Starcraft Ghost Update

GamesIndustry.biz has an interview up with Blizzard creative director Chris Metzen and VP of business operations Paul Sams, where they discuss the status of the Starcraft Ghost title. From the article: "Basically the status of that is that we've kind of gone back and reassessed certain of the elements of the game that we felt needed to be refined. I think E3 was a big influence to us - we looked at other products that were in that genre, and felt as if we were quite competitive in many ways, but maybe there were some other things that we weren't getting to where we needed to go."

Comments

Translation

[aztektum]

We waited to see what cool new things others were doing that we could stuff in our game. Because, while we are Blizzard and make solid games, we usually don't break new ground.

Re:Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

> we usually don't break new ground.

Hey, why re-invent the wheel?

Unrelease, just in case

[Palshife]

A lot of companies, and fans and the press know, Blizzard doesn't release products until Blizzard believes they're done.

And hey, if it turns out to be crap, we just unrelease it, right?

Re:Unrelease, just in case

[KeeperS]

No, if it turns out to be crap, they don't release it in the first place. See Warcraft Adventures, the game Blizzard eventually scrapped because it wasn't good enough. Ghost has been in development a while, and by most accounts it's shaping up to be a mediocre game. I'm honestly sort of surprised it hasn't met the same fate by now.

Re:Unrelease, just in case

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, no sense of humor.

Re:Unrelease, just in case

[Anonymous Coward]

See Warcraft Adventures, the game Blizzard eventually scrapped because it wasn't good enough.

Do you believe everything you read in interviews? WA was canned because it was horribly over-budget and adventure games were a dead genre. Quality is a secondary consideration at best; Warcraft III is proof of that.

The Duke?

[Tepshen]

The development team has an unstated desire to compete with Duke Nukem: Forever's development cycle. Teasing people with little updates seems to be part of the plan. Am I the only person who doesnt care to hear about a game until its out?

Shut up and..

[TrebleJunkie]

...JUST RELEASE THE FREAKING GAME ALREADY!

Not that I'll buy it -- I'm still pissed at Vivendi over the bnetd debacle. Cocksuckers. (Nice to see all you WarCraft III and WoW players stuck to your principles on _that_ one.)

Re:Shut up and..

[rogabean]

Well luckily my principles never stopped me from just playing a game and having fun. Does a companies ethics make a game any less fun?

I'm enjoying WoW (servers issues aside) and I will buy Starcraft Ghost when it releases... (well after it gets Cedega support...)

Re:Shut up and..

[TrebleJunkie]

From the sound of it, *what* principles?

Actually, yes, the company's ethics *did* make some online play of Diablo (and I think some other blizzard games) on people's own servers a lot less fun, or rather, nonexistent/impossible/etc.

bnetd was a great project cease-and-desisted to death. A lot of people bitched and moaned at the time of course, but when it can time to put their money where their mouths were, of course they all ran out instead and bought the latest Vivendi games.

Re:Shut up and..

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a console only game, so it's not getting Cedega support.

Re:Shut up and..

[rogabean]

I'm not trying to start a fight here.. so keep that in mind...

I'm just trying to put a spin on this... that people are going to talk... but when it comes time to either play a game they may enjoy alot... principles are prolly going out the window...

as to my principles.. i should prolly rephrase that sometimes principles do keep me from playing games... I really wanted to play EQ2... despite the fact that after 4 and half years of EQ1 I REALLY hate S.O.E. but EQ2 looked fun... so principles out the window on that... BUT EQ2 isn't supported by Cedega... I'm not going to install Windows just to play a game... so principles stuck on that... I chose WoW instead being supported.

Now if you read the above you'll see I'm a walking contradiction. You would be right about this. To tell the truth *MOST* people are. So they can complain all day about what Vivendi/Blizzard did the bnetd, but when it comes down to it, if the next game they really want to play happens to be Vivendi/Blizzard they are still going to play, principles aside.

besides, we are both offtopic at this point :P

Re:Shut up and..

