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Starcraft 2 To Be a Trilogy
Posted by
Soulskill
on Fri Oct 10, 2008 06:45 PM
from the three-is-better-than-one dept.
from the three-is-better-than-one dept.
The Starcraft 2 gameplay panel was an eventful one at Blizzcon today. The developers faced an obstacle when designing the game; the plans they had were just too massive to implement in a single game on anything approaching a reasonable timeline. Their solution was to divide the game up into three separate, stand-alone titles: Terran: Wings of Libery, Zerg: Heart of the Swarm, and Protoss: Legacy of the Void. Read on for further details.
Each campaign will have on the order of 26-30 missions. The path players take through the missions can vary — the storyline branches frequently — but they will end in the same place. The games will run alongside each other; there will not be cliffhanger endings leading from one to another, and each game will focus on a different part of the story. The Terran campaign will focus on Jim Raynor, and the Zerg campaign will be all about Kerrigan. Multiplayer functionality will be in place for all three races from the start.
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Shenanigans. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, no link to read, so I'm going to go with the summary.
This is stupid.
Ludicrous. The "no cliffhangers" thing suggests that these will be released more or less simultaneously, which means the decision to package them separately has nothing to do with how long it would take to make them. It's a naked grab for cash.
Now, it's entirely possible that they've put so much money into this that they really do need most customers to buy the whole game for $150 a pop. Let's face it, video game pricing hasn't really kept up with the cost of making games. I'm happy to acknowledge that. But do they really need to pretend this is somehow mandated by the "massiveness" of the game itself?
I haven't really been into RTSs since Starcraft 1, and I was kind of looking forward to coming back. But this really leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Boo.
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[...] they really do need most customers to buy the whole game for $150 a pop.
Where did it say that they were charging full price for each one? For all we know, they could charge $50 for the first game, and $20 for each "expansion" campaign you buy (or some other form of arbitrary numbers).
Quite... For all we know... (Score:3, Funny)
They could also be giving them away for free.
To third world children.
With their free Blizzard-sponsored OLPC.
And a lollipop.
Chery flavor.
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and a pony
Re:Shenanigans. (Score:5, Insightful)
Where did it say that they were charging full price for each one?
It didn't, the summary was thankfully terse on what would have been interesting details.
I think I'm going to buy all of their new titles, just on general principles whether I play them or not. Blizzard is #1 in the industry at the moment. Blizzard supports Mac OS X out of the box and their developers worked with the Linux wine guys so the Warden didn't kick out people who want to play on Linux.
I'm sick and tired of people who claim Linux and Mac OS X are worthless because no one does games for them, but someone does. I, for one, am going to welcome Gaming Overlord Blizzard right where it counts - in giving them new sales.
Parent
Re:Shenanigans. (Score:4, Informative)
Trust me, in Australia, we will be paying $99-$120 per pack, as always.
Parent
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I do not see how "no cliffhangers" logically leads to "simultaneous release".
If you remember Starcraft 1 at all, you should see how easily the game could be broken up like this, and yet how badly is would affect the story telling to force it into cliffhangers. Part of what was great about StarCraft 1 was how the different plot lines wrapped together.
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Meh. I don't even like RTS games that much, though I enjoy certain aspects of single player. I hate multiplayer RTS. That said, I _LOVE_ the first three titles in the Warhammer 40k Dawn of War series. When they gave up on making content for their expansions and started bulding the bulk of the gameplay out of their skirmish mode I stopped playing, but those guys know how to make a fun RTS.
They're also the ones who made Company of Heroes, which I never would have tried if I hadn't played DoW first, and which
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>And certainly better than some overbloated Blizztard crap that, despite their assurance it doesn't end with a cliffhanger, will >most assuredly end in a cliffhanger, just like every other game they've ever made.
How can you call starcraft bloated after being a fan of CoH and DoW.
The whole game design is specifically anti-bloat where if a unit is not important enough to gameplay it gets cut so the number of units per team stay near the ideal number of 12.
Re:Shenanigans. (Score:4, Informative)
According to http://pc.ign.com/articles/918/918895p1.html [ign.com] they're planning to have a 1 year gap between games.
Parent
Information Here (Score:5, Informative)
Well, looks like further information is available here [kotaku.com], though it's about as clear as mud.
It looks like the "expansions" will be released one at a time, not all at once. And they will change the multiplayer experience, like Brood War, but also have a "full" (which apparently means 1/3) single-player campaign included as well.
I'm beginning to think that the biggest problem here is not Blizzard's greed (though that is a contributing factor!) but rather their apparent inability to communicate clearly just what it is they are trying to pull here.
