According to a article on GameSpot, the Battle.net project director Greg Canessa hints that next installment in the three-part series (Called Heart of the Swarm) is 18 months away. This would put it sometime in March or April 2012.
A Blizzard rep later said that there was no announced window for the release but he does say the game will not be featured at blizzcon 2010.
Also interesting: Project director Greg Canessa and technical director Matthew Versluys explain exactly why launching a new online service to handle the millions of World of Warcraft and Starcraft II players from day one is no easy task.
How many years has it been since they said they were working on the next-gen MMO? It was before the Diablo 3 announcement, right? I'll admit I'm a little curious about it. I wonder if their plan is to just keep working and working on it until WOW's numbers start to decline, and then formally announce it.
On October 08 2010 12:31 Sqq wrote: but seriously that means i won't play the full game til earliest 2013 ?
you're playing the full game now, i hate people that think the game isn't complete yet, because there are more expansions, the game is complete, their will be additions in the next 3 years
I liked this, I was scared that they would release in 2011. I would prefer if they release an expansion once every 3 years, so we can get used to all the expansion instead of immediately moving from expansion to expansion.
Wonder if they'll release new units, or if it's mostly a singleplayer deal. I assume you wont be able to play multi without buying it either way, as opposed to being just extra story content... 18 months cycle.. Great, now we will be in a continuous cycle of optimistic excuses.
Step 0 . Beta phase "Dont say anything negative, its still only Beta !"
Step 1. Game Release High "Game is too new to criticize about anything!" 1b. "It's been <1 year, too new for [advanced detail]!"
Step 2. Beta Details/features announced "See! Dont be impatient! Expansion will fix it!"
Step 3. More expansion details, into Early Beta Hype "Wow this is new and shiny, everything is new and fun again!",
now I'm not saying Blizzard will deliver on this, but just imagine...
we've waited 10 years for this game. I'm not saying it's perfect, but I definitely was awstruck when i first played through campaign. 10 years for this quality. Now similar quality, all new material, in 2 years.
for me, that's short. continuation of the storyline which I'm super psyched about with all new units and all new strategies. look on the bright side people. in two years you probably won't even be able to master half the strategies out there right now, and two years from now you'll have to adapt to brand new units.
On October 08 2010 13:03 Wire wrote: now I'm not saying Blizzard will deliver on this, but just imagine...
we've waited 10 years for this game. I'm not saying it's perfect, but I definitely was awstruck when i first played through campaign. 10 years for this quality. Now similar quality, all new material, in 2 years.
for me, that's short. continuation of the storyline which I'm super psyched about with all new units and all new strategies. look on the bright side people. in two years you probably won't even be able to master half the strategies out there right now, and two years from now you'll have to adapt to brand new units.
exciting times ^_^ go sc2
Expansions obviously don't take the same amount of effort seeing as the engine is already complete so all they have to do is write a story, make the missions/cinematics then add in some new units. 18 months certainly isn't THAT long for it though. Personally I just want to play the next damn campaign.
I'm a bit skeptical that they can expand the unit selection of Zerg for single player in an elegant way. Surely once the 9 larvae mutation buttons are full there's only room for mutations of existing strains - a la Devourer, Baneling, et cetera (with the notable exception of the queen).
On October 08 2010 12:31 Sqq wrote: but seriously that means i won't play the full game til earliest 2013 ?
you're playing the full game now, i hate people that think the game isn't complete yet, because there are more expansions, the game is complete, their will be additions in the next 3 years
No, its 1/3 of a game. only reason people like you are content with WoL is because you dont notice that all of the missions were filler content and the story was lackluster in order to stretch the story over three games. The only complete part was multiplayer.
Wooow, that's a looong time until HotS - I really would like to see some new Units in SC2 and I don't think we'll be seeing drastic changes like that in the Patches to come...
I wonder why they choose to release the expansions with soo much time between them.
I really hope it's going to be absolutely different from Terran setup (obviously not Spaceship headquarters... don't taunt me on that).
At the same time I want Zerg missions to be much more brutal in the core, not difficulty wise, but story/atmosphere wise. They need to be darker.
On October 08 2010 19:59 kickinhead wrote: Wooow, that's a looong time until HotS - I really would like to see some new Units in SC2 and I don't think we'll be seeing drastic changes like that in the Patches to come...
I wonder why they choose to release the expansions with soo much time between them.
