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??In May not long ago, Blizzard's announcement of "StarCraft II" in South Korea triggered an unprecedented enthusiastic response among global real-time strategy enthusiasts. Due to Blizzard not disclosing the development progress of the game and the official website also not providing specific release information, speculations about the game's launch time began to prevail in the industry.
??Recently, there have been rumors that "StarCraft II" is very likely to be released at the end of 2007. This claim originated from a statement made by the game's lead producer, Chris Sigaty, during a recent interview. At the time, Sigaty indicated that Blizzard takes about three and a half to four years to complete a game, and he even revealed that the game would enter its initial testing phase by the end of this year. Since Blizzard has officially confirmed that the development of the game started in 2003, many people inferred based on Sigaty's statement that "StarCraft II" would be released by the end of the year.
??Just as countless players were thrilled by this news, Rob Pardo, Vice President of Blizzard overseeing all game designs, publicly denied these rumors. In a recent interview with MSNBC, he completely ruled out any possibility of "StarCraft II" being launched by the end of 2007 and joining the Christmas holiday sales rush.
??When asked about the release date of "StarCraft II," Pardo responded to the journalists like this: "At this stage, I can confirm that the game will not be released within this year. Many people believe that the game's completion rate has reached a considerable level, so they hope it will be available by this Christmas. But in reality, this is absolutely impossible."
??Pardo also mentioned Blizzard's future development plans during the interview. He revealed that the current 40-person team responsible for developing "StarCraft II" is just a small-scale production team. He also hinted that the company is currently focusing its efforts on creating a next-generation large-scale multiplayer online game (MMO). According to Blizzard's previous statements, it has basically ruled out the possibility of this game being a sequel to the "World of Warcraft" series. Therefore, many people believe that this MMO new work could very likely be the previously undisclosed "Diablo III".