StarCraft II To Be Released On July 27 220
Blizzard announced today that StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, the first game in a series of three, will be released on July 27. The game will contain the Terran campaign (29 missions), the full multiplayer experience, and "several challenge-mode mini-games," with "focused goals designed to ease players into the basics of multiplayer strategies." It will launch alongside the revamped Battle.net, which we've previously discussed. Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime said, "We've been looking forward to revisiting the StarCraft universe for many years, and we're excited that the time for that is almost here. Thanks to our beta testers, we're making great progress on the final stages of development, and we'll be ready to welcome players all over the world to StarCraft II and the new Battle.net in just a few months."
Re:I still have bugs that make the game unplayable (Score:5, Insightful)
The beta sometimes crashes? The horror!
Clearly they won't fix those for the final version.
Re:bout time (Score:4, Insightful)
I do hate it when people neglect to cite their sources, but most journalists probably received this as an email.
Re:Playing the Beta (Score:5, Insightful)
Blizzard never innovates. They just do what everybody else does without the suck. I LOVE THEM!!!
Re:Playing the Beta (Score:4, Insightful)
And I'm ultimately unimpressed. Here's Blizzard's history:
I honestly cannot tell if you are being sarcastic or not. In the event that you are not being sarcastic, allow me to elaborate on your points.
Warcraft -- First RTS
It was not. Usually Dune 2 by Westwood Studios gets credit for this. Warcraft 1 did have some innovations, but both of those games are really horrible if you try to play them now.
Warcraft 2 -- Added sea/air units, multiplayer
Thats innovation isn't it?
Starcraft -- Asymetric factions, battle.net
Ok, now here is one where the innovation, or at least the execution, cannot be overstated enough. There weren't just three factions each basically the same with slightly different units and maybe a faction specific unit and building or two. Starcraft had three entirely different factions, with almost entirely different build mechanics, and definitely with entirely different feels and strategies that work. They also managed to balance the factions fairly well, after many balance patches (they never quit making balance changes until it got to be just right). People are still playing it now, 10 years later. In Korea it has become something of a sport (leagues, teams, televised games, etc) and over here it is gaining momentum, and has been since I got into it two years ago. Oh, and the best players in the world don't play on the Battle.net server, they play on a server called ICUP
Warcraft 3 -- Hero units, 3D
Maybe not as much innovation. It took balls though to not just rehash SC or Warcraft 2. Blizzard's main competition was the Command and Conquer series of rts games, and those got rehashed and made into so many sequels that I didn't even know C&C 4 came out a week or a month or something ago, and didn't care either. Also, WC3's map editor is quite robust and has spawned many interesting games, including something called DoTA, which in itself is becoming a new genre of competitive multiplayer gaming
Starcraft 2 -- I can select 255 units at once now?
Is there anything I'm missing other than a conspicuous lack of risk or innovation?
Probably, yeah.
Re:Not excited (Score:3, Insightful)
Any highly competitive situation where you're required to multitask in an environment you're not familiar with is likely to cause a small bit of anxiety; certainly enough to ruin the 'fun factor' in a game. With no manual, no tutorial, and no single player to familiarize yourself with the units and buildings you find yourself learning as you go, or sometimes learning as you get your ass kicked.
I was familiar with the original SC, but hadn't really played an RTS for a few years, and I found myself uncomfortable in the game until about 7-10 multiplayer matches. I think most of it is because this is a beta and you're just thrown right into multiplayer (sometimes against highly skilled players, during the placement games).
When the full game comes out the single player campaign should be more than enough to ease players into the game so that multiplayer can be a fun experience from the very first match.
Re:What I'd like to see... (Score:3, Insightful)
Starcraft sold huge numbers of copies and is still widely played in Korea at a very high level. Chess is a game known across the world and played by a vast number of people from every walk of life. They're successful games, and Blizzard seems to know a thing or two about making games require strategy (macro) and execution (micro.)
Re:Playing the Beta (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure he meant Warcraft was Blizzard's first RTS, not the first RTS ever made.