Last Friday at Blizzcon ’08, Blizzard dropped a bombshell about their upcoming, highly anticipated sequel: Starcraft II. Straying from the classic RTS release strategy that most, if not all, games to date have followed, executive VP of game design Rob Pardo announced that the initial release of the game will contain only the Terran campaign and that the Zerg and Protoss campaigns will be split into their own, separately packaged games to be released sometime later. The initial installment of the game is cited to be Starcraft II Terrans: Wings of Liberty followed by Starcraft II Zerg: Heart of the Swarm and finally Starcraft II Protoss: Legacy of the Void.

When questioned about release dates, Pardo likened the development time to that of Halflife 2 — with each episode being about a year apart. Apparently, only the Terran campaign is anywhere near completion, and the team at Blizzard is focusing on creating each campaign to be as full and in depth as the entire original game. Obviously, this announcement has raised many questions in both the development and gaming communities, and I have a few initial thoughts of my own. Continue reading →