[Blizzard Entertainment president Michael Morhaime has revealed today that StarCraft II will enter closed beta later this month and is targeted for a mid-2010 release.
“We’re slated to begin beta testing later this month. The beta test will be conducted on a global scale including thousands of testers from North America, Europe, Korea, Taiwan Australia, and New Zealand,” he said during today’s earnings conference call.
“We expect a tremendous response from our players and we’re eager to enter this stage of development as we enter the final stretch before release,” he continued, right before adding that Blizzard hopes the closed beta will generate “excitement” for the title PC gamers](http://www.destructoid.com/starcraft-ii-to-enter-closed-beta-later-this-month-163237.phtml)
When they announced Starcraft 2 in 2007, I stayed up late just to watch the announcement. When “Marine status: Active” flashed and the Korean crowd roared I stood up and cheered as well.
It’s been a brutal wait. And to tell the truth, I went from anxious, to impatient, to angry, to disgusted with the long dev time. But fuck, all those old feelings of joy just came flooding back.
It’s coming. God help me if I make it into the beta, I’ll weep.
One of my earliest Internet experiences was posting on Blizzard’s messageboard in the leadup to the first Starcraft. I and another guy vied with one another to answer posters’ questions with the most interestingly false information we could come up with. It was a lot of fun (and, I hope, entertained more than it irritated).
The long wait time is a given with Blizzard; that doesn’t worry me. I’m just thrilled that it’s coming out. Games from Blizzard are some of the very few games I’ll buy on the day of release. And midyear is perfect for a teacher!
Also, if any Korean-speaking dopers want to give me a literal translation on the text or what Tychus says (in the English trailer, it’s “Hell…it’s about time.”) I’d appreciate it ;D
can you give the phonetic english of what he said? I could barely make out what the guy said the first part was something like DaelDiOh all echoed and the second part that i could make out meant “it’s coming” Ohwelgiwakkum. No idea what DaelDiOh is too muffled and beyond my Korean comprehension.
the female voice said something like Choom Bee, which means “get ready” or “prepare” but making out the whole saying is hard because of the echoed effect.
Yeah, I know what they say in the English version. That’s all I can speak or understand ;D
It’s simply from a linguistic curiousity that I wonder how the Korean version translates.
And for those wondering, “Why Korean?” - SC was big in the US, but it is and was HUGE in Korea. I give props to Blizzard for showing the reveal in Korea. The Koreans deserve it.
This was probably ten years ago, but I remember reading a stat that claimed SC sold more total copies in Korea than it did in the USA.
Particularly impressive when you consider that the US population is like 6x the population of South Korea.
I’ve heard a couple of Korean translated voice acting for WoW, forgot the boss’ name but it’s second guy in BWL the big dragon dude. I was impressed by the voice acting in Korean, although I didn’t really understand everything he said. I prefer the English voice acting though because, at least i can fully understand what is being said.
The Korean in that SC2 trailer clip is pretty much close translations to the ones they write for in english. They’ll use whatever they need to, to make it similar. They’ll even use Korean phonetic English. Like zergling, it’s ChugLinguh and Hydra they say heedra. Most “new” english words are pretty much translated that way anyways. Phonetic Korean.
it’s better to get a phonetic version of what you heard because you have no real bias in what you are hearing. All you hear are sounds and those sounds could help me somewhat, since i try to hear something that really isn’t there. Again, I doubt you can hear something more than I can due to the echoed effect that muffles the speech terribly in the Korean version, where as the English version it’s so clean and not muffled with computerized effects to make it sound cooler than it already is.
btw my korean isn’t uber good. I can make out common sayings and such but if they use words like Hell, which I dont really know the korean word is. I have the old school english to korean dictionaries at hand but I doubt I can get a good translation due to the poor sound quality.
This is big news. Everyone always talks about how Blizzard releases are always late, but Blizzard knows that, too, and so has the good sense to not actually announce release dates until they’re pretty damn sure. All of the “scheduled release dates” that they repeatedly miss just come from the rumor mill, not from Blizzard themselves. The fact that they are in fact actually announcing a date now means that it really is genuinely close, not just rumored to be close.
* Windows XP SP3/Vista SP1/Windows 7
* 2.2 Ghz Pentium IV or equivalent AMD Athlon processor
* 1 GB system RAM/1.5 GB for Vista and Windows 7
* 128 MB NVidia GeForce 6600 GT/ATI Radeon 9800 PRO video card
* 1024x768 minimum display resolution
* 4 GB free hard space (Beta)
* Broadband connection
So, basically a top-end machine from six years ago.
Blizzard has always pushed its art department to do better rather than push gamers to upgrade their hardware. The crazy-low specs are a testament to this philosophy.
Hell, WoW still looks pretty good and it’s what, six years old now? I’ll take good art direction over envelope-pushing effects any day.
What’s the source for that? I’m more interested in the Mac requirements. Still, the fact that the Windows requirements are that low is encouraging.
Ideally, I want to get something that’ll also support Diablo III, but I’ll almost certainly be buying before the requirements for that are known, so I’ll have to cross my fingers there.
My desktop (where I am right now) is a dual 867 MHz G4 with 512 Megs of RAM. My laptop is also a G4, with IIRC a single 1.2 GHz processor and 512 Megs. I wouldn’t really expect either of them to run it, but like I say, I’m about due for a new one anyway.
