Blizzard Confirms New Product, May Be Starcraft 2

darkhitman writes "According to a Kotaku post yesterday, Blizzard has confirmed that they'll announce a new product at their World Wide Invitation in Korea next month. The statement issued by Blizzard verified that they 'do intend to announce a new product [...] next month" and "plan to revisit [Starcraft] at some point in the future,' but did not confirm the rumor that the new game would be Starcraft 2 — but we can certainly hope."

Not far from the truth.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://blizzard.com/jobopp/ [blizzard.com]

Job Update 4/26/07
New Position - Lead Engine Programmer Next-Gen MMO

Re:Who writes these story headlines?

[darkhitman]

That would be me (yeah, check the names).

Following this potentially awkward silence, I would suggest that you RTFA and attempt to discern what Blizzard is saying behind the marketing double-speak. Look closely, and you'll see that Blizzard doesn't rule out it being SC2... but doesn't promise anything. The two quotes I made were from nearly consecutive sentences.

I didn't exactly synthesize information here; the post was basically a summary of the Kotaku article. Not, however, that you read said article in the first place.

Korea? Bet it's Starcraft-related

[rsborg]

Since Korea is the worldwide capitol of Starcraft players.

Also it's not a total surprise given the hints [wikipedia.org] that Blizzard has been putting out (validity of "hints" left as an exercise to reader).

Starcraft II

[Frozen Void]

Starcraft could be the perfect strategy game if it was more editable and several fixes were applied.
(applies to Battle.net itself too)
The map editor sucks(by capabilities,everyone uses Starforge).
Games start with delay of 5 seconds.
Ladder was so prone to abuse blizzard closed it on all gateways.
When someone's client doesn't respond,game DOES NOT drop him,but instead freezees the game,
shows a non-modal timeout screen,for 40 seconds and then at 0:00 it could just stop if the player uses
the very popular lag hack.
Maphack and other exploits are not fixed.Maphack gives an enormous advantage in Starcraft.
Dragoon(and several other units) AI dances around when used with obstacles.
Pairs of units start dancing when they can't decide the right of way(heading towards each other).
All channels on battle.net with exception of 20-30 are not shown in channel list(it probably a crude anti-spam measure blizzard "invented").
The ability to save games is limited to host(unlike replays).
The random element of 70% chance firing to higher ground does not belong in this game.
When connecting to battle.net client opens 7-10 extra connections to the same server,and closes them only after several minutes pass.
Friendlists are limited to 20.
ignore lists are stored server side and reset each time you login.
Ums Map preview is disabled for some reason.
Maps in singleplayer list are limited to 1024 IIRC,beyond that it just doesn't displays them (batlle.net list works fine).
Spam bots which spam each 60 seconds are never banned and players who speak too fast are kicked out from the server.
Replays must be passworded games only.
The observer glitch:when observer is exactly on center of missile turret, missile turret stops firing and just freezes.
You need to place map revealers and disable fog of war,but cannot make the map be visible 100% in UMS without this.
Unit range,cooldown,AI etc are not modifiable by editor.
lack of math operations and variables in editor.
Spells/abilities are not modifiable and cannot be cast by triggers with exception of few.
Direct coordinates and locations are not supported.

the list goes on and on.

Re:Actually...

[JFitzsimmons]

EVE online?

Re:What's blackthorne?

[fmarkham]

From the home of the underdogs [the-underdogs.info]:

Blackthorne is an excellent action/adventure hybrid in the same vein as Delphine's celebrated Out of This World. Probably the most underrated, overlooked game from Blizzard (made before the company became famous with WarCraft series), the game received little attention when it was released (perhaps due to the fanfare surrounding Warcraft 1, released around the same time). Which is a shame, because it is an excellent, addictive platformer that is arguably better than Flashback. The plot is mundane enough: you are the only hero who could stop evil Sarlac from conquering the kingdoms. Armed with a shotgun whose firepower can be increased, and a few bombs and guided missiles, you must break through the Orcish army and kill Sarlac inside his heavily fortified castle.

Or why not download the abandonware from the above site and see for yourself.

Re:Eh

[GotenXiao]

There's something better on the horizon, and it's called Hellgate: London [wikipedia.org]. The company making it are Flagship Studios, led by Bill Roper [wikipedia.org]. Having seen the live demo given by same at i30 [multiplay.co.uk] about three weeks ago, I can safely say it's going to be good.

Re:Starcraft Ghost?

[Omestes]

Ghost died, pure and simple. It was Blizzards first attempt at re-entering the console market since the SNES days, and they got beaten by their own characteristically long development cycles. It was supposed to be XBox and Ps2, but then the next gen rolled around while they were still working on it, and eventually they gave up, since it would already be dated (its Blizzard, 5-6 years is a SHORT cycle).