Parent
Allow me to translate... (Score:5, Funny)
Effing brilliant (Score:5, Funny)
Those jackholes are going to make me shell out 150 to 200 dollars for this game, aren't they?
God, Blizzard is evil!
pricing: (Score:2, Funny)
each installment is yours for $65 or grab the extended super amazing battle.net chest gold version for $200 with a collectors mouse pad and protoss boxers*
* for a limited time only.
Uh, why the whine over three games...? (Score:5, Interesting)
For those of you whining about "whaaaa 300% markup"..
Each campaign has 36 missions. That's more than the original Starcraft. Further, the campaign will be branched (ie, you'll have choices that actually effect what happens, which missions are selected, what happens). It might also feature co-op multiplayer, not sure on that one yet.
Or, what they announced, was a game called Starcraft II and the following two expansions to it. You know that's how it'll work. They won't just ship new missions and charge you retail for it, it will feature new units, balance, etc.
Starcraft was released, people were happy. Brood War was released, and people didn't whine about Blizzard "ripping them off" because hey, this expansion also had content.
Starcraft II is exactly the same, and yet, people are whining now...? Am I missing something?
Re:Uh, why the whine over three games...? (Score:4, Insightful)
SC
Starcraft came out and turned out to be a success.
People wanted more, Blizzard saw that it was selling, Blizzard made more of SC to sell.
With more story, better AI and strategy, tweaks and new units.
SCII
Blizzard announces game.
People say "Well its about time" and "Give it to us".
Blizzard says "Hey! How about instead of 1 disk, we sell you 3 disks instead? We got the idea even before the game was completed. And which we have fluffed-out enough with video and audio so it fits onto 3 discs instead of 1, so that you could buy 3 discs instead of 1."
Its a strategy game.
There is no practical reason why all 3 of it's announced campaigns should now be able to fit on a single disk and come out at the same time.
Its not like there are months or years of development left once they release the first one. Its a bloody MAP PACK!
Multiplayer being "functional from the start" and "games running alongside each other" means no new units or functionality with campaign 2 and 3.
They are making 3 of them JUST SO they could sell 3 of them, 3 times.
Plain and simple.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> Blizzard says "Hey! How about instead of 1 disk, we sell you 3 disks instead? We got the idea even before the game was completed. And which we have fluffed-out enough with video and audio so it fits onto 3 discs instead of 1, so that you could buy 3 discs instead of 1."
Blizzard says, "Hey! This is going to take a long time to produce to meet our quality expectations, and quite frankly designing a massive branching campaign with multiplayer in mind is a challenge.. we can either take from here until som
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But if each one of those has a full game's worth of content, and the second two are priced like expansions/upgrades, then it would be worth it to most people. I don't understand the indignation when we don't even know the pricing scheme. Blizzard isn't stupid, they're not going to price themselves out of this. They want Starcraft 2 to sell 10 million copies.
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Starcraft II is exactly the same, and yet, people are whining now...? Am I missing something?
You're new here. Whining is a way of life with us.
What people are not thinking about it is that the real reason Blizzard is breaking this apart into pieces is prevent it from becoming Duke Nukem Forever II, instead of Starcraft 2.
Even more like Warhammer 40k (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, it's all a big ripoff of Warhammer 40k, so they might as well take even more inspiration from Games Workshop by soaking their loyal customers for triple damage in the wallet.
Linux Support? (Score:3, Insightful)
I have intentionally stayed the hell away from anything about the game in the press. I loved SC1 and _still_ play it. Does anyone know if there will be Linux support this time around? I haven't had a box running Windows for many, many years. I don't want to have to buy Cedega on top of it, but I guess I may have to.
Also, is there a release date yet?
I ask here because I DON'T want to go to the website and get everything spoiled before I even get the game.:(
Blizzdot is in full swing! (Score:3, Interesting)
Now that Blizzcon is in full swing, I can look forward to every announcement by blizzard being slashdotted and front paged for the next few days. . . .
They're missing the point (Score:5, Interesting)
Part of the inherent coolness of StarCraft was that you got to experience all three races with very three different play mechanisms across the game.
Now they want to make each campaign a separate game? It just doesn't sound nearly as interesting to me, no matter how big the campaigns are or what sort of "metagame" they add to it. It won't cover for the fact that, conceptually, it still feels like a step down.
Obviously, the world isn't coming to an end here - but I wonder if Blizzard's near perpetual success is leading to a bit of disconnect here with the fans. When you can do no wrong for so long, you might start to believe that you can do no wrong even when you're doing wrong.