[rogabean]

You are correct. I could have sworn I saw it was getting a PC release as well, but upon further reading I see I was wrong. Still looks like a great game to me and I'll get it for my Xbox.

Re:Shut up and..

[Anonymous Coward]

Because I had no problem with Blizzard controlling their own fucking product in the first place, particularly given that the sole purpose of Bnetd beyond letting people use pirated copies of the game. War3 and WoW are brilliant games, the fact that Blizzard wanted to control a previous property (in order to prevent piracy, no less) is no reason to not play them.

Re:Shut up and..

[Blublu]

You might have to wait a long time for Cedega support. The game will only be released on the consoles (PS2, Xbox, GameCube).

Starcraft: Ghost FAQ

Re:Shut up and..

[Blublu]

Ugh, I feel stupid now. I should have known someone else had already posted this. Oh well.

Re:Shut up and..

[Drantin]

Another reason it was around was to let people play in a large LAN using the battle.net matchmaking features and ladders in the games... If they had had the code to verify that the CD Keys were in fact legit, there would have been worse problems than people playing pirated games using bnetd...

Re:Shut up and..

[space_jake]

I think Blizzard should stay out of the console market, honestly in the time it takes them to release a product the next-gen consoles will be upon us. I bought a gamecube for to play Ghost on (when it came out) like 2 years ago and picked up Metriod Prime to tide me over. Well Metriod Prime 2 is released and I've finished that. Someone should give Retro a cookie if Metriod Prime 3 is out before Ghost.

Somebody's got to count the money!

[hab136]

Penny arcade said it best:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2002-09 -20&res=l

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2004-06 -23

Re:Yeah, like other games completely?

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite the sensationalist Slashdot headlines and the overly-dramatic crap that Penny Arcade spewed, THERE ARE NO SERVER PROBLEMS IN WORLD OF WARCRAFT.

There are a very few vastly overcrowded servers that are suffering issues. There are 88 servers total. Something like four are having issues. That leaves 84 servers that are working ABSOLUTELY PERFECTLY that Tycho and Gabe could be playing on but won't.

There are issues, but they are VERY small and contained.

As for StarCraft: Ghost, I kind of lost interest in it ages ago. I think Metriod Prime filled the niche quite nicely, which is what I read between the lines in the story.

Re:Yeah, like other games completely?

[keyne9]

You're almost right. Almost. 20 out of 88 realms are having problems. 23% is pretty close to 7%.

Linky

Text:

The overwhelming success of World of Warcraft has brought hundreds of thousands of people together to adventure in Azeroth, and concurrency numbers are well beyond what we expected or even hoped for. Unfortunately, this high concurrency, especially when concentrated on a small number of realms, initially caused issues with our hardware infrastructure. We were able to streamline our code to increase performance in the weeks following launch. However, the holiday season nearly doubled our player base, and it quickly became apparent that in order to handle not only the current player base, but all future players as well, we needed to make some upgrades to our infrastructure.

Last Thursday we made our first such upgrade. 20 of our 88 realms were moved off of the original hardware and placed on a new hardware configuration. These 20 servers initially performed very well, up until we reached our maximum concurrency Friday evening. The high population numbers uncovered an issue in the new backend shared infrastructure. This issue caused some players to experience severe lag and disconnects on a few of the realms, making them virtually unplayable.

In order to stabilize the affected realms and allow as many players as possible the ability to continue playing, we lowered the population caps by 30%. This stabilized the realms to the point where 70% of the players on the realms in question could play, but it also resulted in large queues.

The problems were attributed to high concurrency numbers on individual realms putting extreme stress on the backend infrastructure. We were able to address this problem by implementing additional hardware into the infrastructure this afternoon. This additional hardware has allowed us to stabilize the affected realms, and thus increase the server caps. We will continue to monitor the performance throughout the evening. If we notice any of the performance issues starting up again we will lower the population cap level enough to stabilize performance.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this caused our players this weekend. This process coincides with our constant efforts to improve the current performance of World of Warcraft, and sometimes issues can arise when implementing these improvements. We will do our best to prevent similar situations from happening in the future, and we once again thank you for your patience and understanding.

