14 DAY TRIAL // The bad news is that Starcraft II is not coming out in 2009 and millions of real time strategy fans will find they have to look to an unknown date in 2010 for the sequel to the most loved RTS in the world. The good news is that the people at Blizzard are showing off features related to the game that will certainly serve to enhance the hype surrounding it.
We recently reported that players who create new maps for Starcraft II using the integrated editor would be able to charge for them if they believed that they had created something special that the official and free maps from the community did not offer.
Now, Blizzard is saying that the editor is powerful enough to allow interested gamers to put together role-playing sequences and first person shooters with it, using the same tools that are employed by the game designers when creating the single player and the multiplayer maps that will be shipped with Starcraft II.
At BlizzCon, the developers showed off three such custom maps, saying that they were created by some of the people working on the game in their spare time. One was a third person action-oriented RPG, another one played like a classic top down shooter based in space and another featured a new type of Zerg, specifically modified using tools that will be made public.
The versatility was impressive and could make the editor one of the most interesting elements of Starcraft II when it comes out and justify the decision to allow people to charge for the content that they create using it.
The decision to delay Starcraft II has led Activision Blizzard to lower the amount of money it plans to get from videogame sales this year. The buzz around the game suggests that the title will still make a huge impact when it is released early in 2010.