Starcraft 2 Release Date Delayed to 2010
August 5, 2009 by Ruibo
Not something of a huge surprise but a really big disappointment to fans everywhere as Blizzard has officially announced the release date will be pushed back to the first half of 2010.
There was a previous delay mentioned in the past due to World of Warcraft’s Lich King taking up more majority of the developement team. Now, the delay is reported to be intact with the relaunch of its upgraded Battle.net service which handles all multiplayer aspects.
In a statement to the Blizzard community, the developer writes “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.” Blizzard states the new Battle.net is an “integral part of the StarCraft II experience and will be an essential part of all of our games moving forward.”
Blizzard has mentioned in the past beta testing will take 4-6 months and if beta were to start in August, they would be on a very tight schedule for release this year. While the anticipiated release of the game was planned for the end of 2009, Blizzard president Mike Morhaime said in May: “But as always, we won’t release it until it meets our standards and the expectations of our players.”
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Well, now you’re just TRYING to re-ignite operation CWAL. Blizzard doesn’t need that again…
i think this will come out soon it is febor march i think they will release that is all i care
i just went to see EB games and the release date for SC2 is June 1/2010. Lets hope this will not get pushed back again!!!
Just so long as they make it so you can have loads of units like 500 plus troops and no bloody hero units like they ruined in warcraft III. Keep it pretty much the same as the origional starcraft which millions of people still play and don’t try and add new gayness to it and everyhting will be good. keep it smooth and detailed and don’t make the units overlarge for the map like they did in WCIII either, was total let down.
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I feel the same, a decade for a sequel is just far too long. I believe it’s been 11 years to be precise. Another year to go.
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I’m not too sure about that. It’s taken forever just to get episode 3 out while they dished out left 4 dead 2 in just a year.
And just look at the huge pile of crap that both L4D and L4D2 are… Except for the ability to play in co-op, there’s not 1 good aspect about that game…
When Starcraft 2 will be released i think that it will be the best from all the strategy games.
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Nah starcraft wil never die it just keeps going i mean starcraft origanal and brood war are still going.
well yea they will live longer then wow hahha most defintaly!!
I agree with you Mike, Starcraft is to the date the best strategy game ever created, and there’s no reason to expect any less from the sequel. When I see all this delays, all I can think of is that the people at Blizzard are really taking the job seriously to not disapoint the fans. Even if the game features the same units with little variations it still will be the best of all strategy games.
Have you, by chance, played any of the Total War Series?
Total War is AWESOME, but I want a combination of the two…that would be the best game of all time…in ANY genre…lol
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Well, I’m sure the game will be fun, and I doubt there are any other games on the horizon that will steal it’s thunder, but the whole lack of zerg/protoss campaigns plus pushed release date make me question it somewhat. The fact is I’d almost rather have the option to just buy the multiplayer for $25 rather than the full thing. Oh well.. I’ll probably end up getting the collectors edition because I’m a dork like that.
there are 3 games 1 for each campaign, and you can get full multipplayer support on all 3 games is what I’ve heard theo nly reason you’d be buy ing the other exspansions is to play the campaigns
I think that they also plan to add new units to each of the previously existing factions when the next is released do when the protoss one is released they will release new units for Terran and Zerg
rexxor is right, the campaign is coming out in a 3 part set and with sc2 wol(working title) at base and toss and zerg campaigns as expansions, its marketing genius! and it will make waiting for the next game they make(worlds of starcraft) the best game ever, they did this same thing with warcraft 1-3 and on to world of warcraft. also they have this funny map of blizzard galaxy, it shows all azaroth as one of the planets in same galixy as karpollo sector
its a conspiricy man!!!
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i disagree charles. Thers not to many units. They actually replaced some of the old ones while adding old ones. The new ones were delvompent for the sole purpose of startegys seen in starcraft 1. Like the reapers are perfect for base atts. but no open warfare.plus i think they should slow down a little on wow. Thers too many fat people addictited to it. WoW should stand for “world of warcrack”.
Yeah, charles. If they didn’t add new units everybody would be sorely disapointed with them. Would YOU buy game if all it was (basically) was an expansion pack with better graphics??? I think not!
I’m sorry; but I disagree with that entire statement.
A: “The abilities of many units will definitely create ‘types’ of gamers” as you put it if anything will only increase the overall popularity of the game. For one, it creates a lot more angles for players to get used to the game and allows many different variants of ’styles’ which will keep people hooked to the game, compared to a ’single-line based’ game. Ever go back and play the old AoE? It sucked. Things move on, and stuff get’s more complicated.
