Displaying stories with the tag "StarCraft 2". Subscribe to this URL for an RSS feed of this tag. Want more news? Click here for the Shacknews frontpage.The shots show off the various environmental effects featured in the upcoming RTS sequel. Yes, it still looks great. No, we still don't have a release date.
May I kindly direct you to the new StarCraft II Battle Report.
It's not quite as exciting as a live Korean match, but if you close your eyes during the initial probe keep-away, you can almost hear the cheer squads and excited, incomprehensible yelling.
Blizzard has yet to state when the StarCraft 2 trilogy will begin making its way to stores, though each release may be years apart. The first of the three releases, Terrans: Wings of Liberty, will feature the main Terran campaign and a Protoss mini-campaign.
The second release, Zerg: Heart of the Swarm will pack some RPG elements, with the third entry, Protoss: Legacy of the Void, including a bit of diplomatic gameplay.
"It's not going to be this year," lead producer Chris Sigaty told OMG StarCraft, as found by StarCraftWire. "We're working really hard on Battle.net itself, of course it's a Battle.net beta. As we get through that, hopefully as soon as possible after the new year,but there's no specific date at this point."
It is unclear if Sigaty's claim of "as soon as possible after the new year" relates to the completion of Battle.net work, the launch of the StarCraft 2 beta, or both.
"There's still things we look at and go, oh, we gotta fix that," added senior art director Samwise Didier. "We try to get as much of those out of the way."
"If we're gonna hear everybody reporting that same thing...we don't want that," Sigaty nodded, stressing the importance of balance and receiving meaningful feedback.
Pardo, in an extensive interview with Wired, also shed light on the company's plans for DRM and digital distribution. "Battle.net really is our most effective DRM," he said, adding, "That's really kinda been the thing that's always saved us from a lot of the PC piracy that I think hurts a lot of other single-player-only games."
Blizzard plans to similarly rely on its multiplayer match-making service to protect its interests with StarCraft II and Diablo III after their release. "No, there's no particular plans for that," said Pardo in response to a question about the games "phoning home" to check their authenticity with Blizzard servers each time before launching. "If you want to use an analogy--we take an approach that's more similar to Steam than EA, let's say," he explained.
As for Steam itself, Pardo stopped short of shooting down the idea of launching Blizzard products on the service, stating that Blizzard for now plans to stick with its own digital distribution service. "I think we're probably currently in the mindset that we're going to digitally distribute just on Battle.net. I don't know if our strategy will change in the future. I think it's something that we're just trying to get really good at doing ourselves for now," he said.
"It became clear that the right thing to do from a gameplay, story, and design perspective was to go big on all three races," said Blizzard PR rep Bob Colayco to VE3D. "We're talking about 26-30 missions for each chapter of the trilogy, more cutscenes, more interactive elements, and campaign choices that become more meaningful," he added.
Colayco also chimed in on the flurry of answers coming out of Blizzard regarding release dates for the trilogy. "We'll take as long as we need," he commented with a tone of greater certainty than other Blizzard staffers.
Previously, Blizzard VP Rob Pardo said, "With any luck, it would be like a year for each successive one." Meanwhile, producer Chris Sigaty only offered that "we want to hit the shortest amount of time possible."
Elsewhere, Colayco responded to speculation that Blizzard was "milking" the strategy franchise by releasing three titles instead of one. "No, absolutely not," asserted Colayco in an Edge interview yesterday.
If Activision's press conference from this summer still holds true, "Terrans: Wings of Liberty," the first campaign, is still expected in 2009.
"With any luck, it would be like a year for each successive one, but that's going to be a target date, that's not a promise," Pardo noted in a Joystiq interview.
"In a lot of ways, you should think about the follow-ups as being kind of expansion sets to the original," Pardo explained. "It's just that the campaigns are not going to feel like expansions, they're going to feel like full, independent stories."
"I don't know how long it's going to take...it could be [a year or more between each one]," producer Sigaty revealed to MTV Multplayer. "We want to hit the shortest amount of time possible."
"Let's spin that in a positive light," he laughed, attributing the uncertainty... Read more
The first game in the trilogy will consist of the Terran campaign, and is set to be titled "Terrans: Wings of Liberty."
The second Zerg-focused title will be "Zerg: Heart of the Swarm," with the third game being "Protoss: Legacy of the Void."
Each campaign will be very different, with Pardo announcing the Zerg campaign will contain RPG elements. The Protoss campaign will likewise be differentiated by elements of diplomacy. In addition, the Terran campaign will feature a Protoss mini-campaign.
The campaigns are planned as concentrated, epic storylines, with enough content to justify a full release. As a result, the games will now feature more in-game cinematics and story content.
