Will Blizzard Finally Show Us All-Stars at Blizzcon 2013?

I was looking at the rewards for purchasing a Blizzcon ticket and they all reminded me of something I had nearly forgotten. 

The year was 2010 and Blizzcon was in full swing. League of Legends was still in Beta and DotA 2 was still a year away from its own Beta. During the announcements, a new game was teased: “Blizzard All-Stars” (at the time it was still Blizzard DotA). Several videos were shown of the game’s early development, and a basic story was introduced; two gods are fighting and want the best champions, so they pull them all from Blizzard universes. Since the announcement, not much has happened on the All-Stars homepage and nearly nothing has been said about it.

Clues

But when I was looking at the rewards for this year’s Blizzcon ticket purchasers something struck me. The picture being used in the Starcraft reward was something I had seen before. Back during Blizzcon 2010, there were some videos that emerged of the actual game and its design process. One of the splash images shows “Stitches” wearing the same Terran helmet!

Obviously this is just a single instance of similarity, but the Murlock pet also reminds me of All-Stars. It’s not a perfect match like with Stitches, but it does have some similarities.

The glowing eyes, medieval features and castle looking helmet are all similar. The designs on the right are obviously early in development, but there are clear themes.

The other two rewards don’t leave any clues, but I imagine that this year will have a heavy focus on All-Stars. 

But is it too late?

This year has seen some amazing growth from the MOBA world. League of Legends proved to the US government that it is a real sport and its players can be treated just like other athletes, and DotA 2 pulled a multimillion dollar prize pool for its international championship.

Announcing another MOBA seems like announcing another first person shooter at this point. What will bring players to All-Stars over any of the other games that are out already? I think with the massive amount of players that already know the characters in the Blizzard universe they will have a base of players who might be interested by MOBAs, but were apprehensive about learning all about a new game. Considering both League of Legends, and DotA 2 have upwards of sixty characters each, this is a massive advantage.

What do you think?

Leave a comment below and tell me what you think!