Like many other Blizzard fans, you're probably super excited about the upcoming release of StarCraft II -- it was "about time" when we first heard about the game, and now, this close to actually having the game out, anticipation is higher than ever. So why have you been waiting so long? According to Eurogamer's latest interview with Rob Pardo, you can blame none other than World of Warcraft for the delay. He and StarCraft II's lead designer both confirm that quite a bit of the RTS team were called back in to working on Blizzard's MMO. Artists and class and map balance guys alike were put back on WoW, resulting in the StarCraft title's delay for more than a year. Taken at face value, they're saying you could have started playing the new RTS last November if it wasn't for the whole Azeroth thing.

It's worth noting, though, that when they say "working on WoW," they don't mean developing the Crusaders' Coliseum or even Outland -- they're talking about the original design of World of Warcraft for the release way back in 2004. Even though Blizzard didn't announce the next StarCraft until a few years ago in 2007, production actually started seriously (with multiplayer first, strangely enough) right after the launch of WoW, in 2005. Which makes the choice all the more intriguing: they decided to delay the RTS even before they knew WoW would be the runaway success that it is today.

Guess the choice paid off. The beta of StarCraft II should be kicking off any day now (you all got keys at last year's BlizzCon, remember?), so even though that year delay was caused by WoW way back at launch, we'll see if they've had the time since to make a game that'll meet players' expectations.

Hey there WoW.com readers! You're probably wondering who the hell this guy is. And by this guy, I mean me. I'm a writer over at Joystiq, where we sometimes jealously watch all the fun stuff our sword and spell-wielding counterparts over here get to do. Luckily, and only by means of geographical location and the fact that they were showing off Starcraft 2, I got a chance to tour the Blzzard campus and take a lot of snaps if you know that I mean. Wink wink, nudge nudge.

These will be featured in a story over on Joystiq at some point today, but in the meantime here's a sneak preview just for WoW.com readers. You may already know about Blizzard's massive courtyard Orc statue that's in the process of being installed in the front of the main building, but you might not know about the tenets engraved on each of the eight compass points that tout Blizzard's mottos. There's a peek at all of 'em in the gallery below, and they're also listed just beyond the break.

Read on for more, check out the statue and points gallery below, and stay tuned today for the drool-worth tour photos.

I wasn't anywhere near Huntington, NY on Saturday, but our friend Medievaldragon from BlizzPlanet was, and he did stop by the Christie Golden reading at the Book Revue bookstore. He even brought videos back with him, and so if you're a Golden fan (she is a New York Times-bestselling author, after all) and want to see her reading from Arthas, there you go.

Apparently the reading was a pretty full house, too, and you can see from the video that there were all kinds of people there. Golden also says early in the video that Arthas is Blizzard's first big bestseller, and she repeats what we've heard before: that Blizzard loves having her write for them and she loves coming up with stories from their settings. The only big bit of news for fans from the reading is that while Blizzard is producing three different Warcraft books (of which Arthas is the first), they won't be a trilogy at all, just stand-alone stories. Big thanks to Medievaldragon once again for stopping by the event and grabbing video for those of us who couldn't go.

Apparently there were a few Blizzard blokes at E3 last week, even though we didn't see them wandering the floor at all. Mike Morhaime and Paul Sams were both there to accept their awards for world records from Guinness after making it into the 2009 Gaming edition. World of Warcraft picked up a record for the most popular MMORPG in the world (with, as you probably know, 12 million players), and Starcraft gained recognition for being the best-selling PC strategy game, with 9.5 million copies sold worldwide. Neither of these awards are really that much of a surprise -- both games have already garnered tons of other awards, and both games are already squarely in the pantheon of the best and biggest PC games ever sold. But being recognized is always nice, we're sure.

They honored a number of other extremely popular games and services as well, including two big Activision Blizzard titles: Call of Duty 4 was recognized for being the most-played online video game, and Guitar Hero was recognized for being the best-selling rhythm game series (though Red Octane, the game's original publisher, was honored, and they've only recently been acquired by the Activision overlords).

Congrats to all the award winners, as if they even needed it. Something tells us the millions and millions of dollars in revenue from all of these games was probably a nicer reward than Guinness recognition. Just a guess.

