During a special StarCraft II gameplay panel Friday at BlizzCon 2008, Blizzard made a surprise announcement about the long awaited real-time strategy sequel: the game will be released in three separate parts as a trilogy.

Rob Pardo, executive vice president of game design at Blizzard, told an eager audience that StarCraft II would ship with the Terran single player campaign only, along with the full multiplayer. The Zerg campaign and Protoss campaign will be released later on as separate expansions. Each single player campaign will have its own title, too. The Terran campaign will be called "Wings of Liberty," the Zerg campaign will be titled "Heart of the Swarm," and the Protoss campaign will be called "Legacy of the Void." Pardo said that each campaign will consist of between 26 to 30 missions, and the total single player experience will be three to four times larger than the original StarCraft.

The Terran single player campaign, titled "The Wings of Liberty," will ship with the first release of StarCraft II, which includes the full multiplayer mode.

Pardo explained the reasoning behind the decision. He explained that the development team has simply bit off more than it could chew in terms of StarCraft II's story and content. As a result, Blizzard had three choices. Option A was to cut out a lot of the game's single player content and make the story more linear. Option B was to keep all of the content and release the three campaigns separately. And Option C was to find a compromise and potentially delay the game. Pardo asked the audience which option they wanted, and the crowd enthusiastically cheered for B while booing the other options.

The Zerg campaign, titled "Heart of the Swarm," will ship after the first release of StarCraft II.

Unfortunately, Pardo and other Blizzard team members wouldn't say when the first StarCraft II will be released and what kind of launch timeline the expansion campaigns will have. Blizzard didn't discuss pricing for the games, either, or if the three campaigns will be stand-alone expansions. Pardo did say that each campaign will have unique units only available in the single player mode, and that all three storylines will be epic in scale and will feature plenty of cinematic content, alternate missions.

The Protoss campaign, titled "Legacy of the Void," will be the third and final StarCraft II title.

While the hardcore StarCraft fans at BlizzCon applauded the decision, splitting the long-awaited sequel into three parts is definitely a risky move that could upset some PC gamers that are reluctant to pay up to three times more than they expected for StarCraft II. But the gameplay panel at BlizzCon did offer a number of intriguing glimpses into the epic, three-part story, which will include quite a bit of back story on Sarah Kerrigan's origin and transformation into the Queen of Blades.

Stay tuned for more StarCraft II news, including hands-on impressions of the latest demo, on Tom's Games.

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