Blizzard has been making StarCraft 2 for many, many years. The base game, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty came out way back in 2010, and it had been in development since 2007, when even World of Warcraft was still young (just three years old, the little tyke). That’s a crazy long time in the gaming industry. Think about it: The StarCraft II team has been making that game since just a year after the PlayStation 3 came out. The world is entirely different now, and Legacy of the Void is finally nearly ready for release. It will be the end of the StarCraft saga. And now it’s time to ask… what’s next for Blizzard?

After StarCraft 2: A World Of Possibilities, Or Nothing At All

Obviously, Blizzard has had many projects since Wings of Liberty first came out in 2007. Tons of World of Warcraft expansions, Diablo III and its expansion and the console ports, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, stupid e-sports. The company is doing very well, although I’m sure many of us old-school gamers feel like the direction Blizzard has gone is not what we would have chosen or hoped for the company. StarCraft II has been its biggest link to the company’s own past, at least since Diablo finished active development.

After that ends, what happens? There isn’t going to be a StarCraft 3, because the story of the series is ending with Legacy of the Void. The dreamers among us, me included, will of course dream and hope for Warcraft 4, but in a sense it’s like yearning for a world before WoW, the game that changed everything. It’s not impossible by any means, but the gaming industry and Blizzard in particular have changed so much that a new RTS Warcraft game is never going to be a sure thing.

But what else? What will the StarCraft II team get up to? My fear is that they’ll be folded into the development of the new style of Blizzard games, like Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone… fine games (well, the second one is, at least), but a far cry from what Blizzard became famous for. Alas, such games are massive successes in the new ecosystem. And daring to hope for a new IP? I won’t even dream. Blizzard is part of Activision, and it is probably more risk-averse than even Nintendo when it comes to introducing major new IP (to be fair, Nintendo has gotten much better about this). Blizzard is going to stick with echoes and reflections of what it has.

And that’s what I fear the most—that nothing will replace StarCraft 2 on Blizzard’s agenda. That the Legacy of the Void release date is truly the end of an era that started in the early 1990s. I fear for the future.