B: Battle.net is nowhere near underdeveloped. Infact they spend a great deal of time perfecting the battle.net experience. On Oct 12, 2008 Jay Wilson commented “We are looking to monetize Battle.Net so that we get to keep making these games and updating features. We kind of have to” which paints a clear understanding that for one there are thousands of people working for Blizzard, and I don’t think you’re smarter than any single one of them. Scruffy the Janitor would make a more intelligent comment on how much time they put into it all.
Just to throw some facts in your face, in 2008 Blizzard spent hundreds of thousands of dollars developing new ways to fight battle.net bots, hackers/exploiters and third party programs. One of the newly developed programs is called ‘Warden’ which (in a nut shell) scans all of the players connected to Warcraft III Battle.net and detects any form of third-party program, and then boots them from the server. Many hackers/exploiters/programmers found this irritating because the program would proc every 60 seconds or so. Of course by now you can simply download an ‘anti-warden’ program and run it through your bot program to stop this effect (the easiest way to explain this is that it pretends that your PC is hosting the bot in the same way you would host a game).
I’m not done.
C: What exactly do you know about profits? 60-70%? Seriously? Did you take a university business course and devote hundreds of hours determining what kind of future Blizzard has? That’s (pardon my french) god damn ridiculous. They will definitely not lose that kind of money on Starcraft II. You can still to this very day, four years after launch, go to any Wal-Mart and obtain a copy of Warcraft III, and the expansion Warcraft III The Frozen Throne along with the original Diablo and Starcraft I battlechests. As for hating the campaign itself or “being disappointed” as you would put it, that is strictly a matter of opinion. Yes it will be different. From what I’ve seen from Blizzcon releases and video trailers about Starcraft II the campaign will be a lot different than the first game, but that doesn’t mean that it will disappoint me. Infact I’m looking forward to finding out how Raynor triumphs his problems with the Zerg and Mengsk.
I’m not trying to be rude or discriminative but I read your comment and it got under my skin to think that you actually believe you know what you’re talking about.
here here! That seemd a little long winded to belittle somone for thinking they are smarter then they really are, but you hold your facts like a steel blade and rend emphatic flesh from this poor simpltons soul like a butcher to a steer. you are right, and i could not have stated it better. i love starcraft and i know i will love starcraft2. not because i love pwning in 2vme games, its cuz its gonna be a whole new game and we only seen 3 1v1 maps and a few cut seconds form the begginning of the terran campaign for someone to say this has any chance of flopping or not making the GRADE there out of their fukn minds! this will be a game that will be around for 11 more years! just think about it! how many games you still play that are 11 years old! i mean really! it would have to be a vary special game to have been around that long! i love you man!
lol douche bag
What I find really funny is that I’m seeing a bunch of posts EVERYWHERE coplaining about how Blizzard shouldn’t release information or even announce a game before they even know the exact date. Well, even if it is slightly negative attention, Blizzard still likes it; it might just make it into a relatively big paper, blog or something and will thus advertise the game without Blizzard having to pay a penny. I mean, after I heard about it on a random website (again, people complaining that Blizzard might fail with Sc2 again after Ghost failed) I got my old BW copy out and started playing. After a few months and discovering that my friends also play the game, my whole school now knows about Sc2, because of my friends’ and my own obsession about the game.
Rispetto, just wow
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no it won’t. they are completely different games and will therefore have completely different fan bases. there will be some cross-over, but WoW players will still always play WoW. They don’t call it wow-crack for nothing
It most certainly will not!!! For two reasons ( I can think of about 20 but i’ll leave it at 2)
1. The game types: If you only like a first person shooter (FPS) type game then that is what you buy, but if you like an RTS like Starcraft will be, Role Playing Games (RPGs) like World of Warcraft (WoW) aren’t much competition. (I admit to playing WoW but I quit after 3 weeks there was no strategy that I could see just kill or be killed!)
2. Even if you have a WoW account and you pay for example every six months, and you take two or three off to try out this new game by Blizzard Enertainment you cant cancel the payment because you Already payed for six months!! And even if you get billed monthly it is monthly from when you started the account and, unless you keep track of the days since you started your WoW account and figured out every 29 and 1/2 days you will be billed for your continued use of their server space, then guess what you will be billed until you freeze your account!!
no one cares about WoW, the truth is there spending way to much time on the new WoW expantion, the sad thing is Wrath of the lich king came out not to long ago and now there wasting there time on a new useless expantion. If Wow didnt easnt in the picture we would probably have starcraft 3 out already.
