After cancelling this year’s BlizzCon convention due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Blizzard has announced that it will hold a replacement show online. BlizzConline (yep) will be held on February 19th-20th, 2021 with all the latest news around its popular franchises including World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Diablo, Hearthstone and Starcraft.

BlizzConline is set to take place February 19-20, 2021!

There’s lots of planning left to do, but we wanted to provide an early heads-up on how you can take part in the online festivities!

Check out the blog for more details on the fun!

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— Blizzard Entertainment (@Blizzard_Ent) September 21, 2020

Blizzard announced major new titles at BlizzCon 2019, including Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2, so we’ll likely get some updates about those. It will also hold a “Community Showcase” that will allow “cosplay crafters, artists, and other community creators to participate in the show and put their talent on display through a mix of world-class competition and exciting exhibitions,” Blizzard wrote.

You can add BlizzCon to the list of major events that won’t be happening this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although BlizzCon typically happens in November, Blizzard has already made the call to cancel this year’s edition.

The publisher said in early April that it was exploring its options and trying to determine whether BlizzCon would be feasible. “Ultimately, after considering our options, we’ve come to the very difficult decision to not have BlizzCon this year,” the event’s executive producer Saralyn Smith wrote in a blog post. Blizzard is looking into holding an online replacement of some kind, but that likely won’t happen until early 2021.

The Overwatch team is introducing character leveling this time around. There’ll be unlockable abilities (or “talents”) for the hero missions and possibly story missions, but you won’t be able to customize hero abilities in player-vs.-player modes. You can expect to see several heroes join the ranks, including the long-rumored Sojourn. The current heroes will have new character models, and Blizzard is refreshing the user interface too.

Overwatch 2 will have an additional core mode called Push, which debuts on a map set in Toronto. It sees teams battling for control of a robot that pushes an objective to their opponents’ side of a symmetrical map. You can expect more maps, including ones set in Rio de Janeiro, Gothenburg and Monte Carlo.

Overwatch now has more than 50 million players and Blizzard doesn’t plan to leave fans of the original game in the lurch. All your progression (including achievements and unlocked cosmetics and emotes) will carry over into Overwatch 2 and you’ll get access to maps and heroes from the sequel. What’s more, players across both Overwatch and Overwatch 2 can team up with each other or duke it out in the series’ core 6 vs. 6 competitive mode.

Overwatch 2 doesn’t have a release date as yet, but Blizzard confirmed it’s coming to PC, PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. It’s still planning to release updates for Overwatch in the meantime, but because its bigger focus is on Overwatch 2, there won’t be a new Archives mission during the anniversary event in May.

The publisher confirmed Diablo IV will mark a return to the series’ dark, gothic, medieval version of Hell. You can expect the brutal combat the franchise is known for, along with a variety of monsters and plenty of loot to seek out.

Diablo IV will support solo and co-op play and you might even encounter other players you can take on in PVP combat. Blizzard promised that, for the first time, “Sanctuary will be a contiguous, seamless landmass” which connects five regions.

Three classes have been confirmed so far: Barbarian, Sorceress and Druid. You’ll be able to customize your character via gear, talent trees, skills, runes and mounts. Blizard also said the game will offer “endless playability and progression.”

Diablo IV takes place “many years” after Diablo III. It doesn’t have a release date as yet, but it’s coming to PC, Xbox One and PS4.

Not that Blizzard will leave its competitive gameplay untouched. O2 will supposedly include a major new mode, Push, introduced to sit alongside the existing Assault, Control, Escort and Hybrid options. You could expect a new map to match (Toronto) and “at least” one new hero.

There’s no mention of when the new title would arrive, although development is said to be far enough along that BlizzCon attendees will get a chance to play. At this point, though, O2‘s biggest challenge may be its creator’s reputation. Blizzard is still dealing with the uproar over its less-than-kind response to Hong Kong protest supporters, and the fallout from that may overshadow even major announcements like an Overwatch sequel.