Hello! and welcome to my first ever post on these forums (fanfare please...)! While i'm really looking forward to the release of SC2, I have been checking up on it regularly for about 3 years waiting for some hint of a release date. Now I know that that ain't going to happen anytime soon, and even if it did, I probably wouldnt know about it. But my question is this: does anybody know why the game has taken so long in development? other than random speculation and "it's done when it's done..." Was there issue with some aspects of the game? Difficulty getting voice actors, graphic engine problems or because the game is being tailored for multiple markets (eg europe, US and Korea etc) This isn't me moaning about not having my grubby paws on it yet, I geniuinely am interested in how the game is progressing behind the scenes! So if anybody knows anything I'd be eager to find out Thanks!
I seem to remember reading in one of Blizzard's posts that they deemed available computer technology (programming language, graphics and processing capacity, etc.) worthy of the Starcraft quality only when they started working on it (which, I believe, was in 2005). Which sounds pretty epic. Most companies would strive to spit out the franchise(s) as fast as possible to make money, but Blizzard waited until the time was right. Welcome to the forum. Feel free to introduce yourself in the introduce yourself board. You sound like a sane person, which we tend to run short of.
Well.. as far as I'm concerned there was no complications. What caused the setback is the fact that the bar is so high right now, that they're pretty much forced to make an awesome game out of it, or it will not live up to its expectations and fail. That is why they're taking every precaution to make the game the best It can be. Welcome to the forums
Cool. Well if the game is geniuinely going to be pushing boundaries in technology then I will be glad to wait. From watching battle reports though there isn't much that is obviously advanced..? I know they re-skinned a few of their models from the early screenshots to the current version of the game, I suppose that would have been no small task. Perhaps there have been similar re-addressings of things in the game.
I do believe most of the "advancing" they are doing is either in the Single-player campaign or the smoothness of the Multiplayer experience as they are trying to do there best to release the ultimate RTS of this Generation, for example it has been stated that the game currently has no Loading times for Multiplayer games which is a incredible accomplishment if true. I hope this answers some of your questions, welcome to the Board! -Seradin
The graphics engine was written from scratch and that took a long time. I bet that's one reason it took so long between start and announcement time. Also, until Burning Crusade came out, the team working on StarCraft II was very small. They seem to have suffered setbacks making battle.net 2.0, and that directly affects the timing of the beta. They ended up writing a lot more missions than they intended. Warcraft III's missions took 9 months to write. StarCraft II had 2-3 times as many. Plus side: The new map editor (and therefore the unit editor) is awesome. That saves a lot of time when tweaking units; you just need to change a few lines of code. Changing units in Warcraft I and II and StarCraft I took a lot more time.
Thanks all for your info- I think I can just about supress my eagerness to get the game if I know there's going to be something truely to look forward to I'm trying to dismiss the image in my head of a dusty room with an almost complete game sitting alone on a desk- I need to know it's moving forward
Welcome! One of the reasons for a slow release!? At a videoconference (with Dreamhack) Dustin Browder said that when they started working on the starcraft 2 engine after warcraft3TFT they got into a lot of trouble, as the franchise was developing very fastly, and they had to wait till 2005 before they could finish the engine (or start working intensivly on it - cant remember). Perhaps its also just a genous strategy: they want to release the game in 2010, so WC3 can win the prize for the best strategy game in that decade, and starcraft 2 in the next one
Well, i can see happening. Welcome to the forums Hamsterminator :yes: Just make sure you've read the forum rules before doing alot of posting, just to keep a safe distance from Fenix's almighty BanHammer
*cough* SC2 has been more or less confirmed for the holidays, if not , hopefully, before. beta should be up during the summer, meaning a few months of beta depending on what they want it could be 2-4 months. imho itll be 2 max i think its gunna be a stress test for B.Net 2.0 and to flush out the smallfry bugs. so unless the forums get overloaded with posts on bugs and issues i dont see why it wont be out this year. of course this is blizzard...a simple "wait this dialogue is questionable" could make it go into another year of development -.-