He may have a point. By spending more time on Starcraft II the developers will not get as much done in WoW, and they have over 11 million customers they need to satisfy. If Blizzard was to lose World of Warcraft, it wouldn’t just be a slap on the wrist, it would be a car kidding you; it would break your wrist, your arm, your legs, your neck, and fracture your skull.
This is beginning to look more and more like duke nukem forever……
Doomed to be in development …. forever……
LMAO!!!! i heard of that.
was NEVER released.
i even heard that someone pre-ordered that
they should really just wait till there almost done before they announce their games
the game is done all they need is battle net revision to be finshed with out crashing all of their b.net games but sc2 is finshed
i can already see that starcraft 2 looks like a sick game, your arguments are just your frustrations and doubts are coming from seeing and not tasting it’s AWESOMENESS! ^^
HERE HERE!!
honestly i think that starcraft 2 will be awesome and even though the graphics probably wont be as great as newer games, its all about the strategy. hell i still play brood war with my friend dan and we think its a hoot
obviously if people still play a game like starcraft one with its graphics it will be a massive upgrade
this is all because blizzard is wasting all of its effort on WoW Cataclism that no one wants because theres already wrath of the lich king which they didnt finish because the lich king isnt in it yet.
i personally cant wait for sc2. ive been a fan of sc ever since my brother stole it from his friend across the street in 99 or so. Blizzard should start cracking down on their productions. WoW is not that great, but so many people are addicted. i agree with steve. dont announce your game until you can actually put an exact release date on it. how about we just put everyone down as we maake our game Eh?
I’m a fan of all Blizzard games, and if it takes them another year to make another perfect game so be it, I for one will buy SC2 D3 and any other game they come out with.
At what point will this game be obsolete due to advancements in hardware that this game won’t be able to take advantage of because the R&D is tuned to hardware that is two years old? In other words, since this game has been developed for probably 3 years plus, I don’t think it will be able to utilize the latest hardware advances and will thus be behind the curve even before it is released.
I also don’t understand how a company with 10 mil. online gamers at $15 a month ( = 150 million PER MONTH in revenue) can’t hire an adequate staff to develop multiple games at once.
You are 100% correct on both probably more than you think.
They designed the gameplay to not deviate too much from the original boxing it in. Now the the program and drivers have been written for a game that should have been released in 2007 (development has been longer than you think, I’m a CE myself).
Added to that the SC fans are getting older and are either getting disinterested or finding better games to play.
And yes, they’re HR department seems to be failing since they can’t seem to hire people as they are needed…then again maybe it’s the stupid accounting guys telling top management that they won’t make enough money if they hire.
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People like you are the reason Blizzard gave each copy of Starcraft a unique key code.
People like you, are the reason the game industry already surpassed the movie industry in terms of profitability…
y cant they just get the game done im getting sick of waiting. im almost gonna not buy it if it makes the release date even farther. i want to play now the new units look so awesome
I think the graphics being slightly worse will in turn be a great thing. The game is beautiful as it is, and not all of us can afford high-end systems. It’s just like Guild Wars 2. While that game’s even further away than SC2 (right now, at least), they aren’t adding anything ridiculous to the graphics, but instead are using techniques to make it look better without demanding more hardware. Part of the success behind Starcraft 1 is that everyone can run it on just about any system out there.
As for getting pissed about it being delayed, grow up and be patient. Money doesn’t make development go any faster…and odds are, if you played the current build you’d get tired of it within a week. That’s what they’re going after….that’s what no sheer number of developers can add to the game. They want it to last…and last it will.
They should make a small demo to release now while everyone is waiting. Not of the full game but maybe some one directional unit play.
bunch of whiners. when the game comes out, youll cave and you will get it. don’t even kid yourselves and think that by complaining about how Blizzard has ALWAYS done business (therefore, making amazing games) you will somehow convince them to release it earlier. They know you’ll buy it, and so do you.
So shut up, grow up, and wait.
yeah, right, we need to wait? Let those warcraft guys wait for a few months! I hate to see how much manpower they put into Warcraft, while we are left alone in the cold. The Starcraft fans deserve something too. And it’s not like i’m asking for too much. I’d be very happy if it was a pre-release demo with 1 skirmish map.
Blizzard is pushing starcraft 2 back again because there was 2 many people complaining about the building of the nukes the time was cut in half and that there is no more wraiths.
