When do the expansions come out again? (Sorry if this has been asked)

[Scar]

So? I mean I know it is always "out when its out," but I didn't know if Blizz gave some sort of rough timeline. Thanks!

[TheEconomist]

~1 year minimum

i.e. expect 18 months or longer

[Pandonetho]

i.e. expect 18 months or longer

Because what we expect is never correct, actually expect 24 months or longer.

[Hav0x]

They said at least a year so expect 2 years.

[Mrjiggles]

IDK about you guys but im guessing 6 years, since an expansion is like half a game and took blizzard 10 years for sc2 or maybe 3.3 years since an expansion could also be 1/3 of a game.......

[protoswarrior]

SC2: WoL was where they created the game engine from scratch, that's what took them 5+ years. For Heart of the Swarm, we could expect only about 1 year or 1.5 years of development time before we see a beta for that.


See what I did there?

[Gurluash]

I dont even think it needs a beta as Sc2 did. I mean, its mostly a singleplayer campaign with maybe 1 or 2 new units for each race.

[Articorse]

Am I the only one who thinks they might actually release HOTS by august 2011?

...

I hate my ever-present and all-consuming optimism.

But to be honest, they can definitely make it in that much time. It's just that Blizzard being Blizzard, they would probably delay it at least by another year just to make sure everything is insanely, beautifully, jizz-in-your-pants perfect.

[pure.Wasted]

IDK about you guys but im guessing 6 years, since an expansion is like half a game and took blizzard 10 years for sc2 or maybe 3.3 years since an expansion could also be 1/3 of a game.......

It's tricky. As far as the single-player goes, Blizz has said they hope that the expansions will have just as much content as the original campaign. This seems to suggest a minimum 2 year production time if we're to have AT LEAST 2 pre-rendered cinematics (since they said each takes about 1 year). But of course the game engine itself is completed, many units/buildings are already created, some high-rez (for cut-scene purposes) models are created, many (Zeratul, Kerrigan x2, Zergling, Hydralisk, Marine, Raynor) pre-rendered models are created, so they don't have as much work to do.

For the multiplayer, 95% of their work is done. Even if they add 2 new units per race and totally rebalance 3-4 old units per race heavily, that still pales in comparison to what they had to do with SC2.

[Wankey]

It'll be April 1st 2012. Mark my words.