Amidst all the excitement over Starcraft 2 was the possibility that Blizzard might include a new race in addition to the ones we’ve all come to know. At least, that was what Blizzard thought they were going to do, but it looks like the plans have changed.

Why? According to an interview, the co-founder of Blizzard, Frank Pearce, it was explained that the decision not to include the fourth race was simply due to the time and energy required to polish up Starcraft 2 for release and to implement and balance a brand new race; they could do one or the other, but not both if the game was to have it’s assumed release date next year.

“We don’t have the resources or time to add a fourth race to the launch of Starcraft 2, but I’m sure in the event that we decide to do an expansion set, it’s a feature that’ll come up for discussion.”

I know it’s hard to imagine Blizzard, the creator of a game which currently has 10 million people running about in it worldwide, not having the resources to do something, but Pearce clarifies:

“We talked about the possibility of a fourth race early on, but we felt like we had a finite amount of great ideas and wanted to make sure we focused all the cool, best ideas on the existing three races rather than diluting those ideas across four races.”

Frankly I agree with that thought: last I looked, what they were doing with those three races was pretty spectacular and if it’s a choice between having the game be a jack-of-all-trades with four races or a master with the three it has, then I’ll take the three and hope for four.

That doesn’t mean that the new race will never come to be, however, as Pearce opined that it may yet come in an expansion, provided that project does not get shelved somewhere along the way. That’s for later, however, as Starcraft 2 itself still hasn’t been given a release date more specific than "2009."