I have heard this before. I was a big duke nukem fan, had all the expansion packs. Then in the mid 90’s there was suppose to be a big release of Duke nukem but then all these other FPS came out around that time like Rain bow six. Then there was a bunch of hype in 2000 for duke, and they finally killed it off last year after almost 13 years of ” it will be out when its ready, and it will be the best out there”. They same thing will happen with star craft. Blizzard is making huge mistakes by pushing back all the time, they will lost a huge fan base and support and then that will be it
Ahh.. Blizzard hoax..
Where is starcraft2 ? where is Diablo3? where is Starcraft ghost ??
all Hoax !!!
Actually; Starcraft Ghost Beat was released in 2007. It just sucked so bad nobody plays it.
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… No comment.
Wait, yes I will.
You’re an idiot. ;]
Actually 11.5 million people paying 20$ a month
230$ million
and also like world switch and game buying is another 20$million a month easy
im wondering how they cant afford to hire another like 50 game programmers to finish the game -.-
blizzard is a love/hate relationship
right now im really hating it
For me it’s just the fact that the game is ready, yet B-net isn’t. B-net doesn’t take any race “balance” work or figuring out the best attack and d of each and every unit. Granted, B-net is crucial and may take a lot of man hours, but it seems as if it’s a straightforward task: nothing to delay the release date by 3/4 of a year
you are right, but there implamenting a system that checks your skill rating vs the players it brings to match agnst you its a big tech thing and its gonna make fights equal and unn fukable
well they keep pushing it back it wont met my expectations it will be like outdated
.
As far as i have seen at all the research from blizz i been trying to find(their is alot of varied info and alof or it is wrong, or their jsut guessing)is that starcraft 2 wings of liberty is finshed! b.et is’nt! the goal of blizz for b.net is the integration of the wow netowrks, thats why we had to do that b.net intagration on nov, 11 remember? wow acount holders know whats up! anyweay, i digress, the battle limatations are as follows,(i think) you will have a ranking system that will be far more advanced on picking a challanger for you based on your use of units and skill tactics. also, if you fight in a free battle agnst someone higher ranked then you you can challange them and if you win the battle under viable win you get ranking bonus,(i just made that up from what i read on their sc2 site, its a deduction, not a lie)also their not letting anything about the zerg units and abilitys out and i want to know some more about them!!!! im a zerg swarmer!!! i love the swarm!!!!!!
doesnt anyone remember warcraft and warcraft 2? They were the best before starcraft, and then warcraft 3 came out, with have the units, which was fine. But those stupid special characters and the fact that theres no awesome sea battles. So what we have here is an awesome w1 and 2, then a sucky arse w3. Thats what Im afraid will happen to sc2. I waited years for w3 to come out, happy, elated, like a kid on xmas, only to be pushed back, year after year. Blizzard doesnt care about us. I think they care about the money like all big compnaies which i understand, but they really should not get our hopes up, just to shred our hope. I think thats awful, and blizzard plays it off as “will not release it untill its time” screw u blizzard, you should just NOT annouce a release date and get everyones hopes up just to let them down with a shody product.and here I am again, waiting for you sc2… again.
Reading this whole page was pretty crazy… interesting arguments, some of them seem very true, but seriously you gotta know that if blizzard wants to make starcraft 2, THEY MUST CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS.
Hahaha, well played sir, well played.
-B.
LOL, Thank you for making my day. That was great, a joke to be remembered
I think that Blizzard is pushing back starcraft 2 so that it can get more publicity. I mean, come on! 1 game doesnt have to take 1 decade!
Here’s an example:
Remember Halo? The company already made 4 and already making a 5th one(Reach) in one decade! And it is one of the biggest hits ever. Im pretty sure almost every franchise knows that a big hit game needs a SEQUEL that follows up! Not let the first one rot and forgotten and make a new one over a decade later! And pushing the release date some more?!?! WTF???
I was looking forward to this game about 6 months ago, now i don’t care since mw2 came out
lol after reading that just so u know that is the reason why starcraft 2 got delayed they know how big that game was gonna be and they pushed the release date back becuase the economy sucks and most people can only afford one game for christmas. I meen look at all 4 beta tests theyve showed all the races fighting each other there has to be a closed beta out atm but they are keeping it so secert that no one knows bout it yet imm saying early spring look for the beta to come out to open public then expect a release late summer early fall thats my guess for the game
me 2…
By the time it gets released we will all have forgotten to even buy it…
I remember waiting for WC3, an starcraft ghost was never released (officially). Blizzard needs to act like a business an up the man power behind the creating process like other people posted earlier. They need some competition to keep them in check. And plese don’t tell people what you’re working on until you’ve taken your sweet time testing and are about to release a game.
