Starcraft 2

There’s been quite a bit of speculation about Starcraft 2 release date – as with all Blizzard games. Blizzard’s motto – it’s out when it’s ready – means that exact dates are now known before about a month before.

So it’s good news that Mike Morhaime said at E3 that Starcraft will be out in 2009. Of course, he put it in a conditional sentence!

Blizzard’s Mike Morhaime has said that Starcraft II will be released this year as long as it “meets our standards and the expectations of our players”.

The latest gameplay video I saw, there have been some new Protoss units, so I guess Blizzard never tire of adding/subtracting units.

Another batch of videos demonstrating Zerg gampleay…

Part I: Zerg vs Protoss

Part II: Zerg vs Protoss

In the latest BlizzCast (#6), Bashiok goes through a bag of questions from Starcraft fans. One of the more interesting one concerns the role of the anti-armor units in Starcraft 2.

Bashiok: Cool. The next question comes from gamer-source.com. With the all the anti-armored units like the marauder and the hydralisk – is this meant to counter the end game units? And also what role do you think end game units will play on the battlefield?

Dustin Browder: I’m not really sure what an end game unit is, I guess it would be like a battlecruiser or a carrier or a thor or ultralisk, I guess it’s what we’re talking about here. But the hydralisk has always been anti-armor, even in the original Starcraft had a strong anti-armor role.

The marauder of course gives the Terrans some additional anti-armor capability from the barracks which we felt was very important since we moved the ghost back so far allowing the ghost to fulfill more of a core role on the battlefield for the Terrans. We didn’t think that the ghost made a lot of sense as fundamentally anti-armor with his sniper rifle. If he’s going to be anti biological and sort of taking head shots and taking out individual targets then we really needed the Terrans to have some way to deal with stalkers and immortals and to a lesser extent siege tanks and roaches. So that’s really what the marauder is pointed at, the marauder is pointed more at stalkers and roaches and you’ll see marauders used in that role. They also can tear apart a colossus or thor which is an added advantage for the Terrans from the barracks again.

If you think the billions that Blizzard makes on the back of World of Warcraft have made them less greedy, think again.

They have just announced (at Blizzcon 2008) that Starcraft 2 will not be a single game but in fact a TRILOGY. There will be three separate campaigns: the Terrain will come out first, followed by Zerg and Protoss.

Tell you what – I never cared for single player. I want a game that will allow me to choose a race and fight human opponents. It looks like I’ll have to buy three games – each will probably be around $40, so that’s over $100!

This is the panel discussion regarding Stracraft 2 gameplay at the WWI in Paris (where Diablo 3 was announced). The video is a bit long but worth it!

There’s still nothing on Starcraft’s release date though – I hope it’s early 2009!

Blizzard has started a podcast (audio only for now). You can get the audio and/or you can read the transcript.

In this podcast (a.k.a. Blizzcast), they have two interviews. The first is with Samwise Didier, Blizzard’s Art Director and concept artist who has worked on both Starcraft and Warcraft.

The second interview is with WOW’s lead designer for World of Warcraft, Jeff Kaplan. He’s talking about the changes in WoW patch 2.4.

When I did a review of the Protoss Mothership in May, I did it based on the first gameplay video as well as the narration.

Now, Starcraft2.com has a dedicated page for the Protoss Mothership. You’ll be able to see video clips of all three mothership abilities in action: Cloak Field, Time Bomb, and Planet Cracker.

This one surfaced at Blizzcon (to be followed by the Terran tech tree). Text descriptions by Gamespot.

New structures included the null circuit, dark obelisk, phase prism, and twilight council buildings which all tied into the new units. We tried our hand with as many of them as we could build and were intrigued by what we played. Null circuit buildings are one part of the equation to let you summon the observers to be constructed.

The dark obelisk allows you to make dark templars, and phase prisms let you do create the mighty colossus, a killer land unit shown previously. The twilight council lets you create immortals. In addition the stargates let you summon the new phoenix and warp ray craft as well as the old standby, the carrier.

Here’s the same game play video (as below) – this time narrated by Chris Sigaty. Note that the current label for Starcraft 2 is “internal alpha”. He does mention it will be playable at Blizzcon though and also says there will be a beta (though it might not be a public one).

An amazing game play video with more info on the upcoming Protoss units. This is a bit better quality than the ones at Youtube but I hope Blizzard will upload an HD version to Starcraft2.com

Words fall short but here’s the gist of it:

1) Soul Hunter – his attacks get stronger the more units he destroys.

2) Phase Canon – you can now move them around the base.

3) Mass Tempests (previously known as Carriers) – now feature a shield that protects them from ground attacks. They’ll also cost less.

4) Twilight Archon – powerful infantry unit, doesn’t seem much different from its previous incarnation