incgamers talk to Xordiah

[Gifted]

Well, lookie here...

http://starcraft.incgamers.com/artic...zards-xordiah/

On the Warcraft Regional Finals on the weekend of 26th of June StarcraftWire had a chat with Stefanie “Xordiah” Gwinner, Blizzard’s European RTS-Community Manager, who gave us some insight into Blizzard’s internal leagues and processes. Here is what she said to us:

* Blizzard has an internal league, David Kim currently ranked at #1.
All Blizzard employees are welcome to play in their worktime, altough there is no reserved time slot for it (only multiplayer)
* Blizzard did some WAN (Wide Area Network) Performance-Testing and organized Games from Korea to USA.
These test were successful with a good performance and no lag / good latency
* No LAN Support was a really hard decision. Mainly they did it to give us the best Online experience with Battle.net and to prevent piracy
* Single player is mostly done, they are only “polishing” it
* Although Starcraft2 will focus on Terran, it will also include “Mini-Campaign” of the Protoss
* There is an internal date for both Beta and release. But like in any big company nothing is chiselled in stone
* Xordiah is a fan of the Dark Templar

Although Hawks911 and me tried our best to get the beta date out of her with some rhetorical traps, Xordiah understood to find even better rhetorical answers.

Our thanks goes out to Xordiah once again for her time and patience

I'm rather appreciative that they posted a solid subject with the potential for a new tidbit of info.

I'm rather happy to see the WAN testing which is the first solid indication of progess released relating to the battle.net infrastructure testing. It doesn't say much to us how far they are, but it does show it's working in some form.

It's also nice to have a confirmation that singleplayer is in a polish phase. This makes it more realistic for a 2009 release as I was under the impression that they could be before polish on this portion and thought this would ultimately be the weakest link.

Other than that, the rest is the same old but I wanted to share this publically instead of sliding it in the repository like the other items I've been finding.

[sandwich_bird]

only new info is that xordiah is a girl.

[Eligor]

So, they DO have a specific target date for the release. Good news even if they don't mean much at the moment.

[Hammy]

only new info is that xordiah is a girl.

Yup, she's actually really nice. I got to talk to her quite a bit at the ESL finals. She was very careful not to drop any important info on newer builds than the one we were trying out^^

[Pick]

If there is an internal date for the beta start, I would be interested to know if that date was already missed or behind schedule.

[Gifted]

I'll see if I can get permission to share the information I already know. I'll update in this thread later today.

[Sydarm]

I'll see if I can get permission to share the information I already know. I'll update in this thread later today.

info regarding what

[Hav0x]

I remember hearing in an interview that all of the single player missions are done except for a couple that aren't up to "blizzard quality" yet and that they are mostly working on the in-engine cut-scenes.

[monkeyfodder]

Do you guys think there is more to not including LAN than piracy?
for example, if all multiplayer games must be played on Battle.net this provides blizzard significant control over Starcraft II as an esport. Maybe potential for royalties/ fees/control of broadcast events?

[Pick]

Do you guys think there is more to not including LAN than piracy?
for example, if all multiplayer games must be played on Battle.net this provides blizzard significant control over Starcraft II as an esport. Maybe potential for royalties/ fees/control of broadcast events?

That was my theory also which I posted in the original no LAN rant thread.

Blizzard isn't just making a game with SC2, they are making an e-sport. All games on Battle.Net gives them control of the e-sport.