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Blizzard Announces StarCraft 2
We'll be returning once again to the world of StarCraft, it appears, and not in the form of a Massively Multiplayer game. Blizzard has announced StarCraft 2 at their packed event in Seoul, South Korea. IGN is liveblogging the event, describing gameplay footage being played as well as full cinematics. From the description of ongoing events there are massive changes to the way the game plays, new units, a physics system within the game engine, and the capability to show over 100 units onscreen at a time. "Showing gameplay footage - Looks like protoss ships - floating over asteroid/ base structure - entering protoss ase - similar looking buildings - vespene gas still in the game - character pane shows up on right side - some protoss guy - shifts to terran bases floating on rockets over same type of territory - sill collecting crystals as resources - marines load out. Dustin is actually playing the game - nothing in the game is final." Additional coverage from Milky at 1up.
...welcome our new ZERGLIasddAS24Y6JNGG-G--SAD9ODASIDAS98244128990WQA
NO CARRIER
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Excellent, so glad it isn't a StarCraft MMO as rumoured.
What I want to know is, will it have a Heroes model (after Warcraft III) or will it drop back to a more traditional model of RTS (just units). Or will it have an entirely new hook? I hope it follows after Warcraft III's model.
However, the reports of having hundreds of zerglings makes it seem like it might be more of a macro scale RTS.
Even SC2 beat out Duke Nukem Whenever...
I only hope that Blizzard won't try to mix&match genres in an attempt to gain wider audience. The fact that in WC3, the game degenerated into Hero rush is what kept me from playing it.
They should look at the original Ground Control for an idea of a good strategy game
KEKEKEKEKE ZERG RUSH!
The Protoss mother ship (from IGN's Charles Onyett):
3:18 - warprey also very effective against structures - very vulnerable to small unit fire - shws warpreys getting wiped out by terran marines. Physics system lets debris from warpreys roll down a ramp. Showing one more unit - warped in in a serious of cubes - giant floating base - called a protoss mothership - can only have 1 at a time - cost big resources - special abilities include timebomb that slows all enemy missiles inside - shows terran missle launcher shooting in projectiles that stop in the field before they reach the ship - when field ends missiles drop the ground - planet cracker attack - giant lasers stream from ship to ground - ship can be moved around while planet cracker laser is active - the ship looks like a metallic, triangular sand dollar - mothership can create a black hole anywhere it wannts to - creates distortion that actually sucks ships in and destroys them - in the demo the black hole destroyed four terran battle cruisers in about ten seconds.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
....Or was that "My life for Aiur!" I could never tell what those damn zealots were saying.
If Star Trek had the internet: Captain, we've received an IM from the romulans. "Surrender or be destroyed. LOL. o.O"
In other news, the rest of the world released a huge sigh of relief as the Doomsday Clock was turned back. A spokesman for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was quoted as saying "A Starcraft MMO could have ended it all. We may never know how close we came to the complete and utter destruction of society as we know it."
StarCraft is back for more. Will my academic career survive this time?
Here
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
IGN has posted screenshots here.
Looks incredibly cool graphically, though at the moment it looks like the gameplay is exactly the same as StarCraft. I wonder if there'll be some gameplay announcements soon.
And yes, I'm a huge fan of Relic's work.
P.P.S. I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJB-Z54R61s
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
I, for one, welcome our new Zerg overlords.
*whisper: dude, we don't have any overlords*
SPAWN MORE OVERLORDS!
I'm entering "long, pseudo-philosophical rant"-mode here, so caveat lector:
Improving StarCraft is like improving chess - arguably possible, but hardly without upsetting a lot of people. StarCraft is still being played today because as a game, it's one of the most polished and consistent experiences available. It's not truly "real-time", it has little to do with "strategy", it is certainly not trying to be realistic and the graphics suck by today's standard - but that's also true for poker and darts. I feel most of the comments calling for Blizzard to "look to Title X" for new ideas for StarCraft 2 are a little misguided. StarCraft's gameplay is in a class of it's own, people will buy it because it's StarCraft. And they will buy it because StarCraft -even in its current form- is just a damn good game in it's own right. It's just imaginable that, a hundred years from now, people will still enjoy slightly enhanced versions of exactly the same formula, just like we enjoy back gammon thousands of years after its original form was created.
While I see some complain that Starcraft2 is just like Starcraft, I rather think that's just one of it's strengths. I would *hate* to have seen a completely 'revised' starcraft where one could hardly see any link with the old game. Let's face it; it may be true that Blizzard is (much like EA) a rather commercial company (well, they all are, but you know what I mean) who mainly goes for established and proven concepts, and doesn't come up with something daring or original - one must acknowledge they hit the spot with Starcraft. It was one of the best games of the genre in its time. Ah, the wee hours I spend on it (including broodwars). I'm not saying it was perfect (there were some missions who were rather tedious and boring), but all in all it was a great game - and even until this day I play it now and then (I bought it again for 6 euro or so last year; a real bargain, since it STILL looks reasonable and remains as enjoyable as when it came out).
