Blizzard ceases major content updates for StarCraft II after over a decade

[Polycount]

In context: StarCraft 2 is one of the oldest RTS games on the market, but its lively competitive eSports community, and Blizzard's continued support of the game, have helped it maintain relevance over the years. Indeed, in a sense, StarCraft 2 is the competitive RTS community -- no other games have really achieved a strong foothold in the PvP side of the genre.

Sadly, as Blizzard has proven today with its latest StarCraft II community update, no king lives forever. In the update, the company reminisces about its long history with this beloved franchise and lays out its bittersweet plans for StarCraft II's future.

In 2020, Blizzard says it celebrated 10 years of StarCraft II with one of the game's largest-ever patches, bringing prestige talents for co-op commanders, gameplay improvements, and "massive updates" to StarCraft II's editor.

However, StarCraft II has long since entered its final stages of development, and that patch will be one of the game's last. From here on out, Blizzard says it will switch to supporting StarCraft II in the same way it's supported some of its other longstanding games, such as "Brood War."

For players, this essentially means no more proper content updates, paid or otherwise. Instead, Blizzard will focus exclusively on "season rolls" and balance fixes as needed.

This news is certainly unfortunate, but there's a silver lining. Blizzard hints that ceasing full-speed development on StarCraft II will let it focus on what comes next for the "StarCraft universe as a whole."

That could be Blizzard's way of saying StarCraft III is around the corner, or perhaps it has different plans for the StarCraft franchise. Only time will tell.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/87150-blizzard-ceases-major-content-updates-starcraft-ii-after.html

 

[Hexic]

Quite sad to see, but hopefully this alludes to another legendary SC game in the coming years.

 

[Squid Surprise]

Will it be StarCraft III... or World of StarCraft?

If they’re smart, they’ll go with the latter - but I’d prefer the former!

 

[franticfrosty]

Will it be StarCraft III... or World of StarCraft?

If they’re smart, they’ll go with the latter - but I’d prefer the former!

an MMO based starcraft game where you can basically do a WoW but instead of pets its a squad of your own units that you can control that will help out and attack or defend you or a place, lol that'd be fun and different

 

[Dennis83]

World of StarcraftS would be great.

 

[Hexic]

Will it be StarCraft III... or World of StarCraft?

If they’re smart, they’ll go with the latter - but I’d prefer the former!

They actually had a SC FPS in early development back in 2002, Starcraft: Ghost. It was leaked recently as being in development way back when, but was ultimately shelved:

 

[veLa]

It's the end of a gaming era, but it's not going to stop people from playing it.

 

[candle_86]

Meh it's activision, expect yearly Starcraft releases going forward

 

[amghwk]

Will Starcraft III be a "mobile only" game? Since everybody "has a mobile phone" now.

 

[franticfrosty]

Will Starcraft III be a "mobile only" game? Since everybody "has a mobile phone" now.

As much fun as that might be, it'd also be chaos if I imagine the UI & buttons required for SC2 lol, diablo though I am waiting on for mobile.

Would be nice to play diablo whilst on the toilet or waiting around, only decent mobile game would be diablo tbh.

 

[VitalyT]

StarCraft is a rare type of game that could handle 8K right today, because it is nicely playable even at 30fps. But with nVidia's 3090, it could do 60fps and perhaps beyond.

 

[moon982]

It will probably be last update well the company works on StarCraft 3 or StarCraft 4.

So this probably be last update to they bring out new one like StarCraft 3 or 4.