Reaver (StarCraft II)/Development

"No, you can't take the reaver! I can't imagine the game without the reaver! Why are you killing the reaver?! I hate you!"

- Rob Pardo paraphrasing Blizzard employee complaints about cutting the reaver from StarCraft II

The reaver made a brief appearance in StarCraft II promotional material. However, it was removed from the BlizzCon 2007 build of the game. Its role as a siege unit was given to the colossus, which possesses superior mobility and hit points and occupies the same position in the protoss tech tree as the reaver.

It was meant to be produced from the robotics facility and required a null circuit before it could be warped in. A replacement for the reaver was being sought in July 2007.

The reaver was meant to appear in the StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty campaign and in the map editor, but was not present at release. An incomplete tooltip in the editor implies the reaver would have had a new passive ability that boosted its movement speed when not currently constructing scarabs.