Good morning! This weekend was BlizzCon, which had several big announcements regarding loot boxes. Given that Blizzard has been at the forefront of the loot box trend for quite some time, it's interesting to see where they want it to go next.

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Blizzard teases major update to Overwatch loot boxes later this year

Nathan Grayson, writing for Kotaku:

Today during the Overwatch “What’s Next” panel at BlizzCon, Blizzard announced that from now on, it’ll add more event-style skins to regular, non-event loot boxes. For the past year, the majority of new skins have only been available during timed events, after which they went back into a vault inside Jeff Kaplan’s terror palace. During the panel, Blizzard said that won’t always be the case anymore and revealed an upcoming set of Blizzard-themed skins that’ll enter the regular loot box pool. [...] “Those skins are just a small preview of a big update [to regular loot boxes] that’s coming next year,” Jeff Kaplan later said while being interviewed for BlizzCon’s online show.

Interesting move. By virtue of its endearing cast and high quality, Overwatch has avoided most of the ire aimed at loot boxes. It also helps that Blizzard wisely chose to keep the microtransactions cosmetic, something EA could have learned from.

My guess is Blizzard would like Overwatch to stay beloved by fans, and this is the first step in a process of making the loot box system more player-friendly. Cosmetic or not, the limited-time availability of seasonal skins feels like a hard arm twist to players drooling over a specific costume.

"Overwatch making loot box rewards time sensitive prays on obsessive tendancies, like those I have from autism," Kotaku UK writer Laura Kate Dale tweeted. "Undeniably predatory."

Overwatch is large and successful enough that Activision has made a killing several times over. At this point it's less important to milk players for 10% more loot box money and more important to keep the billion-dollar goose alive.

StarCraft II goes free-to-play, minus two campaigns and loot boxes

Rishi Alwani, writing for Gadgets 360:

One of the biggest announcements of BlizzCon 2017 was that StarCraft 2 is going free-to-play. [...] At BlizzCon 2017, Blizzard said that the first campaign, Wings of Liberty, would be free but users will have to pay for the next two campaigns - Heart of the Swarm, and Legacy of the Void - or just the last one if players already own the first two.

Makes sense - Blizzard's steady stream of updates shows it's interested in keeping this game alive and even expanding the playerbase.

“We have no intention of doing loot crates any time soon," says [lead user interface designer Christopher] Reed. "War Chests will stay the way they are."

For those unaware, War Chests are preset packs of skins, emotes, decals and portraits - no random rewards. Players pay $10 per race or $25 for the whole collection. Rewards are received by playing the multiplayer or co-op to level up the chest, according to the StarCraft wiki.

This is ostensibly better than loot crates in that it removes the randomness, but, as TotalBiscuit pointed out on Twitter, missing the end of a War Chest season means players have to buy, again, what they missed. At least it's for a reduced price.

If War Chests gave you everything you didn't get at the end of the season, they might not be "predatory." Punishing players for not playing the game enough is the kind of manipulative tactic free-to-play mobile games use, regardless of whether you know what rewards are in your War Chest.

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