Blizzard: Heart of the Swarm Unvelied in May
Media outlets have received an invitation to a Heart of the Swarm press event next month.
Kotaku reports that Blizzard plans to unveil the second part of its StarCraft 2 "trilogy" for the first time next month. Various media outlets have already received invitations to the press event, and are promised to see a portion of Heart of the Swarm's campaign. What attendees won't see will be changes or additions to the multiplayer portion at this stage-- that's likely to be revealed later on this year at BlizCon 2011.
Blizzard is reportedly taking a different approach to this second chapter, focusing on Sarah Kerrigan and the Zerg legions. New legions are expected to appear along with an RPG-like mechanic. Media outlets present at the event will likely be given the green light to offer coverage, giving salivating StarCraft 2 fans a better look into the post-Wings of Liberty story.
Currently Blizzard is planning to launch Heart of the Swarm in early 2012. Of course, that can change between now and then. However, Kotaku points out that it received its press event invitation for an early peek at Wings of Liberty nearly a year in advance of the game's retail release. That said, this time next year we could be knee deep in Zerg goodness.
Back in December, the unpolished ending cinematic for Heart of the Swarm leaked onto the internet, but was quickly nuked on YouTube and Vimeo by Blizzard, claiming the standard "copyright infringement." The clip featured storyboards and dialogue without lip-synching, indicating it was still in the early stages of production. To seemingly back up its legitimacy, The Third Floor's watermark was spotted at the lower right-- Blizzard is one of the studio's clients.
To see the clip, Kotaku still has a local copy for your streaming pleasure here. Stay away if you're not into spoilers.
Blizz should have listened to customers and included a LAN multilayer option. In the meantime my cash stays in the bank and away from Blizz's accounts.
The sales figures also come to support what a lot of people believe - that piracy actually sells and does not harm companies profits! Tens of millions of people were before playing SC 1 and eventually hepled Blizz sell 8 - 11 million copies. The current SC 2 comunity is pretty small and a lot of the sales were actually helped by the massive SC 1 crowd, that would not be there to support their next part/version. curious if they'll manage to sell 3 mill of the secong expansion.
I really don't see the future SCII titles being standalone for one prime reason and that is piracy. If there aren't any MP changes exclusive to the new titles this gives no reason for anyone to buy them instead of pirating. All they would need is a legit version of Wings of Liberty and they would be good to go if they want to play MP if the promise of the future titles were standalone and compatible with the other versions.
I even emailed Blizzard about this to see what their two cents were on the subject and to see if they actually thought about this. I got a short email basically saying that they have not decided if they will release it as a standalone or not. Which obviously is backpedaling already so its obvious that it won't be the case.
Starcraft II not being as succesful as Blizzard thought it will be... Non shocking tbh.
I'll be surprised if this actually happens, tbh. I fully expect that they'll charge full price for it. They thought WoL sales were lower than expected, HotS will be even lower if they end-up charging another $60 for it.
Aaahhh yeah, the hype...
This is like Dr. Dre album - first hype the people out, than collect your cash, nice strategy.
PRESS RELEASE
Blizzard Entertainment has announcing that it's upcoming followup to its "Record breaking" Starcraft 2 series, The Heart of the Swarm, will contain a new LAN Gaming function. It will only be available for those who have purchased the new Zerg-focused game.
I would seriously die laughing....
The figure of 4.5 million games is from December 2010, not February 2011. So in 5 months it sold 3 times more than what the original SC did in one year (the original SC sold 1.5 million games in it's first year). Yes the original games sold about 10 million copies but let's not forget it achieved this number by being on sale for more than 10 years, in fact it still is on sale. I hardly call it a failure, and even blizzard said that the game was a commercial success.
I do agree on the LAN bit. It was a pity Blizzard removed it.
I'm just gonna wait until all 3 parts are out and are sold as a discounted warchest. I don't know how successful that will be considering they still want like 40$ for the D2 one.
Normally I just wait for the inevitable 50-75% off steam sale to pick up AAA titles, but that doesn't work with Blizzard games for obvious reasons.
At least Torchlight2 will have LAN play