There’s new media to soak in, including a close look at the stars of StarCraft II’s single-player campaign, Tychus Findlay, Zeratul and Jim Raynor, plus ample background info on each. Blizzard has also added new details on the Zerg’s Changeling, some updates on multiplayer map-making and the requisite much, much more.

It’s all detailed at the StarCraft II community shout out below.

StarCraft II Content Drop [StarCraft.com]

Well, as those of you who may have read the spoiler-laden version of our StarCraft II single-player preview may already know, the Brutalisk doesn’t do much more than intimidate… and die. It’s one of a handful of non-playable unit types that StarCraft II brings to the table, a powerful, well armoured beast that is best avoided while hunting fresh vespene geysers.

This “surprise custom unit”, as Blizzard calls it, shouldn’t be a multiplayer balance concern. But maybe someday we’ll see more of it in one of those StarCraft II expansions coming… way, way in the future.

During a presentation in New York today, Thomas Tippl, Activision Blizzard chief financial officer, raved about the strong business done by Bliizard games. He said the division has a full pipeline of content, which he presented in the slide pictured here.

While the lineup confirms continued World of Warcraft support and a Starcraft II launch in 2010 (with expansions to follow after), Diablo III was marked to be released in 2011 at the soonest.

So what it like to be working on StarCraft II, which is not a WarCraft game?

“I don’t think it has anything to do with anything,” StarCraft II lead designer Dustin Browder tells Gamasutra. “It’s just all about scheduling and resources and what happened. World of Warcraft was not something this company expected to be this successful by far. They were hoping for a couple hundred thousand subscribers. That was what had been done in the past — “If we could equal those numbers, we’d be fine.”

Browder doesn’t believe there was any sort of conscious decision to focus on a particular — it was just a matter of the different teams at Blizzard (Diablo III, for example) getting to a point last year where they could show what they had been working on. Browder goes on to say he and Blizzard wishes they were shipping StarCraft II instead of still working on the title. “So, I think it’s just that these games are taking longer to make than we’d like,” he adds. The WarCraft team is working from an established toolset, so they are able to release expansion in a timely manner.

“Certainly, we’re hoping, as we’re developing this new engine [for StarCraft II], that once we get to that point, we’ll be able to maintain a higher rate of speed than we have in the past, but I think up until now it’s just the way it’s worked out.

The Design of StarCraft II [Gamasutra]

You just better have it done by November 11, as Blizzard will be requiring it for WoW players, not to mention future games, like StarCraft II and Diablo III. Better yet, it’s easy, free and will net World of Warcraft players a virtual penguin to pal around with in-game. There’s even a FAQ!!

Hit up the official site for a brief explanation of why Blizzard considers this switchover a good thing.

World of Warcraft Battle.net Conversion Coming [Blizzard]

IGN AU caught up with Pardo over at Blizzcon and pressed him on the topic of local servers for Australian StarCraft II players.

“We are looking into it. There’s been lots of discussion going on, nothing to announce right now, but I know that – especially with the Australian audience growing the way it is – that it’s something we’re seriously going to consider.”

The previously announced lack of LAN play with StarCraft II means that all online games need a direct connection to Battle.net, a situation that could potentially result in unpalatable lag unless local servers are in place.

Check out the IGN article for more thoughts on the issue, both from Pardo and the Aussie gamers attending Blizzcon.

Servers Please! [IGN AU]

That may be because his company is sitting on some of gaming’s biggest franchises—Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Guitar Hero—or that Kotick’s just a little power hungry. But he tells Barrons, “I view the medium as having the potential to eclipse film and television.” And quickly. In five years or so.

Bob may have a point. Much has been made of the decline of television viewership in favour of other distractions, including the internet and video games, both of which can take away valuable screen time from Hollywood’s cinematic and televised offerings. Plus, the TV doesn’t even have a snazzy plastic peripheral one can play with.

Well, with the exception of the TV remote.

Game-Changing Hero Is Poised to Rule [Barrons]

The subject of StarCraft: Ghost came up during my interview with StarCraft II art director Didier as a joke at first. I asked him when StarCraft: Ghost was coming out, and he replied, “Didn’t you get it? It was out at GC in Germany, running on the PS Slim or whatever they’re calling it,” he teased. I mentioned reading the StarCraft: Ghost novel, and how it really made me want to play the game that didn’t exist. “Oh it exists,” he replied.

“We actually looked at a lot of the art assets so we could include them in specific missions in the game, or if there was a specific installation in Ghost that we wanted to include in StarCraft II. We look at all our assets.”

He likens it to the situation with the cancelled Warcraft: Lord of the Clans adventure game. “Originally Lord of the Clans was like that. We cancelled Lord of the Clans for a lot of similar reasons, but Thrall ended up as the biggest character in the Horde. I’m not saying that’s Nova, but we’re definitely not throwing away the lore.”

It’s good to know that all of that StarCraft: Ghost development didn’t go to waste. If you’re interested in of the lore behind Ghost and its lovely protagonist Nova, be sure to check out the StarCraft: Ghost Nova novel, recently featured in our 2009 Summer Reading List.

The art director for StarCraft II when he isn’t belting out vocals for Blizzard’s house band, The Artists Formerly known as Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain, was quite vocal about keeping things fresh across the Terran, Protoss, and Zerg campaigns during our interview at BlizzCon 09. “We definitely have ideas that we haven’t include in this one to keep the next games unique. We always joke around that every expansion has to have the snow tileset, so there we go, we’ve got the snow tileset. We do that just for a goof. “Hey, there’s the snow tileset!”"

All joking aside, Sam explains that certain ideas have been held back for the two single player expansions, in order to ensure that each has its own unique flair.

“There’s a lot of really cool unit ideas that we have that we probably could have squeezed onto one of these, but instead we wanna let them shine more in the next one – let them be a little more unique. This is an expansion, but it’s the Zerg campaign or the Protoss campaign. It’s not like a one-off sort of thing. It’s gonna have all its unique sets.

“We’re going to go back to the same planets. My hope is that we can affect those planets somehow, so if you’re on Korhol in Wings of Liberty, when you return in the Zerg campaign or the Protoss, I want something radical to have happened to it or changed, whether a change in leadership or some “Cataclysmic” event,” he jokes, referring to the newly announced World of Warcraft: Cataclysm expansion.

“That’s the sort of thing that I really dig. I love it in movies when you see a character from the original one except now he has a cool hatchet wound on his face – what happened to him? So basically we’ll put hatchet wounds on the planet. The +2 hatchet of doom!”

Did I mention I love this man? He’s like me, only with a fully-working face and hair. He’s even at my same skill level in StarCraft. “Everybody is better than me. I get beat by the UI. Not the AI, the UI. Waitaminit, what do I have to build here? What, I have to build a – ah damn.”

Some of our readers were a bit put off by the suggestion that the single player portion of StarCraft II would require logging into Battle.net, as evidenced by some of the comments in the post following the Battle.net panel at BlizzCon this weekend. The next day we followed up on the issue with Blizzard vice president of game design Rob Pardo, who clarified the single player situation for us.

“You don’t technically have to (login), but you’ll want to. You can play in offline mode if you want – I just don’t think you’re going to want to. You’ll be giving up lots and lots of features, and why would you want to be giving up features?”

We covered the features exhaustively in the original post, but perhaps we didn’t draw your attention to the button on the above screenshot labelled “Play As Guest.” That button kicks off the game without connecting, so those of you without internet who couldn’t possibly be reading this post should be happy, unless they try to set up a LAN.