"These aren't final--they may not even make it to the game," says prudent Blizzard rep Bob Colayco, as Protoss units crawl over a rocky landscape on screen. "We're in a really experimental phase right now."

Colayco is narrating a short video of StarCraft II, which, of course, most of the internet has seen already. "Come to BlizzCon," he tells us over and over, but right now it's E3, and we're all starved for StarCraft to the point of redundancy. Behind closed doors, with giant Blizzard logos covering the walls, the excitement of the game's first announcement returns. Finally--StarCraft II.

"What's interesting is that every time he scores a killing blow, his weapon gets more powerful," Colayco says to the sounds Protoss Soul Hunters beating up on a Terran base. As the hovering hunters fire away at a barracks, their yellow-green beams begin to thicken noticably, until the building explodes with a shower of particles. "There's not going to be an infinite progression of power; there will be a cap to it."

An early worry brought on by early videos was that gameplay seemed to have slowed in comparison to StarCraft, but Colayco assures us this is not the case. "This is running at normal speed. When you're actually playing, most games are going to be on fastest, so things are going to be more bang-bang than what you're seeing right here."

The new Photon Cannons, named Phase Cannons, can warp from place to place, entirely mobile within power range of their Pylons. Many units have seen upgrades or changes in this way, such as the Archons changing into Twilight Archons, which can be made from any combination of either Dark or Light Templars. The interceptor-swarming Carrier, now renamed the Tempest, is functionally similar to its forebear, but features some slight variations to its strategic value.

"What's different about the Tempest is that as of now, it's a little bit cheaper to build [than the Carrier], less minerals and gas," Colayco notes. "And also, the undercarriage shield is very thick against ground attacks, so you can see it can absorb quite a few missiles before it gets through the shield. This makes it good for assaulting bases, but more vulnerable against aircraft."

As the presentation comes to a close, we have the opportunity to pose some questions to Colayco regarding the past, present, and future of StarCraft II. We spend a dense half-hour going over single player concerns, multiplayer plans, early decisions by the team, and everything from grouping selection caps to oft-dreaded hero units.

On the official start of development:

"Since the Frozen Throne shipped, so that would be 2003. Pre-production started then. When we were getting down to the end of development World of Warcraft, some of those resources were shifted to help make that happen, and then shifted back. There are a lot of members on the team, many of which worked on the original StarCraft and on WarCraft 3."

On early discussion of adding a fourth playable race:

"There was a lot of discussion, and certainly, we did think about it. If you introduce a fourth race, and you've got all these cool ideas for new units and stuff like that, do you put those all in this fourth race that's going to be uber cool and new, and maybe sprinkle a couple things on the other three? Or do you just totally blow up the existing three?

"They just decided they wanted to go back to the original three races and put in all these crazy new ideas, and make them even more different than they were before."

On the Protoss-Zerg hybrid race seen in Brood War:

"We haven't talked about anything like that yet. As far as multiplayer, there are three races. But that was talked about in the story, and definitely the story will pick up where Brood War left off."

On improving single player:

"There are definitely some ambitious plans in place to do something different with the story mode campaign. Add some elements of replayability to it and give you a chance to really do something different. We'll probably have more to say about that later, but right now, it's not going to be--I'll just say, it's not going to be one mission at a time. There'll be some new stuff in there."

On catering StarCraft to E-Sports:

"I would say that's a very big concern. We tend for this game to be very competitive and very popular within the competitive RTS realm, and so we want to make the game very fast-paced and very responsive, and also just give a lot of opportunities for players to show off their skill level. For example, you've got the Stalker, let's say you're up on a cliff against Zealots--you can shoot the Zealots as they come up around, and then as soon as the Zealots come up to the top, you can just blink down to the bottom and then keep shooting as they come back around, so you can keep kiting them back and forth that way."

On Battle.net upgrades:

"There will definitely be big upgrades to Battle.net. We haven't talked about what those features might be, but definitely that will be a concern. To make sure that the game stays popular, we want to make it easy to record playback demos, and easy to distribute those things, because that's a big part of the community--not only for a professional match, but for your own enjoyment. You record a game that you play on Battle.net when get your butt kicked, and it's like, 'Why did that happen?' You can go back to the tape and try to evaluate what did happen.

"I'm not sure if the legacy games (StarCraft, WarCraft III, and Diablo II, etc) are going to be on the revamped version of Battle.net--if those are going to be all put together, or how that's going to work. Those types of things we'll be able to figure out once it's all built."

On multiplayer matchmaking:

"First of all, there are a lot of things--with Warcraft 3, they did the skill-rating matching, so that's been refined--and something that they're even doing with World of Warcraft when you get into battlegrounds, so you don't have all these pre-made teams with epics. In StarCraft II we're definitely going to take that into account, matching you with people who appear to be at your skill level. But again, there will be tools that allow you to watch replays and examine what you were doing. 'How did he get a Colossus so quickly?' And you go back and look and see that he built a forge before you did, and so you can start examining these replays, and that will help people a lot."

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