tl;dr SC2GD from BR1 to now, Blizzard is god-awful at communication with the community.

The Blizzard PR strategy of never giving us dates until they are set in stone does what it's meant to do, they almost never miss their announced date and thus don't "disappoint" us. The (previously) minor problem with this approach is that the community makes their own estimates based on what little they know. Blizzard will usually give a "ready when ready" post in response to a fake leak or large scale hysteria so no one will go crazy when they don't reach a made up date. Normally that is how it goes and people put up with it, but with the current circumstances:

-A 3rd party repeating Xordiah's mentioning of an internal set date for the beta at the ESL, not shot down by Blizzard.
-The community haphazardly starts throwing around dates for a beta announce in the coming weeks. Not shot down, but no one cares because it was so vague.
-Fewer and fewer blue posts on the forums.
-Longer waits between Q&As.
-Little to no discussion-provoking information given in Q&As and blue posts. (With the exception of the well done macro Q&A and follow up)
-Only one new gameplay video (3rd party) since BR1.
-BR2 announced as TvZ (five weeks ago), heavily implying the game had already been chosen. This is an entirely separate frustration since Cavez said with that announcement that "Once we get that game the process is reasonably quick to get it out", and then two weeks ago Karune said, "production processes can sometimes be lengthy". Also when this was announced by Cavez he said, "You must continue to suffer and wait." Even jokingly, it's rude and unprofessional to mock your community, especially when it is already frustrated with you.
-blizzcon.com/beta changes.
-The community labels the upcoming 11th anniversary as the beta announcement and BR2, not shot down by Blizzard.
-Lots of blue talk about earning beta keys.
-Fansite countdowns.
-The community more or less solidifies 3/31 or 4/1 as the beta announcement/BR2, not shot down by Blizzard.

The big reasons behind that last one are (in order):
-The community had received zero info on how far off the game or beta are in these past few months (other than "this year").
-Blizzard never denying the "set date" despite it being in forum discussions for months.
-Blizzard coming out and denying a few obviously fake items, but nothing else.

So here we sit today, no BR2, no beta date, and some generic Blizzard April Fools joke. Yesterday was the first time since who knows when that we received more than overly vague information on the beta release. We are disappointed, not just by what Blizzard has done, but by what they haven't done. Blizzard is so inconsistent with the quantity and quality of the information they've released over the past two years that SC2 was labeled as vaporware not too long ago. Going back through the blue posts, the last time we got information that sparked discussion beyond the few generic "cool!" replies was Q&A batch 49, six weeks ago.

Blizzard, you believe that your "ready when ready", non-committal, vague attitude is the right way to do things. I believe it isn't. I know you wont change, and I've known this ever since I canceled my WoW account a year ago (6/8 T6 mage, lol "dps" class). "Soon" isn't worth paying for. You likely wont lose any SC2 customers to your attitude, but you already have lost an enormous amount respect from many of your hard-core fans and from the video game community in general.

Now, pretend I'm your father and I'm giving you the I-give-up-on-you look.

(edit: changed the title)

To give you guys an update, the Battle Report is still in localization and needs to be ready in all supported regions before it will go up. Many times this adds to the development timeline, but it allows everyone worldwide to be able to experience Blizzard updates at the same time, so no particular region feels neglected.

In regards to beta, I'm seeing many websites and hoaxes messing with people's expectations. These are not official announcements, and when that time comes, the official announcement will be written by a blue or posted up on official websites like battle.net and StarCraft2.com.

The developers are hard at work in getting StarCraft II to a beta phase. With each of the Q&As, you can see the types of updates they are working on. More and more, we are trying to include 'behind the scenes' type content in the Q&As (localized in all regions as well), which unfortunately adds a little bit to the production timeline of Q&As as well, but gives the community something to 'see' in addition to what they 'read.' Comparing Q&A 49 & 50, they have changed drastically from say Q&A 1 & 2. In order to get more content out there as well, we have begun soliciting questions from fansites a part of our fan site program, so stay on the look out for those when they get answered.

We have a habit of holding things back at Blizzard to make sure when we finally show everyone, it will be up to par - we want to make sure it will our products are something both the community will love to play and something that we too can be very proud of.

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Q u o t e:


Thanks a lot.

Are you able to give us an ETA on the Battle report?

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They added a transcript to the Battle Report, so that is still in the localization process. Once that is done in all regions, we will be good to go.

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Q u o t e:


My problem is with the way they don't announce dates. Saying things like "soon" or "shouldn't be too long off" leads to a false sense of urgency within the community. This is why these forums are so active despite so little game discussion, despite no steady information. Everyone is always thinking the next thing to talk about is "almost here".

Blizzard doesn't come out and say "still a few months away" or "We're working on it! No set date, but we're working on it!" often enough. After maybe four to five months we start to get antsy, and there will be a few weeks of "Are we there yet?" before we actually hear a "soon" or "not for a while" and start over.

The way they announce dates tends to give rise to unrealistic deadlines within the community. The constant rise and fall of anticipation is frustrating. Most of us know that we shouldn't be so optimistic with Blizzard's vagueness, but sometimes we can't help it when we're excited about the product :)

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StarCraft II is highly anticipated = Everyone wants 'anything' right now

By nature, there is some tension there.

Thus to offset, we try to provide content for you guys as often as possible, while still maintaining quality standards in that content. We also try our best to provide more answers and transparency than any other gaming company both for pre-launch/post-launch and constantly improve upon that process solely because we know the anticipation for StarCraft II has been unprecedented.

By the way, tip :) We are vague because we know deadlines get missed - but they are often times missed because the game is becoming better in some way from it. For instance, we even struggle internally about releasing an image of a unit or map, because we know it is going to get even better the following week.