Blizzard added that the plans for the multiplayer component are unchanged by the splitting of the campaigns. However, some units will now be unique to the campaigns and will not be playable in multiplayer.
Pardo noted that the decision was necessary to maintain the quality of the product, the alternatives either being a long delay of the game, or a scaling back of the campaigns.
More details may become available during BlizzCon, which continues through this weekend.
Players will take on the role of Jim Raynor during the Terran campaign. The campaign begins on Mar Sara, the point of first contact with the Zerg in the original StarCraft.
"Depending on which missions you choose and which order, you may open up five planets [at once]," said Blizzard's Rob Pardo of the game's non-linear, planet-based progression.
As the game begins, Raynor is fighting a losing battle against the Terran Domninion, lead by Arcturus Mengsk. A new character named Tichus Findlay will be... Read more
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No details were provided as to when the beta or full product will arrive, but Morhaime assured attendees that development of the anticipated PC RTS sequel is going well.
StarCraft 2 was recently pegged as the debut point for an enhanced version of Blizzard's online Battle.net matchmaking system, featuring friends lists, in-game chat, and achievements.
A release date is far from certain, but studio owner Activision Blizzard recently said the highly-anticipated PC game "should" arrive next year.
Fan site DIII.net has compiled a list of new features gleaned from statements from Blizzard higher-ups. Among the new expected features are:
"Next year's offerings from Activision Blizzard should include highly anticipated PC strategy title StarCraft II, the sequel to one of the world's most enduringly popular games," Activision Asia Pacific publishing VP Phillip Early claimed at the Activate Asia Pacific, which was attended by StarCraftWire.Net.
Though Earl's comment point to a likely 2009 release, Blizzard is notorious for only releasing its games when they're done. In addition to StarCraft II, the studio is currently wrapping up work on the second World of Warcraft expansion pack--Wrath of the Lich King, due out this year--along with Diablo III and an unannounced "next-gen" MMO.
They see screenshots. They watch movies. They even get to play the game. "It looks great," they say, ears perked. "It feels like it could be released tomorrow," they write, tails wagging happily.
The problem is, Blizzard does such a great job of polishing their demonstrations--Diablo III being the most recent example--that we naturally overestimate the state of their projects.
At BlizzCon last year, StarCraft II seemed like it could have shipped by Christmas 2007. Of course, the reality is that we'll be lucky to see it before... Read more
Multiple Building Selection is a feature that has been debated on every StarCraft forum since StarCraft 2's unveiling at BlizzCon last year. Essentially, MBS allows players to select as many buildings as they like, and then form them into a control group--allowing remote training of units en masse.
On the show floor at PAX, I learned that Blizzard will be fielding a new StarCraft II build at its upcoming BlizzCon convention, and that MBS will be changed... Read more
"We don't have the resources or time to add a fourth race to the launch of StarCraft II, but I'm sure in the event that we decide to do an expansion set it's a feature that'll come up for discussion," studio co-founder Frank Pearce told videogaming247.
He explained that the team had originally considered adding a fourth race to the long-awaited real-time strategy sequel, but opted to focus on the "the cool, best ideas on the existing three races rather than diluting those ideas across four races."
Though the company has yet to detail when StarCraft 2 will arrive on PC, Blizzard has a history of releasing at least one expansion pack for its recent PC efforts, including the original StarCraft, Diablo I and II, Warcraft III, and World of Warcraft.
"Eventually, our plans are for the Achievement system to become an account-based system," Kaplan told MTV Multiplayer. "For now the points are just a [World of Warcraft] character score. As we graduate to that Blizzard Account system, which is right on the horizon, it will switch over to a Blizzard Level."
Kaplan explained that a player's so-called Blizzard Level—essentially akin to the Xbox 360's Xbox Live Gamerscore—would be composed of achievements across numerous Blizzard titles including StarCraft II, Diablo III and World of Warcraft... Read more
Update: Later in the conference call, it was revealed that World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King will arrive between October and December.
Original Story: Blizzard Entertainment CEO and co-founder Mike Morhaime today discussed the effects that the recent launch of Funcom's PC MMO Age of Conan had on World of Warcraft (PC).
"Age of Conan released with some initial success," Morhaime noted. "We did see some of our players leave, [but] about 40% of those players have returned to World of Warcraft."
According to the CEO, World of Warcraft has a key advantage as competitors are going up against "a product that has been continually enhanced, expanded and refined for almost four years now."
Morhaime refused to specify a release date for either StarCraft 2 or Diablo 3, merely noting that both games were "heavily in development" and that the... Read more
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