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StarCraft II To Be Released On July 27
Blizzard announced today that StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, the first game in a series of three, will be released on July 27. The game will contain the Terran campaign (29 missions), the full multiplayer experience, and "several challenge-mode mini-games," with "focused goals designed to ease players into the basics of multiplayer strategies." It will launch alongside the revamped Battle.net, which we've previously discussed. Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime said, "We've been looking forward to revisiting the StarCraft universe for many years, and we're excited that the time for that is almost here. Thanks to our beta testers, we're making great progress on the final stages of development, and we'll be ready to welcome players all over the world to StarCraft II and the new Battle.net in just a few months."
only been waiting for what? 10 years?
"Anyone who trades liberty for security deserves neither liberty nor security" --Benjamin Franklin
I've been waiting for this half my life!
Nerds unite! Now you can logout of WoW for 30 minutes to get your ass handed to you by a Korean teenager again!
in power plants in South Korea. I hear they're going to have a boom come July.
So a friend got me in on the SC2 beta, and I've got to say, it really wasn't much fun. I loved the original SC, but when BroodWar came out, I felt like i had to coordinate too many units' special abilities during a battle, in a very small amount of wall-clock time. SC2 felt similar but perhaps even worse in that regard. Maybe some of that goes away after you've played for a while, but I'm just not in the mood to put in that time. Maybe it's just a stage-of-life difference, I dunno.
That being said, I *am* looking forward to Diablo 3 still.
Lan.. lan.. lan.
At first, the decision to split the story arc into three games (terran, protoss, zerg campaigns) seemed to be an obvious money-grab. But 29 missions seems to be on par with what you got w/ SC1 (anyone remember how many missions were in it?).
That said, if they're pricing each campaign as a full-on game, are the 2nd and 3rd titles going to be as popular if the first gives you access to full multiplayer?
Finally, has anyone from Blizzard answered whether any form of LAN play will be supported? Is it going to be authentication only, or will literally every byte of data between players be sent to/from battle.net, even if the competitors are 5 feet away from each other?
I have a new computer I bought last summer for SC2 beta. They announced beta last summer so I got a computer so I'd be ready to play. When playing the game, I often times get,"You've been dropped from Battle.net" and autolose a game. When I click "Quit game" it crashes me to desktop.
Heres one you "LAN Lovers" will get a kick out of. If I play 1vcpu, I still get dropped against the computer! Yes, if you lose Battle.net connection during LAN or fighting a computer, you get disconnected from your game.
I'm going to get it, but I can't play until they fix bugs that prevent me from playing it.
God spoke to me.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The beta sometimes crashes? The horror!
Clearly they won't fix those for the final version.
I'm inclined to agree, but I wonder how much of my enjoyment (or lack thereof) comes from the fact that there's no single-player element as well as the fact that I don't know any of the people I'm playing (only one other friend of mine is on the beta).
Other random observations:
Funny enough I've been playing for ~1 month and have not experienced ANY of the problems you've had. Sounds like your machine/OS install or something. *shrug*
#define true false
Is lan support in the final version? If not, they will not see a dime from me or my friends.
Yeah. Exactly. GP, have you been submitting good thorough bug reports? Sometimes the automated report doesn't give them enough info, perhaps you should be on their forums or whatever helping them out.
If you have, then I'm sure it'll likely be resolved by release date.
And I was hoping it would never be released. Now I will never get a girlfriend again... Unless their matchmaking servers fill my dating needs too. :)
I've been in the beta for a week and it's alright but I liked warcraft 1/2 and starcraft 1 more. BW and WC3 required too much micro so I didn't like them. Currently some SC2 units seem useless and some of the new ones are OP.
