Development
The development of StarCraft II was announced on May 19, 2007, at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in Seoul, South Korea. According to Rob Pardo and Chris Sigaty, development on the game, though initially delayed for a year by the temporary reassignment of Blizzard's resources to World of Warcraft, began in 2003, shortly after Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne was released. StarCraft II supports the DirectX 9 (Pixel shader 2.0) software, and it is also fully compatible with DirectX 10 as well. The development team had decided not to add exclusive DirectX 10 graphic effects. The Mac version uses OpenGL. The game also features the Havok physics engine, which allows for more realistic environmental elements such as "debris rolling down a ramp". Additionally, there are plans to implement VoIP into the game.
At the June 2008 Blizzard Worldwide Invitational, Blizzard Executive Vice President Rob Pardo announced that development of the single-player campaign was approximately one-third complete, as well as that Wings of Liberty would be followed up by two expansion packs – StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, which would focus around the Zerg and StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void, which would focus around the Protoss. On February 25, 2009, Blizzard announced the Blizzard Theme Park Contest, where prizes would include two beta keys for StarCraft II. The updated news and updates page of Battle.net for Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne stated that the top 20 players from each realm was to be given a StarCraft II beta key.
Blizzard posted a release date for the game's first beta of Summer 2009, but failed to release a beta during that time. Since May 6, 2009, it was possible to sign up for the beta phase of the game. In November 2009, the game's producer Chris Sigaty confirmed there would be no public beta for the game taking place in 2009 but assured fans that it would happen next year. In February 2010, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime announced that a closed beta would open later that month. On February 17, 2010, StarCraft II began closed beta testing, as promised. The beta was expected to last for 3–5 months. Beta keys for the initial release were sold on eBay for prices as high as $400. Blizzard also released a map editor for the beta as part of Patch 9. According to the company, they had planned to release a major content patch towards the end of beta testing. As of July 23, 2010, eighteen patches had been released for the beta (only seventeen on European servers), including a patch which provided access to the Galaxy map editor. On May 12, 2010 Blizzard released the beta client for computers running Mac OS X, for the users who had signed up. On May 17, 2010, Blizzard announced that the first phase of the beta test would be coming to an end in all regions on May 31, but it was later extended to June 7. The second phase began on July 7, 2010, and ended on July 19, 2010.
In an interview held in June 2009, Rob Pardo indicated that LAN support would not be included in StarCraft II. Removing LAN requires players to connect through Blizzard's servers before being able to play multiplayer games, causing gamers to voice their dissatisfaction online. Further controversy was sparked when Blizzard confirmed that the game would not support cross-server play out of the box, restricting gamers to only play against local opponents—for instance, US gamers against those in the US and Europeans against Europeans. The company originally explained that Australia and New Zealand servers would be located in Southeast Asia, pitting them against combatants from Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. However, starting from patch 1.1.0, it was announced that the Southeast Asia/Australia/New Zealand version of the game would not be strictly region-locked, with gamers able to play on both the SEA/ANZ servers and the North American ones.
Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard, announced during the opening ceremony of Blizzcon 2009 that StarCraft II and the new Battle.net platform would both be released in 2010, with an approximately one month gap between releases. As of March 2010, Blizzard had stated that the new platform was being tested outside the beta and was planned for release in early July 2010, for both StarCraft II and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, with a later upgrade for Diablo III. On May 5, 2010, it was revealed that StarCraft II and Battle.net 2.0 would be integrated with social networking site Facebook, "linking the world's premier online gaming platform with the world's most popular social platform"—a move that allowed gamers to search among their Facebook friends for StarCraft II opponents. Wired magazine, in its annual Vaporware Award, ranked StarCraft II first among the delayed technology products of 2009. StarCraft II was finally released on July 27, 2010, with launch parties in selected cities of countries around the world, such as Singapore. Customers and reviewers who received the installation DVD before the July 27 release were greeted with an error screen, telling them to wait until the release date. There was no known workaround and some reviewers had praised the action for limiting journalists to playing and reviewing the game with actual players.
Compared to the original StarCraft, StarCraft II was designed to focus more heavily on the multiplayer aspect, with changes that include major improvements to Battle.net, a new competitive "ladder" system for ranked games, and new matchmaking mechanics that are designed to "match-up" players of equal skill level. In addition, the replay function, which allows players to record and review past games, was improved. Blizzard also stated that they incorporated changes to the game that were suggested by fans. StarCraft II continues its predecessor's use of pre-rendered cinematic cut scenes to advance the plot while also improving the quality of in-game cut scenes within the levels themselves, which are rendered on-the-fly using the same game engine as the graphics in the game proper. Blizzard stated that, with the new graphics engine that StarCraft II uses to render the gameplay, they "can actually create in-game cut-scenes of near-cinematic quality". Improvements include advanced scenery allocation and more detailed space terrain, such as floating space platforms with planets and asteroids in the background. Small cliffs, extensions, and even advertising signs were also shown to have been improved and refined.
Read more about this topic: Star Craft II: Wings Of Liberty
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