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Starcraft II

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IGN debate the cash cow strategy of Blizzard...

 

:o

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I haven't followed all the facts about this, other that what I read at Kotaku. But I honestly think its a stupid idea.

 

But it all depends on pricing of each part. If they charge full price for each part then yeah they are trying to cash in. If each part costs a quarter of what a full price is worth than I feel its all good. The Starcraft die-hards will just have to wait longer. The other fact could be Blizzard are probably only just getting started making the SP content, realising its going to take at least the next 12 to 18 months to finish, they decided to feed it to the fans in bits and pieces.

 

Its not a popular decision and may be one that could come back and bite them on the ass in terms of sales.

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Doubt it, Sonic. There will be multiplayer on the first set and I'd pay full price for each part too. I heard rumors that each campaign will have 30+ missions and be more modular instead of linear like most RTS games so it would be worth the money. I think it's a stellar idea, and it would set StarCraft 2 apart from the crowd.

 

Besides, it's not cash whoring since it will develop a deeper, more legendary storyline, and we'd have room for more cutscenes.

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yeah i heard about this too yesterday... i'm a little disappointed to be honest, because i -do- wanna try it... just to give the game a chance. but it feels like they are trying to cash in :\ though i'm sure there are many reasons why they've done this 1) they want to please their fans by releasing stuff as quickly as possible 2) instead of making it all in one go you've got a full game's worth of missions with each race o.o 3) chances are if you're gonna make -that- many missions for each race it may not be able to fit on a single disc or something xD so instead of selling what is technically three games for one price they're selling each as a single game o.o it's unique, it's bold... and if it turns out to be a good idea we'll probably see it happen a lot in the future. i mean i don't mind this too much. it's like the DoW expansions... you can just pick the race you want and buy that... or if you want the full experience, buy them all. and if you have a little patience and wait a couple of months after all three have come out they'll almost certainly release a collector's edition pack with all of them in for a price that works out slightly cheaper ^.^

so i gotta say, i'm pretty eager about this. i can't stand starcraft because of it's history but it's such a good game i'd be a fool to miss out at least -trying- it...

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I'm more interested in the storyline in anyhow. With 30 plus missions the development can go so deep, and be even more evocative than just a 12 mission set. Besides, how often do you see a gaming company care this much about its own lore? It's a step beyond anything Westwood, EA or any company for that matter have created or will create.

 

I'll quote a friend on the C&C Den - "C&C is fun. SC is for nerds that get massive erections when they hear something about the Xel'Naga. :P"

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I don't know if I'm a SC fanboy - but I'm definetely a fan - and this is terribly dissapointing news personally.

And well it's making me rethink *my* immediate purchase of it... I would rather wait for a battlechest style combination of all three.

 

I like episodic content -- HL2:Ep2 was cool and all, well when it was included as part of the Orange Box -- but would it have been worth the cost and wait on it's own? This decision could go either way, I'm afraid it will go bad for Blizzard.

 

(The IGN editors make some interesting comments, which you guys don't seem to be bouncing off!?!)

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I blame Activision for this upsurge in milking. :P

 

For the hardcore MP people, AKA all of those funky Asians, they buy the one game and they'll all set. Then everyone else who likes the SP stuff gets ****ed over. :P I just hope the game doesn't get boring playing through 30 missions... I mean 30 missions is a lot, and I've played RTS games and been when will this **** end and they only had 10 missions. :( I hope Blizzard make some cool SP matches, as opposed to Protect X, Kill Y, repeat x 25, commando x 5 missions. :P

 

Oh well, I wonder how much they'll charge for these expansions... The usual 50% of a full game? 40%? Its alright. :)

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I'm more interested in the storyline in anyhow. With 30 plus missions the development can go so deep, and be even more evocative than just a 12 mission set. Besides, how often do you see a gaming company care this much about its own lore? It's a step beyond anything Westwood, EA or any company for that matter have created or will create.

 

I'll quote a friend on the C&C Den - "C&C is fun. SC is for nerds that get massive erections when they hear something about the Xel'Naga. :P"

The problem with the non-linear campaign is mission design and -purpose. I'm relatively certain that numerous missions are going to be simple fetch/collect quests to get resources in order to tech up. Additionally, the lobby camera is rather stiff.

