Another interview by IGN with senior vice president of product development Frank Pearce is about StarCraft II at GC 2008 and how things are coming along. At this year#DY#s GC, StarCraft II is playable on the show floor, but it#DY#s the same build as was present at Blizzard#DY#s Worldwide Invitational earlier this summer.
The details are as below:
The issue with StarCraft II updates is that the game is in such a constant state of flux that whatever is reported on now may soon be removed from the game or dramatically changed the next time around. So right now there#DY#s a mechanic where you can pay minerals to basically get vespene gas more rapidly, which Blizzard says should create an interesting dynamic especially later on in a game as gas is required to access higher build tiers. Blizzard also said several other methods of tweaking gas collection have been implemented in the past weeks, so it#DY#s really tough to tell what#DY#ll wind up being chosen to be included in the final product.
Currently, the testing for StarCraft II doesn#DY#t include that many people. "It#DY#s like a limited internal alpha phase," says Pearce. "The development team that#DY#s working on it is playing it and we#DY#ve released some alpha builds to some other development teams internally and then the quality assurance department is also playing it."
Is Blizzard using some of the professional StarCraft players as StarCraft II testers? "Exposure to pro players is more opportunistic. We hosted an event in Korea that was an e-sport event for Warcraft III and StarCraft and we had a playable [StarCraft II] build that we brought along to give the pro players an opportunity to play it and give us some feedback. It#DY#s a new luxury for us to have this community of pro players playing our in-development games ... so definitely when we have the opportunity, we try to leverage it."
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Resource: IGN
More screenshots on next page.
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