So, yes, Blizzard isn't really an innovative company and only bets on sure moneymakers, and their Starcraft2 is much like Starcraft, only with prettier graphics, a new story, new units, new AI and physics...but really, isn't that new enough for something that already was a superb game (and, as Blizzard well knows, a huge succes)? I think *many* more would complain if Blizzard had taken Starcraft into directions that completely deviated from the old game, frankly. Imagine they made a MMOG out of it...that would have been completely awful (just as when Beth would make the next TES game into a MMOG; a big mistake - though in that case, multiplayer for 4-8 friends to play in it would be cool). All in all, Blizzard did well not to tinker too much with the concept of the game itself; a huge fanbase would be more inclined to turn their backs on them if they would be *too* cavalier in changing an already established and loved game.
That said, I would like to see Blizzard and EA try out something really innovative with a new game, though. It's a bit sad such huge companies dare less then other, often far more smaller game-developing corporations. Yeah, I know; going for the easy money is always...well, easier. But I can't imagine the game-devs themselves wouldn't like to tackle and try out something totally new too, even in those companies.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
I really appreciate the fact (judging by the visuals) that they have seemingly concentrated on making things aesthetically pleasing, rather than technologically demanding, as so many new games seem to.
This means it should be fairly scalable to lower end PC's. Complete opposite to say Supreme Commander which kills even high-end computers, yet isn't exactly great looking - infact it looks worse than 10 year old TA on anything but the highest settings!.
Blizzard did the same with WC3, which ran nicely on my low end laptop back in the day and still looked nice. Kudos to them for putting gameplay, and true art ahead of 'graphics technology'.
It's unsurprising to see how reminiscent of Starcraft this is. Innovation has never been strength of Blizzard; historically, Blizzard games have never had revolutionary features. Starcraft itself was merely the purest, best manifestation of a RTS formula that was very well established by the mid-90s. Blizzard sticks to refining established gameplay concepts into a perfectly crafted and meticulously balanced gem. This is not intended either as a insult of Blizzard, merely an observation - the studio is obviously very, very good at what it does, and it is rightly rewarded for that by the market. Indeed, the games industry would be much poorer without Blizzard, as it had a hand in popularizing many otherwise overlooked innovations in games, but the fact is that they don't innovate and never have. (The Gauntlet-style RPG slasher was about dead prior to Diablo, and Warcraft 3's appropriation of the hero system from neglected games like Battlecry and Kohan seems to have made it a staple of the RTS genre, etc.)
The point about style that you made is probably why everyone remembers Starcraft, while Total Annihilation is practically unknown to most gamers today. While I'm sure most of us can agree that Starcraft was a technically inferior program, it was much more memorable for its style, appearance, and story. Total Annihilation, meanwhile, was a game far ahead of its time, and it got left in the dust because it had zero personality. Total Annihilation's gameplay was and continues to be top-notch, even surpassing Supreme Commander in a few respects. (Namely in unit diversity and pacing.) It had features most RTS games don't have now, and that was ten years ago. The problem is, there was no 'coolness hook' - no real style - to draw you in unless you really, really appreciated the gameplay and the feature-set. In today's world of pretty lights, convoluted storylines, and stylishly dressed feature characters, games like Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander are just too difficult for most gamers to appreciate.
That's not to say they're both not completely incredible games, which they are. They're just totally square in spite of being so awesome.
i'm starting grad school next semester. i hope to god that sc2 is delayed long enough for me to get my phd.
chillax137
It appears the good ole days of the RTS are back. C&C 3, Supreme Commander, and now StarCraft 2. Throw in some very good newcomers like Company of Heros, and it's the best time to be an RTS gamer since the 90's.
This is NOT flamebait, this is the sentiment of millions of gamers. I strongly prefer the starcraft style of gameplay to the warcraft 3 style.
I too hope it does not have the heros, they're the reason I grew weary of wc3 in a week instead of the 4 years I played sc.
I have to think the game marketshare of Linux is running neck and neck with Apple systems. Blizzard is showing that it is worth it to port to MacOS, so why don't they also feel the same about Linux?
The Linux game market is *not* all those willing to buy a native Linux port of a game, it is *only* those who refuse to buy a Win32 version and dual boot or emulate. If a company does a native Linux port it needs *new* sales to justify it. Cannibalizing existing sales, having a person buy a Linux version instead of a Win32 version, does not bring in any new money. It loses money, they got the same sale but they spent more money getting it. The majority of Linux gamers dual boot or emulate, until that changes the Linux gaming market will not be viable - Linux gamers are already paying customers via the Win32 version.