The matchmaking system in SC2 is working rather well and matches you against similar skilled players. There are some concerns over it because it's loosely based on the Elo rating system used for chess and other competitions, but some people argue that they've destroyed everything good that the Elo system does. Elo gives people a starting pool of points and then trades points between the winner and loser of a match and the amount traded depends on the difference between the numbers. This makes it so that a good player beating a poorly rated player will gain hardly any points whereas if they lose then they lose a lot of points because they're good but lost to someone bad, and if they're evenly skilled then a moderate number of points will be traded. Eventually you top out and reach a number that corresponds with your skill and will stay roughly the same unless skill changes. With the SC2 rating system there are 5 leagues that separate skill levels, and within each league are divisions consisting of 100 players. Each division has its own Elo ratings and if you change leagues because your skill is out of place then your rating resets and you start a new Elo rating all over again in the new league/division. There are also 'bonus' points that accumulate while you're not playing that you can then gain once you do gain, much like WoW's rested xp system. These bonus points cause inflation within each division. For these reasons you can't compare the Elo style rating between divisions or leagues, your rating only shows how good you are within your division.
I've contacted them, walked through with a tech support through several emails. I posted in about 50+ different places about it. The Blues won't even acknowledge the problem on the forums. I've been through a lot of beta tests in the past, and almost none of them fix their bugs.
God spoke to me.
I call shenanigans. The official beta does not support 1vcpu.
I've been playing the beta on a decent connection (Verizon FiOS) and I haven't had the problems your describing. I did have the game crash. Only twice though. Out of 30+ games that I've played. And one of those times was right after a match was over.
What are you running on? You've Piqued my interest
And I'm ultimately unimpressed. Here's Blizzard's history:
Warcraft -- First RTS
Warcraft 2 -- Added sea/air units, multiplayer
Starcraft -- Asymetric factions, battle.net
Warcraft 3 -- Hero units, 3D
Starcraft 2 -- I can select 255 units at once now?
Is there anything I'm missing other than a conspicuous lack of risk or innovation?
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
The trouble with multiplayer RTS games is that, after a while, they appeal largely to the type of folks who want to learn the recipe for success on a given map and then practice until they're able to apply it faster than the other loser they're playing against.
What I'd like to see in the next wave of RTS games, then, is a method by which they screw with the various units just enough from game to game that simply being able to do the same thing over and over again as quickly as possible does not equal success in multiplayer -- somehow introduce a measure of creativity and quick-thinking rather than just "zergling rush the bitches until Blizzard patches us"-style tactics.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Dropped against the computer? That's the saddest joke ever. With my occasionally-flaky wireless, damned if I'm going to buy any games from this generation--and I don't pirate, either.
That is probably because 1vCPU isn't supported via the beta. In fact, I have no idea how you are doing so. You can setup 1 vs CPU in the map editor sure enough, but that has nothing to do with Battle.net. In fact you can do so with no internet connection at all. So I am somewhat doubting your story...
There could always be another daemon run in the background similar to Ploader, so when you load a map with multiple computer-controlled teams, the Ploader-like daemon can synchronize as a peer to other Ploader daemons to manipulate the StarCraft executable in memory to overlay each of the users' client manipulation in place of the non-networked computer-controlled multiplayer entropy.
There's nowhere you can run Blizzard. All your jmp and cmp are belong to us naoooo!
So, could Duke Nukem Forever be just around the corner?
Not a big fan of the micro-fest that has evolved from these RTS games. Back when starcraft was new, people would have great time building up huge economies and tossing huge armies at their opponents without a thought to the actual rate of success of such attacks. Then a sudden paradigm shift happened, and all the game focused on micro. Winning early was no longer rushing, and frowned upon. And a casual player had no hope of success against a much more experienced, and twitchy, player.
As an older gamer, I'll tell you that I will more likely only play the SP campaign. Maybe I will play MP{ with a friend, but probably in a comp-stomp capacity. I have no desire to compete in what I consider a very un-fun contest. Though I may become one of those armchair commanders when it comes to watching live matches.
Perhaps someone in the beta can enlighten me. Till they get the other expansions out, isn't terran vs terran multiplayer gonna be rather boring?