Obviously to work on them as much as they can, let SC2 community develop, multiplayer to stabilize, get more money...
let me get this straight, we will have to wait another ~3 years before this game is actually "finished" with all two expansions? so the same level for e-sports as BW will not be reached before that point? (blizz will have to introduce new units to keep the average bronze-gold-players interested, which means that we will basicly see a new game after each expansion)
On October 08 2010 12:31 Sqq wrote: but seriously that means i won't play the full game til earliest 2013 ?
you're playing the full game now, i hate people that think the game isn't complete yet, because there are more expansions, the game is complete, their will be additions in the next 3 years
No, its 1/3 of a game. only reason people like you are content with WoL is because you dont notice that all of the missions were filler content and the story was lackluster in order to stretch the story over three games. The only complete part was multiplayer.
I think the story only felt lackluster because of the whole structure.
Since there isn't a single story, they'd have to pour in much, much more effort for the thing to feel cohesive. But the way things are, your choices felt mostly meaningless. And the mission structure is a mess, jumping to one place and then back again. You can't do "the artefacts mission" and then "the agria missions" and then "Tosh missions". You try Tosh but after mission one, nope, dead end. It's really bad.
They already said for HotS they want to go back to a single story which should mean they can also finally go back to their fine, linear writing.
On October 08 2010 12:45 thisblindman wrote: "Hellsssssssssssssss, it's abouts timesssssssssssss." - Kerrigan
lol
Man, that's a long time to wait. Brood War was released the same year as StarCraft and offered three new campaigns. Now we're waiting two years for the second campaign of StarCraft 2.
On October 08 2010 12:12 trainRiderJ wrote: How many years has it been since they said they were working on the next-gen MMO? It was before the Diablo 3 announcement, right? I'll admit I'm a little curious about it. I wonder if their plan is to just keep working and working on it until WOW's numbers start to decline, and then formally announce it.
Good luck on that... they just released an announcement that WoW finally hit the 12 million subscribers milestone, which means that it is still growing.
Eh, I don't mind the time being taken for HotS as long as I get a good game with an awesome story. Plus, I don't think Battle.net 2.0 is that bad. Chat channels are coming shortly in patch 1.2 and hopefully they will integrate cross region sometime.
On October 08 2010 22:18 muzzy wrote: This is the only game release I've ever seen in which people complain that it's not finished because all the expansions aren't released.
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is finished. That is the game you purchased.
for me the problem is definitely the development of warcraft 3
TFT (wc3-addon) completely changed the playstyle; every balancing that was done before TFT was rendered useless; the races played completely differently, the difference was as big as going from BW to sc2;
therefore my concern is, that blizzard will never strive for perfect sc2 balance UNTIL all two expansions are released; because only then we will have the game in its final state that will be balanced to exist for many, many following years
Thinking about this makes me depressed. It'll be another 3-4 years before this game is fully finished. I'll be in another stage of my life at that point and I don't know if I'll appreciate/be able to appreciate the game as much at that point.
muzzy wrote: This is the only game release I've ever seen in which people complain that it's not finished because all the expansions aren't released.
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is finished. That is the game you purchased.
Would you all rather have had some 10 mission campaigns for each race and have the hype surrounding SC2 dissipate in one release?
I think it has more to do with multiplayer and setting the game up as an esport - it feels a bit like they're holding out on adding units to fill key roles simply since they want to add them in upcoming expansions - thus waiting years feels like a long time to wait until they "finish" the game.
The campaign side I don't see people that upset about - I would have preferred a zerg campaign personally, but most of the complaints seem to be a bit misguided. Some more moral decisions or a slightly less kid-friendly feel on the whole perhaps, but frankly I thought the campaign was awesome, especially when I played it again and chose to purify the agria colony and help tosh.
On October 08 2010 22:18 muzzy wrote: This is the only game release I've ever seen in which people complain that it's not finished because all the expansions aren't released.
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is finished. That is the game you purchased.
Would you all rather have had some 10 mission campaigns for each race and have the hype surrounding SC2 dissipate in one release?
I would rather have the story finished but that's my view. My wifes maternal alarm clock is going of and I can't hit the damn snooze button anymore. I probably won't be able to play the other expansions.
I'm just happy to see Blizzard communicate these sort of balance issues on their blog and hope this means they will discuss and debate before implementing changes in the next patch!
