Most of you reading this will have already heard the rumors that Blizzard are set to announce a StarCraft MMO as opposed to a StarCraft II RTS title.
A few thoughts on the topic come to me and I’ll add them to the growing pile of commentary.
Firstly, I’m interested and I’ll surely check it out, if true. But, what the heck has happened to Blizzard’s Real-Time-Strategy department?
We’re heading into the summer of 2007 here and still no Diablo III, WarCraft IV or StarCraft II. In gaming terms these franchises are aged and fast becoming ancient. StarCraft came out in 1998 and Diablo II in 2000 fer cryin’ out loud. I’d still like to see all of these RTS games announced as soon as possible. A scary thought is that since WORLD OF WARCRAFT has been such a great, all-consuming success, the WarCraft RTS series seems dead and gone. I know we’re an MMO-centric site here, but I think there’s plenty of room for both the MMOs and RTS games to exist side-by-side.
Regarding a WORLD OF STARCRAFT MMO; Blizz only has one, almost 10-year-old game to work with here. They’re going to need to do a tremendous amount of lore expansion for the universe. There’s been a few StarCraft paperbacks published (which I haven’t read) so they have got that to draw from at least. I’d really like to see ship-to-ship, space combat. That would bring something new to the Blizz gaming table and help differentiate it from WoW.
We’ll know more on May 19th. And perhaps see other new game announcements at E3 in July and at Blizzcon in August. Fingers-crossed. Blizzard is also working on bringing their franchies to mobile platforms - so we’re heading into an eventual Blizzy glut. Just don’t forget my WarCraft IV and Diablo III guys. Appreciate it.
“Well placed US sources have revealed to us that the StarCraft MMO will be unveiled at an upcoming Blizzard event on May 19 in South Korea - the epicentre of the sci-fi RTS series’ rabid fandom. The unveiling of the new instalment has previously been rumoured for the South Korea event, though we now know that the title is in fact an online spin-off and not a new RTS game as previously assumed.”