Remember the Blizzard creative writing contest that happened during March and April? I'm pretty sure many of our readers entered, but for those who missed it the idea was to write a story up to 10,000 words in length and set in the Warcraft, StarCraft or Diablo universes.

Well, Nethaera finally announced the winner (a story entitled In the Shadow of the Sun by Sarah Pine), runners up and a bunch of honorable mentions via the forums. Unfortunately there's no other information about the stories themselves, which universes they are set in or what Blizzard are going to do with the winning entries (personally, I'm betting on some kind of anthology). So head on over to the forums to find out if your entry made it to runners up or got an honorable mention.

We've had WoW and Diablo 3-themed BlizzCon/Worldwide Invitational in-game pets already, so you might say "hell, it's about time" when we tell you that Grunty, a murloc in Space Marine power armor, is on its way.

MMO-Champion's Boubouille, head of the Romulan Data Miners Guild, discovered the pet's model while performing routine excavation on the newly-updated 3.1.2 patch files.

If I were a betting man, I'd say that all signs point to this being part of the BlizzCon goody bag as opposed to TCG loot, meaning there's even less of a chance for you to get it. Hope you're prepared to beat the queue to get one. Heck, I'm even considering trying to go after seeing this -- I can't wait to see the idle animations he gets. According to the screenshots, it looks like he even blasts the air with his flamethrower. For once, the fish will do the frying.

*puts on sunglasses, plays "Won't Get Fooled Again"*

Our sister site Joystiq pointed out last night to their readers that the BlizzCon 2008 beta codes were now being accepted, and we thought it prudent to pass the news along to you.

You can enter the code over at http://www.blizzcon.com/beta and enjoy the satisfaction that you'll get knowing in a few months (or less?) you'll be playing the beta of StarCraft II.

The code took me a few others on staff a couple tries to enter. 'B' looks like '8', and 'S' looks like '8'. You'll probably need to try a few different permutations of the code until you get it right. When you enter the right code, you'll get an email 'confirmation' that really just tells you that you've entered the key successfully. You don't have to do anything further. The email is a little oddly worded though, and doesn't look like your typical Blizzard email. So we've posted a copy of it after the break for folks.

BlizzCon 2009 is coming up on August 21st and 22nd of this year. We'll be there in force again. Should be a blast!

In what every Blizzard fanboy hopes to be a precursor to the real thing, the company has announced the winners of the Blizzard Theme Park Contest where creators were called to submit their best ideas for a theme park based on each of Blizzard's properties or even all of them. The grand prize winner, Christina Marie DeLong, designed a brightly colored map that had the most amazing stuff in it.

It featured attractions such as a Terran combat simulator, a Diablo-themed petting zoo (yikes!), and a roller coaster based on Captain Skyshatter's race around Netherwing Ledge.While that's all pretty cool, it's the little details that must've won the judges over -- like the Mage's refreshment table on top of a Dalaran-style building intended to be the park's buffet. There are just a lot of small things that should make all of us go to Blizzard and pester them about making it all real.

There were three other winners who won for the best StarCraft, Warcraft, and Diablo-themed entries, although they all seemed to incorporate all of Blizzard's properties. All of them were pretty good, but Christina's excellently drawn and conceptualized entry was hands down the best of the lot. You can check out all the entries including the honorable mentions over at Blizzard's theme park contest site. The winning works will be displayed in this year's BlizzCon. Given that Blizzard always has a few surprises in store for us each year, who's keeping their fingers crossed for a real-life Blizzard theme park?

I worked at Blizzard for close to three years. During my time there I saw a lot of big things happen: the closing of the Console Division and shelfing of Starcraft Ghost, the launch of the first (and second!) World of Warcraft expansion ... and one that some people say is the biggest event in Blizzard's history, Vivendi Games' merger with Activision.

The merger was, of course, a controversial move; and, like any corporate maneuver, it's generated a lot of misunderstandings, misreporting, misinformation ... in general, it's been a flurry of mis-es. It's upsetting and frustrating to see so many people not understand what the merger means and, in turn, form stubborn opinions.

