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Blizzard dusts off the old Hype Machine, announcement next weekend

A couple weeks ago, Team Liquid translated a Korean article claiming that Blizzard would be announcing a new game at the World Wide Invitational tournament in Korea on May 19th. And, straying into super-rumor-town, the authors of the original article claim that they heard from their friend who knows a guy who knows a guy who used to work for Blizzard North (which no longer exists) that the game to be announced would be a fully-3d sequel to Starcraft.

Rumors have always been abundant regarding the fabled Starcraft 2. Just over the past couple months we've heard rumors that it would be a 2D game with minimal updates from the original (as to not disrupt the Korean competitive Starcraft scene), we've heard it would be a 3D RTS as suggested in the above-mentioned rumor, we've heard it would be an MMORPG/MMORTS/MMOFPS, etc. Really, people have suggested that the followup to Starcraft could be just about anything, because no one really knows except Blizzard employees.

At the very least, today we have confirmation that something will be going down on the 19th. Blizzard has put up one of their patented multi-day teaser splash pages at Blizzard.com, and it's pretty safe to assume that this time it won't be leading up to a Battle.net redesign, since across the bottom of the screen we have a timeline of Blizzard releases leading up to a question mark. So since we at the very least know it will be a game, let's look at the most likely contenders:

Starcraft 2 (RTS)

• The Starcraft license fits best for the event it's being announced at.
• The event is a pro-gaming tournament, in Korea, a scene which is dominated by Starcraft. It would make sense to give them what they want. (It's tough to do an MMORPG tournament.)
• A Starcraft MMORPG would cannibalize WoW's user base, which wouldn't make a ton of sense for Blizzard.
• For what it's worth, this is what the article said it would be. Granted, it was third-hand knowledge from someone who really shouldn't have any inside info anymore, but it's something.

Starcraft 2 (MMO-something)

• The Starcraft license fits best for the event it's being announced at.
• After the unbelievable success of WoW, why would Blizzard ever make anything other than an MMO? With a normal game you get $50 once for the initial game, maybe twice if you release an expansion. With an MMO you get $50 once for the initial game, and then $15/mo until the end of time, and extra cash for whatever expansions you release.
• No seriously, re-read that last one. Why would Blizzard ever turn down another stab at the mountains of cash an MMO brings in?
• Blizzard has had job openings listed for awhile looking for people to work on a "Next-Gen MMO".

Something Completely Different

• Korea doesn't need a Starcraft 2. They've been perfectly content playing Starcraft for nearly a decade, no reason to stir the pot. Especially since there's a rather good chance that whatever sequel Blizzard could churn out would never come close to the getting same kind of widespread success in Korea that Starcraft received.
• Blizzard is exceedingly good at not announcing the obvious.
• Hey, remember Diablo?!! Remember back when Blizzard actually released games based on new and unique intellectual property!?! How about some of that?

Whatever happens, we'll know in less than a week. Until then, give us your own theories of what Blizzard has in store for us in the comments.

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