Let’s be honest. It’s been 12 years now since the release of the original StarCraft, and 11 since the best of its three expansions, Brood War, was released. At the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in 2007, Blizzard debuted a playable demo of StarCraft II and, by the next E3 in 2008, was promising fans would see it by the end of the year.
Obviously, that year has come and gone, as has another. Blizzard again promised in 2009 that release would happen before the end of the year, but yet another delay has struck. While the official site periodically receives updates in the form of a new multiplayer map for fans to drool over, or artwork and a back-story the new Protoss unit, the Mothership, the site is short on any specific details the fans are really craving – most notably the date this thing is going to drop and, to a lesser extent, if their fevered hopes over these many years have been justified.
A cursory search of the Interwebs reveals that even die-hard fans are beginning to wane in their enthusiasm, as websites like the StarCraft II Armoury see less traffic and more people acting up and acting out in their forums. Perhaps most telling is that Wired magazine named SCII their winner for the year’s biggest “vaporware” title, an “accolade” given to big-name games that just never seem to get released.
Since its inception, this award has belonged almost exclusively to Duke Nukem Forever, which had been in development only slightly longer than SCII. However, after the recent collapse of 3D Realms, the game will likely never see the light of day, and a new candidate had to take its place as the best game that will never come out. Wired has, with good reason, seen fit to crown SCII with that honor.
But does that crown really fit? Is Blizzard going to end up in the same position as 3D Realms, with their game shelved and business failing? Well, to answer the second part of the question first, not a chance in hell. WoW has over 11 million subscribers at this point, and the game’s low-level mechanics have evolved to the point that your cat could probably play it with little or no difficulty. This has elicited complaints from some fans about its simplicity at the beginner end of things, but it means that Blizzard essentially has a license to print money – they won’t be going bankrupt anytime soon.
As to SCII’s actual release, just take a look at Blizzard’s recent track record. While 3D Realms was involved with moderately popular games such as Prey even three years ago, everything Blizzard has touched in the last five years has turned to gold. Vanilla WoW? Success. Expansion #1? Huge Success. Expansion #2? Fort Knox may as well have just shipped its entire gold bullion stock to Blizzard’s front doors. As well, Blizzard is currently developing Diablo 3, which, like StarCraft, has a dedicated and voracious fan base.
The key is to look at what Blizzard has done. Each of these games – StarCraft, Diablo, and WoW, have risen to the top of and re-defined the genres they are a part of. Does this guarantee that Blizz will release SCII and that it will actually be any good? No. But it does mean that they have a higher-than-average chance to get it right. They’re not going to go bankrupt like 3D Realms, and shelving SCII at this point simply wouldn’t make sound business sense. SCII isn’t vaporware. Its awesomeness has yet to be determined, but it’s coming out. Eventually.
