Rii
Rear Admiral
I particularly like how you tried to substitute "make money from" in place of your earlier "paid service". Apparently TrekBBS is a paid service.
No, Blizzard is not a charity. You've got me.
Starcraft 2: no LAN support?!
- Thread starter The Fatman
- Start date
I particularly like how you tried to substitute "make money from" in place of your earlier "paid service". Apparently TrekBBS is a paid service.
No, Blizzard is not a charity. You've got me.
I think the big issue with this is it seemed as if it was going to be one game when it was originally in the works, and later on diced into pieces. If the campaigns are long enough though, maybe the masses will ignore that issue
I live to make you happyI particularly like how you tried to substitute "make money from" in place of your earlier "paid service". Apparently TrekBBS is a paid service.
Breaking game into three parts to make more cash as well as removing lan support to counter "piracy"? Yep, not a charity is certainly a good way of describing them
Rii
Rear Admiral
Eh, they've been clear from the start that each campaign is self-contained, i.e. the conclusion of Wings of Liberty is as workable an end-point for the game as the conclusion of the original Starcraft was, pre-Brood War. Would you say that Assassin's Creed is being sold on an installment plan?
The root of the discontent, of course, is that the original game included three campaigns of ten missions each, one for each race, whereas each of the SC2 releases includes a single campaign, albeit one as long as each of the three original campaigns put together. If SC2 were released as a single package it would contain significantly more content than the original Starcraft and Brood War releases put together. No doubt all three will later be released in a single "Battle Chest" edition in any case.
Personally I've no issue with this, most of SC2's innovations over SC1 are in the singleplayer campaign, they're using branching mission structures and a persistent overworld economy/tech tree, even a few character-centric RPG-lite features, all things which would be difficult to make use of in campaigns as short as those in the original game. Also, each campaign is not as race-centric as those in the original game, although Wings of Liberty is primarily a Terran campaign, you'll be playing Protoss some of the time also.
I just have to laugh when folks bitch about SC2 being too conservative, and then bitch about the structural changes being made to better accomodate those elements that aren't conservative.
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I just wonder if there's really any interest in playing an extremely long RTS campaign. I'm still not sold on storytelling in RTSes, given that everyone - even Blizzard - has to rely on cutscenes to make story work.
I imagine that they'll do the WC3 "Hero" thing again, so maybe "you'll" be on the field... but trying to play the original SC campaign now, it's almost silly how it works.
And it's not like SC has the greatest story anyway. It's a generic Warhammer 40k space marines story and I'm not sure that merits a trilogy any more than any other game franchise.
But, oh well.
I imagine that they'll do the WC3 "Hero" thing again, so maybe "you'll" be on the field... but trying to play the original SC campaign now, it's almost silly how it works.
And it's not like SC has the greatest story anyway. It's a generic Warhammer 40k space marines story and I'm not sure that merits a trilogy any more than any other game franchise.
But, oh well.
If people accept this three episode LAN-less package, they'll pay for it. If enough people are turned off by these plans then it will obviously hurt the sales.
People are free to boycott the game and/or the parent company it if they dislike their policies. It's not like there aren't other games to choose from.
Competitive players want to cut out every ms of latency they can, and LAN is chosen for the professional e-sports matches for this reason. Whether these decisions affects e-sports (and therefore advertising) is yet to be seen.
People are free to boycott the game and/or the parent company it if they dislike their policies. It's not like there aren't other games to choose from.
Competitive players want to cut out every ms of latency they can, and LAN is chosen for the professional e-sports matches for this reason. Whether these decisions affects e-sports (and therefore advertising) is yet to be seen.
i'd honestly say wait for the game to come out before you decide to boycott/complain/praise a feature you know next to nothing about, or a comment a developer says and you dont know the full context.