Victim of WoW's success (Score:5, Funny)
I can see the conversation now at Blizzard's headquarters:
Bean counter: "Hey, we're making money hand over fist with World of Warcraft! How can you justify diverting money into an expensive new project without subscriptions?"
Developer: "We could put subscriptions into multiplayer."
Bean counter: "No, that could take away from our golden cash cow."
Developer: "We... could split the single player into three map packs and charge for all three?"
Bean counter: "Won't consumers feel gipped? Could that cut into sales?"
Developer: "We'll add more 'mine X resource, build Y units and rush the enemy base' missions to fluff it out. Total gameplay hours will be 3 times as long!"
Bean counter: "Brilliant!"
I'll buy em all (Score:4, Insightful)
I loved Starcraft. Played it regularly for many years, often going through bouts where my girlfriend, later wife, and I would play every weekend for 8-10 weeks in a row. We played through the single player, and it certainly was compelling, but multiplayer was "where it's at". I've put more time into Starcraft than any other game, hands down. Possibly more than every other game I've played put together, although you might have to take Starflight [wikipedia.org] and its sequels [wikipedia.org] out [wikipedia.org].
I can easily look at Starcraft 2 and justify buying all three races the same way a WoW player can say "$15/month is cheaper entertainment than anything else I can do". I am totally sold on the new visual direction they're going in, even making single player more muted and dirty than bright and easy to distinguish multiplayer. I love the characters I'm supposed to love and I have the characters I'm supposed to hate.
I just wonder how much money this is going to cost me in babysitting and white chocolate mochas at my local wifi-enabled coffee house. 3 discs may be the cheapest part.
What you're all overlooking (Score:3, Insightful)
Starcraft (and Brood War) came out in 1998. Since then, Blizzard's been providing online play AND a continued stream of patches and updates, completely free of charge. Even if you paid full price for each piece back when they launched (let's say $50 each), I think you've gotten your money's worth out of the game over the past decade.
Yes, Starcraft 2 may cost more up front by being packaged this way, but if Blizzard's past is any indication, the game's going to give you years of play, with the online support free for the duration. This, of course, is on top of the game itself, which (again, judging from the past) is going to be polished, balanced, and a blast to play.
Blizzard's doing the smart thing here - if they were to rush the game and risk the content being broken or unbalanced even slightly, they'd get ripped apart for this. Even if people bitch now, giving the chunks of the game more development time will lead to a better product...and let's face it, probably 95%+ of the people here whining are going to buy the game and its expansions as soon as they're able to.
And for the record, Starcraft was March '98, and Brood War was November '98. The game and its expansion pack were eight months apart - that's not exactly a long time between the two of them, and, given how long development and marketing take, I'm willing to bet that Brood War wasn't conceived after they'd had time to digest the sales figures from Starcraft for a while. Same goes for Retribution and Insurrection - more content, sold separately, mere months after the release of Starcraft.
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I just wish I could beat you over the head with the SUMMARY that you didn't even bother to read before blasting off a comment.
Go back to youtube
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i was going to make some kind of contextual reply to your comment, but i just couldn't bring myself to read it.
i only read the story tags.
Re:Speaking of Multiplayer (Score:5, Funny)
Wow. I'm lazy, I just blindly click the page and mash the keyboard now and then. I don't even speak English, I'm just very, very improbable.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You and your infinite improbability keyboard!
Re:Speaking of Multiplayer (Score:4, Funny)
We've gone from RTFA to RTFS, now.
Do people on /. actually read anything?
I read your comment. I can has cookie?
Parent
Re:Speaking of Multiplayer (Score:5, Informative)
Multiplayer functionality will be in place for all three races from the start.
Parent
Re:Speaking of Multiplayer (Score:5, Informative)
There IS no UID 666. You must be new here...
Actually, ACs internally are uid 666, they just don't display.
Parent
Re:Am I the only one? (Score:5, Funny)
Including this one; their stated reason is untrue, this is a marketing ploy to sell more units.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps you should have taken a moment to confirm that indeed, every other post in the thread says the exact same thing.
They didn't exist when I started my post, but thanks for your thoughtful insight.
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Re:Zeratul (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just lame. Game companies seem to be coming up with more and more ways to gouge consumers. Now releasing THREE Starcraft titles... Sorry Blizz, you just lost a sale. What? Making an expansion pack doesn't make you enough money any more? Making 75 million plus a month off WOW isn't good enough? Activision must owe some loansharks.
