http://www.joystiq.com/2009/08/31/blizzard-interview-samwise-didier-talks-starcraft-2/
^ Full interview here

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/blizzards-paul-sams <- Full interview

As COO for Blizzard Entertainment, Paul Sams is a busy man, currently juggling the imminent launches and associated campaigns for StarCraft II, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm and the company's soon-to-be-updated Battle.net service.

Speaking exclusively to GamesIndustry.biz at this year's BlizzCon, Sams filled us in on why Battle.net has been responsible for delaying the launch of StarCraft II to 2010, how the service radically differs to Valve's Steam and why he wasn't convinced at the start that re-engineering content for Cataclysm would be a good idea.

Q: In your recent Activision/Blizzard investor call you said the main reason for the Starcraft II delay was getting Battle.net ready. What's the hold up?

Paul Sams: Well, the fact of the matter is, what we're trying to do is very big. It's ambitious and, we could have shipped it from my perspective, but we wouldn't have been able to ship it with the feature set that was going to deliver the type of compelling experience that we really wanted throughout the game.

My feeling is that if you're going to relaunch Battle.net you can't just go, "okay here's this extra little feature and this little feature and this one, we're all good everybody, let's go". If we're really going to relaunch Battle.net, then it's going to be the platform we described yesterday in the panel sessions. We can't short-change the players.

Q: Why is it so important to get it right?

Paul Sams: Because it's the platform on which all of our games will be played on from now on. And there's going to be such a huge amount of integration that goes on between games over Battle.net that getting it right the first time is what's required.

Plus, you know, we have a trust relationship with players. We have, I believe, not let them down all that much if at all, you know, on a big scale. And we've been able to, over a decade and a half, build that trust in our players so they know that if they buy a Blizzard product they're going to get a good quality experience.

And so when we launch Starcraft II, together with the new version of Battle.net, we want to make sure it's compelling and people say, "this was worth the wait, this is really cool, and love how this integrates together and understand why this was so critical". Because people say, oh well, Starcraft II is going to be awesome - it's just Battle.net, it's just match-making right? It's really not - it's far beyond that. We've only scratched the surface. We can only say so much right now, but the plans are much bigger, much grander. And have long-term positive implications for gamers.