Speculation regarding the Release Date

[Norfindel]

I doubt they will release based on that only. They will release when they feel the game is ready.

Sysrpl: you better stay far from casinos, i think you have a tendency to lose money

[Santrega]

There is no knowledge about what the release date is, srsrpl is working off pure speculation until Blizzard announces it themselves. It's important to realize that SC2 is an anomaly and therefore trying to judge off previous schedules will not work in this instance.

I also changed the title to be more accurate.

I understand what you are saying, but in blizzcast 13, they said they want only a 3 month beta. That is February 23(?) - May 23rd. That would give them a little over a month of additional testing if anything goes wrong and still some time to prepare the game for release before July 4th.

I highly doubt this game is such an "anomaly" that blizzard would plan for second quarter after all of the previous issues that caused the delay were worked out and then not be able to meet that mark.

I believe with a combination of the blizzcast 13 and blizzards previous history; this date is pretty damn close to an accurate absolute latest date the game will be released.

If anything, blizzard may release it early, but I seriously doubt it will be released after july 4th(Without an unforeseen catastrophe, like a giant octopus that climbs onto land, pulls itself to blizzard HQ and eats everyone and everything inside). Since we can't really know about catastrophes, I don't think this date is mere speculation but rather a guess supported by fact. (I believe i've had this debate with gifted before)

[TargetBlue]

Hm, I still say June/July. I'll be making my pre-order by May the latest.

[dreadmourn]

I want a gauss rifle!!!, thanks sysrpl I compared it with C&C and its close. Again Im hoping it will be this year atleast. No point in debating because in the end its still blizzard's call and you heard it hundreds of times when its ready its ready. better discuss something else.

[hyde]

Just to let you know, there is a chance of it being released later than that. There is no absolute guarantee.

It was mentioned their original beta window time span was anywhere from 3 to 6 months once their beta came out. (G4 TV's exclusive interviews with Morhaime, Browder, Sagaty)
However that time window was cut in half; so 3 month beta . It would be a bad business decision to release SC2 and WoW Cataclysm during November time.

The game is more or less finished I would imagine. If they stopped being so paranoid and unleashed 100,000 beta keys and then gauged their gameplay data on that , it would be pretty concrete data.

That would only take 2 months. April and May. Send it off for gold processing June 1st, get the factories to make special edition crap and package. Send it all off.

Easily a late june/july 1st release. The beta was delayed for a year due to simply Battle.net . That's a years worth of polishing/fine tuning. I bet the Terran Campaign and voice acting was done sometime in 2009 or just "finished" for GOLD processing.

I bet they're working on the Zerg/Protoss ones already. Or DLC packs....ughh..DLC...

[Crazy_Jonny]

I'm sticking with July. Blizzard said the beta will last 3-5 months; my prediction is that they'll utilize all 5 months (knowing them). It'll also be more convenient because by that time I'll definitely have a new gaming rig.

[Hammy]

Hm, I still say June/July. I'll be making my pre-order by May the latest.

Meh we've been waiting for this game so long, I'll probably geek it the whole ten yards and go for a midnight release xD
(I'll probably buy the box so I can get the little booklet, instead of getting a digital version).

[Caliban113]

Blizzard already said they are releasing two titles this year (SC2 and the WoW expansion), which they've said will be a first for them.

Which is also a good reason to consider that things may be different this time. I am predicting a long beta actually; besides the pressure of being SC2, there is the whole e-sports thing - the game will need to be much more hammered and polished than the original. - I dont think we'll see a June or July release, but it probably wont be much longer than that.

[Santrega]

Which is also a good reason to consider that things may be different this time. I am predicting a long beta actually; besides the pressure of being SC2, there is the whole e-sports thing - the game will need to be much more hammered and polished than the original. - I dont think we'll see a June or July release, but it probably wont be much longer than that.

How can any of you predict a long beta? Did you guys not read/listen to blizzcast 13 or are you completely ignoring it?

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/communi...e13.html#21:25

Quote:

Hidden Content:

Rob Simpson: The new Galaxy Map Editor won't be available initially in beta, but what can people expect when they finally get their hands on it and when would you guys like that to be?

Chris Sigaty: So the editor is something that we're talking a lot about. We would like to potentially release it in what we're calling our major content patch update that's planned for pretty late in the beta to be honest with you. The question really is, will it be far enough along and in a spot where we can allow people to look at it and publish and will we have enough time to react to that? So it's something we're looking at closely. We've discussed it, but I can't say that it will or will not happen at this point, I don't know. It's a goal, but on the periphery of whether it will happen or not, that's probably my best answer to that. What we hope to get from having the editor out there early is get some people started on some cool ideas for maps so that when the game launches they can have some cool stuff up very quickly on the service basically, so that other players can download it and have some other options out there. We feel like we're going to hit a lot of the cases that players would have not only with just their multiplayer maps but we will have some cool mod maps that we're going to do on our own, but they're largely just glimpses at things rather than entire answers. The earlier we can get the community started, the better, it's just the time window is shorter than we have talked about.

You haven't asked this question yet, but I'll answer it ahead of time. We were targeting three to five months for the beta, we're really at a three month period of time for the beta at this point. We are still targeting the first half of this year, so with that in mind, it really shortens the window of time with our major content patch coming out pretty close to the end whether it's even worth it putting out the map editor at that point.

They are deciding what not to include in the final content patch in beta before the release because they want to stick to 3 months... If they felt they had a choice for a long beta, they wouldn't feel like there possibly was no reason to release the editor early.

The Sc2 team believes they have to release it after a 3 month beta... they must feel that way for a reason...

[Norfindel]

Didn't they say earlier than they expect to get completely bullshit-data in the first month? That means that they're going to balance this in only two months?