StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm out after 2011, mods Bite Back at Valve
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty fans may have to wait a little longer than they thought for the next Zerg rush. Heart of the Swarm, the next installment in the three-part StarCraft II series, most likely won’t be released any time next year.
Chris Sigaty of Blizzard told IGN, “We will be very hard pressed to bring it out next year. I don’t have a date, but it’s more ambitious, it’s bigger than what Warcraft: The Frozen Throne was to Reign of Chaos and I don’t anticipate it being done in that one year time frame.”
It may be worth the wait if Heart of the Swarm will be so epic even Blizzard doesn’t know its limits of awesomeness yet.
“We’re making pretty significant changes and still figuring things out,” Sigaty said. “As far as the multiplayer game goes, we’ll definitely see changes across all three races. What those changes are… if I knew I couldn’t tell you, but we don’t know. We’re going to continue to look at the game and see where the holes are and see what makes the best sense for the game… we’re very, very early in the process for Heart of the Swarm.”
But fear not, Terrans – at Blizzcon, Blizzard announced four new internally-developed mods are in development for StarCraft II, titled StarJeweled, Left 2 Die, Aiur Chef, and Blizzard DOTA.
Despite the trademark controversy surrounding Valve’s hostile takeover of the “DOTA” acronym, Sigaty said Blizzard DOTA will be the largest of the mods and is expected to be released last. Left 2 Die may be Blizzard’s way of publicly poking back at Valve, as it features hordes of undead and, obviously, a similar title to Left 4 Dead. StarJeweled is a version of a Bejeweled tower defense game, and Auir Chef is best described as Iron Chef for a Protoss cook.
All mods are expected to be released “within the next few months” for free download.