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Starcraft 2 To Be a Trilogy
The Starcraft 2 gameplay panel was an eventful one at Blizzcon today. The developers faced an obstacle when designing the game; the plans they had were just too massive to implement in a single game on anything approaching a reasonable timeline. Their solution was to divide the game up into three separate, stand-alone titles: Terran: Wings of Libery, Zerg: Heart of the Swarm, and Protoss: Legacy of the Void. Read on for further details.
Each campaign will have on the order of 26-30 missions. The path players take through the missions can vary — the storyline branches frequently — but they will end in the same place. The games will run alongside each other; there will not be cliffhanger endings leading from one to another, and each game will focus on a different part of the story. The Terran campaign will focus on Jim Raynor, and the Zerg campaign will be all about Kerrigan. Multiplayer functionality will be in place for all three races from the start.
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"We at Blizzard Entertainment value you, the wallet mounted on the back of an entranced magpie. As such, we wanted to ensure that StarCraft 2 was the highest quality money sink possible, while still extracting money from you soon. As such, it will be released in installments for the low, low price of $59.99 each. Naturally, each new installment will break multiplayer with previous ones. We hope you enjoy playing our games as much as we enjoy taking your money!"
Multiplayer functionality will be in place for all three races from the start.
We've gone from RTFA to RTFS, now. Do people on /. actually read anything?
Those jackholes are going to make me shell out 150 to 200 dollars for this game, aren't they?
God, Blizzard is evil!
Perhaps you should have taken a moment to confirm that indeed, every other post in the thread says the exact same thing.
Including this one; their stated reason is untrue, this is a marketing ploy to sell more units.
There IS no UID 666. You must be new here...
Actually, ACs internally are uid 666, they just don't display.
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
For those of you whining about "whaaaa 300% markup"..
Each campaign has 36 missions. That's more than the original Starcraft. Further, the campaign will be branched (ie, you'll have choices that actually effect what happens, which missions are selected, what happens). It might also feature co-op multiplayer, not sure on that one yet.
Or, what they announced, was a game called Starcraft II and the following two expansions to it. You know that's how it'll work. They won't just ship new missions and charge you retail for it, it will feature new units, balance, etc.
Starcraft was released, people were happy. Brood War was released, and people didn't whine about Blizzard "ripping them off" because hey, this expansion also had content.
Starcraft II is exactly the same, and yet, people are whining now...? Am I missing something?
We've gone from RTFA to RTFS, now.
Do people on /. actually read anything?
I read your comment. I can has cookie?
Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
I have intentionally stayed the hell away from anything about the game in the press. I loved SC1 and _still_ play it. Does anyone know if there will be Linux support this time around? I haven't had a box running Windows for many, many years. I don't want to have to buy Cedega on top of it, but I guess I may have to.
Also, is there a release date yet?
I ask here because I DON'T want to go to the website and get everything spoiled before I even get the game.:(
But this is slashdot. A slashdoter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber!
This is just lame. Game companies seem to be coming up with more and more ways to gouge consumers. Now releasing THREE Starcraft titles... Sorry Blizz, you just lost a sale. What? Making an expansion pack doesn't make you enough money any more? Making 75 million plus a month off WOW isn't good enough? Activision must owe some loansharks.
"How can we make more money?"
"Well screw it. We pay the writers very little. Just have them write longer stories and VOILA! One game, but three sales for the whole thing!"
"Jenkins, you're a genius! You'll find a whore and some gin waiting on your car when you leave."
Ah well, one less game to buy. Or three actually.
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This isn't exactly a new development. Remember Diablo II? Its 'expansion' was really just the end of the story started in the main game, a.k.a. Act V. The same could be said about Warcraft III and its expansion.
http://crummysocks.com
Has it ever occurred to anyone that this is actually a good thing? What blizzard is saying is that their massive team of elite game developers simply do not have the time to fit the enormous amount of content they want to put in. This means that there will most likely be 2 more WELL-WORTH games that follow the series coming out. I know how much I wanted to go to blizzard and say "can you make another?" when it came to the brood war expansion. If there were only campaigns that came with the expansions, then people would just pirate it and buy the cd-keys for cheep online. Chances are, the expansions will have more units/buildings, more areas, more neutral objects, and possibly new functions to the old units/buildings. And chances are each one will redefine the way the game is played, and lead to many more hours of good gaming, which is much more than you can say about a whole lot of other expansions.