It has a lot more modern control things so you can shift click and queue up the activities, but it is absolutely true that the best players will always win by microing. A few hellions can destroy your zealot army no matter how huge it is if they are properly micro'ed. And reapers are untouchable still if the person controlling them has any good ability to micro. It has a lot more stuff to watch for via terrain and such now too. Reading Art of War is probably a pretty good idea with the way it's set up, and learning to micro is absolutely essential. If you don't click 20 times for every time your opponent clicks, you suck.
And there's something to the criticism that it's SC with updated graphics. There are certainly some very nice things added to it.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
"I call shenanigans. The official beta does not support 1vcpu." Wrong. Create a game. right-click on the empty opponent field. Select "Computer Opponent" or somesuch. Select a race and a team color and off you go. Now, the computer opponent only has one difficulty setting, "very easy", which essentially means it builds bases slowly, rarely attacks your base (and never in force) and can be wiped out by a toddler mashing the keyboard, but it IS available if you want to figure out the units available to you without embarassing yourself against a real-live person.
Storyline?
Art design?
I believe Starcraft 2 does have some gameplay mechanics changes like variable mission order and being able to unlock various units depending on which missions you've done or how many resources you have.
But in general once a game franchise is established there's not much innovation being done, it's mostly polishing and evolutionary improvement. (at this point I feel compelled to mention the abomination that is C&C 4)
Personally I'm most interested in the narrative in a game and innovation is pretty far down on the list, you might want to look into some indie games if that's what floats your boat.
You may want to investigate your ISP for the connection problems, unless you don't have problems with any other persistent connection applications.
and can be wiped out by a toddler mashing the keyboard
Woot! A skill level that is finally right for me! :-)
Games like Starcraft, Warcraft, C&C, etc almost always have one campaign for each faction. That's been the standard for decades now. Blizzard is slowly releasing a single game over (a year or two?) and making a lot more money in the process. I'll admit that 29 missions is slightly longer than your average campaign, and challenge modes are a nice way of recycling content, but it certainly doesn't make for a complete game. I'll still buy it.
Somehow I doubt that general release will meet that schedule. There are still widespread installer issues with the Mac beta, and reading the beta forums one is left with impression that there are still severe balance issues between races.
So I expect they'll delay release. Or -- worse -- they'll delay the Mac release until sometime after the PC release.
Remember the original StarCraft? The Mac Release was more than a year after the Windows release. Few people seem to remember it, but I do; I was pissed. Blizzard pledged "never again" but somehow I doubt that they'll stick to that pledge if it threatens them with any real opportunity costs.
Most of my friends are already playing the Windows version on PCs or using BootCamp. But if that becomes a requirement, why even bother pretending to cater to Mac users?
I can see the fnords!
And as another side-note, I don't envy the Blizzard employees that have to deal with beta tester feedback. The beta community forums are horrible which is why I don't feel like I can effectively provide any feedback or criticism. It's an immature forum full of players whining, where most arguments include some form of "you're retarded" remarks and where a bunch of platinum-level players acts like anyone from a lower league is automatically wrong about any issue. Gah.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/9/1/
If you actually read the beta forums instead of reading a bunch of whiny noob posts... there isn't a severe balance issue... http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=24630604051&sid=3000&pageNo=1#4
I agree, why bother.
I once asked Blizard this very question but the only response I received was "who are you", "where did you get this number" and "never call here again".
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
It was exactly a year after the PC release I think, too.
The WoW release happened more smoothly and most of the issues with the Mac client seem related to the installer and not the game itself--I would imagine that fixing the installer (especially for Mac OS) should be 'trivial' in the sense that it wouldn't delay the release.
In regard to balance issues... people are of the opinion that there are still balance issues in SC1 and the game is 12 years old. You will never cater to every player in a way that keeps the forums clean of complaints. I've been in the beta for months now and they have made a lot of good changes patch after patch and I'm actually pretty happy with the way things are right (aside from the issues with Protoss early game).
I got it to run fine on my macbook. Didn't have to stress over anything even the least bit. It's crashed once or twice but...it's a beta. Given the laptop is using the 9400M chipset, I didn't expect it to deal with the game easily but it does the deed. Maybe there's something particular to your setup that's fubaring it?
