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StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm Released
Today Blizzard launched its first expansion to StarCraft 2, titled Heart of the Swarm. When initially developing StarCraft 2, Blizzard made the decision to split the game into three parts, each with a campaign as long as the original StarCraft. The initial release in 2010, Wings of Liberty, centered on the story of the Terrans. The newly-released Heart of the Swarm is focused on the Zerg. The final release, Legacy of the Void, will dedicate its campaign to the Protoss (and does not have a projected release timeframe yet). In addition to the new campaign, new units have been introduced for multiplayer and new maps have been added, which ought to shake things up in the competitive landscape. Blizzard has also made long-awaited improvements to the social system, including support for groups and clans.
Here I am working, when I could be playing. Thanks Slashdot, now I'm going to have to kill my productivity and go home and kill some zerg!
Don't play multiplayer then?
I really don't see the issue here, the campaign is standalone singleplayer missions.
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
If we really want to deter North Korea from developing nuclear weapons, we need to preemptively deploy SC2.
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
I started playing the campaign for Heart of the Swarm today, and am very pleased with it so far. The cinematic sequences are really well done, and it has a great storyline so far.
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"AT RELEASE", SC2: Wings of Liberty had an offline "guest" mode that could play single player and custom maps, but could not play any multiplayer (no LAN support). It continues to behave in exactly this way.
Keep in mind that some other dudes want you to pay a recurrent monthly fee for playing on their servers. All Blizzard titles provide free access to battle.net and a replayability that I have yet to find in other games. I have had played SC 1 for several years before SC 2 came out. I think I have good zerg-bang for my protoss-bucks.
Or, they could just release the game people want.
Remember Starcraft? The one that was such a big success? The one with local LAN games and dedicated servers?
It made plenty money.
But the days of companies giving customers what they want are gone forever. Now, you get what you get and STFU.
You are welcome on my lawn.
No...after more research, it was a bug, and it is mostly fixed. See here for details.
TL;DR:
Blizzard screwed up offline mode at one point.
Currently to go offline, you must have:
1) The game fully downloaded (makes sense)
2) Go online once after patching (they are working on fixing this).
So right now if you are a hermit in a cave with no online connectivity, but you happened to pick up the open wi-fi of a passing hiker and patch SC2, but then did not go online after the patch....then you are screwed.
Otherwise, yes, you can apparently play the campaign offline.
Sorry...I'll try to be more indecent in the future.
Not *exactly* the same thing, but...
A huge number of WoW players wish that Blizzard would split WoW into two games... PvE and PvP.
One of the biggest factors behind PvE players quitting the game is Blizzard's complete inability to stop tweaking and sometimes fundamentally redesigning classes. This is only very rarely driven by PvE or quality-of-game issues. More normally, it's because the changes were needed to correct a PvP imbalance. Having to relearn your class because some people you never talk to playing a version of the game you have no interest in have found an interesting way to exploit the game-rules is no fun. But it happens all the time.
There's a real tension in Blizzard between the people who know how to make a fun game and the people who spend years worrying about multiplayer balance. They both have a role, but they both need to be kept completely separate.
Have you played the Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty campaign? It is a full game all by itself. Starcraft 2: Wings of Libery + Starcraft 2: Heart of Swarm + Starcraft 2: Legacy of the Void, = 3 Games.
No. I count one game and two fairly expensive expansion packs. They include a few extra units, some multiplayer tweaks, and a map pack.
Most triple-A companies would charge you $60 per game which comes out to $180 for the series. Assuming the final game is also $40, Blizzard is charging you $140.
How much koolaid did you drink?
I guess you have never been to a LAN party without internet.
While I think you're justified to have your gripes, in this case I feel it's a bit excessive. RTS games have had single player and multiplayer components almost since the very beginning. Granted, the multiplayer aspect has been far more significant lately, but I don't think it's been at a cost of a weaker single player. I kind of feel like your complaints are like griping about the passenger seat you had to buy in your car even though you'll never sit in it.
HOTS is at least priced as an expansion rather than a "full price game," unlike CoD and the sports games.
+1 Disagree
The guest mode disabled certain features that tracked your single player campaign progress. My internet went out during a particularly long mission, no notification popped up, it just silently went to guest mode, and I had to redo the mission. I didn't find the game anywhere near as fun as the original, and with no LAN I ended up just going back to SC:BW. I won't be wasting my money again this time round.
Spoken by someone who's never had to do voice overs.
You have no idea how expensive and time consuming voice works and pre-rendered cinematic's are.
Also if you think the engine in HOTS is exactly the same as the engine that was released in WOL, you need your head examined. There's been continual patching. I've only played the first 5 levels of HOTS but you can spot a lot of work put into level design, they haven't simply slapped together some new maps with voiceovers. This isn't COD and EA for fucks sake, they actually put some work into it.
Frankly $40 for an expansion pack (yes, it's an expansion pack, like what we used to have in the Good Old Days(TM) before DLC) that has almost as much content as the original is a godsend when they charge $5 for a hat and $15 for a single map DLC.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.