Intro

StarCraft II was perhaps the most anticipated game of all time for the PC. Fans of the original StarCraft had been waiting for a sequel to the best seller for several years and have been denied and teased by Blizzard time and time again over the years since 1999. Yet the majority of these fans have remained patient and loyal, faithfully waiting for the day Blizzard will finally announce it, not discouraged from the fact that Blizzard decided to create three consecutive WarCraft products and the slap in the face when the company announced StarCraft: Ghost, a third person shooter available exclusively for consoles and excluded from the PC. Nevertheless, on May 19, 2007, we were assured The Legacy will continue.

StarCraft Freak is proud to present you The Chronicles of StarCraft II.

Since the release of the original StarCraft, everyone had been sure Blizzard would intend to visit the StarCraft universe in its RTS form, as its FAQ used to claim:

“Although we have not made any announcements and do not have a development or release timeline, we do fully intend to revisit the world of StarCraft on PC at some point in the future”.

Blizzard left many open questions in the original StarCraft story, such as the Hybrids. In addition, the company added more questions by releasing “Resurrection IV” with the StarCraft Nintendo 64 version, the bonus map “Deceptions” in 2001, and even posting random “StarCraft Trivia” question-ads on the Battle.net interface during 2000-2001, such as: “How many sons does Stukov have?” or “Who was infested and brought back to life”?. Obviously, they planned a sequel.

The domain www.starcraft2.com was owned by Vivendi Universal Interactive Publishing North America, the parent company of Blizzard Entertainment. It was already bought few years after the release of the original StarCraft.

2002 – Denial

During 2002, Bill Roper (ex-Blizzard employee) gave many interviews to the press regarding StarCraft II. Here are some of them:

02/07/02
GameSpot spoke to a Blizzard representative about reports that Blizzard’s Bill Roper had confirmed plans to create a sequel to StarCraft, the company’s wildly successful sci-fi real-time strategy game. Roper has not confirmed plans for StarCrat II, according to the representative, and Blizzard has not announced any plans for the game.

05/31/02
NBC GIGA TV in cooperation with pro-gaming.net taped an interview at E3 2002 with Blizzard Entertainment’s very own Bill Roper:

GIGA TV: Now we have some gossip about StarCrat II . Now tell me just something about that. We just need to know. Bill Roper: StarCrat II…all rumor. Anything you’ve heard. We’re not working on StarCrat II. We love StarCraft. We wanna make more games in the StarCraft universe. I’m sure at some point we would obviously do another StarCraft game, but right now we’re not working on StarCrat II. But it’s definitely…I’m sure when Warcraft III is done, it’ll be on the list of things to talk about.

10/21/02
HomeLan Fed had an interview with Blizzard VP Bill Roper concerning StarCraft: Ghost.

Bill Roper – Unfortunately for fans of the series, we are still not working on StarCraft II. We know you want it, and you know we want to support the universe and our passionate community. It is something we talk about frequently and fondly and is at the top of the list of games to consider every time a team becomes available

Blizzard had an “unemployed” team since the release of The Frozen Throne in 2002. The community speculated this team is the one working on the StarCraft sequel. Here’s what Bill Roper had to say on the matter on September 2002:

“The work on StarCraft: Ghost doesn’t impact the World of WarCraft team. It doesn’t impact what the WarCraft III team is doing next. It doesn’t preclude us from doing anything else in the StarCraft universe. We certainly don’t see StarCraft: Ghost as being something that replaced StarCraft II. It’s just as likely that StarCraft II will be released at the same time as Ghost.”

GameSpot had conducted (October 2002) a video interview with Nihilistic (The former company which worked on Ghost) designer, Ray Gresko, about the development of StarCraft: Ghost. According to Gresko, one of the main objectives of StarCraft: Ghost is to provide smooth continuity between StarCraft and StarCraft II. Through the years, many rumors started popping in the web, but all were proven to be wrong. Among these you can find the infamous rumors about the Vanix race, leaked letters from Mike Morhaime (Blizzard’s CEO) and people claiming they work for nVidia and posses knowledge about the game.