If you want to help curb ignorance and misunderstanding regarding what's going on with the merger, you're in luck. My former employment at Blizzard means I have a lot of information to share to set the record straight. Even if you're going to continue believing that Blizzard is somehow dipping in quality or in a bad way because of the merger, at least read what I have to say. It'll be worth it.

This portion addresses questions about the merger's affect on Blizzard's day-to-day.

So if most publishers control what their developers produce, does Activision control what Blizzard does?

No, since Activision is not Blizzard's publisher.

What about in areas like support?

When I was in support at Blizzard, the only negative change I noticed in my day-to-day work post-merger was that we suddenly had an influx of terrible A-B-themed benefits program posters hung up around the office. Things may have changed since I left, but my contacts have expressed mostly positive opinions about how things are running over there.

Won't the merger result in a dip in quality of Blizzard products? Has it already?

No and no. The merger gives Blizzard the opportunity to hire more employees to produce more content while maintaining the standard of quality that we expect from Blizzard. It also allows them to keep more employees due to the new financial backing provided by the merger, which affects things like benefits and payroll.

Blizzard has stated that you can't get quality content made just by throwing money at it, but money obviously helps sometimes.

Did Activision force Blizzard to release Wrath of the Lich King during the holiday season to maximize sales?

Let me answer this with an anecdote.

Blizzard's office walls are decorated with a lot of stuff -- concept art, murals, lifesize statues of characters, and posters with Blizzard's philosophies on art and design, etc. One of these posters talks about mistakes developers make, like pushing for a holiday release when the game's not done or polished enough.

It's my belief, which is backed up by Blizzard bigwigs, that if they didn't feel the expansion was worthy for release then they wouldn't have released it when it was released.

What's up with this money-making scheme of releasing Starcraft II as three games? This is because of their post-merger greed, right?

I've been hearing this a lot lately. Even our own Mike Schramm commented that the Blizzard that let people play Warcraft 2 on Battle.net for free isn't the same Blizzard that's releasing three Starcraft II games.

This really, really confuses me. Why would anyone familiar with Blizzard's work be put off by them releasing expansions? Because that's exactly what the last two Starcraft II titles will be -- expansions. One will add the Zerg campaign and one will add the Protoss campaign, as well as likely multiplayer additions and enhancements to the experience. The single-player campaign for each game will be incredibly robust as well, with tons of in-game engine cinematics and branching events.

Devs explained to me that they had three choices once they realized the depth of the Terran campaign:

- Shorten and pare down each campaign, resulting in campaigns about as long as Warcraft III, and release it as one game.
- Make the campaigns as robust as possible and release the Protoss and Zerg campaigns in expansions.
- Put everything in on game exactly how they want it and have Starcraft II come out in 2014.

They said the the choice was obvious, and I agree. It's about delivering the player the best experience.

Won't this merger result in a lot of stupid cross-promotions?

Probably. Activision isn't known for its advertising or marketing subtlety. We dealt with it a little at work -- Activision sent us a ton of copies of Guitar Hero Aerosmith that none of us really cared about (but hey, extra Rock Band guitar, right?), as well as posters in the office with Activision desperately trying to equate our flagship properties with their licensed crap. Yes, Activision, clearly Zeratul is on the same level as the main character from Kung Fu Panda.

The best I can hope for is that we'll never see World of Warcraft advertised on KFC combo meal boxes. Blizzard seems to consider the insulation of the WoW universe important, which is why we'll likely never see in-game advertising or "Lars Umlaut <Guitar Hero>" as an NPC.

What's your personal opinion on the merger?

From a corporate perspective, it makes sense and gives Blizzard access to more funding and assets. You can see that they've begun hiring a ton of designers and other WoW-relation positions, which can only increase the amount of content we get to experience and enjoy.

From a gamer's perspective, Activision is an IP-exploiting shovelware mill run by a doddering blowhard who doesn't play games and it hurts my heart to see Blizzard's name attached to them.

On the bright side, if you look at your Wrath box, you won't see Activision's logo on it anywhere. That's more than just literal -- it's symbolic, and I hope that it stays that way for a long, long time.

