During an interview with MSNBC, Rob Pardo, Blizzard Entertainment’s Vice President of game design, revealed that StarCraft II won’t be released this year. "…the only thing I can give you [that’s] concrete is it’s not going to be this year.
Some people were hoping, because of how advanced the game looks, that we’d have it out by Christmas, but that’s definitely not happening."
The "advanced" look of the various gameplay videos gave fans the impression that the game appeared to be well off but that’s not the case this time.
Pardo also revealed some more details about the game’s development. The StarCraft II team now has approximately 40 people, which may seem small considering Blizzard Entertainment employs well over 2000 people across the world. Once the game debuts, one of the main multiplayer features will be the built-in matchmaking system, which was missing from the original StarCraft.
As for future plans for Battle.net, Pardo hinted at new concepts like spectators being able to view matches, improvements to matchmaking, ladder systems and automated tournaments and enhanced support for the mod community. Lastly, StarCraft II won’t feature a fourth race, "No fourth race. We talked a lot about it. We ultimately decided we wanted to focus on the three races we had."
