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StarCraft II Closed Beta Begins

Posted by Soulskill on from the rush-starts-now dept.

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."

4 of 268 comments (clear)

  1. Lost my interest by Kitkoan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

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    1. Re:Lost my interest by jollyreaper · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

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    2. Re:Lost my interest by khellendros1984 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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)

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    3. Re:Lost my interest by HeronBlademaster · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.