On 2005, Blizzard representatives started posting various questions in the official StarCraft Discussions forums at Battle.net about “What do you want in a future StarCraft RTS sequel?”.

2006 – Blizzard Warms the Surface

On 2006, Blizzard hired a famous RTS developer, Dustin Browder, who used to work for EALA (More details on the matter: http://www.blizzplanet.com/news/893/). In addition, Blizzard posted job-request for RTS developers and various editors in the RTS field in August 2006 “…to work With the team that created StarCraft and the WarCraft games”. These events were the first sparks of hope in the hearts of the StarCraft fans. Clearly Blizzard had started to work on a new RTS…

A Blizzard representative (Paul Sams) mentioned on August 2006 that Blizzard has 3 unannounced projects, and they would have “a major product announcement during 2007″.

In Various interviews with Blizzard employees over 2006 they claimed that “StarCraft is their favorite game and they will be the happiest people alive when it’s announced”. Hmm… Something on the horizon?

2007 – The Sum of All Hopes

The event which raised the hopes of the StarCraft fans above everything was Itzik Ben-Basat‘s announcement on The Burning Crusade release-party in London (January 16th, 2007):

“We’d like to say to our fans of Diablo and StarCraft that we haven’t forgotten we have these franchises,” he said. “We cannot wait to be here in a few years, or however long it will be. It won’t be a decade, and we’ll be celebrating the launch of [the next] StarCraft together”.

People in the crowd said that when he said that Blizzard Reps. looked as if a secret was being revealed and seemed uncomfortable…. Since that announcement, rumors started to surface quickly…

On a 10 minutes Ventrillo (VOIP) conversation regarding a Counter-Strike pro-league (which was leaked at January 2007), one of the organizers was being asked when StarCraft II will be released. He replied that Blizzard should announce it by the end of February/beginning of March 2007 (but adds, that with Blizzard you can never know for sure…). The contents of the discussion about Counter-Strike in the 7 minutes before the StarCraft II question were proved to be true, hence the conversation was authentic.

The release date of the first book in a new StarCraft trilogy – “The Dark Templar Trilogy” was announced – May 22, 2007. The community speculated that this book would supply background story for a StarCraft sequel, thus its release date might be close to a StarCraft sequel announcement.

April-May 2007 – Getting Close…

A rumor posted in fighterforums.com on April: According to it, there are rumors in the industry about the making of StarCraft /ii and a beta released by the end of the year. The new game will have a new race (“The Kerrigan Race”) and few new units for each existing race. The source added that Blizzard will try to “kill” the existing StarCraft so the sequel will succeed. The source mentioned that this rumor is true, unlike rumors spread in the past about the game. Many doubted the authenticity of this rumor since Blizzard seemed to keep supporting StarCraft with the 1.15 patch and its Custom Leagues feature.

Blizzard announced (April 2007) its 3rd WWI which would be held in Seoul, starting May 19. Many people assumed this will be the date StarCraft II will be announced since Korea is the “homeland” of StarCraft.

On April 26, thisisgame.com published an article regarding a possible announcement of StarCraft 2 in the upcoming invitational. It included a response from Blizzard Korea’s chairman, who said they would have a game announced on May 19th. It also included a quote from Blizzard’s CEO: “At the World Wide Invitational in May, there will be a surprise announcement”.

A day later, Blizzard sent this mail to Kotaku:

“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”

Thus, the rumors had been confirmed.

On May 13, less than a week before the WWI, Blizzard started posting various splash screens upon entering their site. The splash screen showed a timeline featuring all of Blizzard’s past games, with a big, glowing question mark at the end.

And finally, on May 19, at the WWI in Seoul – StarCraft II was announced. The Legacy goes on…

Thanks To Starcraft Legacy