i dunno you must assume they have already have the single player lined up with the current single player campaign from wings of liberty. they cannot just go to the white board and make stuff up randomly to tie into the wings of liberty campaign they must look to the future of the story to see how it would play out to an epic ending. oh yeah id say 2012
I'd honestly say 3-4 years, considering the development of WoL took so long, and they have to do another full campaign
WoL took over 3 years due to gameplay. HotS wont need to incorporate ground-breaking-ly new graphics, units or mechanics. i think o.o
well keep in mind they didnt originally plan to make it in 3 parts, so they must have some idea of how it is going to end. Although honestly the way the story seems to work they could probably get away with just about anything
Since Blizzard develops their own graphics engines, I'd say that that took up a lot of those years the game was in development. For those who have been following the game since alpha phase, you know what I'm talking about when I say that we were all happy to see those plastic looking buildings go. Other then that, a load of material, such as doodads and obviously units, are going to be recycled for the next two parts. So unless we're getting yet another huge visual update, (which seems unlikely when you look at other games Blizz makes sequals to) I'd say the development time lies mostly with a few new units, cinematics and a crapload of new maps. Should take more then 1 year, I'd say. Simply because of the fact that the game is already largely complete before they even begin. Looking at the time after which Warcarft 3 and Starcraft got their expansions, this seems like a plausible guess. Yes, I'm aware of the fact that BW was released after a pretty short amount of time, but TFT took almost exactly a year to complete. If you follow that increase in development time, and seeing as WoL took 3 years, any guessed dates surpassing 2 years of development time are just silly. And hey, I'm not getting the solo zen master achievement anytime soon anyways, and after that there's always custom maps. Don't need an expansion anytime soon. ^^