I'm also quite sure that there won't be enough CGI sequences, which is a real shame considering how well Blizzard does in that particular area.

 

Still looking foward to it, even if it's only for the superior pathfinding (Yeah, who gives a rats ass about clipping? :D)

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well anyway it's looking promising. and blizzard are normally pretty good with games. they manage to keep players interested enough. i mean just look at WoW... and the first starcraft o.o i'm pretty sure that even if it turns out sucky, it'll still be real popular and they'll release patches which will fix half the bad things. but the lack of CGI and possible repetitive missions sounds worrying...

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In many ways this is rather a brilliant idea, that being rather than stuffing as much as you can into one game by compromising bits or pushing it back a great deal. I personally find this strategy to be the best they could've chosen out of the three.l

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I don't give a damn if I have to buy 3 DVDs costing 50$ each (a sum total of $150, or at least php6000 here in the Philippines, which is almost 2 months allowance for me), as long as it's a good game, and from all that I got from Blizzard, I know it'll be worth it. Besides, I'm a story addict; the better the game's story, the more I love it.

 

And the uniqueness factor is way off the chart; I believe no other game studio has ever attempted such a ploy; I mean, making 3 different versions of one game, all with a different race, and all stand alone! Only one has come close to such a move (THQ, with the Warhammer 40k series), but they did it rather softly; Blizzard is going all the way here folks, and I'm going to run after them!

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a sum total of $150, or at least php6000 here in the Philippines, which is almost 2 months allowance for me

:o

You get a lot of allowance...

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...not really o-O that's over two months XD that's roughly £75 over 8 weeks o.o which is like, £9.50 to last a whole week... which is like, £1.20 a day or something o.O in the uk that wouldn't even cover my bus fare to school xD; let alone lunch and a couple of pound spending money (when i was in school anyway o.o)

nowadays i get £110 a week... (income support and disability living allowance. i have no job and i'm a mental retard - i'm so screwed up with post traumatic stress that i can't live an ordinary life. therefore until i get over my issues enough to be able to actually get a job or something, i get paid by the government. at the moment i have a job lady with the early intervention team for psychosis who is visiting me every so often to help find what is best for me ^^ so i may be doing a computer graphics and computer animation college courses in the near future :3 once i've done them i'll either end up as a games tester or some kind of low-level game designer of sorts o.o) but yah, £50 goes to mom for my upkeep, £30 goes in my bank account and £30 goes to me as spending money... out of that £30, £10 goes to essentials like when i leave the house once a week to go to the social group... it pays for my bus fare and if i want to buy lunch while i'm out. the other £20 i get to save month after month because i want a load of expensive stuff .-.; and every 2 weeks i have to go out and buy a load of drinks and snack food to keep me sane... which works out to over £20...

 

so yah. there are a LOT of good games and stuff coming out soon... over the rest of this year and next year... really i just don't have the money for them but i'm just so darned tempted i think i'm gonna -have- to get at least a few of the games i really want...

 

what makes me laugh though is technically i'm expected to be able to survive on whatever benefits i'm given. i'd never be able to survive alone... i'd have to lose the internet, satellite tv, phone line... probably the heating, electricity and water as well. and i'd still be struggling :\ as it is, we own our house and our monthly bills come up something rediculous like over £300... probably more then that... but y'know, that's life. gotta make do with what you got... luckily we're in such a situation where we can afford luxuries and i am actually at the point where i can think to myself "gee, do i buy myself a massive takeout for dinner instead of having mom cook for me or do i buy a fancy pc game i'll play through once and probably never touch again?" yah, sounds pretty arrogant considering how many poorer people there are in the world, but believe me i am thankful for every moment of my life in relative luxury o.o

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Ok, well whatever... I haven't gotten allowance in over five years, I guess people got more spoiled since then.

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Meh, it's Starcraft.

 

Like the original before it, it's an RTS I will probably buy about 4 years after release in some Gold Final pack with expansion. I shall pay no more than about 33% of the original retail price, only to play the first 5 missions of the first campaign before swiftly chucking it in a corner, never to play it again!