So yeah, there aren't, weren't, and never will have been any server problems that people are complaining about. Of course, you could verify the link, but their forums are down (again; for the fifth time today)--but there are no problems!

Release Dates and Growing Up

[superultra]

I find it interesting to compare the movie industry and game industry. Movie studios are generally able to predict the date of a release as soon as production begins. Dates do change, but this is rare. But in the game industry, it's rare when a game publisher is actually doesn't change the date. Is it that there are more people involved? No. Money? No. Are games just more complicated to make than a movie? I can't see why. So what is it about games that makes it so difficult for publishers

Why is it that the best studios are the ones who often claim the mantra "when it's done" as their release date? It seems to me that a truly great studio ought to not only craft great games, but do them in a timely manner. I don't think this would bother me so much, except that in every E3 they imply and act as if the game is coming out that year. They're taking advantage of the press and fans, and eating their cake too: they get to put out whenever _they_ feel like it. Seems like a raw deal for us.

Someone needs to kick the game industry in their pants and tell them to shape up and act like, oh you know, every other professional industry.

Re:Release Dates and Growing Up

[Mr. Sketch]

I guess the fact that movies have been made for almost 100 years and that software production in it's current form has only been around 20, maybe 30 years, is irrelevant? The fact is that software is still not very mature as an industry, and in about 40-50 years or so, it should be comparable to the current movie industry.

Re:Release Dates and Growing Up

[RsG]

That is a false comparison. Movies are an established form of entertainment, and have a fairly well laid out production arc. Hardware considerations are a non issue, and neither are alpha and beta testing (and yes, I know about test screenings, and they just don't compare for difficulty). When was the last time you saw a "bugged" movie? Design in a movie is what's done before production; you don't write the script after you've started filming. Conversly, game design is what take up much of the production time, meaning that the number of variables you need to take into account is greater.

Finally, I would rather _not_ see the game industry become the next hollywood. Games are already too formulaic for my taste, and speeding up production in order to give a predictable product faster, *cough* EA *cough*, does not sound like an improvement.

Re:Release Dates and Growing Up

[bskin]

I think anybody who's ever coded anything of even a moderate size, much less a giant project of the scale of what Blizzard would be taking on, knows that the unexpected just happens sometimes and it can set you back weeks, or more. Predictions of how long software projects will take are usually more accurately called "guesses". And trying to get a project out by a deadline no matter what usually means "Ship it with the bugs, we'll patch it later." I don't think Blizzard should be criticized for *not* taking this approach.

Of course, it's not like Blizzard products have never shipped with a bug in them. But I think the entire idea of polishing a product until they're sure it's worth putting out is a good one. Lots of good games have been ruined by being pushed out too early. And while Blizzard's development cycle is quite long, they don't seem to have a vaporware problem, either.

Course, Blizzard seems to have almost nothing to do with this game, so we'll see if they hold it up to the same standards since their name's gonna be on it.

Re:Release Dates and Growing Up

[tc]

I don't think it is true with movies either.

The predicatable part of the schedule for movie production happens after the script has been written and directors and actors signed. Predicting how long it will take for all of the steps after that is a relatively straightforward business.

However, before you get to that stage there are a number of steps which are not predictable. Someone writes the script. Perhaps it goes through re-writes. You need to retain the right director. Casting for principal characters needs to be done. All of those steps are highly variable, and are not easy to predict accurately.

Think of all of those movies you've heard about being "in development" for years. Remember back when the rumour was that James Cameron was going to direct Spiderman? How long has the Hitch-Hiker's movie been talked about? How many attempts at scripts for various movies are abandoned before the final version is settled on?

If you count all of that time, I would argue that while the "production" phase of movie making might be highly predicatable, the whole process, start-to-finish, of making a movie really isn't.

