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World of Starcraft? Not So Much
The rumours have been swirling since last night, when MMOG discussion site F13 posted the surprising news that Blizzard plans to make MMOGs of Starcraft and Diablo. Turns out that while the possibility still exists, that's not exactly accurate. The CessPit has some of the slides from Vivendi's presentation, (courtesy of SirBruce). The last of these would seem to show the mere possibility (not confirmation) of expansion into the Massive and console markets for the company's intellectual properties. However, this is coupled with a flat denial by lead designer Rob Pardo: "Nothing in that rumor is true in regards to Blizzard. If I had to guess, there was some confusion between what Vivendi has planned for its game division versus what Blizzard has planned. While Blizzard is owned by Vivendi, their game division operates separately from Blizzard." So, while not out of the question, I find it unlikely we'll be hearing about World of Starcraft any time soon.
Personally, I think that MMO's are draining way too much focus from the other gaming genre's. Right now they're a big cash-cow, which unfortunately makes them more attractive Vs other games.
I'd much rather see a proper Starcraft sequel... full 3d environments, and all the coolness of an in-space RTS that Starcraft introduced. Warcraft III has been fun, but I find that the races tend towards being a bit too linear, especially in terms of special abilities. In Starcraft, the mix was awesome... with zerg being your massive-rush force, protoss being brute-force, terran being in-between, and the technological aspects mixing all three together (protoss carrier rush=massiveness) and all the cool techs such as the arbitor abilities and the nastly little zerg devourer slime. Combined with the strategic elements such as invisibility, scanning, shields, etc... the strategic element of Starcraft far exceeded Warcraft III, and would make for a much more worthy sequel if done right...
But for Aiur's sake, please don't wash all that out with an MMORPG. It works for some things, but it's a good way to absolutely murder good games from other genre's.
Hell, a mere followup to StarCraft would be nice. I mean, how much longer are people supposed to put up with 640x480 pixels???
Wow, I just zoned on an excellent way to do the zerg...
Remember the actual zerg are the little worm things that come out of the hives, that's step one. So everyone starts out as a little worm thing, with some kind of piddly stun attack. Then you go out into the world, and stun something, then you infest it, and it mutates into a basic thing like itself, with maybe some variation depending on the stats of the actual thing. You know, infest a wolf, get a zergling, infest a big lizard, get a hydralisk, infest an elephant, get an ultralisk, etc. But there is no reason you couldn't have different types of creatures for everything.
As you level up, your little infesting worm guy gets new mutational talents, so you can change the thing you're infesting in some way. When you get killed, you lose the thing you were infesting and have to go find another one.
Wow. I always thoguht the big problem would be coming up with a way to make the zerg playable, but that would work...
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" Trying to fit all games into an online model forces them to be basically all versions of the same game (all the same run around-kill-collect-level model of game play)."
Not really. MMO games also include stuff that's pretty different from WoW. Mind you, not _completely_ different, but still. E.g.:
1. Planetside.
It's really a MMO-FPS. Think UT2004 with 200 players in each team. Think battles where a SF fortress is attacked by waves of a hundred infantry (ranging from unarmored infiltrators to the massive mechanized exo-skeletons) and tens of tanks, artillery vehicles, AA vehicles, bombers, gunships, giant transport ships paradropping whole squads on top of it, and even about a lance of mechs in most fights.
It also has absolutely _zero_ grinding, farming, etc, as the game has no money (you're a soldier, so your equipment is provided to you based on your certifications) and levels don't give anyone an unfair advantage in combat (being higher level gives you more flexibility, as it allows you to be certified in several different things, but you still have the same health, do the same damage and can use the same weapons as someone half your level.)
_And_ it doesn't really need 3 hours of gathering a 40 man group a la WoW or of waiting in a queue for some battleground. Anyone can just jump into any battle and get xp for whatever they can do. E.g., if you're certified as a medic, you don't have to wait until some raid invites you: you can just jump into any battle and get xp for healing the combatants. E.g., if you're an engineer, you can just jump into any fight and start repairing the damaged vehicles, and get xp for it. E.g., if you're certified to pilot a transport, just load up a squad and paradrop them wherever they want to go, and not only you'll be a very popular guy or gal, but you'll get xp for their kills there too. Or, of course, if you can use a gun, you can just get your gun and go join whatever assault or defense is in progress.
Sure, joining a squad or outfit lets you fight more coordinated as part of a team, but that's about it. If you don't want to, you can just go solo in any battle just as well. You'll figure out something useful to do pretty easily. Be it healing, repairing, shooting a gun, being gunner on a tank, laying mines, or jumping into a chaingun turret and laying down the suppression fire.
And, again, any of those you can do from level 1 (though you can gain a few levels first by just doing the tutorials anyway) and have max level people thanking you for it. There is no grinding to level 60 or collecting epic equipment before you can go play with the big boys. You can take part in any battle right after installing the game, and feel like you've made a difference.
So, basically, you know, you can just play the game and let levels and stuff happen on their own. There is no need to focus on collecting anything either.
2. City Of Heroes / City Of Villains.
Well, this is a sorta more standard type of MMO, but it cuts down on pretty much anything that could be seen as a time sink. E.g., travel time is short (SuperSpeed caps at about 90mph, Teleport caps at about 200mph), combat is fast and furious, there is no collecting "loot" in the traditional sense of the word (if you want your character to wear big red pauldrons, you can just paint him that way in the character editor), there is no crafting in the traditional sense (though you can craft devices for your super-hero base or super-villain lair), and there is no farming for gold or resources.
Also, although it does depend on grouping (unlike the loose action of Planetside), missions are automatically instanced for whatever number of people you have. I.e., the same mission can either be soloed or you can find an 8-player group for it. Since groups yield better xp per minute, you rarely have a problem finding random people to group with at any level. (Though whether they can also play well in a group, is a bit of a hit-and-miss issue. Some groups rule, some can make a good point for misanthropy.) But again, any instanced mission can also be soloed if you're not in a social mood.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Exactly, it is still probably the best game ever created. If they could raise the resolution a bit for more modern monitors, and clean up the online functionality it would be spectacular. They could probably even beef up the graphics a bit without too much work, although that isn't particularly important... Starcraft is great because there are not too many silly graphical effects going on, and it relies instead on the perfection of the gameplay.
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
Assuming they ever do get around to making a follow up, I don't expect it to be very good. Why?
Take a look at the original Starcraft team, here. You can follow the names and see where many of them are now. For the most part though, many of the top designers and programmers from the original Starcraft are gone. Where did they go? Guild Wars, or more specifically, they founded ArenaNet.
And if there is something I have learned about games. If the original team behind a game is gone and a new team tries to pick up the game, the results arn't typically very pretty. So don't expect much. I'm not.