"StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty" release date announced!

After 12 long years the time has finally come for the sequel to one of the best games ever, to be unleashed upon the world! Blizzard has announced that StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty will be released on stores worldwide on July 27 2010.

The release of StarCraft II will also mean the official opening of the new Battle.net which will offer many new features.

I am excited about the game but I have to say that I still think it was a wrong move by Blizzard to release the game in three parts. This basically means that in order to experience the whole story you will have to pay the same game 3 times.

Starcraft 2 delayed for 2010

Blizzard announced yesterday that the release of the much anticipated (understatement) second installment in the Starcraft franchise will be delayed. The justification behind this decision is that it "became clear that it would take longer than expected to prepare the new battle.net".

Today we announced that StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty will not be ready for release by the end of 2009. Over the past couple of weeks, it has become clear that it will take longer than expected to prepare the new Battle.net for the launch of the game. The upgraded Battle.net is an integral part of the StarCraft II experience and will be an essential part of all of our games moving forward. This extra development time will be critical to help us realize our vision for the service.

Our mission is to develop games that deliver an epic entertainment experience. As part of that commitment, we will always take as much time as needed to ensure that our games and services meet the expectations of our players and the standard for quality that we set for ourselves as developers. As we work to make Battle.net the premier online gaming destination, we’ll also continue to polish and refine StarCraft II, and we look forward to delivering a real-time strategy gaming experience worthy of the series’ legacy in the first half of 2010.

We will share more details about the beta, Battle.net, and StarCraft II’s launch in the future. Keep an eye on the official website at http://www.starcraft2.com for updates, and as always, thank you for your continued enthusiasm and support for StarCraft II and all of Blizzard Entertainment’s games.

Blizzard remains faithful to the "when it's ready" policy of releases. Compared to other companies that release unpolished/buggy software this is a good thing, but at the same time disappoints the die hard fans that just want to play the game. The new battle.net is essential to the multiplayer aspect of the game. The perfect balance and flawless multiplayer gave starcraft a faithfull following and a, still, very large active community of players around the world for the past 10 years. Blizzards wants to keep it that way with Starcraft 2.

StarCraft II Beta Test Opt-in

Blizzard has started accepting request for the upcoming StarCraft II beta. All you have to do is create a new Battle.net account, register at least one Blizzard game and download a small program that gathers information about your pc and sends it to your Battle.net profile. When the time for the beta comes Blizzard will select a number of the people who have opted in based on various factors. For more info read the beta opt-in FAQ.

This info will be used for upcoming betas of other games too (Diablo universe, Warcraft universe) so if you love Blizzard games (and who doesn't?) be sure to opt-in and cross your fingers!

Starcraft 2: Terra-Tron. April Fools day unit

In what most probably is an April Fool's Joke, Blizzard announced the new Terran unit, Terra-Tron. The unit is a really big compilation of other units and acts and works like a transformer robot. Blizzard's attention to detail extends even to jokes like this as the company released videos, screenshots and sounds from the "new".

UPDATE (more jokes)

Blizzard made a couple of more jokes today. The company announced a new feature for WoW called pimp my mount. In the same spirit a new Diablo 3 class was unveiled, the archivist.

Starcarft 2 to be released as trilogy. Damn you corporate bozzos

Blizzard announced in BlizzCon that the Starcraft 2 is going to be released as seperate Games. What? I say What? They said that the campaigns where too long and that it would be a very big game that it would take more time to be released. Now, that is pure BS. Blizzard always releases games when they are ready and not earlier. It might take years between releases but the studio always delivered top notch games. In addition to that, older games, when video games used to be more than dollar cows for large publishing studios, would be long and when say long I mean huge. Baldur's Gate 2 had more than 150 hours worth of gameplay and that was part of the whole experience. So what is this thing with the campaigns being long.BS...pure distilled BS I say. If it will take them a year longer I DON'T CARE, I will wait in order to get the FULL game and not some episode of the game.

I am not saying that the game(all three of them, for that matter, now) will not be excellent. All Blizzard's games are quality games. What I am saying, is that probably some corporate bozzo decided that this would be an excellent oportunity for even more money. And the thing is that they ll make them.Everybody will buy it. It is as if World of Warcaft does not generate tons of reveneu for them they want even more. Well I guess that's capitalism for you, but Blizzard never worked that way. I am disapointed.