwatch 2 in season 8 of the free-to-play hero shooter, but fans of the franchise can try him out early this weekend.

Overwatch game director Aaron Keller also offered a sneak peek at the next year of Overwatch 2, including a new PvP game mode called Clash, which he described as a five-point capture gameplay mode. Clash will feature the return of a reworked location from the original Overwatch: Deprecated map Hanamura is coming back, re-imagined as a Clash map called Hanaoka.

Keller also promised overhauls to Overwatch 2’s most important in-game systems, including a reworked version of Competitive play and all-new Competitive rewards. He teased themes for upcoming seasons, which will focus on Eldritch horror, Egyptian mythology, witches, and a mirror universe “where heroes become villains and villains become heroes.”

Finally, Keller teased two more heroes coming to Overwatch 2 in