StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void is no longer a distant dream. The final expansion to StarCraft 2, and the capstone on a storyline that started in 1998, is coming out on Nov. 10. And then something unprecedented happens: For the first time since 2003, when StarCraft 2 development first started, Blizzard’s RTS team won’t be working on anything. That’s right: StarCraft 2, which first came out in 2010, has actually been in development for 12 years. And now that’s ending. And that means, for the first time in 12 years, Warcraft 4 is no longer impossible.
Warcraft 4: No Longer Impossible, Which Is A Huge Improvement
Real time strategy games aren’t really big business anymore, at least not the way they used to be. StarCraft 2 has been a big hit, but not as big as Diablo III or World of Warcraft. Blizzard’s newer games, like Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone, are different beasts entirely, and seem to appeal more strongly to a younger and more casual audience. As Forbes pointed out in August, the importance of those other games, and the changing nature of the games market, is a big strike against Warcraft 4 happening anytime soon. In some ways, the industry has moved on, and Blizzard has moved on, from the genre that made it famous.
But it’s not all doom-and-gloom: After all, StarCraft 2 has been a big success, if not on the same scale. And Blizzard has made some intimations about the future of Warcraft recently. At GamesCom, a Legacy of the Void producer confirmed to IGN that a new Warcraft RTS is very definitely on the table for discussion. That doesn’t mean it’s happening, of course, just that the team and Blizzard brass will discuss it. That’s a lot better than the official word for the last few years: absolute, total silence.
But with WoW declining and StarCraft 2 ending, Blizzard is going to undergo some major changes no matter what happens. And I don’t think this company will reorient totally toward MOBAs and other casual games. The RTS team still exists, after all, and it’s pretty darn good at one thing in particular: Making RTS’s. Why shouldn’t the next one be Warcraft 4? Sure, it won’t come out for many, many years. It may not be top priority in the company. But it would be destined to be a big hit, and it’s the most logical move. We’ve been demanding Warcraft 4 for over a decade. Blizzard may finally answer—although we won’t know it for a long time. Dare to dream.