StarCraft II Beta To Begin This Month

mrxak writes "It's official; Activision Blizzard's much-anticipated sequel to 12-year-old StarCraft is going to enter closed beta 'this month,' according to company President Mike Morhaime during an investor conference call. This comes in the wake of the SC2 beta forums showing up briefly on Battle.net. If you've got a Battle.net account, it's probably not too late to opt-in for upcoming Blizzard beta tests."

Comments

Finally

[Cobralisk]

I was beginning to think this was Starcraft Forever

Re:Finally

[Conchobair]

This is actually a good thing. Blizzard has the habit of not releasing unfinished games and even cancelling games if they start to look like they will be bad (SC:Ghost, WC:Adventures). I would much rather wait for a full and complete game without content cut out to meet a release date like EA-Bioware does (KOTOR2).

You know when this game comes out its going to be polished and will kick ass and kill several Koreans in teh process.

Re:This beta should be...fun?

[PitaBred]

I'm sure the game might be fun. But given that Blizzard has ripped out local LAN play (which is part of what made the original great), and made it into 3 $60 games instead of a single game with all 3 campaigns... fuck them. I am not a wallet, I am a customer. I used to be a Blizzard fan, and I may get this game eventually when it hits the bargain bins. PC games are losing ground to consoles because the fucking game manufacturers keep trying to turn the PC into a console.

Who cares?

[AdmiralXyz]

This is Slashdot. We should be griping about the DRM, or the removal of LAN play which is obviously intended to keep us as indentured servants to the corporate behemoth, not talking about trivial things like when the game is going to be released.

Re:Who cares?

[brkello]

You obviously didn't read the other Blizzard article. That's all you are about. Complaining about stuff. Slashdot is the Tea Party movement of the Internet. A bunch of old people complaining about how things used to be with complete disregard to reality.

Re:This beta should be...fun?

[darkvizier]

PC games are losing ground to consoles because the fucking game manufacturers keep trying to turn the PC into a console.

Turning PCs into consoles? That won't happen easily in the RTS genre because the controls are so different.

But in other genres, let me know when multiplayer PC games designed for use with a single PC and HDTV become common, and I'll agree with you. But right now, they appear to be limited to Serious Sam, Left 4 Dead, and EA Sports.

I think the GP was talking about DRM/anti-pirating measures, not the user controls. Essentially they're trying to turn computer games into the black box that console games are.

SC2 = Star Control II

[Jon Abbott]

As much as I enjoyed StarCraft, the acronym "SC2" will always be reserved for Star Control II in my mind.

too late?

[northernfrights]

"If you've got a Battle.net account, it's probably not too late to opt-in for upcoming Blizzard beta tests." Well, ok... NOW it probably is...

Re:DIABLO!?!?!?!

[Bobfrankly1]

Found my own answer, if vgchartz.com is correct.

Starcraft 1 sales 12million. Diablo2 sales 5million.

Guess I'm just going to have to wait.

That, and they're still negotiating a new contract with the Devil.

Re:Failure of imagination

[c.r.o.c.o]

I'll probably get modded down for writing this, but I'm more than certain that a short time after SC2 gets released there will be a pirated version that will circumvent all three of your points. When will companies learn that the only people affected by DRM are their paying customers and NOT those running pirated copies?

Re:This beta should be...fun?

[bluesatin]

You're seriously comparing hosting that many live-action gaming servers with some match-making servers?

The game servers are hosted by the players, not Blizzard; only the match-making server will be hosted by Blizzard.

Looking Forward More to the Other SC2

[Maltheus]

Although I'm dreading the "simplification" of the economy, I'm much more looking forward to Supreme Commander 2. The AI might have sucked in the first one, but the strategic zoom and infinite queuing of tasks has added more to the genre IMO, than anything the original starcraft ever did. Not to mention the scope.

Still, as an RTS junkie, I'll be interested in seeing what the new Starcraft will offer. Hopefully they don't continue the unfortunate RTS trend of focusing more on offense, to the exclusive of defense and the intricacies of building up an economy.

Oh who am I kidding? I hope they both suck. I need them to suck. RTSes are as bad as any drug out there. Maybe worse. At least you can do other things while high on drugs. You can't do anything else while wasting your time on an RTS. Except perhaps, drugs....hmmm.

Re:Bargain bins?

[Backward Z]

Bargain bins? For Blizzard games? Oh no-no-no-no-no, this does not happen.

Last year I wanted to pick up a copy of Warcraft III so I could play DotA with a friend of mine. The battle chest, mind you SEVEN YEARS after the game was initially released, was still $40. Amazon still lists it as $39.99 (-$5 discount).

Blizzard does not end up in the bargain bin.

Re:This beta should be...fun?

[Archimonde]

According to Blizzard; no. The first game will only contain one campaign, the human one I think, but will contain full multi-player, including all the units and races from the next two expansions. Thus, if you are only interested in multi-player you can completely ignore the two other campaigns.

You are unfortunately wrong there.

From http://www.starcraft2.com/faq.xml

How will the expansion sets impact multiplayer gameplay?
The expansion sets will add new content to each race for use in multiplayer matches. This could include additions such as new units, abilities, and structures, along with new maps and Battle.net updates.

In other words you *will* need all three expansions for multiplayer matches. Of course they won't force it, but that would be exactly like playing wow at lvl 60 when everybody is lvl 80.