Concerning balance issues, I've noticed each race favors different methods of gameplay. Much like the last game but to a larger extent. Also, considering the large gap between player ability on battlenet could result in alot of unnecessary complaining.
There's no way BootCamp will be a requirement with the release. This isn't Cedega/Transgaming/Wine/Nonsense...it's a game being released for mac by a reputable gaming company.
And before anyone yells at me for complaining about Wine, I swear I miss the joys of getting some god forsaken windows game to run on my mutant linux box of doom.
Now, I'm going to get back to being pwned by children and koreans.
Yes, but that isn't really fair to the game. He was making it sound like he played a 1 vs CPU skirmish single player game and got kicked. That didn't happen because the only way it is supported is via the map editor which can work without any connection at all.
What he was doing is playing a CPU game over battle.net. And JUST like in StarCraft 1, if your connection gets interrupted there you drop. Has nothing to do with LAN play. The shenanigans call is quite valid, even if the other AC didn't get the why right.
I've had the beta for a month now, haven't played it once. Not that I haven't tried I just haven't been able to get the game to work. First I had an issue where I couldn't login to the server (it kept telling me I wasn't authorized to play) then the game just told me it wasn't up to date, I couldn't get any patches ANYWHERE (except of course cracked versions of the beta) and the support wasn't helpful at all. It doesn't help that I work a lot and just don't have the time to sit around just trying to get a game to work so I can test it. Perhaps when they release the game there won't be any issues but I highly doubt that'll be the case.
...will arrive in stores throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Mexico, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau starting on July 27, 2010. Players will also be able to purchase StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty directly from Blizzard Entertainment shortly after the retail launch.
Only retail and from Blizzard? No other details provided in TFA. (emphasis mine)
Pardon the pun, but i do believe gaming on Mac is going to be gaining Steam very soon. This should pressure more houses into releasing a trainload of mac titles. Hopefully Valve will literally open the floodgates of gaming on a platform with a much higher incidence of discrete graphics then PC.
Good-bye
Don't worry - the Windows version is having a lot of problems too - search for 'black screen' on their forums. I'm one of the (seemingly many) users afflicted with this - the game simply refuses to start maybe 80% of the time, dumping me at a black screen. I read some comments on the forum saying to just try and reload it over and over and thought "yeh, right, SURE", but I tried it and lo and behold, it works - I just have to keep starting the game, and if it doesn't load I pskill sc2.exe, then try again until it works.
My question is, what kind of Draconian Restrictions Mechanism will the software have?
The game sounds interesting but depending on that I might or might not buy it.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
When you connected to Battle.net, you were only allowed like 1 map and only 2 player games. Ploader worked in that you downloaded any map you could find and any number of players, and everyone ran Ploader before starting Starcraft 1 Demo where it would replace the internal map that was default in the Demo battle.net mode. So in-effect, everyone that was Ploader'd could join a game under a any map name with 8 players and play. Demo mode only had Terran units, so that is the next limitation.
I can see this happening to Starcraft 2, whereas a background-run Peer2Peer program with it's own similarly-battle.net chat interface could cooridinate to replace local in-memory computer-controlled AI to syncronize to other players on the same map in an independent "intervener" as did Ploader. Come to think about it, this is how games should be made: to optimize local play and allow plugins for better AI supplied by a networked client. That's how many emulators of non-networked television-console entertainment systems operated: Virtual Gameboy, SNES9X, and a number of others would syncronize clients to another other client for game-controller input and such. Worked like a charm.
I hope this happens, because with how Blizzard has been destroying the playability of their programs in what Network Topologies they allow this would make for the proper replacement from their tying everyone into their client and server topology from which they proved to be a complete failure.
Oh wow I hope there's a Linux version.
Even if it is through Steam.
will be welcoming our new zerg overlords.
May we have those builds, even unsupported?
I know i'm gonna be flamed to oblivion for posting this, but seriously, what's the point of making the same game again and again (besides making loads of money from "fans", of course)?
On the other hand, a little french company is releasing a STR where the gameplay is about strategy and not about who will click faster or who will find the better construction sequence.