A few reasons to BOYCOTT Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty!
I. The development of StarCraft II was announced on May 19, 2007, at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in Seoul, South Korea. Blizzard set a release date for the first public beta to summer 2009, but failed to make the release date. StarCraft II is being developed, under the codename Medusa, for concurrent release on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Blizzard has not yet announced a release date. Development on the game, initially delayed for a year by the temporary reassignment of Blizzard’s resources to World of Warcraft, began in 2003, shortly after Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne was released. According to Rob Pardo and Chris Sigaty, development for StarCraft II was put on hold for a year in 2005 due to the assistance needed for World of Warcraft.
II. Rob Pardo indicated in a June interview that LAN support would not be included in StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. Removing LAN has the effect of forcing players to connect through Blizzard’s servers, Battle.net, before playing multiplayer locally.
III. At the June 2008 Blizzard Worldwide Invitational, Blizzard Executive Vice President Rob Pardo was quoted as saying that development of the campaign was one-third complete. He also said that Starcraft II is to be released as a trilogy of games, starting with Wings of Liberty, focused on the Terrans, followed by Heart of the Swarm, revolving around the Zerg, and finally Legacy of the Void, devoted to the Protoss. – Consider the fact that we still waiting over 6 years for the SC2: Wings of Liberty, this means that the other two will be released in 2022…
IV. The blizzard make fun of us!
THE CONCLUSION: Just fuck them be a MAN!
Blizzard is completely unprofessional. By the time the game is released, it will be outdated and people who were once interested and anticipating the game’s release are now frustrated. A professional business would have order to their investments. Blizzard apperantly didn’t even realize battle.net would be inefficient to support the game until after the game was in the process of development. I feel like my investment should be in a reliable company that will professionally invest in its consumer.
lo he esperado toda mucho tiempo. y creo que sera el mejor juego.
Starcraft II World Editor will be the biggest reason I will get the game, because it will be like the War III editor except on steroids. I expect a large ammount of custom maps to be developed that will allow this game to thrive unlike any other Blizzard RTS game. Hopefully…
Starcraft is by far the best game ive ever played! Blizzard focused on the gameplay rather than fancy graphics. If a game isn’t fun then wtf are the graphics for? why not just watch a movie!
I personally think that Blizzard is doing a great job with StarCraft II. I’m very happy that Blizzard is taking its time to make a great, balanced game WITH good graphics. As always, a good game released later is way better than a bad game released on time. I love StarCraft, and it’s one of the few video games I ever play. Go Blizzard!
I’ll reiterate many other threads: I think blizzard is taking too long on this project. I went to a GameStop thinking the game would be on sale since Blizzard’s announcement two years ago and found out it wasn’t even released.
This is almost comical…
Any large corporation should be ashamed of themselves with this type of delay. At a minimum they should concede their fault surrounding their inability to produce a game on time instead of some round-about excuse of “perfection.” They should have seen this coming and not even bothered announcing a “Starcraft 2″ until they had a reasonable timeline.
Agreed. Blizzard doesn’t care about the fans waiting for Starcraft 2 because they’re making so much money off of WoW.
I have heard news that starcraft2 will defiently be out on the 15th of march in 2010 oh sorry i forgot to say i work for blizzard lol. sorry about the fustration its not my fault its the starcraft2 teams ffault they havent made the graphics to a high enouth satndard and theres one more unit there introducing.
sorry but its actually coming out in may 30th or 31st.
my sources believe that they are nearly done with the programing and stuff like that.
and also, arent you david kim, the one that plays games for blizzard?
i saw the videos and the effects ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!
ohhh…! pirates! yeah ill get a copy…
but they wont get my money… hahah.. it’s mine! mine! mine!… too bad it pushed back.. im sticking with mass effect 2..
come on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
warcraft is so gay, they should really focus on the real thing.
my entire school, literaly, hates world of warcraft,and they would rather play starcraft 2.
P.S i hope that blizzard entertainments accidentlay reads this and they come to there senses that warcraft is gay and they should dump it and focus on geting starcraft 2 done.
STARCRAFT 2 ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
sounds like another ghost to me
true, what ever happened to that game?
Well, well, well. I used to be an avid Starcraft fan. Not anymore. I’m sorry but 13 years after the sequel is way too long to still be a fan of. Besides, the graphics are HORRIBLE compared to many of the games that have come out. They are using graphics that were cool back in 2008. Okay, peeps, that is way too subpar. Everyone saw the graphics, and everyone has said that the graphics were stunning…for 2008. For 2010, boringly dram.