Blizzard has recently announced on its forums that it will be ending its support for both Windows XP and Vista in "World of Warcraft," "StarCraft 2," "Diablo 3," "Hearthstone," and "Heroes of the Storm." With this, those who are still using Windows XP and Vista to play Blizzard's games are encouraged to upgrade their OS to at least Windows 7, if they wish to continue doing so after this year.

As per the community manager Ornyx's writing on the company's forum, they will begin the process of discontinuing support for Windows XP and Windows Vista in the said games starting later this year. Microsoft dropped support for Windows XP and Vista in 2009 and 2012 respectively.

Ornyx said that Blizzard continued to support the old operating systems due to a decent portion of its player base was still playing games on them. However, Ornyx pointed that as a vast majority of Blizzard's audience has now upgraded to either one of the newer versions (Windows 7, 8 or 10), the support will now conclude.

This gives a simple implication. Windows XP and Vista users need to upgrade their OS or just simply stop playing Blizzard's widely popular games.

Ornyx further added that as the older operating systems will no longer be supported, obviously the games will not run on them. The discontinued support will happen on a "staggered schedule." It means that not all games will be affected simultaneously and that Blizzard will post further notices as it gets closer to ending the support for each game.

Blizzard gets the credit for having supported these operating systems for this long. There aren't many people still using Windows XP and Vista, so it is hard to imagine that many users are upset by this announcement. But for those who are still using the older OS, hopefully it will be easy for them to make the necessary upgrade and continue enjoying Blizzard's games, PCGamer writes. The video below serves as a guide on how to install and upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7.