Given that Blizzard's StarCraft is mostly responsible for the gaming craze in Korea, even reaching the degree of interest that most popular sports get, and even granting top players celebrity status, Blizzard surprisingly managed to keep StarCraft 2 a secret since it's production started at around 2004 (ideas were laid down around 2003).

Speaking to MSNBC, Blizzard's Rob Pardo explains that they keep their games under code names and they train their development team to refer to projects by their code names. He expounds: "We’re just really careful about talking about the game internally. We don’t bring external folks through unannounced product areas. But I think even I’m surprised that we were able to keep it under wraps all the way to the end."

What's nice is that while answering that line of inquiry, Pardo humorously noted the Penny Arcade strip about that matter, saying, "Well, Penny Arcade figured it out!"

Oh, and if you're sick of Blizzard's mantra of "It'll ship when its ready," then tough luck. Pardo explains that they've "learned to keep release dates really close to the vest" What's definite, though, is that Pardo confirms that it won't be released within this year. He says: "Some people were hoping, because of how advanced the game looks, that we’d have it out by Christmas, but that’s definitely not happening."

Given that we've mentioned that the game's been started conceptually around 2003, and was in earnest production around a year after that, you may be wondering why it takes Blizzard so long to finish their games. Pardo explains that they have "smaller development teams than other companies in the industry, and that turns into longer development cycles." The StarCraft 2 team is currently at around 40 people.

Rob Pardo's take on StarCraft 2s biggest competitor? Pardo noted that in the presence of more modern RTS games, StarCraft 2 stands out because of its capabilities in the "competitive" scene. Moreover, storyline-wise, he feels that their setting far better than their competitors. Here's his words: "our story and our world and our IP [that] we developed in StarCraft is superior to what we’re going to be competing against."

It seems that StarCraft 2's biggest competitor is still StarCraft, or at least the nostalgia surrounding the first game. "It’s not so much beating StarCraft that’s the problem, it’s beating people’s perception and nostalgia of StarCraft."

For the complete MSNBC interview with Rob Pardo, feel free to head to it using our "read' link below.