Whenever StarCraft II comes out, you can expect a day one patch, because Blizzard is going to be refining the new Battle.net right down to the wire.
Speaking with VG247’s Patrick Garratt, lead designer Dustin Browder said that StarCraft II would almost certainly necessitate a mandatory patch right out of the gate, just to give the Battle.net team “a little bit more time to sort of get their ducks in a row.”
This doesn’t necessarily mean anything bad though, said Browder. “As a consumer back in the day, I always thought a day one patch was kind of a sad sign, but I’ve got to tell you, as a developer now I kind of welcome it, just for the chance to get a couple more months to really polish and work on the game a little bit longer.”
“If you think about the logistics of printing million of boxes, and millions of discs, and getting all that distribution out to all parts of the world, there’s a big chunk of time there that can be utilized by development to improve the game,” added Blizzard rep Bob Colayco. “It only makes sense to use that time somehow.”
The patch was going to be as tiny as they could possibly make it, elaborated Browder, “so it’s really quick once you install the game,” and not a hassle.
As for the rest of the game? Well, it’s coming along swimmingly, according to the full interview: The single-player campaign has all the missions and mechanics in place, and all the sound has been recorded – all that’s left is there is to playtest and polish the hell out of it until it’s sparkling a gleaming shine. The multiplayer balance is shaping up nicely, too – Browder said that while Terrans were a little bit below par at the moment, almost all the races were shaping up to have a 50% win ratio, with only minor tweaking necessary.
Though Browder was optimistic that the game would ship within the stated release window of “the first half of 2010,” he didn’t want to rule anything out. “You never know what’s going to happen. You never know when something’s going to jump up and bite you that you didn’t expect,” he said, “Yeah sure, today it’s looking great, but who knows tomorrow?”
“I can’t tell you how enthusiastic the team is at this point of getting this game out of the door, not only to get the game into the hands of our fans, but also so we can go home. But at this point we really want to get it out in the worst possible way, and any delays are going to meet with our righteous fury.”
Ah well, better than Day-One DLC, right guys?
