a question about SC2's state at this time

I heard from other sources that SC2 is in Internal alpha stage. is this true? if so, is there any more stages before SC2 goes into beta testing?

 

Internal Alpha?!

What does that even mean? It's Alpha or it's not. Oh man I HOPE you're intel was off on that one. I didn't want to hear about StarCraft 2 just to sit here a year later waiting on an 'internal' alpha!

 

OMG what the hell is Blizzard Entertainment doing ?

Sorry, by the time Starcraft 2 will be released Blizzard will become Activision Blizzard.

We know that Starcraft 2 is in progress, but that it will take time to be released. But now it is Alpha, that means it will take ONE YEAR to become Beta. And then ONE YEAR again to become the official game. With a lot of bugs and unbalances to be fuixed by thousands of patches, of course !!

 

thats what i heard someone else say, i really dont know what it means myself. so after alpha, theyll start testing?

 

The game release cycle goes pre-alpha, alpha, beta, gold. Alpha is the one that we've been at for several months now. Once the core code for the game's engine and once the majority of the art is "done" a company moves to beta, which is testing and balancing.

Testing happens throughout the cycle, but beta is the stage dedicated to testing.

Where a game is in the cycle is often misleading, when it comes to guessing when the game will finally ship. Sometimes a game can spend years in alpha, then burn quickly through a beta, then head out, other times, it spends a long time in beta. Blizzard is particularly hard to gauge.

We have several members guessing that they're on the brink of hitting beta, but, to be honest, people have thought that since the game was announced. Just take Blizzard at their word that it won't be done until it's ready.

 

It's very strange. How many time will blizzard create this game?

I don't understand why all other companies, the rivals of Blizzard, don't take so many time to create their games and that Blizzard takes years to make ONE game.

Who could explain that please ?

PS : once the beta released, count ONE year to get the official game on store. Furthermore the game will get a lot of bugs that have to be fixed by patches. You know, 10 more years of patches for Starcraft 2

I don't care anyway, I am patient.

 

If they're in Alpha stage right now, then that means they are taking their time, which is GOOD for us. Be patient guys - it'll be worth it.

 

Internal alpha, aka pre-alpha, means not everyone at Blizzard has played it yet. (For instance, people at Blizzard Europe had not played it even after WWI. Which seems a bit unfair.)

 

Do you think that Blizzard is sharing its team around every blizzard projects ? I mean for instance you need 200 persons to create SC2. Maybe those people are also creating some other games like Diablo 3.

So the time to develop those games are shared because of the limit of the number of employees

 

suddenly i got the unfriendly climate feeling reading all those previous posts lol... anyway my state on that is that SC2s state as of now is at code yellow as of now.. just a lil more till we get the green lights on wooooo!!

 

lol code yellow. For a quick sec I thought you were making an anology with the US Terrorism fear level. Which anyone living stateside knows is BS.

Don't forget that you also have options of a closed beta and open beta. I know Blizz always does a closed beta.

@SOGEKING- Most game companies look at video games as a big bussnes. They have far less concern over the artistic merits of their work than Blizz does. Which is fair enough; you need to recoup the losses you spent creating a game otherwise your stock drops when the new fiscal quarter hits. Money out but no money in.

Look at the creators of Titan Quest; Iron Forge. They went belly up. One former employee blamed pirates. I pirate software fairly often myself. Like most people (imo), if I find something quality, I wanna get a true hard copy. I think Iron Forge died out because they weren't getting games out. What they did was phenomenal but as a young company with little revenue, they couldn't fight off the bill collectors.

Same thing would of happened to Blizz at the rate they release things except they have had chart topping games starting with War1. Now-a-days they have more cash than the Vatican coming home from WoW. They can work on their art until they are true masterpieces without much concern.

To answer your other question; I'm almost 100% certain Blizzard teams focus on one game at a time. What was once Blizzard North was souly responsible for D2. The team working on SC2 right now only started their work after finishing the war3 expansion. I'm pretty sure WoW updates and server maintenance is a full time job.
The only person I could imagine working on multiple projects is art director Samwie. But from what we know about D3 I believe that to be false.

 

Since when could you compare a company who throws out games left and right with lackluster quality to Blizzard, a company that is bend on perfecting a game before release...You must think making a game with the huge amount of expectations SC2 has to be easy as cake.

 

Of course Blizzard takes time to reach the perfection with that game, but BTW so many years are according to me too exagerated. It seems to me that Blizzard is not hard working on this project. That's my impression.

Notice that even Starcraft 1 (read well, I am talking about Starcraft 1) didn't reach the perfection expected by lizzard even ten years after its realease. Why so ? Because of the mass patches and debugs sent by Blizzaard to fix all those problems we met, even after 10 years.

So .... for Starcraft 2 ....*coughs*

 

That shouldn't matter.

The team for StarCraft II is only about 40 people, but they do have people from outside the team occasionally play the game and give their less-biased thoughts.

 

Blizzard looks like they're not working on StarCraft II because they're putting a "push" into Wrath of the Lich King. The development of Burning Crusade also slowed down StarCraft II (they probably had to temporarily move people from the SC II team to the Burning Crusade team). A WoW expansion beta takes about four months. (That's four low-news months, except for BlizzCon 08.)

Did anyone see the Mar Sara update? It was obvious Blizzard was working hard on the campaign. They had cops, multiple civilian types (more than in Warcraft III) and civilian vehicles, too.

 

I don't know where you guys are sourcing your information from.

Blizzard is broken up into teams:

Team 1: WoW: WotLK

Team 2: Starcraft 2

Team 3: Diablo 3

Team 4: Undisclosed Project

Then there is a fifth team, the web team. They are responsible for ALL four titles plus existing titles. That's why updates are so slow.

 

For StarCraft II being slowed down by by Burning Crusade, I'm using the PC Gamer article from least year (I believe it was July 2007).

 

There's no way that SC2's development has been slowed in any way by WotLK. If anything it's being delayed by development of Battle.net 2.0.

Source me this article. I've never heard anything of this before.

 

Here you go:

Stapleton, Dan. "StarCraft II." PC Gamer Magazine 164 (August 2007): 20-30.\

I think the biggest thing "delaying" StarCraft II are just regular gameplay issues. They're going to try out a bunch of new concepts before the game is ready for beta.

 

First of all, how does "gameplay" have anything to do with WotLK?

Secondly, who is Dan Stapleton, what does he know about Starcraft 2, has he ever worked for Blizzard, and is he even a StarCraft fan? What qualifies him to "think" about anything?

Lastly, you didn't source the article, you just told me its title and quoted from it. Link it. Furthermore, you said the article specifically referenced WotLK....