It's the same thing with games. You can have a long "pre-production" phase where you are nailing down all of the core mechanics and getting key systems and pipelines working. This is less predictable because of the iteration required. At some point, you're into "production", where you're just churning out content, and that phase is much more predictable.

Granted, movies are more predictable than games, but it's not quite such a big gap as you might first suppose.

Re:Release Dates and Growing Up

[Anonymous Coward]

Software hass been around for just as long as movies.

Re:Release Dates and Growing Up

[Deliveranc3]

The end of movie production is in studio editing, something that can be rushed.

Also it can be considered complete more readily than say, a video game bug.

You've seen the effects, scars moving to opposite cheeks, timing that isn't funny, all kinds of stuff.

Artists are passionate and need time to create what they envision.

Re:Release Dates and Growing Up

[Flunitrazepam]

"When was the last time you saw a "bugged" movie?"

Starship Troopers!

Re:Release Dates and Growing Up

[RsG]

The monsters? Or the quality acting? :-)

Re:Release Dates and Growing Up

[Jormundgandr]

So, what I'm hearing is, you think those games are great and all, but you want them on the original release date. So I suppose it might not have mattered to you had Half Life 2 been released in fall 2003 with less than one playable level.

Would you like a playable game?

No no no, I'm being obtuse, you say. You want the game playable AND on time. Right. Well, in THAT case I suppose those game developers should have gone back in time and changed the original release date. Or maybe slipped in and extra month or two in spring, maybe, I dunno, Thermidor or April 2 to get that done for you on time.

Oh, they can't do that? Why not? REALITY INTERVENES. Which is why they had to push back the date.

Oh, and BTW, what do you do about this injustice? Bitch about it on Slashdot. Stick it to the man!

Re:Release Dates and Growing Up

[cgenman]

Are games just more complicated to make than a movie?

Yes. For one, problems with movies generally don't snowball. For example, if you can't shoot the scene where Harrison Ford jumps out of the helicopter and lands on the top of the state building because it is raining too much every day you have available, you quickly film a shot where he's taking off in a helicopter, then cut to an interior of the state building with Harrison Ford sneaking around and the helicopter flying off. On the other hand, if you're reusing code and you discover that while your graphics subsystem can easily handle 1,000,000 polys it can't deal with the 1,000 units of 100 polys you were planning on throwing at it, you're screwed. You may have to redo your graphics engine, you may have to re-do your in-game graphics, you may have to re-author your worlds to compensate. Or you may discover that your idea for an RTSRPS, while seeming great, is actually boring in practice (Anyone else remember the revisions to Warcraft 3?). A lot of these things a competent director on film can tell by looking at dailys, but videogame developers have to wait until running code is in front of them to know. And unfortunately for code to run all of the support code has to be in place, etc, etc... generally for half of the project all people can do is hope that things will work out. Furthermore the painful debug period can last anywhere from as long as you think it will until infinity. You can't ship a game if it is buggy: the publisher won't let you. But you can ship a crappy movie. You can also fix many problems with movies during the editing phase, whereas games can't just be re-cut.

If you consider a game in development to be like a script in development, the cycles are similarly predictable. Nobody knows how long the latest Superman movie will be passed around from author to author before it's done with revisions and ready to go, but it could be a long while. Likewise, nobody knows how long it will be before Starcraft Ghost is ready for prime time, but it could be a while.

On the other hand, I haven't always seen the correlation between "when it's done" and greatness. Some companies have games that aren't done because they want to polish it to perfection. But quite frequently you have games that aren't done because it just isn't fun, and while the spark of insight is great enough to avoid putting it to sleep, nobody can really make it work. Sometimes you just have to get it out the door so that you can start over.

Re:Release Dates and Growing Up

[bugbread]

When was the last time you saw a "bugged" movie?

Depends what you consider "bugged". Do "glitch" style bugs count? If so, every time I've seen a boom, or a reflection of a camera man, or a continuity problem, I've seen a bug.

That said, they're all really minor bugs compared to the kinds of bugs that can happen in games, and while I've seen a movie crash (or, rather, melt), that was entirely the fault of the projectionist, not the movie itself.