The only flaw I could find is the game editor (Ubisoft) and his *** retarded DRM.
Treat me like a thief, and I might as well act like one.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Damn man, that's what she said.
You are a mac user, get over yourself. If you have to wait a little longer and that makes you sad, why not buy a PC? Macs weren't exactly designed for gaming...
Use a Mac? You deserve to wait.
I blame SC for ruining my first run at getting a higher education. Now that I have been going back again for a 2nd go around, Blizzard up and releases SCII. Why does Blizzard hate College Students!!!!
At least from the beta, the DRM appears to be that you are required to sign in to Battle.net before playing the game (in either single- or multi-player mode). Because of this, you are unable to play the game without a Battle.net account (to which your CD key is associated - think World of Warcraft). Based on the SC2 beta and on Blizzard's statements to date, I have no reason to believe it will work any other way.
Have you tried re-installing? I know it is cliche but it really does work for some of the more obscure problems that only affect a few random people.
" Blizzard pledged "never again" but somehow I doubt that they'll stick to that pledge if it threatens them with any real opportunity costs."
You're overreacting. Blizz did stick to this pledge and there is nothing to point to the fact that they won't here. My Mac client patched just fine, so did a friend's. Do they have bugs to iron out in the mac client? Sure, but patching issues aren't a huge deal. They have 3 months to fix them. There were patching issues in the Windows client earlier as well, these got sorted out. I see nothing in the Mac beta that makes me think they won't reach launch on time.
"and reading the beta forums one is left with impression that there are still severe balance issues between races."
People tend to shout "imba" when they lose and can't figure out a proper counter. The problem with balancing a game like SC is that so much of the actual game balance comes out in the metagame, and this takes time. SC:BW hasn't been changed in, what, 7 years? And yet the way the game is played today is totally different than 7 years ago. What was once thought was OP is now not a big deal, people figured out how to stop it. If you keep mucking with units and balance, you never have the opportunity to see if the player base will "learn" how to counter challenges on its own.
Yes, it does support 1vCPU. Only with Easy AI though, so it's not really all that great. Create a custom game, and there's a button +AI on the screen where you see who's in the game.
I've never seen the OP's issues myself, though... maybe my computer is more stable (chose stable components when I built it in '03, maintained it properly, and am not maxing it out) or my connection is more stable (paid the extra $$ for a good router)... No idea why his would be so terrible.
After logging in:
1. Click Multiplayer
2. Click Create Game
3. Click +AI above the player list
4. Realize that the only difficulty programmed into the AI at this point is Very Easy, and have fun fighting an opponent that never makes more than a half dozen combat units.
The beta is online-only. You don't need any connectivity to play the single-player stuff in the actual release, to the best of my knowledge.
But I've only had 12 years to get used to the original.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Downloaded the beta and it is running no problem on my slightly older Macbook pro (geforce 8600M video card). Admittedly I have 10.6.3 and I upgraded my ram to 4gb. I wasn't aware that there were widespread problems installing on macs. Are people trying to install it on PPC or 10.4?
I doubt they will...but so what if they do delay the release? That's why we like Blizzard, they don't release garbage. They make sure it is a solid product and then they support that product for a really long time.
You are complaining about something they did over 10 years ago? What have they did since then? Did all of their other games do that? No? Then seriously, what is wrong with you? You are worrying over a video game that hasn't been released yet. Maybe you should step away for awhile and evaluate what you are doing with your life.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
But seriously, I just bought WCIII: The Frozen Throne for $11, because it is no longer possible to be matched for a battle.net game on WCIII: Reign of Chaos. I guess there is only three months left before The Frozen Throne suffers the same fate.
"You've been dropped from Battle.net" and autolose a game. When I click "Quit game" it crashes me to desktop."
Maybe your new computer is why you're having network problems?
Wouldn't be the first time I saw that.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Do you have a degree in computer science or computer information systems? No, of course not: You're yet another dime-a-dozen slashdot wannabe computer expert (not, not minus those degrees slacker. You're no expert by any means, far from it).