Blizzard Announces New Title in Existing Franchise

[hendricius]

We're split on which franchise we think Blizzard will announce a sequel for this year. The two obvious choices are StarCraft, which hasn't seen an entry since 1998 when both StarCraft and its expansion Brood Wars were released, and Diablo, which has been on hiatus since Lord of Destruction was released in 2001. Both of these franchises are sickeningly popular, both are still being played around the world, and both are seriously overdue for a sequel. Blizzard hasn't announced anything in a while which leads us to believe we'll all hear about one of these famed franchises getting another chance at stardom.



Both Charles and Steve believe that it's probably going to be Diablo III announced this year. There's some speculation that Blizzard wants to keep Diablo hot and StarCraft seems to be a bit more like the everlasting gobstopper of the bunch. On top of that, the ill-fated StarCraft: Ghost might have been their StarCraft in production while the next Diablo game began development in earnest. It comes down to more of a gut feeling for this pick along with the heavier number of rumors circulating around the Diablo franchise in the past few years.

That leaves Dan, the lone dissenter and it may just be that he just wants to see what Blizzard does with a sequel enough that he's willing to believe anything. It also could be that StarCraft came out almost ten years ago and he chooses to believe Blizzard's Vice President of Development Itzik Ben Bassat when he spoke at the WoW Burning Crusade launch event in London that StarCraft would be released sooner rather than later.

original article:
http://pc.ign.com/articles/757/757996p3.html

January 26, 2007

[Dokken]

Blizzard Announces Starcraft II

Originally Posted by IGN

The long-awaited return of StarCraft has been rumored for years, and now is finally official -- Blizzard officially announced on May 19, 2007 the sequel to its incredible strategy title Starcraft.

Designed to be the ultimate competitive real-time strategy game, StarCraft II features the return of the Protoss, Terran, and Zerg races, overhauled and re-imagined with Blizzard's signature approach to game balance. Each race will be further distinguished from the others, with several new units and new gameplay mechanics, as well as new abilities for some of the classic StarCraft units that will be making a reappearance in the game. StarCraft II also featurse a custom 3D-graphics engine with realistic physics and the ability to render several large, highly detailed units and massive armies on-screen simultaneously.

Information from: http://pc.ign.com/objects/850/850126.html
Screenshots can be found here: http://media.pc.ign.com/media/850/850126/imgs_1.html