Re:Release Dates and Growing Up

[king-manic]

Why is it that the best studios are the ones who often claim the mantra "when it's done" as their release date?

Doesn't that more or less tell you that movies are nothign liek video games. While a tiny glitch in a movie (say the mike was in a scene or a car was parked int he back ground of a fantasy movie) doesn't matter. But a tiny glitch in a game can ruin the whole game.

Somone needs to kick you in pants. The ones who follow their schedules religiously do so at the expense of the game. EA is one good example of time over quality. Delays hurt the company more then they do the fans. with each delay the fans expect more. With each delay the company burns money. They would love nothing more then to get the product out on time but the ones who wants somethign that lasts and shines spend extra time gettign it right.

Re:Release Dates and Growing Up

[king-manic]

Course, Blizzard seems to have almost nothing to do with this game, so we'll see if they hold it up to the same standards since their name's gonna be on it.


Actually Blizzard fire nihilistic and took over themselves. Now that WOW is out they have the man power. I think they initially out sourced it so they can concentrate on WOW. But nihilistic didn't do the gameplay up to blizz expected level of quality so they gave them the boot (paid them out) and took over.

Interesting story

[Pan T. Hose]

Even if completely irrelevant for loyal Slashdotters.
Because we are still boycotting Blizzard, right? Just checking.

Re:Interesting story

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, that was funny reading through that.

"Blizzard has tought fight."
"Lawyer thinks that Blizzard in wrong." ...years pass...
"EFF takes case."
"Court rules 100% in favor of Blizzard."

But it appears Slashdot is still boycotting Blizzard, or at least making stuff up about them.

Re:Interesting story

[pezpunk]

since when does everyone who reads a certain website have to act in the same manner? obviously some feel blizzard's actions warrant a boycott and some don't. there's no hipocracy, jsut a difference of opinion.

Re:Interesting story

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you know...reporting the truth about them.

Re:Interesting story

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's not the truth. The truth is that some small number of servers had downtime, not the entire game.

NEWSTORY: www1, www2, and www4 went offline! www3, www5, www6, www7, www8, www9, www10, www11, www12, www13, www14, www15, www16, www17, www18 all still operating fine.

Doesn't sound like much of a story, does it?

A couple of servers went down, but most players were still able to play. Gabe and Tycho were idiots for whining about it in their post. _xeno_'s an ass for submitting the story. Zonk is a moron for posting it without investigating the truth.

Read the comments in that story - almost no one is having problems with the game. Most people are still playing it just fine without any problem.

Asside from a small core of whining assholes, no one is having problems with the game.

Re:Interesting story

[space_jake]

Right I'm going to boycott Blizzard. They've done nothing but crank out fun games since I bought Warcraft 2 in 1995. 10 years of great gaming or listening to some Slashdotter cry about their privacy, fair use, and all of those other things that joe random linux user cries themselves to sleep at night with.

Re:Interesting story

[Deliveranc3]

But we have access to the same arguements which converted the others.

If you're not convinced then you are probably interpretting them diffrently.

Or you're stupid... but we'll forgive you.

Re:Interesting story

[pezpunk]

not everyone draws the same conclusions from the same information. to call someone who disagrees with your stance "stupid" is just you being an asshole.

Re:Yeah, like other games completely?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, so you're saying that instead of there being 84 servers working perfectly there are only 68. Oh no. Only 68 servers.

The people bitching about server issues could, instead, simply play on one of those 68 other servers were NOTHING IS WRONG but instead of playing the game they are paying for, they are bitching all over the place.

Sorry, but the fact remains: The VAST MAJORITY of players have NO PROBLEMS playing the game. Only a small but vocal few are running into issues, which they could completely avoid if they were willing to.

In other words, the entire thing is a non-issue.

Re:Yeah, like other games completely?

[keyne9]

Of course, because problems affecting 138,000 players are a NON ISSUE, right? That's assuming, conservatively, that those 20 servers hold proportionnate amounts of people as working servers, which is false (as the ones not working properly are among the most populous ones).

