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Can Blizzard Top StarCraft?
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu May 31, 2007 01:51 PM
from the better-than-ezra-anyway dept.
from the better-than-ezra-anyway dept.
MSNBC is running an interview with Blizzard designer Rob Pardo discussing a number of facets of the upcoming StarCraft II. Informational tidbits include the fact that, unsurprisingly, the game won't be released this year, and some background on the game's long development cycle. "Penny Arcade figured it out! We keep games under code names and we teach developers to refer to games by their code name. And we're just really careful about talking about the game internally. We don't bring external folks through unannounced product areas. But I think even I'm surprised that we were able to keep it under wraps all the way to the end."
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Top starcraft? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Top starcraft? (Score:5, Insightful)
We're not talking about not id or Valve or anyone else, just Blizzard.
They can pull it off.
Parent
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A company who is milking a franchise releases the sequels relatively quickly, not 5-10 years down the road... When a sequel is released 5 years after the first one... I'd say those are typically going to be amazing games, because it took so long because they were trying to make
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Re:Top starcraft? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Can Blizzard Top StarCraft? (Score:5, Funny)
Long answer: "no" with a "but"
Wouldn't the better question be... (Score:5, Interesting)
Starcraft sold a ton of copies, but it is now a moneysink. It is free to play on Battle.Net and not many new copies are being sold. They are continuously losing money from a game created many many years ago.
The $15/month from a MMO cannot be understated. The decision to make a non-MMO game after the success of WoW is very puzzling.
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Of course, $15 a month is probably a lot more money...
Re:Wouldn't the better question be... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll assume they did the math and figured it'd be a good investment. Blizzard is a business first, after all.
Meanwhile, if they made a new MMOG to top themselves with WoW, they risk the new project cannibalizing their own subscribers. Back in the day I played Everquest and with new-at-the-time games like Anarchy Online and Planetside I still couldn't bring myself to pay for more than one online game since A) the new game consumes time, B) time is linked to progress in MMOGs by design, C) I'm paying full price regardless of how many hours I actually use each period.
Parent
Re:Wouldn't the better question be... (Score:5, Interesting)
Despite the fact that WoW has been out for quite some time I think most of the users would feel the game was being abandoned before it's time if they turned out another MMO. Starcraft on the other hand is long overdue for a new addition to the franchise. The advancements in technology alone give them a lot of room to improve.
Parent
Re:Wouldn't the better question be... (Score:5, Informative)
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Even then the analysis is simplistic since keeping the
Re:Wouldn't the better question be... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd question if StarCraft really is losing them money. People are still purchasing the game, either replacing old disks or buying it for the first time, and the related paraphernalia associated with StarCraft still sells quite well. There's still a huge following for StarCraft in Korea, which is why they announced SC2 there. StarCraft was released in 1998, and as of a few years ago, it still had branded Doritos being distributed (cannot verify if they still are, sorry). So far as I can tell, no other game (MMO or not) has managed to have that kind of staying power a marketplace outside of its own industry.
I won't argue that WoW is Blizzard's bread and butter, they've got a ton of subscribers (myself included) pouring a lot of money into their coffers, but I heavily disagree that SC is a negative drain on their resources. A moneysink would be what is left of the game originally known as SWG, if Blizzard had that steamy pile of poodoo instead of SOE. Running battle.net servers for something with as rabid a following as SC, however, is far from a moneysink. It maintains a status quo, and probably breaks even when cost is weighed against revenue.
Finally, the decision to not pursue an MMO is actually a good one, imho. It avoids cutting into Blizzard's current revenue stream...WoW. When you have something that works, especially something that works as well as WoW does for making money, why jeopardize that? What would happen if they made a World of StarCraft, and users found they hated that game? Some would gravitate back to WoW, others would swear off Blizzard games entirely. Personally, that's what I did with SOE's handling of SWG. SOE may very well come out with the best WoW killer ever, but myself and a ton of other old-style SWG players would snub the game just because SOE is involved with it. The same could happen to Blizzard with a competing MMO that doesn't live up to the hype it's given before release. They know SC2 will generate a great return on investment, simply because of the hype associated and the loyal fans they have already. They have no need to top WoW, they only need to satiate as much of the playerbase for SC2 as possible.
Parent
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From the article (one of more interesting parts, I think)...
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I'd be surprised if they required a fee to play anything on Battle.net. That's what drew a lot of people to the service in the first place. Funny how back in the day we had pay-for-play services like TEN and Mplayer and then we got the free services, and now we're coming back around full cycle. I'd expect a subscription plan if they have some premium services, but I'll bet the
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If they were to MMO starcraft I think they'd have a hard time finding quality developers, to make it. Not only that blizzard's reputation would get dragged through the mud in korea. There is no way they could fuck up starcraft as an MMO because they would simply abandon their fanbase completely.
Re:Wouldn't the better question be... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Of course they can (Score:2, Insightful)
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I would agree with your statement if you meant only the most famous RTS games (Starcraft/Command and Conquer, at least the early games, and probably Warcraft). However, there's a decent amount of games beneath the radar that are actually quite awesome and play quite differently. Refer to the Homeworld series by Relic Studios. Also, lately, Relic has been putting out some decent RTSs based around the principle of capturing strategic points on the map for resources instead of mining them (see: Wa
Shouldn't be too hard (Score:2, Insightful)
Then again, this is Blizzard we're talking about...
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Then again, this is Blizzard we're talking about...
You mean by failing to stay solvent and selling drastically fewer copies?
