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AusGamers: You're with AusGamers once again, sitting here with Stephen Farrelly and we're speaking with Kaeo who is a producer on StarCraft II and who came out to Australia for the midnight launch last night which was pretty damn amazing. Two-thousand odd people kept busy for a solid two and a half hours, which is pretty monumental on its own. Were you expecting that kind of response?

Kaeo Milker: I didn't know what to expect coming out here, I was just really excited to be here for the launch of the game and to have that many people; for that many StarCraft lovers to kind of show up was just incredible, yeah, such a great vibe out there last night.

AG: Did you get any kind of crazy rabid fans asking you like super super hardcore questions in any instances when it was one on one?

Kaeo: Nah everyone was actually really, really cool out there so it just felt like hanging out with a bunch of friends, it was great.

AG: Ok now shifting gears straight into the game and the final release. Obviouslyfor Blizzard it's important to balance everything out and that's why betas are really important - what's changed from the beta to the final release of the game, basically from just a gameplay and scaling point of view?

Kaeo: They changed a lot of stuff. We have a dedicated team of balance designers that kinda work on the game and were really focused on the beta, kind of watching everything globally trying to see what kind of trends were showing up; seeing what units they wanted to tweak. They made everything from little tiny number tweaks that are probably imperceptible to all but, like, the highest level of players to, you know, completely removing abilities and juggling them around. So there were a lot of changes made during the beta that kind of helped to kind of polish the game up and get the balance where they wanted it to be.

So I think by the end of the beta multiplayer was really where Dustin [Browder] and Matt Cooper and David Kim wanted things. Once we go live to a much wider audience, they're going to continue tweaking stuff, like, forever - basically keeping it as perfect as they can.



AG: With the multiplayer beta did any of the tweaks jump over to the single-player campaign at all?

Kaeo: We actually separated the data for the single-player and multiplayer so that any tweaks that we made on the multiplayer game wouldn't affect all of the balance that we have in the campaign. There's a lot of really specific tuning for various difficulty levels against the AI in the campaign and we wanted to make sure to keep that in tact, so they really were separated and kind of two separate parts of the game we were working on.

AG: Now the franchise has obviously been around for quite a while and Blizzard have a long history of creating really solid RTS, but there's a lot of hype behind SC2. For newcomers to the series - I'm one of them, I've played WarCraft III to death but I've never played the original StarCraft - it seems like it could be an intimidating kind of game, especially with all the hype around, like, the Koreans who absolutely own at it. Can you run us through how the scaling for newcomers works and I guess the invitational aspect of that as well?

Kaeo: Sure, well there's definitely a hardcore component to StarCraft and StarCraft II, I think though that it scales pretty dramatically. You know, you can start off as someone who has just played any game ever and could jump into StarCraft II and just play the campaign. We started off on a casual difficulty level that goes all the way up to insane for people who are truly insane. Then on the multiplayer side, you can play against AI, and can team up with people. We have a really robust match-making service on Battle.net that even if you're someone who's totally new to it, we're gonna really match you up to people that are similar skill.

So I mean I think there's something there for everybody, even if you're super casual; never really played RTS; aren't hardcore at all, there's still so much fun to be had across the campaign and across the multiplayer. We have some challenges that are actually this really great new feature we added to StarCraft II, that are kind of like little mini games that you can play, that really start building your skill levels up. Things like micro skills and kind of trying to optimise your base-management and learning how to use hot keys. So there're a lot of things there to kind of help you jump in and have fun as a casual player, then build your skill set up so you can play at a higher level if that's what you want to do.



AG: Now I'm not sure how much you can answer about this question, but one of the big ones we've got from our community and I guess the gaming community as a whole, especially in Australia is it was great to see the decision reversed to allow us to play against people in North America (or anywhere else) if we want to. Can you run us through the logistics of that for people who don't necessarily understand what the original decision was, why it was overturned and why in general the region stuff was locked like that?

Kaeo: Sure, well to begin with you kind of have to go back to World of WarCraft and when we went to launch World of WarCraft in 2004 the decision was made then to, instead of delaying the game for Australian New Zealand, we basically allowed this region to play with North America. So that was kind of the beginnings of where we are today with StarCraft II. That worked fine and everyone in Australia and New Zealand are playing on North American servers and as a whole that experience is great for World of WarCraft.

When we started working on StarCraft II, an RTS game, latency became a much bigger issue than it was with World of WarCraft and so we made the decision - and actually it was a really great decision for everyone down here - to make a dedicated data centre so that people here could play with much better, much lower pings, much better latency and be able to enjoy the game here instead of having to play with North America and have much longer ping times - I think that was actually a really good decision for everyone down here.

However, everyone has their friendships built with World of WarCraft and the North American player-base, so I think after looking at that a little more we decided to allow everyone in Australia and New Zealand, if you buy a game here you get to have a key that allows you to play in North America. So at that point it will be kind of your choice. This isn't actually going to roll out for maybe another 60 days or so after launch and we don't know the exact timeline yet, but in a little while here people will be able to choose if they want to play on the South East Asian servers or if they want to play on North American ones.

AG: Now once you make a decision are you locked into that with the key that you have, or can you kind of jump back and forth?