It's good to know that 138,000 people don't have anything to worry about. The game is working as intended.

Re:Yeah, like other games completely?

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to reply to the right post. Anyway...

If you are having problems on a given server, you might want to try PLAYING ON ANOTHER ONE until Blizzard solves the problems that are being caused because no one would restart their level 5 characters when Blizzard doubled the number of servers.

After all, it's not like those 138,000 people can't play the game. They are perfectly capable of doing so. They just refuse to do so.

It's a non-issue. Blizzard is fixing the problems that these people are causing in the first place. Just be patient. You could always play on one of the 68 working servers while you wait!

Anyway, can we please move back to Starcraft: Ghost? I know I'm no longer interested in it (never really was), but that's the subject of this thread. Not some made-up issue that people keep on whining about all over the place.

(I have a feeling that when it does get released, it's going to have a certain Metriod Prime feel to it...)

Re:Yeah, like other games completely?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice try, genius.

All my friends happen to be on the one of the 18 servers that got nuked yesterday for hardwaare maintenance...maintenance that could have happened at any other point in the day, but they decided to go ahead and perform at 6PST, i.e. MMO Rush Hour.

The 2 hours it was supposed to take went over 5.

"Simply playing" on one of the other serves means absolutely nothing when you lose your character. You don't spend 3 weeks levelling a character up to level 30 or so only to jump ship and start up a level 1 guy on a server you're never going to be playing again...until the next server outage.

Stop being a tool and realize for those people on the 20 servers encountering these issues that IT IS A FREAKING PROBLEM.

Anyone read the article?

[Alkaiser]

The "relevant" part about Ghost is 1 question, and it's in the post. Fairly useless post if you want to know anything about Ghost. I have to say that she looks better in Gabe's drawings, too.

As far as another 3rd person stealth action game on the console...YAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWN.

Seriously...what could this game possibly do that would be markedly different than other games out there? Have you infiltrate Zerg bases? Whoopty doo. If it comes out, maybe I'll care at that point, until then, I file all Ghost news along with the Duke Nukem Forever news.

Re:Anyone read the article?

[PedanticSpellingTrol]

DNF? That's a tad optimistic, I've been tossing all the Ghost news in my "Perfect Dark Zero" file.

Re:Anyone read the article?

[Bluetick]

Could've just as easily said the same thing about WoW. Another MMORPG? YAWWWWWWWWWWWWNNNNNN. And now they've got a license to print money. Don't get me wrong, I'm skeptical of Ghost, and I didn't like WoW at all, but just because a genre seems saturated doesn't mean there isn't room for improvements there.

Old article?

[johankohler]

Inspired by E3?

E3 was in May last year, is this article old?

Re:Yeah, like other games completely?

[Anonymous Coward]

OMFG. Can we PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stop talking about this crap? This thread is about STARCRAFT GHOST and not "I'm too much of a whiny bitch to start a new character during the couple of hours the servers are down to fix the problems me and my friends are causing because we refused to move to a low pop server when our characters were level 5."

Look, if you want to play the game, YOU CAN. Some servers have problems. DON'T PLAY ON THEM. You don't have to. Play the other side. Start a class you haven't tried yet.

Then, when the servers come back up, you can resume your quest to become OMGWTFUBER1337 60!!!!11!

Seriously, your "friends" can still play the game. They just WON'T which isn't the same thing at all.

Re:Yeah, like other games completely?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you read the effing article? There's MORE about WoW in that article than there is about Ghost!

The whole freaking point of an MMO is to play a character and keep growing that character. If you were just going to restart their development all the time, you wouldn't bother paying $20/month for it!

Developing a secondary character on a server that you won't continue to play on is useless, and essentially the same as not playing. It's wasted time in the grand scheme of things. All your guild is on one server, all your enemies are on that same server. The persistence of the universe is the entire point of playing an MMO. Otherwise, you could do all this crap offline.

