With UK World of Warcraft/MMO/gaming community events Preachcon 2024, Plebcon 2024 and LFG London on the horizon, who needs Blizzcon?
Preachcon 2024 dates, location and ticket info
First up, Preachcon, the community gathering organised by British streamer Preach, is coming back for 2024.
It will take place on Wednesday August 14th and Thursday August 15th 2024 in Ashton-Under-Lyne in Manchester.
Tickets will go on sale on Saturday May 4th from 8pm BST, with the Preach Gaming Twitch channel going live at that time.
The event features content creators, entertainment, a chance to play games and socialise with friends in person – and of course the chance to catch up with Preach himself, a creator with half a million subscribers on YouTube and 300,000+ followers on Twitch. It’s usually not streamed, giving attendees something IRL-only.
It returns after a couple of years, after a sold-out Preachcon took place in 2022, and the usual show version of the event didn’t happen in 2023. This was due to a mix of reasons, including the community already travelling to the UK in October for the separate Final Fantasy FanFest in December, so Preach booked a party the day before FanFest instead.
For 2024 though, the main show-style event is back.
Plebcon 2024 dates, location and ticket info
Plebcon, the series of UK World of Warcraft meet-up events, will be returning on August 1st to 3rd 2024, also in Manchester.
The latest Plebcon will take place at Pixel Bar Manchester, and once again feature games and drinks.
It comes after the first event of the year took place back in January, also at the Pixel Bar in Manchester.
Organiser and UK MMORPG content creator RageDarling shared a tweet recently about the latest event, and added that tickets info will be coming soon.
RageDarling previously told Esports News UK about her events: “Everybody in my community is welcome with open arms to come along, but I also want to open the doors to the WoW community in general.
“The game can be super isolating sometimes and I just want to encourage people to step out of their comfort zone and make some IRL friends. Creating an environment that encompasses what guilds used to feel like is exactly what I’m trying to achieve.”
LFG London 2024 host announcement and other key info from MrGM
LFG London is another UK WoW community meetup event, organised by British content creator MrGM.
It will take place at the Red Bull Gaming Sphere in London on Saturday May 18th 2024 – and will be streamed.
The event sold out in just over an hour when tickets went on sale earlier this year.
MrGM said: “I don’t know what to say. Thank you for believing in me and let’s make this something special.
“Unfortunately due to capacity limits on the venue, we will not be able to do a full second run of tickets for our WoW Community Event. We will continue to have the waitlist open and if you already “purchased” a ticket and are unable to attend, please cancel your order so it can open a ticket up for someone on the waitlist.”
You can join the waitlist on the LFG London Eventbrite page, where there’s more info on the event.
LFG London’s host was also recently announced, with Kexman on board as the master of ceremonies.
All in all, with Preachcon, Plebcon and LFG London, there are plenty of IRL events for WoW/MMO fans in the UK to sink their teeth into.
The news also comes as UK games industry trade body Ukie reported that revenues from UK games events jumped 140% year-on-year thanks to esports and festivals.
UK MMO events info follow Blizzcon 2024 cancellation
The news comes after Blizzard Entertainment announced its annual US-based games celebration event, Blizzcon, would not be taking place in 2024.
Instead, it will run activities at trade shows and conventions like Gamescom to celebrate its upcoming releases, like World of Warcraft: The War Within and Diablo IV’s first expansion, Vessel of Hatred.
There will also be the Overwatch Champions Series’ stops at Dreamhack Dallas and Dreamhack Stockholm, as well as ‘multiple, global, in-person events to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Warcraft’.
Blizzard said in a statement: “After careful consideration over the last year, we at Blizzard have made the decision not to hold Blizzcon in 2024. This decision was not made lightly as Blizzcon remains a very special event for all of us, and we know many of you look forward to it.
“While we’re approaching this year differently and as we have explored different event formats in the past, rest assured that we are just as excited as ever to bring BlizzCon back in future years.”
Microsoft got the go-ahead to acquire Activision Blizzard last year.
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Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
