The Battle Report 3 is now officially released with a transcript and a 780px × 572px view of the entire Scrapyard map used on the match between Yeon-Ho Lee (Zerg - blue team) and David Kim (Protoss - white team).
Developer Blizzard is preparing for the beta to begin this summer.
According to Kotaku, Blizzard sent an e-mail to video game writers and journalists, requesting that press make sure they sign up for Blizzard’s online gaming service, Battle.net, in order to register for the upcoming StarCraft 2 beta. In the email, Blizzard asked if the journalists to them all their info by June 19th.
StarCraft 2 is currently scheduled for a release at the end of this year, Blizzard president Mike Morhaime announced today in an Activision Blizzard pre-E3 conference call.
"We're targeting an end of year release--this year--for StarCraft 2," said Morhaime. "But as always, we won't release it until it meets our standards and the expectations of our players."
It's been over a decade since the original release but if you were betting on an aught nine release for StarCraft 2 (or one of the StarCraft 2s, as the case may be), you may only be half-right. While he wouldn't confirm what its "one frontline" release for 2009 will be (it's a grudge match between Diablo 3 and StarCraft 2), Blizzard's Paul Sams did say that a StarCraft 2 beta test would be "coming up in the months ahead" running on top of a "basic version" of a "new Battle.net architecture."
When the final beta is getting mass tested it should be very, very, very close to done. When the game get a release will the stock go up or down? When the game get gets released will the stock go up or down?
Blizzard always takes their sweet time to get games out the door. This was the case with Warcraft III and World of Warcraft, and both were historical best sellers. I don't think it causes people to lose interest. On the contrary, Blizzard is very transparent with their games, releasing lots of information on their web site as development goes on. I think this only builds anticipation for their games. Additionally, it ensures that the game quality is superb, which always helps with sales.
You can only tease an audience so long until they lose interest. I fear that Blizzard is going to take too long and then put out Diablo 3, and Starcraft II with reduced fan fare.
StarCraft II lead designer Dustin Browder tells 1UP that while the Terran single-player campaign — over two-dozen missions strong instead of then StarCraft-standard ten — is playable the others "are definitely not in a playable state."
This is a full 20 minute video of a 1v1 match between two of the StarCraft II team's associate game balance designers, Matt Cooper and David Kim. Lead designer Dustin Browder and e-sports team member Robert Simpson provide the excellent commentary for this match.
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