Winzen posted an update about the status on his World of Starcraft Mod.
A few days ago, YouTube shutdown the trailer for copyright reasons, but it turns out it was a routine procedure.
According to Winzen, a Blizzard Entertainment representative reached him to find out exactly what his project was about. Winzen confirmed his project is entirely built within the Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty engine. After knowing the facts, Blizzard encourages the development of the mod and even invited Winzen to visit the Irvine campus. Riot Games seems to be interested in hiring the modder as well.
Gamasutra has word from Blizzard:
- “It was never our intention to stop development on the mod or discourage the community from expressing their creativity through the StarCraft II editor,” Blizzard said in a statement. ” As always, we actively encourage development of custom maps and mods for StarCraft II, as we’ve done with our strategy games in the past.”
The name of the mod might be changed at some point when the mod developers choose one. I’ll update our followers when that happens so you can keep track of the renamed project. So far, Winzen is toying with the idea to call it Starcraft Chronicles.
However, he doesn’t know there was a Starcraft Chronicles project, a few years ago. It was to be a fan-made 3D film. I was the recruiter for that project led by Critical.Mechanism. As the recruiter, I saw a lot of great candidates sign up after Joystiq linked to my article. People involved in the industry: Julie Loomer (Lucasfilms Matte Painter), JFranzen (South Park, Team America), PiNPOiNT (Everyone’s Hero film), and a Starcraft: Ghost developer to name a few.
The project went downhill, and I left. Then a year or so later development restarted, but I haven’t heard any further updates for many years.
There might be some confusion if Winzen picks the title Starcraft Chronicles, but it’s unknown to me if the fan-made 3D film died eventually.