StarCraft II Closed Beta Begins

Blizzard announced today that the multiplayer beta test for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is now underway. The client downloader is available through Battle.net for people who have received invites, and the system requirements have been posted as well. A list of known issues is up on the official forums. StarCraft II and the revamped Battle.net are planned for release "in the first half of 2010."

Comments

Lost my interest

[Kitkoan]

When they declared it would be sold as three different packs, one per race. While they do have a history of expansion packs, it's never been 1 with 2 more like this, nor planned this far in advanced to break it up and sell the parts.

Re:Lost my interest

[jollyreaper]

When they declared it would be sold as three different packs, one per race. While they do have a history of expansion packs, it's never been 1 with 2 more like this, nor planned this far in advanced to break it up and sell the parts.

Wouldn't be so bad of an idea if done intelligently. For games we really like, expansion packs are loved. Figuring full retail, that's $40 for the game (back in the day), $20 each for the expansions. You could end up spending $80 if you bought it all new, or you could get the bundle months later for $40. You paid for two games and the developer probably didn't have to expend as much effort on two expansions as with the full original game. Win win for all.

What gets to be bullshit is when the $60 game is chopped up and you're left paying the full freight for the original game plus the expansions.

What I always thought would be fair is something like this: the developer plans out the game with maybe six races total. Starcraft has a lot of Warhammer 40k similarities and just think of how many races you have in that setting, it's more than orks and humans and eldar. But we'll stick with Starcraft. You sell the game with three races. The development of additional races is proceeding alongside. Sell the game for full price and then release additional races with full campaigns as add-ons. Don't skimp on the details but charge a fair price. The customer knows he's getting another 20 hours of gameplay with the expansion, plus he can use the new race in multiplayer. Then after the game's been out for a while, all the add-ons can be bundled in a battlechest and the people who skipped it when it launched can catch up with the fun. The publisher makes more money which is an upside, the fan gets more game which is another upside.

Of course, this can be more complicated than I think. I thought the idea of episodic content for shooters was a good idea, sell the game in affordable, bite-sized serial format but the reality was less enjoyable. And the dick move usually is the one that gets made. So you buy a full game like Dragon Age and are getting propositioned for add-ons that were developed at the same time as the original game and should have been included in the first place. That's not like Lord of the Rings where they're releasing three movies at once, always planned on doing so and you feel you're getting your money's worth, this is more like Kill Bill where it was supposed to be one movie and they just released it as two to make more money and planned on soaking the fans by releasing multiple versions on DVD.

Re:Lost my interest

[khellendros1984]

You have the game and two expansions, and each one has about the number of levels that the original game had. It's a different direction for the game,, but I don't think it's bad (as long as the expansions don't cost as much as the full game...and maybe if they publish a whopping 90 mission version at some point)

Re:Lost my interest

[HeronBlademaster]

It doesn't really matter whether Blizzard even notices. See, some of us have these things called "principles" and "values", and we stand up for them even if nobody else cares.

Blizzard wants to shove a LAN-less multiplayer game at us. That's fine, but I'm not going to buy it because I like LAN games.

It's also a demonstration on Blizzard's part that they no longer care about their own roots. Starcraft was so popular largely because of its LAN-friendly multiplayer games. I don't like it when companies abandon their roots.

Heck, Blizzard even provided spawn copies of Starcraft you could use for multiplayer games, so you could play with your friends even if they didn't have their own copies of the game. Do you think they'll be doing that with SC2? Of course not.

My decision to refuse to buy Starcraft 2 has as much to do with Blizzard's attitude as it has to do with the game itself.

Re:Lost my interest

[vcgodinich]

Because you haven't given a good reason as to why you are voting the way you are.

Sorry, but while clever, SCI was not fantabulious because you could play all three race's stories on release day.

Would you care if they took 3x as long in development, then released a truly MASSIVE amount of content in one installment, charging 3x as much? Because that is your reason for "voting with your wallet" and frankly it's utterly ridiculous.

Re:Lost my interest

[Anonymous Coward]

Starcraft 1 was fantastic largely due to its LAN play support (and, related to it, its ability to spawn multiplayer copies of the game for your friends), which not only let us play with our friends in large, internet-less groups, but introduced people to the game who later bought the game because they had a chance to play it for free. I'm one of those people who bought it thanks to a spawn copy (in fact I bought two copies of the game).

Largely due to its LAN support? Sorry but you're crazy. I'd bet good money that at the very least 90 percent of the people who bought SCI didn't take advantage of LAN support (and that's an incredibly conservative estimate). Owning more than one computer back then was quite rare for your average consumer (still is, really), setting up a home network was complicated enough back then and the level of the average consumers computer know-how was so low that having a home network was quite rare (plus all those cables...) and as laptop gaming was in its infancy it was only the die-hards who lugged their towers and weighty CRT monitors around to friends houses. Now, I'm one of those die-hards but you can't expect me to believe people like me made up a significant number of SCI players

They've claimed on multiple occasions that only pirates want LAN play. I'm not a pirate, yet I want LAN play. What does that reveal about their attitude toward me? It reveals that they're not interested in my money.

No, it reveals that you're in an extreme minority and thus aren't worth catering to, particularly since catering to you will make it easier to pirate multiplayer gaming which was the core experience of the first one. Blizzard is not a dumb company and knows how to make money. Just look at Diablo 3. People like me won't buy it because we have to pay for multiplayer which used to be free. You think they care? No way. They're going to make so much damn money off that game it's ridiculous. Don't get me wrong, I'll definitely miss LAN support in SCII but logically speaking their choice make sense as I doubt that any more than 5% of the audience will notice and those that care enough to take a pass on one of the biggest game releases in quite some time over this probably number well below that.

Finally, all this talk about whether the three releases will be worth 150 is all complete hypothetical nonsense given that we still don't know exactly what these releases will comprise of. Given Blizzards history of quality game making it is completely possible that they will be able to produce 150 dollars worth of gaming out of SCII. They've certainly done it many times over with WOW when you figure in the monthly fees.

Incomplete StarCraft - LAN Play = NO PURCHASE

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe people still give a damn about this game after all the bull they're trying to pull. Only one race in the story mode? No LAN play? More internet-required-use-our-new-online-service crap? Seriously? I mean, up until the news about this game and Diablo III being neutered, Blizzard was a great PC game dev. This is the point where people need to send a message, but I know pointing this out is about as effective as whizzing into the wind. It blows my mind how much disrespect and manipulation people are willing to put up with.

How long until DotS (Defense of the Stars) Mod?

[Anonymous Coward]

My favorite mod for WC3 is DotA. I hope something similar is created for SC2.