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I said "What, are expansion packs not making your enough money?" I mean we already know multiple game developers remove stuff from their games (latest example: Plant creator in "Spore") so they can put them in the expansion. So yes, I'm fully aware this is done. Marketing three different standalone games is ridiculous. I guarantee there will be some reason, some hook to force folk into buying all 3. Whereas all races are activated for multiplayer supposedly, I would expect each version will have something like skirmish maps exclusive too each version which you can only play if you own said version, or something similar along those lines. Some way to force all but the most ardent resistor to buy all three.
Part of the inherent coolness of StarCraft was that you got to experience all three races with very three different play mechanisms across the game.
Now they want to make each campaign a separate game? It just doesn't sound nearly as interesting to me, no matter how big the campaigns are or what sort of "metagame" they add to it. It won't cover for the fact that, conceptually, it still feels like a step down.
Obviously, the world isn't coming to an end here - but I wonder if Blizzard's near perpetual success is leading to a bit of disconnect here with the fans. When you can do no wrong for so long, you might start to believe that you can do no wrong even when you're doing wrong.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I can see the conversation now at Blizzard's headquarters:
Bean counter: "Hey, we're making money hand over fist with World of Warcraft! How can you justify diverting money into an expensive new project without subscriptions?"
Developer: "We could put subscriptions into multiplayer."
Bean counter: "No, that could take away from our golden cash cow."
Developer: "We... could split the single player into three map packs and charge for all three?"
Bean counter: "Won't consumers feel gipped? Could that cut into sales?"
Developer: "We'll add more 'mine X resource, build Y units and rush the enemy base' missions to fluff it out. Total gameplay hours will be 3 times as long!"
Bean counter: "Brilliant!"
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Where did it say that they were charging full price for each one?
It didn't, the summary was thankfully terse on what would have been interesting details.
I think I'm going to buy all of their new titles, just on general principles whether I play them or not. Blizzard is #1 in the industry at the moment. Blizzard supports Mac OS X out of the box and their developers worked with the Linux wine guys so the Warden didn't kick out people who want to play on Linux.
I'm sick and tired of people who claim Linux and Mac OS X are worthless because no one does games for them, but someone does. I, for one, am going to welcome Gaming Overlord Blizzard right where it counts - in giving them new sales.
Trust me, in Australia, we will be paying $99-$120 per pack, as always.
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Wow. I'm lazy, I just blindly click the page and mash the keyboard now and then. I don't even speak English, I'm just very, very improbable.
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
According to http://pc.ign.com/articles/918/918895p1.html they're planning to have a 1 year gap between games.
No, you're paying $50 for an engine and a campaign. Then you're paying $100 for 2 more campaigns.
Right... except normally you'd pay $50-60 for 2 more campaigns, in boxes called 'expansions' normally for between 19 and 29 bucks, instead of the price of a full game.
Remind me why I need 3 copies of the game engine? They only developed it once, why do I need to pay for it 3 times?
That's largely my thought, if they have enough material to justify several games, I'd rather have several games rather than one mega sized mega priced game.
Historically additional content that uses the same engine is called an expansion. All they're doing is bundling the engine with the expansions and charging full price for them.
They develop the engine once, you pay for it 3 times. Sucker.
Me, I'll just wait until they release a 'box set' with all 3 for what a regular game costs; it probably won't take more than 6-12 months after release.
"Effectively each game in the will be an expansion"
http://kotaku.com/5062018/starcraft-ii-lead-producer-on-the-split-single-player-campaign
I loved Starcraft. Played it regularly for many years, often going through bouts where my girlfriend, later wife, and I would play every weekend for 8-10 weeks in a row. We played through the single player, and it certainly was compelling, but multiplayer was "where it's at". I've put more time into Starcraft than any other game, hands down. Possibly more than every other game I've played put together, although you might have to take Starflight and its sequels out.
I can easily look at Starcraft 2 and justify buying all three races the same way a WoW player can say "$15/month is cheaper entertainment than anything else I can do". I am totally sold on the new visual direction they're going in, even making single player more muted and dirty than bright and easy to distinguish multiplayer. I love the characters I'm supposed to love and I have the characters I'm supposed to hate.
I just wonder how much money this is going to cost me in babysitting and white chocolate mochas at my local wifi-enabled coffee house. 3 discs may be the cheapest part.
Like a smoker, or a motorist, you know exactly what will happen. You will make a crapload of noise about how stupid it is that these things are so expensive. You will vow to all within earshot that you will never surrender your hard earned money to such a blatant cash grab.
And then you will walk into the store within 3 days of its release and purchase all three games, probably pre-ordering them.
You will complain. You will whine. And in the end you will buy all three within days of their release. And ultimately you will enjoy them.
I know this because your not complaining that Starcraft sucks or is over rated. Your just angry that you are being gouged for something you know you will probably pay for no matter what.
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