Kaeo: No, you'll be able to jump back and forth. Your Achievements and your player character are going to be separated though. It's not like the same one carried over, but you can jump back and forth. You can play with some friends in South East Asia then jump over to North America - kind of have the freedom to do that. It's actually a pretty neat thing right now that only down here [Australia\New Zealand] are able to do that.



AG: Has there been anywhere else in the world kind of screaming out for that, for a similar kind of thing?

Kaeo: Yeah, there are talks about that. There are a lot of logistical issues with that regionally, trying to get the various different game models and businesses out there to let us have the players kind of jump around like that in other regions. We're in a kind of unique situation down here where we built the bran new data centre for this very segregated, very specific group of people and then now allow people who are already playing on North America [in World of WarCraft] to continue playing on North America for StarCraft II.

AG: It's awesome because you've got situations that arose not so long ago with the Real ID forum stuff which got overturned and then people in Australia screaming out to play with their friends overseas, so I mean it proves that Blizzard are definitely a community-focused publisher. But at what point do you guys scale that back? I mean a really good example would be everybody who was screaming out for Diablo III's art to be switched back to the darker stuff. You guys were like "nope that's it; this is what we're doing". At what point do you find that kind of sweet spot between fans and a business model?

Kaeo: I think we're always looking for what's best for the game and will allow players to enjoy the game to the fullest extent and there're difficult decisions to be made there across the board. But ultimately we're really trying to look out for all of our players, we're trying to look out for the game and the experience of playing the game so I think we'll continue to make decisions that kind of help us reach our goals of where we want the game to be.

AG: Now switching gears again to a bit more of a hardcore angle: I don't 100% know a lot about this one but you might be able to elaborate a little for me. A lot of people have been asking about the hybrid story-line and if we're going to see that manifesting itself across any of the three releases coming up because people feel they were kind of left hanging [after Brood Wars]?

Kaeo: Yeah there's definitely stuff there to explore. I won't go into any details of it, or otherwise spoil it though. There are some things touched on in Wings of Liberty and we will definitely go into more detail later on, so the answers will be there in time.



AG: And just on that, what was the decision behind splitting the experience across three releases as opposed to just one big RTS with three different campaigns? It seems that from a business perspective it's probably a really smart idea, but a lot of people were kind of, like, wondering if there will be a tutorial for people that want to play as Protoss and Zerg in multiplayer, because the single-player campaign [in Wings of Liberty] is essentially a tutorial for Terran right?

Kaeo: Right.

AG: Will there be anything like that for newcomers?

Kaeo: In Wings of Liberty - to get to the tutorial side of it - there's a Protoss-like campaign that's just a four mission arc that you get to play that will kind of start building the basics of some of the Protoss control stuff. We also have - for people who are totally new to the game - there're video tutorials and then also gameplay tutorials where you actually play through little missions, so we made sure to cover someone who's totally new to it and had no experience with it. It's obviously not as in-depth as if you were playing the whole campaign but all the basics are there to get you going if you want to play Protoss or Zerg from Wings of Liberty.

AG: And the decision behind splitting up the campaign like that?

Kaeo: It wasn't a business decision at all. It's really an issue of, you know, we have a really big story to tell; we have this huge legacy with StarCraft. We started a really epic story with StarCraft in Brood War that we need to continue and as we sat down to develop StarCraft II we really looked at this massive amount of storytelling we needed to do and try to figure out the best way we could do it. And I think having the trilogy, having the Wings of Liberty and two expansions after that to really fully flesh out each race as its own book-ended, self contained story was really the way to go for us.



AG: And obviously, I mean people waited with baited breath for this, but all the tech is there now and I guess a lot of the balance is kind of ironed out - is that leading towards the idea that the two expansions are definitely going to come in a more timely fashion?

Kaeo: We don't have exact time-lines for them yet. Even when we announced it, I know our lead producer, Chris Sigaty, talked about maybe 18 months between them. But that's Blizzard time, we're famous for, you know, never saying something with a solid deadline. It's really going to be, you know, we'll take the time we need to make it awesome and we'll try to do it as quickly as we can.

AG: You guys aren't going to fall into the Valve time vortex with like no [Half-life] Episode 3 kind of thing now are you?

Kaeo: No, we'll do our best to get this out as soon as we can, but there's a lot of stuff there to dig into.

AG: And finally, just for the more hardcore fans out there - there's been a question of tone. This one looks maybe a little more darker, a little more serious - will there still be a lot of the tongue-in-cheek humour that was prevalent through the original and Easter Eggs for the really, really hardcore fans... a bit of fan service?

Kaeo: StarCraft definitely is a grittier universe... a little more dark sci-fi universe, but we found plenty of opportunity to have fun with it. You'll have your classic unit responses where if you click on them enough you'll get the pissed-off lines where they start going off with their little one-liners. In the campaign there are plenty of little moments of levity. So I think there's plenty of fun still in there; still feels like that StarCraft 'cowboys in space' kind of fun vibe. On the Easter Egg side, if anything our people were trying to cram way too many Easter Eggs into this game, so there are plenty to be found. There's a lot of fun stuff if you look for it.



AG: And now a personal question from myself. Has Blizzard forgotten about the Lost Vikings?

Kaeo: Have we forgotten about the Lost Vikings? No, there's actually a little reference to them in this game, so I think people can kind of check that out. Go into the cantina and check it out in there.

AG: Awesome thanks very much for that Kaeo.