"How can we make more money?"
"Well screw it. We pay the writers very little. Just have them write longer stories and VOILA! One game, but three sales for the whole thing!"
"Jenkins, you're a genius! You'll find a whore and some gin waiting on your car when you leave."
Ah well, one less game to buy. Or three actually.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This isn't exactly a new development. Remember Diablo II? Its 'expansion' was really just the end of the story started in the main game, a.k.a. Act V. The same could be said about Warcraft III and its expansion.
Re:Zeratul (Score:5, Interesting)
I said "What, are expansion packs not making your enough money?" I mean we already know multiple game developers remove stuff from their games (latest example: Plant creator in "Spore") so they can put them in the expansion. So yes, I'm fully aware this is done. Marketing three different standalone games is ridiculous. I guarantee there will be some reason, some hook to force folk into buying all 3. Whereas all races are activated for multiplayer supposedly, I would expect each version will have something like skirmish maps exclusive too each version which you can only play if you own said version, or something similar along those lines. Some way to force all but the most ardent resistor to buy all three.
Parent
Re:Zeratul (Score:5, Interesting)
Has it ever occurred to anyone that this is actually a good thing? What blizzard is saying is that their massive team of elite game developers simply do not have the time to fit the enormous amount of content they want to put in. This means that there will most likely be 2 more WELL-WORTH games that follow the series coming out. I know how much I wanted to go to blizzard and say "can you make another?" when it came to the brood war expansion. If there were only campaigns that came with the expansions, then people would just pirate it and buy the cd-keys for cheep online. Chances are, the expansions will have more units/buildings, more areas, more neutral objects, and possibly new functions to the old units/buildings. And chances are each one will redefine the way the game is played, and lead to many more hours of good gaming, which is much more than you can say about a whole lot of other expansions.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No, you're paying $50 for an engine and a campaign. Then you're paying $100 for 2 more campaigns.
Re:Zeratul (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you're paying $50 for an engine and a campaign. Then you're paying $100 for 2 more campaigns.
Right... except normally you'd pay $50-60 for 2 more campaigns, in boxes called 'expansions' normally for between 19 and 29 bucks, instead of the price of a full game.
Remind me why I need 3 copies of the game engine? They only developed it once, why do I need to pay for it 3 times?
Parent
Re:Zeratul (Score:5, Insightful)
That's largely my thought, if they have enough material to justify several games, I'd rather have several games rather than one mega sized mega priced game.
Historically additional content that uses the same engine is called an expansion. All they're doing is bundling the engine with the expansions and charging full price for them.
They develop the engine once, you pay for it 3 times. Sucker.
Me, I'll just wait until they release a 'box set' with all 3 for what a regular game costs; it probably won't take more than 6-12 months after release.
Parent
Re:Zeratul (Score:5, Interesting)
"Effectively each game in the will be an expansion"
http://kotaku.com/5062018/starcraft-ii-lead-producer-on-the-split-single-player-campaign [kotaku.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So what you're saying is that you only plan to buy three more games in your lifetime, and you don't want the other two titles to be Starcraft related? Why did you even bother to buy BroodWar when you already paid for Starcraft???
It shouldn't matter if Blizzard decides to release three games focusing on an individual race. What should matter is whether each game, with its sets of tweaks, would be worth paying $50-75 each. Perhaps, perhaps not.
Re:Zeratul (Score:4, Insightful)
Like a smoker, or a motorist, you know exactly what will happen. You will make a crapload of noise about how stupid it is that these things are so expensive. You will vow to all within earshot that you will never surrender your hard earned money to such a blatant cash grab.
And then you will walk into the store within 3 days of its release and purchase all three games, probably pre-ordering them.
You will complain. You will whine. And in the end you will buy all three within days of their release. And ultimately you will enjoy them.
I know this because your not complaining that Starcraft sucks or is over rated. Your just angry that you are being gouged for something you know you will probably pay for no matter what.
END COMMUNICATION
Parent
Advance news of GotY and you still complain? (Score:3, Insightful)
I also find it interesting that I see so many World of Warcraft advertisements on slashdot pages...
The Wrath of the Lich King expansion if it makes its release date will be Game of the Year this year. Otherwise if it misses and comes next January, it will be Game of the Year next year.
Most of the time, people complain about things being posted here too late, like say after it appeared on digg a week ago. Consider the WotLK ads to be the PTB's at slashdot apology for all the late articles we've been given.
I think they're wasting money on their ads. Unlike Microsofties and Microsoft Vista, us WoWers are