On October 08 2010 22:18 muzzy wrote: This is the only game release I've ever seen in which people complain that it's not finished because all the expansions aren't released.
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is finished. That is the game you purchased.
Would you all rather have had some 10 mission campaigns for each race and have the hype surrounding SC2 dissipate in one release?
I would rather have the story finished but that's my view. My wifes maternal alarm clock is going of and I can't hit the damn snooze button anymore. I probably won't be able to play the other expansions.
I grew up playing sc/bw, and want to see the end
lol, all you people acting like your lives will be over in a few years...
I grew up playing Warcraft/StarCraft as a child/teenager. I'm 25 now, married and have a 1 year old daughter. Guess what? I still play StarCraft! It's astonishing, I know. I can't veg out and play for 12 hours a day, but I'm pretty satisfied with the hour or two a night I get (more on the weekends).
Trust me, life goes on as a gamer, even after you have children
On October 08 2010 12:18 dapierow wrote: I bet they will delay the 18 month release, then indefinitely delay the project, and then in 2020 they use the "hell its about time again" slogan
On October 08 2010 12:07 snakeyes wrote: Well hopefully they announce the new MMO they have been working on then. been years since they mentioned it.
Not with WOW doing so well right now. And Blizzard is famous for taking a freaking long time to reveal a game. Do you know that World of Warcraft was planed somewhere around 1999-2000 or even earlier than that.
On October 08 2010 22:18 muzzy wrote: This is the only game release I've ever seen in which people complain that it's not finished because all the expansions aren't released.
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is finished. That is the game you purchased.
Would you all rather have had some 10 mission campaigns for each race and have the hype surrounding SC2 dissipate in one release?
I would rather have the story finished but that's my view. My wifes maternal alarm clock is going of and I can't hit the damn snooze button anymore. I probably won't be able to play the other expansions.
I grew up playing sc/bw, and want to see the end
lol, all you people acting like your lives will be over in a few years...
I grew up playing Warcraft/StarCraft as a child/teenager. I'm 25 now, married and have a 1 year old daughter. Guess what? I still play StarCraft! It's astonishing, I know. I can't veg out and play for 12 hours a day, but I'm pretty satisfied with the hour or two a night I get (more on the weekends).
Trust me, life goes on as a gamer, even after you have children
On October 08 2010 12:40 ironchef wrote: Wonder if they'll release new units, or if it's mostly a singleplayer deal. I assume you wont be able to play multi without buying it either way, as opposed to being just extra story content... 18 months cycle.. Great, now we will be in a continuous cycle of optimistic excuses.
Step 0 . Beta phase "Dont say anything negative, its still only Beta !"
Step 1. Game Release High "Game is too new to criticize about anything!" 1b. "It's been <1 year, too new for [advanced detail]!"
Step 2. Beta Details/features announced "See! Dont be impatient! Expansion will fix it!"
Step 3. More expansion details, into Early Beta Hype "Wow this is new and shiny, everything is new and fun again!",
Repeat
I'm hoping we don't get into the "but it's only beta/release/almost before a patch/just after a patch/close to an expansion, so balance doesn't matter" cycle that WoW players believe.
On October 08 2010 13:03 Wire wrote: now I'm not saying Blizzard will deliver on this, but just imagine...
we've waited 10 years for this game. I'm not saying it's perfect, but I definitely was awstruck when i first played through campaign. 10 years for this quality. Now similar quality, all new material, in 2 years.
for me, that's short. continuation of the storyline which I'm super psyched about with all new units and all new strategies. look on the bright side people. in two years you probably won't even be able to master half the strategies out there right now, and two years from now you'll have to adapt to brand new units.
exciting times ^_^ go sc2
You but of course it's 2 years only. There just doing a new campaign and adding probably 2 units to each race, if that. Graphics will be the same, game engine the same, everything the same exept some units and campaign. People shouldn't get super excited about an expansion unless it's about the campaign and certainly not to balance the original SC2. Hell they might even just put the units that were available in campaign in, in the next expansion.
18 months seems reasonable. Brood War took two thirds of a freaking year. TFT took half a year. So what in HotS could possibly take longer than 18 months to complete?
P.S.: I pirated WoL due to insufficient funds, but I'm going to authentically buy the expansion. Will I be able to play online, or will Blizzard bitch at me because I only have the expansion key?