More StarCraft 2 Speculations

I’ve dug some more into this whole SC2-rumour, and I’ve found out some things which might interest the SC-gamers. First of all at Blizzard’s own Employment Opportunities-page there’s been alot of new hiring for a so-called “Next-Gen MMO”. This is quite interesting as I, if I remember correctly, a Blizzard-spokesman said that after the successfull launch of World of Warcraft - all games coming from Blizzard would be MMO’s. The only exception that we know of so far is StarCraft: Ghost, but it’s been said that SC:G is going to be console-only. So if Blizzard is about to create a new MMO, so-called Next-Gen (whatever that implies), what could it be?

Blizzard have, to this date, three successfull different series of games which’ve made them well known in the gaming environment (and earned them millions of dollars):

• StarCraft-series: This RTS-game is so known and so popular, even to this date, that in Korea it’s got its own channel on TV. The thing about StarCraft is that the graphics never really meant anything (at least not later on), it was all about balancing the units and (most important) the gameplay. This sci-fi RTS is mostly about your microing-skills in combat and controlling large numbers of units. In 2005 the korean Lee Seung Seop died, 28 years old, from consecutive play of StarCraft and World of Warcraft for about 50 hours.
• Diablo-series: The hack’n slash-games really got to another level when Blizzard released Diablo. You control your character and in a real D&D-style, you kill your way through the dungeons - getting experience points (for level) and new weapons/armours. When Diablo 2 was released, alot of new gamers got interested, especially because of Battle.net (aka BNet). On BNet players from all over the world could play together online. The idea of killing monsters together and trading items between each other was one that made Diablo 2 have the largest online gaming community in 1997 (I believe it was). On it’s highest peak, Diablo 2 had 2.75 million players worldwide.
• Warcraft-series: If you haven’t heard about Warcraft nowadays, you haven’t been around the ‘net, yet. The Warcraft was originally an RTS that used the similar system as StarCraft, but instead of sci-fi futuristic, the theme was humans and orcs (the first one). The most acclaimed of them all, according to me (my holy opinion), was Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos (aka WC3). Though players could play online on BNet in Warcraft 2 (BNet Edition), competitions with money prizes came when online-WC3 became the most played online RTS after it’s release. It became even more popular when the expansion-pack The Frozen Throne was released in 2003. Then about a year and a half later, the MMO World of Warcraft was released. Because of the simplicity in gameplay and the socializing (in game, not in the real world) made it the MMO with the highest number of subscriptions worldwide (8.5 million). The game earned Blizzard approx. $10 billion in 2006.

So, I got around and found out another press message from Blizzard that was discussed on both Diablo- and StarCraft-fanpages. The recent message from Blizzard goes as follows:

We do intend to announce a new product at the Worldwide Invitational next month in Korea, and we appreciate the enthusiasm and interest in getting an advance look at what that will be, but players will have to wait until May 19th to find out more. Also, we have a very strong connection with the characters and settings of StarCraft, and we do plan to revisit that universe at some point in the future, but we don’t have anything new to announce in that regard at present.

If you read it like I did, you’d think they won’t do anything to StarCraft, but they do have a “new product”. It can’t be another expansion, as, for me, an expansion pack is only an expansion pack - not a new game product. We can only hope that they think like me. What I’m really hoping for, personally, would be a new game - not MMO mind you (time-consuming) - that ain’t connected to the other series they’ve made. Then they’ll show us all that they actually can create something new and ground-breaking (hopefully), and not just create another money-milking title from older series. Well, it’s only 21 days till the announcement is made on the World Wide Invitational (WWI) in Korea - so we just gotta look out for rumours and keep our ears sharp.

Some discussion about the recent message:
Diablo3.com: http://www.diablo3.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2870
Starcrafttwo.com: http://www.starcrafttwo.com/forum/showthread.php?t=149

If you find anything out there in the internet-jungle, please let me know through a comment! (About this time I curse myself for not having the contact-form up and running.)