 

Yeah, so that's the life cycle of my copy of the original, which I have no idea to it's whereabouts..... I probably ended up selling it or threw it in the bin or something, cos it's not on my games shelf. :P

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Azrael: How are they going all the way? The only thing they do is that they release each campaign separately, while every part features all races in MP and skirmish. And how is that beneficial for anyone besides them?

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Yeah even if (god knows why) you only wanted to play one factions campaign you would end up wanting to play the other ones, because they will have shoved a ****load of missing links into the cut scenes so you can only understand the story once you have played them all.

 

EDIT: lol accidentaly bypassed the swear filter :P

Edited by BioBen

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I surprised you don't like Starcraft Saracen... not a chess player either?

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I play a lot of chess. In fact I'm more of a turn based Strategy player all round. I'm a big fan of the Civilization series, I own every strategy game on my PSP which are all turn based, and I've ripped through every version of Advance Wars on the Nintendo handhelds..... so I'm no stranger to the genre.

 

I've just never seen what the hype surrounding Starcraft has been about. I first gave it a go on release day when a friend of mine was going nuts about it. I found the maps bland, the gameplay wooden, and the story extremely slow to get into. Sure people say the story is great, but if a game makes no attempt to suck me in from the start.... I'm not interested.

 

About a year ago DD got me interested in Starcraft again for a short period. Until I started playing the game again. It then promptly got uninstalled and I vowed never to touch it again. Which is how I came to either selling or binning it... I'll speak for Zee here as well, he hates Starcraft too.

 

I'm not against Blizzard games though. I loved Warcraft 2 and I found Warcraft 3 to be quite fun as well. That in itself is unusual since I'm not usually a fan of fantasy based RTS games. Personally I'd prefer Warcraft 4 over Starcraft 2 any day.

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Yeah, WCIII was much better than SC. I second the sentiments about the bland maps as well. I also hated the Texan accent for the Terrans. That having said, I'm still interested how SCII turns out. Neverhteless, I'd like Blizzard to fail ultimately. Their games aren't as perfect as people say, so they'd deserve a flop to even the rabid fanboyism out.

 

The craze about SC is due to the gameplay btw. Soft counters and such. Very good, imho.

Edited by hagren

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I only got Starcraft back in late 1998 because Tiberian Sun kept on getting pushed back and I needed something to fill void at the time. I only recall playing as the Terrans the most because the Protoss and Zerg factions were way to strange for me.

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i haven't yet played SC because of my heavy underlying hatred of it's history. however because of all the amp and the fact that half of the world's gamers are obsessed with it, it only seems fair to try it out. but i'm not gonna go back and buy the original one after all these years... the graphics will probably hurt my brain. so i'm gonna wait for SC2. texan accent? ew... i guess they had to have -some- accent though... it's too hard to make up an accent and you have to work with what you got o.o would have been cooler if they had given them some foreign accent though like russian xD but then again if it were a russian accent it would probably irritate all the american gamers XD but the terran infantry -are- meant to be like, criminals aren't they? so it might be accepted o.o ignore me, i'm babbling. but i am pretty curious about playing the game, just to see if it's as good as they say...

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Just get the original. The graphics are no worse than Tiberian Sun. It's quite the amazing game and you're letting bull**** prevent you from having a deep gaming experience. Ignore Saracen and Sonic, they sucked at the game and couldn't finish a campaign. :P The SC campaigns are way harder than anything C&C has to offer.

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I like SC because, like Chess, the victories are not based on the units but the players. It's a silly example, but it doesn't really matter whether you are black or white, all things being equal.

 

And that by and large, every unit has an effective counter, rather than a certain percentage of damage compared to others. Especially I like that you can often spend more time thinking about your next move/s, rather than making it up as you go as I tended too in Red Alert 1 & 2.

 

It's fun being able to pummel your enemy's base from your own fortress with SW's & quick air-attacks; but it is not nearly as satisfying as successfully sending a ghost up to enemy base and getting away with a nuke detonation.

 

So Saracen, again I'm surprised you like chess but not Starcraft.

(I did forget about your love for turn-based games though, my bad.)

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Back to the original topic, I believe that I read somewhere that the "episodic content" for Starcraft II was going to be organized in a manner reminiscent of Kane's Wrath: the basic game will have one full-length campaign, and then Blizzard will release a pair of expansion packs, each containing a full length campaign.

Edited by Quadhelix

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