StarCraft II expansion Legacy of the Void really is out this year. Blizzard has just announced its release date...
NewsUpdate 9.14.15: Blizzard has announced that Legacy of the Void, StarCraft II's next big expansion, will arrive on Nov. 10.
The expansion will focus on the Protoss, who are about to face a serious threat to their species. It's planned as the conclusion of the game's five-year run in terms of story. Legacy of the Void will also include new units for all factions, as well as new multiplayer modes with shared bases and objective-based co-op.
The developer also released the game's opening cinematic, which will catch you up a bit on what's going on:
Original Story 2.2.15: It's already nearly five years since Blizzard released StarCraft II: Wings Of Liberty, a sequel which, as predicted, was a massive hit and sold millions of copies.
Expansion pack Heart Of The Swarm extended the game's universe in 2013, and since then, Blizzard has been teasing the launch of Legacy Of The Void - a second, stand-alone expansion which will focus on the Protoss species and provide an additional 20 missions.
For the best part of a year, Blizzard has remained quiet about when it'll release Legacy Of The Void. But an anonymous employee has since told Yahoo Finance's Tae Kim that "the next StarCraft II game is done and ready to go". And while there isn't a firm date set at the time of writing, "it's likely to come in the second quarter."
This means that the expansion could be with us as soon as April, or by June at the latest - though this, of course, is by no means officially confirmed.
Meanwhile, the same insider talked about one of the other projects secretly in the works at Blizzard. He's revealed that the team who brought us Diablo III are currently working on some form of MOBA set in the StarCraft universe. It is, the employee says, "similar to Warframe" - the free-to-play sci-fi shooter first released in 2013, while zombie shooters Left 4 Dead and Day Z are also cited as inspirations.
Now, this is by no means the first spin-off from the StarCraft universe. One of the best known is StarCraft: Ghost, a third-person stealth game first revealed in 2002, but then reportedly cancelled in 2014. It's pure speculation on our part, but could this StarCraft MOBA, which sounds similar to Ghost in any case, be a new attempt to revive its concepts with a different creative team?
Whatever it is, the game's still in pre-production, which means we won't be seeing it until at least 2016.
More news on this as it comes in.
