I don't want to get anybody's hopes up, but with BlizzCon 2026 now just over a week away, it really is starting to look like something—possibly something big—is happening in the world of StarCraft.

The excitement began earlier this week when Korea's Chosun (Google translated, via WCCFTech) ran a story saying Nexon is close to finalizing a deal to develop a new game based on the StarCraft series. As Chosun noted, the series has been dormant since StarCraft Remastered in 2017; the last original StarCraft game, StarCraft 2, arrived all the way back in 2010. Despite that, the series remains hugely popular in Korea.

The StarCraft subreddit took some issues with the report: For one thing, Chosun suggested the new game would be StarCraft 3, rather than the StarCraft shooter Nexon is reportedly working on. There are also concerns that the report might be accurate, given CEO Junghun Lee's enthusiasm for generative AI and microtransactions. Still, the timing seemed right: BlizzCon 2026 runs September 12-13, which is now less than two weeks away.

That's how things remained until earlier today, when the StarCraft website started glitching, in the way that doesn't happen unless it's intentional: Images twitching, text flashing, all that sort of thing. The classic loss of signal right before something happens—that's probably not a coincidence, right?

It's a bit more conspiracy-coded, but the WoW subreddit has also noticed a rather peculiar gap in the BlizzCon main stage schedule—about an hour, early on the first day, that's unaccounted for. What might fit into that hour? Well, anything that takes 60 minutes or less, really, but the prevailing opinion seems to be StarCraft.

Whatever the situation, that gap is definitely there:

Our resident Blizzard pro Tyler Colp cast his wizened eye upon the BlizzCon floor map and saw nothing carved out for StarCraft, so even if a new game is announced, it likely won't be playable—although it's possible Blizzard is camouflaging a demo area in the Well of Eternity or whatever.

The rumored Nexon shooter isn't the only StarCraft spinoff game that may be in the works: Blizzard was reportedly "incubating" a StarCraft shooter of its own in 2024, under the guidance of former Far Cry director Dan Hay. It doesn't strike me as especially likely that two StarCraft shooters are in development simultaneously, but Hay's LinkedIn indicates that he's still a Blizzard, so at the very least it doesn't appear that he's found a new home for himself and his project at Nexon.

Adding to that, earlier this year Blizzard was looking to hire a "lead designer of innovation" for an open world shooter using Unreal Engine, the studio recently dropped a major patch for StarCraft 2, and most recently, it revealed that this year's BlizzCon rewards will include a 15-day co-op XP boost for Commander progression in StarCraft 2. That's pretty small, sure, but as Tyler said, this is the kind of stuff that gets fans wound up real good.

Given all the shooter hints, it doesn't seem very likely to me that a StarCraft 3 RTS will be the big announcement—if there is in fact a big announcement at all. A shooter would also seem to comport with Microsoft's post-Phil Spencer strategy of focusing on games with the potential to go over big with mass audiences. Anything's possible, and frankly I think actual StarCraft 3 would provide a much more immediate boost to Microsoft's gamer cred than an all-new shooter. But is Microsoft really going to take a risk on a niche genre when it's cancelling big survival games and MMOs? I suspect not.

One way or another, we'll find out soon enough—BlizzCon opening ceremonies kick off at 10:30 am PT/1:30 pm ET on September 12. I've reached out to Blizzard and Nexon for comment and if anyone spills the beans, I'll let you know.

With Guild Wars 3, developer ArenaNet is looking to directly tackle probably the biggest challenge in the entire MMO space: these things are hard to get into, and even harder to get your friends into.

As part of our big Guild Wars 3 preview, we spoke to studio head Colin Johanson about ArenaNet's next big adventure. He examines the onboarding and accessibility hurdles endemic to MMOs, or in short, the second job problem.

"We want to have that next generation come play MMOs," he begins, "and I think that, honestly, one of the biggest challenges the MMO industry faces right now as a whole is when we tell people to come play our game, the first thing they say is, 'I don't have time for that. It's like a second job. I can't engage with it.' And I think that makes it hard for anyone, folks with families, to engage and bring their family in. Folks who are younger who have 50 games that they're trying to play that compete for their time, they don't want to have that experience that's like a second job."

Many recent MMOs have talked about getting to the good stuff faster. Johanson suggests this is part of the solution, but only part of it. The key, he reasons, will be getting Guild Wars 3 "approachable to the point that you can very easily play and progress and complete things, while also having the depth that MMO players are looking for, so that if I want to play for that long, I can meaningfully engage."

Here, he looks at play patterns. "I think a huge part of the problem for MMOs is there's this ingrained 'preparing to have fun' window where you load into the game, you figure out your inventory, organize your inventory, go through your quest log, set up your build, get your gear figured out, get your friends' gear figured out, your build's ready to go, and you're ready to play the content. And you look at the clock, you've been online for an hour, and you haven't started playing yet.

"So many other genres have modernized to the point now where they're accessible and you're able to very quickly get in and start playing the game, and immediately be able to get a return on your time investment. And you need to be able to jump into an MMO and have 20 minutes, 30 minutes, and be able to do something."

Momentum is directly reflected in Guild Wars 3's combat and movement, which veer closer to a traditional single-player action game – even spectacle fighters or character action games – than you'd expect from an MMO. A sense of weight turns actual momentum into a vector of power and strategy, sending you diving and soaring with rare physicality.

Additionally, Johanson echoes a point that the Final Fantasy 14 team brings up a lot: "You also need to be able to set this game down and say, 'I'm going to take a break for four months, and I'll come back when the next expansion comes out, and I'm not going to be left behind and not be able to keep up with everybody. I can just jump back in and play when I want to play.'"

Here, ArenaNet has one big advantage. "I think our no subscription fee helps there too," Johanson says. "There's nothing holding you hostage, [like] you have to keep playing the game. You just set it down for a while and that's a totally healthy, normal relationship with a video game, and it should be, and our system should respect that."

He and ArenaNet are still keeping the details of their solution close, but Johanson says this is collectively "one of the most important things we're trying to tackle with Guild Wars 3 so that it can speak to a broader audience. so that it can speak to a broader audience. So it can be both what brings a lot of older MMO fans back, and the 29 million Guild Wars fans who played over time, bringing all of them back to be able to engage with this game.

"But also to bring a new generation into MMOs, who I really don't think have had an MMO in their life for the last 10 years. [Something] that they all jump into, and we would love to be like that."

Guild Wars 3 may have cracked the MMO code for tired millennials.