Rock, Paper, Shotgun

More hyperbolic hyperbiff inbound from Blizzard, who are going to be causing fanmen to punch the air and whoop at Blizzcon later this week. It’s time for the Starcraft II trailers, and we have a CGI sequence with Zeratul up to his Protoss-business in some space-ruins – not Blizzard’s best, but okay – and then plenty of in-game footage, showing off storyline, environmental effects, and tiny men shooting each other unto death. Also robo-things with lasers for eyes, which usually go down okay in the Rossignol household.

Other SC2 news includes: No co-op campaign, and some kind of DLC, as well as a “trial”, which will be released after the game hits the shelves/internet.
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Chums of RPS VG247 have (just about) scooped the internet with a huge hands-on previews of Starcraft II, and an interview with Blizzard bossman Rob Pardo. Needless to say, we get to learn quite how Starcraft II causes other games to seem like nothing in comparison, and how the three-game structure that the game has been broken up into will work. Here’s Pardo on those two follow-up expansions: “Right now the plans are to do something along the lines of full single-player campaign and some additional features on the multiplayer side, but obviously using the same engine. That to me is an expansion price point. If we decided to put in three new races, and a bunch of new technology and features, maybe that would be a standalone product. But right now I think we’re looking at being much more like an expansion feature-set.” Anyway, go have a read of the full thing. The internet will be overflowing with more SC2 stuff today, following a big press event.

Actually, it’s just the hey-where’s-that-beta of Starcraft II that has been delayed until 2010, but all this slippage is starting to make the field a bit sparse. Are all the games going to suddenly wake up next to each other in early 2010, thrash around in a panic, and delay things for another year-segment? Will Tiny Tim have anything to play come Christmas morn? The news of SC2’s vanishment into the future came (in)directly from Acti-Blizz biz-duke, Bobby Kotick he said: “As we prepare for next year, we have moved the expected release dates for two games, Activision Publishing’s Singularity and Blizzard Entertainment’s StarCraft II, into 2010.”

He probably knows what he’s doing, as the company brought in over a billion dollars last quarter, according to VG247’s report. There will be more through there later, if anyone cares about Acti-Blizz money stuff. Not me, I’m off to smoke some feathers and get high on loose jazz.

Update: Ooh, apparently this is tied to a Battle.net delay.

UPDATE: This story on VG247 suggests that they really mean it: no LAN support of any kind. Bananas.

An abundance of Starcraft II stuff has appeared on the grainy info screens of RPS HQ, including project lead Dustin Browder saying that the beta is set to last “four to six months”. Which means they’ll be right up against it if they’re aiming to get the game out before Christmas. In rather more bizarre news, Blizzardian hyperboss Rob Pardo has said that that the game won’t support a LAN option, and that the decision not to include it “is because of the planned technology to be incorporated into Battle.net.” Which presumably means they are going to support play over a local network, but you’ll still need to be online and logged into Battlenet on individual accounts to play. Maybe. I could be quite, quite wrong.

Seven minutes of footage – watch those tiny dudes eviscerate! – courtesy of Joystiq, below.
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A new post over on the official World Of Warcraft website reveals that an “opt in” for the forthcoming Starcraft II beta has been added to your beta profile settings page on Battle.net. Needless to say, that’s only there if you have a Battle.net account. The US beta will apparently come online before the rest of the world. Thanks to Pat for the tip.

Starcraft II has changed substantially since I first played it almost two years ago, and yet it remains fundamentally the same game. That provides some real insight into how Blizzard work: they have a kind of pure idea of what they’re aiming to achieve, and the development process is one of repeated iteration: UI after UI, art style after art style, each wave of changes bringing them closer to the perfect balance of what’s playable and what’s beautiful. Anyway, I expect we’ll be awash with fancy trailers in a couple of months time, but for now I’m enjoying the sort of back-to-basics game footage approach Blizzard are taking. Below the jump is a multiplayer battle report, with the designers commentating on a game being played between Blizzard employees. It’s revealing stuff.
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