Usually I would agree, and with most features/aspects I do think we should wait and see on; the game being divided into 3 parts being one of them. The whole no lan support thing is pushing it though. LAN is a known quantity. Its a feature people know about and removing it is something that would be missed. If people put up a big enough stink about it now, maybe Blizzard will change their minds. I highly doubt they will but it wont hurt
i'm still gonna say people should wait and see... who knows what will happen with LAN in the final game. maybe there will be some viable alternative...
as for the people complaining, i'd guess blizzard responds to that complaint by wearing a t-shirt about it.
http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/10/11/blizzard-on-rainbows-in-starcraft-diablo-art-director/
as for the people complaining, i'd guess blizzard responds to that complaint by wearing a t-shirt about it.
http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/10/11/blizzard-on-rainbows-in-starcraft-diablo-art-director/
Rii
Rear Admiral
That would depend on how well it's executed and how much variety they can offer within the course of a single campaign. From what I've seen so far, and knowing Blizzard's history, I don't have any concerns on that score. The releases will probably be 12 months apart in any case so it's not exactly going to be a single marathon session.
Them's fighting words!
I'd like to see them come to a middle ground, yeah. Possibly they could attach one or two multiplayer spawn client keys to each parent key that only function when said parent key is in use? Spawn keys could be transferred from one B.net account to another as Steam gift passes are.
12 months?!
Rii
Rear Admiral
Well they're certainly not going to be released at the same time. Blizzard said a while back, before the announcement of the "three-way split", that the Terran campaign was only partially complete and that the Zerg/Protoss campaigns were at that point still at the drawing board stage, which matches both the footage we've seen (of which the only singleplayer stuff has been from the Terran perspective) and the subsequent split. Shooting for Christmas 2009/10/11 seems a reasonable goal financially, the only issue being that the later releases might compete with Diablo III and its inevitable expansions. World of Warcraft too, but that's very much a self-contained market at this point. Its possible the releases could come only six months apart, of course, but this is Blizzard we're talking about.
yeah, i doubt that...
i think a lot of piracy starts off with the delusion of, if i like it, then i'll buy it... of course the purchase part rarely happens (and using "rarely" is being overly generous)
of course your complaint, "no LAN means i won't buy it, but i'll steal it with an upgrade" gets even more far fetched. just be honest, you weren't going to buy multiple copies. you probably werent going to buy a single copy, if you could pirate it. with this tidbit of information you now found an excuse to justify pirating the game.
i'm sure before the LAN comments, your excuse to pirate the game was because the game was being split into 3. before that it was over the graphics being too shiny. before that it was that it looked like starcraft 1 or the firebat got pulled or the mothership was added.
for me, before i saw the trailer, i thought i was going to buy 175,231 copies of Starcraft 2. but then i found out <insert any SC2 news tidbit> and i decided i'll pirate it first before i commit to such a bulk order.
Yeah, more like 2-3 years, knowing blizzard.
You're right of course...It's going to be 5 or 6 years before I am playing through the 3rd campaign, isn't it? I'm not even joking.
Well they're certainly not going to be released at the same time. Blizzard said a while back, before the announcement of the "three-way split", that the Terran campaign was only partially complete and that the Zerg/Protoss campaigns were at that point still at the drawing board stage, which matches both the footage we've seen (of which the only singleplayer stuff has been from the Terran perspective) and the subsequent split. Shooting for Christmas 2009/10/11 seems a reasonable goal financially, the only issue being that the later releases might compete with Diablo III and its inevitable expansions. World of Warcraft too, but that's very much a self-contained market at this point. Its possible the releases could come only six months apart, of course, but this is Blizzard we're talking about.
Iohknow. This was one of the purchases I had planned for, now I don't know if I'll bother. I'm sick of being saddled with pointless anti-piracy stuff that usually just annoys the end user and does nothing to stop piracy. Like said above, it won't be more than a few hours or days before the LAN hack comes out...
Maybe I'm just too content with Stardock's games and lack of DRM schemes to think that Blizzard isn't trying to soak me for more money. I mean, we get a complete game with Sins of a Solar Empire, not split into three yearly installments.
Maybe I'm just too content with Stardock's games and lack of DRM schemes to think that Blizzard isn't trying to soak me for more money. I mean, we get a complete game with Sins of a Solar Empire, not split into three yearly installments.
S
Stone_Cold_Sisko
Guest
LANs? How quaint