And just cause the quote's funny...

[bskin]

From the article, about WoW:

That's one of the other things that I think is interesting about this product. It's really the only MMO that has an extremely long history, where there are millions and millions of people that are already dedicated to that franchise. They're already tied into the storylines, the characters and what have you, and as a result of that we think that we have a built in audience that is going to be interested in checking it out.

Uhm, I don't suppose you've ever heard of Star Wars Galaxies? There are, apparantly, people who are just a tiny bit attached to this "Star Wars" franchise as well. And that made it such a great game, too...

And, y'know, while on that subject...isn't talking about Warcraft in terms of its grand plot about on the same level as talking about the original Doom that way? I've played the games since the first one, and I haven't gotten much more out of the plot other than "Orcs kill humans, and then humans kill orcs." Admittedly, that may be because I filtered most of it out, but I still hardly think it's a crowning achievement that people are extremely attached to, character-wise or plot-wise...

Re:And just cause the quote's funny...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Admittedly, that may be because I filtered most of it out..."

No shit.

Re:And just cause the quote's funny...

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, so you skip by all the cutscenes (or just play online) and then complain about the lack of story?

You deserve a (Score:-1, Stupid)

Re:And just cause the quote's funny...

[Darkmane]

The Warcraft series had a huge mythology behind all the happenings in the game. But most of it was kept away for those that wanted it.. Mainly in the cutscenes and manuals.

Admittedly, that may be because I filtered most of it out

And for those that were not interested, it was easy to just filter it out, making it just a no-brainer fantasy-themed war game.

Sexually Transmitted Diseases

[tid242]

Well luckily my principles never stopped me from just playing a game and having fun. Does a companies ethics make a game any less fun?

Do STDs make unprotected sex with prostitutes any less fun?

-tid242

Re:Sexually Transmitted Diseases

[bar-agent]

Do STDs make unprotected sex with prostitutes any less fun?

Nope, they sure as hell don't! It's still fun!

Um...or so I've heard.

Re:Sexually Transmitted Diseases

[Anonymous Coward]

The "it feels like sandpaper" STDs can.

Re:Yeah, like other games completely?

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to freak out, Dr. Spazopolos.

+FIVE BILLION INSIGHTFUL!!!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Blizzard likes money! LOL! Where do they come up with this stuff?!?!?!?!?

Blizzard Puts Foot In Mouth

[SirBruce]

Quoting Paul Sams:
"That's one of the other things that I think is interesting about this product. It's really the only MMO that has an extremely long history, where there are millions and millions of people that are already dedicated to that franchise. They're already tied into the storylines, the characters and what have you, and as a result of that we think that we have a built in audience that is going to be interested in checking it out."

Umm, hello, McFly?!? How about a little game called ULTIMA ONLINE? Perhaps you've heard of it.

Sheesh.

Bruce

Re:Blizzard Puts Foot In Mouth

[Anonymous Coward]

Ultima lost its "millions and millions" of dedicated followers ages ago. Sometime around Ultima VIII by my reckoning.

MOD PARENT FUNNY YOU UNFUNNY FUCKS

[Anonymous Coward]

That was friggen classic. Did all the Blizzard fluffers get the mod points today?

Ghost != 2

[istewart]

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Personally

[Krakhan]

I'm hoping this will continue the SC storyline in a decent way. I do have some doubts though, since a lot of the people that developed Starcraft and Brood War are now long gone. I'll just have to wait and see.

I say...

[Taulin]

I say just let them take their time, and do what they want. However, just don't tell us about it until you are almost done.

Re:Yeah, like other games completely?

[moonbender]

Woohoo, the Iraqi information minister is posting on Slashdot!

Uh...

[Inoshiro]

"When was the last time you saw a "bugged" movie? "

Lots of movies have bugs...

Even this one..

It happens all the time!

Re:Uh...

[RsG]

Those are things like costume slipups and continuity errors. In the context of a game those are not "bugs"; they're rarely even noticed.

