cateran#14
" Blizzard's vice president of game design, Rob Pardo, has revealed to Eurogamer that early delays to StarCraft II's development were a result of staff being called off to work on World of Warcraft for a year.
Work on StarCraft II started in 2003, but Blizzard didn't even announce the game until 2007 - and it's not due to launch until later this year. However, despite the WOW-relayed delays, Blizzard has had a playable version of the game since late 2005.
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Once WoW launched, the team were able quickly to prepare a playable multiplayer version of StarCraft II - which they've been building upon for testing and balancing purposes ever since.
"We build the multiplayer side first," Pardo explained. "It was a brand new engine and brand new technology, so it did take us a couple of years before we had something that was reasonably playable. I would say late 2005 or early 2006 is when we had something that was probably legitimately playable."
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Blizzard didn't start work on the single-player side of the game until halfway through development, when the multiplayer was already fairly well underway - and according to Pardo, the single-player game has created an even bigger design challenge than the multiplayer."