Hear that sucking sound and feel the pain in your butt? It’s Blizzard screwing you, while the cash cow drains your wallet.
http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/pc/starcraft-2/918896p1.html
Whee!
I’m betting $60 a pop… because they can. :lol:
I really enjoyed the Starcraft series when it came out, but honestly, they’re going to have to do something interesting gameplay-wise to get me interested in Starcraft II. The first gameplay video I saw didn’t really impress me too much, but maybe that’s because I saw it after playing a month or so of Supreme Commander, spiritual successor of Total Annihilation. And now that the game is going to be… three games, now they really have to impress me. :lol:
That’s my main issue with this whole ‘trilogy’ malarkey as well. Before this announcement, I was mildly interested in playing Starcraft 2 because hey, it’s a Blizzard RTS, and I’ve enjoyed Blizzard RTSs before.
But one of the things I really enjoyed about Starcraft and Warcraft 3 was the way they showed you the other sides’ perspectives when you started a new race’s campaign. That’s out the window now. 30 missions playing Terran? Ergh. I mean, I like playing Terran, but that’s got to get boring. (I know the ‘branching’ campaign design means that an actual playthrough won’t be that long, but still.)
Which leads me to my second concern: mission design. The campaigns used to follow a very simple structure: they start you out with very basic units and then slowly introduce you to more advanced units as you progress. Sure, they started throwing in timed missions and dungeon crawls (the latter of which I never found that interesting) to shake things up a bit, but the learning curve was the main attraction for me. And when I felt that I’d gotten the hang of Terran units, I was able to start learning how to play the Zerg. And so on. The factions all played differently, so each game gave me more than enough value for money in terms of gameplay variety.
When playing Brood War, I started getting bored, because I already knew how to use the units. Instead of the learning curve, they would throw arbitrary limitations at me (we have no gas here; our air units won’t work; etc), or just make the levels huge, with the odds stacked against me. So I don’t see how they’re going to come up with enough mission variety to sustain a campaign that’s 20-30 missions long - and sustain my interest in the story.
The way I see it, Blizzard realised “oops, our game design is way too ambitious for us to have this game out before 2011, at which point we’ll have sunk millions of dollars into its development without seeing a single red cent in return, and our game engine will be considered even more outdated than it already is”.
I appreciate that they’re trying to push RTS in a new direction with a more sophisticated campaign structure (the same way they were originally planning with Warcraft 3’s ‘role-playing strategy’ design). And they may very well pull it off; if anyone can, they can. But I’m not going to bother with these games until all three are out (and cheaper) and I can get what I want out of the experience (as detailed above).
Oops. Ignore this post.
My main concern is that we’ll end up paying approx 200 for the whole game. I hate playing as terran and even though they’re supposedly independent titles it means that in order to understand what’s going on I’m going to need to buy all three. And play 30 Terran missions and 30 Zerg missions before I can play as my favorite Protoss.
I think Blizzard lost a lot of heart when they became phenomenally rich off of WoW.
Heh… I guess Blizzard hired some people from EA. 
Didn’t need to. They’ve got Activision employees on their side now.
It would seem that the Xel’naga and the UED will have a major role in the Starcraft 2 setting.
Turns out that the Xel’naga aren’t a benevolent god race afterall. :twisted:
Also it turns out that the UED is a lot more advanced than the Starcraft expansion shows. They used the local technology to churn out a larger invasion force: which is why their units were the same as the Koprulu Sector terrans. However Blizzard reps claim that the UED is a lot, lot more advanced than their colonist cousins. Just how advanced? Guess we’ll know when SC2 is released.
Terrans automatically win. The UED unleashes their ultimate weapon:
http://www.starcraft2.com/features/terran/terratron.xml
Merge for rampage. 
:lol:
It was only an April’s Fool joke… or was it?
Has anyone watched the “Battle Reports” on the site? I think they’re pretty darn exciting.
http://www.starcraft2.com/features/battlereports/3.xml
Btw, shouldn’t this thread be in the sub-forum with “Gaming”?
If you search for “Wings of Liberty” on Amazon, it has it listed for pre-order for 49.99…not sure how official that is.
Amazon is usually right about price estimates, since they get it from the manufacturing source… although there’s always a +/- error of $10. 
I’m happy to hear that medics might still be in the game - although as a “guest npc” and not buildable. I love medics… sexy women in powered armor are hot. I’m still upset they removed the medics, rather than just modify the reapers (or make jump capable medics).
The official SC2 artwork for medics prove it. 8)
Blizzcon 2009 is upcoming in the middle of next month. Hopefully there will be a finalized release date announced… although I doubt it.
Looking over all the released lore, it’s pretty obvious the Xel’naga are the “ultimate evil” in SC2. What really interests me however, is how Blizzard is so adamant in saying the United Earth Directorate will have a minimal role in the overall SC2 story. I bet ya $5 the UED will be the new badguy in SC3, considering whenever Blizzard answers questions about the UED not making an appearance, they’re also quick to mention Earth only used a small fraction of it’s power and technology in Brood War.
I guess SC2 will have anti gambling features.
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3178788
They take it seriously over there.
Jesus Christ… I was playing the SC2 beta over friend’s house, and discovered how horribly good Korean players are.
Sheesh… 3 minutes… [u]THREE MINUTES!!![/u]
It probably only took him that long, because he was taking his time. 
Game’s not even officially out yet, and major spoilers are already being posted. 
http://starcraft.incgamers.com/blog/com … d-spoilers
Mwa, ha, ha, ha! He lives! HE LIVES!!!
Most epic end to a match EVER! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOY2ve7zHb4
You could watch the other three vids but the end of this one is the only one worth watching.
I skipped the third part. That was a great game. The guy talking made me believe it was really over for him, then bam! Haha. Thank you for that.