If, in a game, someone's clothing changed between two levels with no plausible explanation that didn't violate continuity, would it count as a bug? That's the sort of thing you linked to in IMDB, and it doesn't fit the definiton of a software bug. "Bug" in the context of software means something that prevents the program from executing properly, like a crash bug, or a rendering anomaly.

The equivalent in a movie would be a random BSOD in the middle of a fight scene, or a character's body clipping into a wall and getting stuck. Obviously this is a rare occurence :-)

Re:Uh...

[Inoshiro]

" Those are things like costume slipups and continuity errors. ...."Bug" in the context of software means something that prevents the program from executing properly, like a crash bug, or a rendering anomaly."

Sounds like one and the same to me.

I go by the dictionary definition of bug:
2: a fault or defect in a system

A fault or defect in a movie.. hmm!

Re:Yeah, like other games completely?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are lots of other people to make guilds and enemies from on that other server as well. If you're having fun the time is never wasted, I'd take 10 fun hours giving me maybe 2 levels over 1 unfun hour that ups me 20 levels any day because I'm playing for the fun. But playing an MMO for fun seems to be a futile attempt because hundreds of hours of fun are hard to make so they stretch out the game over such a long time requiring you to craft hundreds of swords to advance when it stopped being fun at the third.

Anyway, so far I've always had a second character I'd develop when the server for the first one was down or I just didn't feel like playing my first character. This also helps with the variety since you're playing more different playstyles instead of one all the time.

Re:Yeah, like other games completely?

[realdpk]

"That leaves 84 servers that are working ABSOLUTELY PERFECTLY that Tycho and Gabe could be playing on but won't."

Won't? Can you move your characters from server to server at any time?

for starcraft fans

[Flunitrazepam]

Patch 1.12 is coming out 'soon' now.

It has some interesting new features, like mini-map ping (like Warcraft3) and some alterations to current ladder maps (Lost Temple included.

Check Blizzard's main page for more details.

Pretty neat they are still supporting this game.

Re:Yeah, like other games completely?

[DarkZero]

There are a very few vastly overcrowded servers that are suffering issues. There are 88 servers total. Something like four are having issues. That leaves 84 servers that are working ABSOLUTELY PERFECTLY that Tycho and Gabe could be playing on but won't.

According to the average /played, once you reach around level 30 and have your profession suitably leveled-up as well, you've played the game with that character for at least 48 hours. Therefore, moving to a new server is the equivalent of having your memory card save file corrupted in the last hours of Final Fantasy VII. If my save file was corrupted after 48 hours of an RPG, I would be pissed off, and probably so would you.

I don't know about you, but I don't think that the normal operation of one game (an MMORPG, specifically WoW) should be equivalent to a total fucking disaster in another game.

Real Translation: You are clueless

[orthancstone]

You do realize Blizzard gave over the majority of control in making this game to a studio, right?

Re:Real Translation: You are clueless

[Psykechan]

Yes, but that studio is Swinging Ape Studios. (warning flash) They already have a superb multi platform game called Metal Arms which is one of the best party games ever.

It's a budget price right now. Go pick it up!

But

[obeythefist]

This game will be just like C&C renegade. Cute for a few minutes, because you see all the buildings you built in the first game but from first person perspective! And they're huge and they look really cool! Then you play the game a bit and it's pedestrian and there's nothing new. Some players might dig out an old copy of Starcraft and play that.

What they really need to do is make the Starcraft 2 we're all waiting for. How big was Starcraft? It was *huge* for its time. How much does the games biz like to rehash old popular titles to scrape a bit more cash out of the general public? Loads! (See DooM3, HL2).

I feel like a need a tinfoil hat. Why isn't there a Starcraft sequel in an age of sequels? Something is not right.

Off topic -- Re Pie charts on your site

[Anonymous Coward]

Pie charts are easiest to read if you put the shares in order from largest to smallest starting at the 12:00 position. The current pie chart for market share by MMOG is ordered by chronological order and while useful for the relative contribution chart, is rotten for a pie chart.