starcraft-ii-heart-of-the-swarm posts

StarCraft II players have been waiting patiently for developer Blizzard to give out more info on StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, the Zerg themed second game in the planned trilogy of titles for the sci-fi RTS sequel. At GDC 2011, during a panel on the future of the strategy genre, GameSpot reports that Blizzard's Dustin Browder gave a little more info on when Heart of the Swarm might be coming out.

Browder stated that he expects Heart of the Swarm to be released in the "next six months to a year." That would suggest that the game could in fact be out by the end of 2011. It's perhaps more likely, however, that the second StarCraft II game will be released in 2012.

Blizzard will have two retail games released in 2010; StarCraft II and the upcoming World of WarCraft Cataclysm. But it looks likely like Blizzard might not release any games at all in 2011. Without stating a date for Diablo III at BlizzCon 2010 this weekend, it looks like that game won't make it out the door next year. Now IGN reports that the same can be said of the next StarCraft II release.

IGN.com reports that the Zerg-centric StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm won't likely be released until after 2011, according to comments at BlizzCon from Blizzard's Chris Sigaty. He's quoted as saying, "We will be very hard pressed to bring it out next year. I don't have a date, but it's more ambitious." In the meantime you can check out some concept artwork for Heart of the Swarm over at IGN.

Next month's BlizzCon 2010 event should reveal more info about Diablo III and what's next for World of Warcraft but people heading to the event in Anaheim, California should not expect to see any info about the next chapter for StarCraft II. PC Gamer reports that according to Blizzard's lead designer Chris Sigaty the planned next chapter in the sci-fi RTS franchise, StarCraft II Heart of the Swarm, won't be playable or even shown at the show.

While there will be a StarCraft II story panel at BlizzCon, Sigaty states the panel is, ". . . just to tie up any loose ends and questions players have about what was happening during the story." While we suspect the show will have some StarCraft II-related reveals it's a little disappointing that we apparently won't be learning anything about the Zerg-centric next game in the series.