Historically the Mac side was a very different story. Dual boot was not an option until recent times, and emulation was not practical for games - the CPU, not just the APIs, needed to be emulated. So Mac gamers had to have a native port. This made the Mac gaming market viable. If anything has changed, it is not Linux becoming more viable, it is Mac becoming less viable. If Mac gamers begin to dual boot or emulate, so that they more gaming options, then they will create an environment where developers will find it more profitable to reach Mac gamers via the Win32 version as well. One version (Win32) to rule them all (Win32, Linux, and Mac).
A secondary but non-trivial problem with targeting Linux, support. Targeting Linux is not like Mac where you have one platform, or two if you still want to target PowerPC. There are many Linux distribution, your code and/or installer may need to be aware of some of their subtleties, your support personnel surely will need to be aware. These support people may even need to be more technically inclined than Mac support people, on second thought that's a given isn't it? Your quality assurance testing matrix just ballooned from Win2K, WinXP, WinVista, MacOS X Intel, MacOS X PowerPC to the former plus Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, SUSE. Doesn't seem to bad at first glance, but keep in mind the much smaller return that the latter four provide. All this support and qa effort *must* be paid for by the Linux gamer subsegment that refuses to buy the Win32 version and dual boot or emulate.
The Linux gaming market is not really viable yet, at least for large developers. I wish this were not true, but it is. Recent events like the Apple Intel migration have not really changed the situation. I'll address some good questions that came from a troll thread.
Supporting Mac OSX on X86 and not supporting Linux is nothing short of Laziness now.
You are mistaken. The migration from PowerPC to Intel has not made a Linux port one bit easier. It has made the Mac market more important as a greater percentage of Macs are now viable gaming systems, especially on the laptop side.
Mac games are not *nix based, they still use proprietary APIs like Carbon and Cocoa to some degree. Also a company like Blizzard that has been supporting Macs for over a decade surely has some internal libraries that are pretty Windows and Mac specific as well. The source code to Mac based games is not really any more compatible with Linux than it was before Apple's Intel migration. All that has happened is that assembly language / SSE from the Windows side does not have to be rewritten in PowerPC / Altivec.
I have to think the game marketshare of Linux is running neck and neck with Apple systems. Blizzard is showing that it is worth it to port to MacOS, so why don't they also feel the same about Linux?
The Linux game market is *not* all those willing to buy a native Linux port of a game, it is *only* those who refuse to buy a Win32 version and dual boot or emulate. If a company does a native Linux port it needs *new* sales to justify it. Cannibalizing existing sales, having a person buy a Linux version instead of a Win32 version, does not bring in any new money. It loses money, they got the same sale but they spent more money getting it. The majority of Linux gamers dual boot or emulate, until that changes the Linux gaming market will not be viable - Linux gamers are already paying customers via the Win32 version.
Historically the Mac side was a very different story. Dual boot was not an option until recent times, and emulation was not practical for games - the CPU, not just the APIs, needed to be emulated. So Mac gamers had to have a native port. This made the Mac gaming market viable. If anything has changed, it is not Linux becoming more viable, it is Mac becoming less viable. If Mac gamers begin to dual boot or emulate, so that they more gaming options, then they will create an environment where developers will find it more profitable to reach Mac gamers via the Win32 version as well. One version (Win32) to rule them all (Win32, Linux, and Mac).
A secondary but non-trivial problem with targeting Linux, support. Targeting Linux is not like Mac where you have one platform, or two if you still want to target PowerPC. There are many Linux distribution, your code and/or installer may need to be aware of some of their subtleties, your support personnel surely will need to be aware. These support people may even need to be more technically inclined than Mac support people, on second thought that's a given isn't it? Your quality assurance testing matrix just ballooned from Win2K, WinXP, WinVista, MacOS X Intel, MacOS X PowerPC to the former plus Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, SUSE. Doesn't seem to bad at first glance, but keep in mind the much smaller return that the latter four provide. All this support and qa effort *must* be paid for by the Linux gamer subsegment that refuses to buy the Win32 version and dual boot or emulate.
It irks me when people see a successful game and say, "Wouldn't it be better if it were totally different?"
Look at Master of Orion...Master of Orion II was a great game and Master of Orion III was a complete dog. An upgrade of AI, graphics, buildings and ship gear on MOO2 would have left them with a solid, potentially excellent game. Instead they tossed everything from MOO2 except the name, and proceeded to create one of the great flops of all time.
Judging by the Diablo->DiabloII sequel, I'll give 'em the benefit of the doubt.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Actually, Blizzard has said that they've learned not to announce things until they're almost done. They've said themselves the only thing left is tweaking the balance between the sides. The engine is polished, the physics are polished, they have voice acting done in at least 2 languages that I know of (Korean and English). The game has been in development for four years now, and rumor has it that we'll be seeing it either holiday season this year or early next year. Blizzard has stated SC2 will be out before the 10th anniversary of the original coming out.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.