TA is more in line with competing with Command and conquer since the gameplay resembled that one more. It was all defence and big rushes. It's popularity is mainly with those who enjoy that play style. SC sold to a different and more numerous crowd of twitch RTS pla
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sacrilege! (Score:3, Insightful)
It beggars belief that many 'modern' RTS games (like C&C3) STILL don't do some of the more obviously good things that TA implemented.
Starcraft was a great game, but it was simplistic and relied very heavily on the "Unit X beats unit Y but is itself beaten by unit Z" philosophy. TA and Supreme Commander are
Can? Most likely. Will? We'll see. (Score:5, Insightful)
What made SC1 was the perfect balance. Sure, it took a few patches, but essentially, it was balanced to the extreme. I attribute my inability to win as a Protoss more to my inability to play the game well rather than a balance issue (I get my ass whipped regularely by other people playing Protoss... there's a reason why you rarely see me at those tournament finals, ya know...), if they manage to get SC2 well balanced again, it's a seller.
Let's face it, people. After the "ohhh shiny" effect wears off, which is usually after a month tops, what's left is whether the game is fun to play or not. And fun in a multiplayer RTS game hangs mostly on game balance while at the same time offering actually different sides with different units (hello Supreme Commander...), and strategies that you have to adapt to the side you play, and the side you play against. And SC1 had that down to the point.
My guess is that the success, especially the long time success, of SC2 hang on balance. Not graphics, not sound, not handling, not interface (as long as they don't overload it and make it unplayable). Balance or not balance will be the decider that tips the balance in favor or against SC2.
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Though in some cases both are out of whack: Holy/Disc Priests have the worst 31 and 41 talents in the game, in any situation. (They're also the least popular, fully 84% of Holy Priests skip their 41, and 77% skip the 31 too.)
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It really comes down to what player group you cater to. PvP tends to be a small subset of the overall population, so ideally Blizzard should focus more on PvE balancing.
It's debates like this that makes me appreciate PvP in Kingdom of Loathing, where you have a series of randomly selected challenges that check players stats, equipment and a ton of other random stats they track inside the game to determine a
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9 races/factions with 3 separate and viable tech trees fighting in two or more drastically different types of battle.
Heck, that's oversimplifying it by a long shot.
Blizzard doesn't just have to account for every class, but every class spec. Not just every class spec, but every class spec/gear combination. Not just every class spec/gear combination, but every group dynamic possible. Not just every group dynamic possible, but every situation that group dynamic is going to face.
Th
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Frankly, I'd love to see that. And a bit of U/I updating, larger groups, etc.
SC1 is a blast, but it's ugly, especially on a laptop. Fix that, add a new race or two, and I'd happily fork over my $50.
Re:Can? Most likely. Will? We'll see. (Score:5, Interesting)
There are plenty of other games that have better controls, better features, less repetition and clicking, more races, equal or better storytelling, better graphics. But the one thing that they do not have that blizzard does is racial balance. That's what truly makes the multiplayer experience a game, where any round could almost always go any way, instead of it always being a blow-out because one player knew the surefire technique. Blizzard's games are about strategy, not tricks.
Parent
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They also kept Starcraft's "Map of the _____" program going s
More than one kind of balance. (Score:2)
Brood War unit types got a little more complex compared to the original SC. For instance, blinding was introduced, but medics could heal it. The more different kinds of capabilities you need to worry about balancing, the harder you have to thing about the game. And if your mental juggling drops just one or two of those b
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Either you didn't watch the videos very carefully or you never really played SC1. Or both.
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Of course this is what SC2 should be so I don't really have any problem with it. If SC2 was anything other than that then it wouldn't be SC2, it would be something else with the Star Craft name at
Obligatory... (Score:2)
No, they really can't (Score:4, Insightful)
They could make the best RTS on the market, and it still wouldn't "top" Starcraft in the eyes of many of the fans. Its an impossible goal, because there is no real way to judge it.
Hopefully they'll just focus on trying to make a good game in the spirit of Starcraft. If they can do that, I'll be happy.
Re:No, they really can't (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
I'd be shocked if they can... (Score:2)
Not a chance (Score:2, Interesting)
Which seem to be a problem in recent Blizzard releases, because where the gameplay itself used to be their s
I hope they make a decent single player campaign (Score:5, Insightful)
they focus on multi (Score:4, Insightful)
Starcraft by comparison was much more about the single player campaign. They ended up making the multiplay pretty good, but you will notice that there are tons of units that are totally useless in multiplayer mode (infected command center? light and dark archons? zerg queen?). Multi play in pretty much every serious game became mostly about being really good at producing lots of low level units really quickly really early. Later in the game someone *might* mass battlecruisers or carriers if it's BGH.
Personally, I'm hoping they're trim the units (it looks like they've already done that actually) and make nukes more useful. Nukes were one of the most fun things in SC, but also one of the most impractical (you could make it work... but there was almost always a better strat.). Nukes should be a little less powerful, but much easier to obtain. At the very least I don't want to have to built extra command centers...
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Total Annihilation (Score:2)
The thing I like most about TA is the resource model. Unlike in nearly every other RTS on earth, resources are never depleted. I found it absurd that one could deplete an entire forest or mineral deposit in the course of one
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The thing I like most about TA is the resource model. Unlike in nearly every other RTS on earth, resources are never depleted. I found it absurd that one could deplete an entire forest or mineral deposit in the course of one
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The philosophy of Taylor's RTS games is to cut out
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I agree with most of what you just said except the tec
Blizzard raped my childhood! (Score:3, Funny)