If you have any specific questions about the merger that you think I can answer, you're more than welcome to email me at sacco [at] wowinsider dot com and I'll compile the questions and responses in a followup article.

The 8th episode of BlizzCast, the Blizzard Podcast, rolled out just a short while ago. If the only Blizzard game you're interested in is WoW, you'll probably be disappointed this time around, there's not much World of Warcraft discussion. The information is very, very heavily slanted toward Starcraft II and Diablo III.

The podcast kicks off with their usual Q&A portion. The World of Warcraft questions, answered by Tom Chilton, were aimed at Wintergrasp and the vehicle system (specifically the lack of aerial combat). That's the full extent of the WoW content here. That's all, folks. If WoW is all you care about, that's the end. For those of you that are Blizzard fans in general? Jay Wilson (Diablo III Game Director) and Dustin Browser (Starcraft II Lead Designer) cover the Q&A for their respective games.

The remainder of the podcast is a Diablo III interview with a pair of the game's developers, Julian Love (Lead Technical Artist) and Mike Nicholson (Senior Artist). If you intend to play Diablo III, it's worth a listen. It gives some insight into the developmental process of the game, and that's probably the most interesting part of these podcasts.

Rumors are bubbling up from GDC '09 that Blizzard is finally considering consoles again for their future games. Blizzard seems to have a hate/hate relationship with consoles -- despite the fact that they started out with some extremely popular console games (Lost Vikings was one of the best games on the Sega Genesis), they've become very solidly a PC gaming company in the past few years. Sure, they released Starcraft 64 and the Playstation port of Diablo, but since Starcraft: Ghost left a bad taste in their mouths, they've stayed away from the console market (and some might say that's saved the PC market).

The main problem, says Rob Pardo, is one of control: console controllers just don't have the flexibility to do what Blizzard wants to do with their games. "If I were them," he told the press, "I'd be sitting around trying to figure out what's a cool new input device that supports all types of new kinds of games." And he also hinted that he might be trying to do just that -- Blizzard is apparently in talks with Microsoft, not to develop for this generation of consoles, but to help them advance to the next generation. This is a little more than just Diablo III on the Xbox 360 (though that's definitely a possibility) -- it's Blizzard possibly getting the chance to bring what they love about PC gaming to the next console generation.

Heady stuff. Blizzard doesn't need to do anything these days, of course -- if they want to take their next sequel and release it in, say, three separate parts, they can do that and it will likely still be a hit. But if they want to set their sights on innovating in the console space, we'll probably all benefit.

We gave you a heads up a bit ago on the preparations for the new battle.net accounts, and now they're here, both for the EU and, apparently in the US only for now. We saw a "preview" of these accounts back during Wrath of the Lich King Beta, when we signed in using our email addresses and got a pet penguin in the mail "as a thank you for signing up for a Battle.net account," But now they're here and they're live.

Here's some awesome news for all Lore Nerds and aspiring Lore Nerds out there: Blizzard is holding a creative writing contest. You are invited to write 3,000-10,000 words in English about the world of Diablo, Warcraft, or Starcraft.

If you've always felt your character's RP story could give Rhonin a run for his money, here's your chance. The contest is global too, so almost anyone can enter, with a few exceptions. Check the official rules for complete details.

And yes, there are prizes, too. The grand prize winner will get a trip to Blizzard Headquarters to meet the Blizzard writing staff and a Frostmourne sword, while 7 runners up will get a signed collection of various Blizzard novels. The deadline is April 12th, so you'll probably want to pick up that pen as soon as possible. Good luck and happy writing to everyone planning to enter!

Welcome back to an extreme late night edition of The Queue. What's so extreme about it? Read on after the break. Why is it coming out so late at night? Well, I've been busy today. I've finished up leveling my last two characters while two of my accounts are linked via the recruit-a-friend program. Now my Paladin and Warlock are level 60, and my set is complete. WTB account wide achievements now, please. "K. Thx. Bai," as the kids like to say.

Dan Asked...

"Does anyone know who the three characters in all the BlizzCon announcement graphics are (see posting earlier this week)? One looks just like Thrall, but the other two seem pretty vague... a paladin and some sort of demonic rogue looking thing (maybe an Orc)?"