BlizzCon 2011: What Blizzard Did And Didn't Announce

At Blizzard’s annual conference this weekend, the game developer of popular franchises like World of Warcraft and Starcraft made some big announcements, but also held some cards close to its chest. Among the biggest of noteworthy announcements was the release of a new World of Warcraft expansion called Mists of Pandaria, which has thankfully has nothing to do with either Jack Black voice-acting or James Cameron. However, the expansion pack will feature a playable race who are essentially pandas and a new playable class that is essentially a kung-fu Monk.

Blizzard also released some info on the new StarCraft II expansion, Heart of the Swarm. As both professionals who were invited to the tournament and dedicated fans listened in, the developers introduced a host of new units and abilities that would be playable in multiplayer in the upcoming expansion for the highly competitive e-Sports game. Meanwhile, Diablo III, which was originally set to be released toward the end of the year but was recently pushed back to 2012, was playable but no additional information was announced.

As is norm with all things Blizzard, release dates for any of the three games featured were not mentioned. As is also the norm with Blizzard, information on mystery game projects like their “casual MMO” Titan, were unsurprisingly absent. But don’t be sad, check out the new BlizzCon-released trailer for Heart of the Swarm below: