StarCraft II Single-Player Details Revealed 206
As Blizzcon approaches, a number of gaming sites were invited out to California to get an early look at the single-player campaign for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. Kotaku has a detailed write-up (spoiler-free version), and 1Up summarizes one of the missions: "... you're on a planet with an alternating day/night cycle (every five minutes, it switches): during daylight, you're safe. You can build forces and go out and destroy structures. At night, the infected Terrans will relentlessly stream towards your base — necessitating a strong defense against the 'zombie horde.'" An interview with some of the developers is available, in which lead designer Dustin Browder says Blizzard will continue their trend of having downloadable maps and other improvements throughout the game's life. BlizzPlanet posted a mission guide for the part of the game they got to see, and new video footage has been released that shows off the single-player mode.
the next lost generation of koreans (Score:5, Funny)
As if Starcraft wasn't damage enough, now comes Starcraft 2. Millions of young South Korean men idling away their lives on multiplayer servers. I think Blizzard's done them more damage than the Japanese occupation.
Re:the next lost generation of koreans (Score:4, Insightful)
So how are the dedicated fans of Starcraft going to take any changes in the gameplay? Starcraft was perfectly balanced, the fact that people are still having competitions after so many years shows that much. What can Blizzard do to Starcraft to make it new and worthwhile, without damaging the perfection of Starcraft?
Re:the next lost generation of koreans (Score:5, Funny)
Re:the next lost generation of koreans (Score:4, Funny)
Next up....Pirates and Ninjas! Then the triumvirate will be complete!
Re:the next lost generation of koreans (Score:5, Funny)
Next up....Pirates and Ninjas! Then the triumvirate will be complete!
Off in the corner, unnoticed and unloved, a single drop of hydraulic fluid leaks from a robot's optical sensor.
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That's because his left diodes hurt.
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It wouldn't be fair to add cyborgs/robots to the mix. The robot overlords would win every time and StarCraft aims to have good balance.
Re:the next lost generation of koreans (Score:5, Funny)
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But then it's just Warcraft III, and that's just not as good.
Infested Terrans (Score:2)
They were "infested", not "infected". See also Sarah Kerrigan [wikipedia.org]
I believe they were mind controlled by zerg larvae rather than being undead, so they shouldn't quite qualify as zombies.
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It wasn't just that it was insanely well balanced, it's also that Blizzard patched it over the years as exploitable game mechanics came about. It could be argued that the constant focus on balancing and rebalancing the game, as well as listening to the community from pros on down is what made Starcraft a perfectly balanced game.
(for an RTS -- I suck horribly at micromanaging so TBS is more my bag)
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Even if Starcraft 2 is extremely popular and well-balanced don't expect it to overtake competitive Starcraft for at least a couple years. I doubt that will happen, but Blizzard certainly has the skill and reputation t
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It's such a ridiculous argument...
Everyone knows Protoss is best...
Seriously though, the game is fantastically well balanced. Not so much when it first came out but Blizz did an awesome job patching it.
Starcraft is a classic. SC2 won't be. The Blizzard who developed the original SC is a VASTLY different company than the one who developed SC2.
Incidentally, I notice no mention of the "There will be 3 different releases, one for each race" nonsense. Have they dropped that? Or are they hoping people might forge
Balance and expansions (Score:2)
One of the great things about Starcraft's balance is that each unit is great in certain matchups and awful in others. For example, vultures are great versus zealots or dark templar but not so good versus dragoons or archons. My biggest fear with Starcraft 2 is that there seem to be so many dimensions of advantage/disadvantage that it will be very hard to build an overall strong defense.
Likewise, when most of your opponents are playing one race then you can gain advantages by playing another race with specia
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Of course not. In Korea, only old people play Starcraft.
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Except that Blizzard isn't forcing anyone, in ANY county, to play their games. The Japanese didn't really give anyone a choice.
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Re:the next lost generation of koreans (Score:4, Funny)
Re:the next lost generation of koreans (Score:5, Informative)
On the bright side, that's millions of available South Korean women.
you've obviously never been to South Korea.
in starcraft, my ass was handed to me by just as many female gamers as male gamers at the PC bang.
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I'm not about to try playing against even a Korean child. I've seen some of the videos. It seems like about the time my screen finishes loading, their first rush of a thousand zerglings will hit. Those games just move too fast.
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Seems like the green-zealots might have something new to get pissed about...
Was this intentional?
Every five minutes (Score:5, Funny)
An unstoppable message stating: "What A Horrible Night To Have A Curse" or "The Morning Sun Has Vanquished The Horrible Night".
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A flame whip and holy water was used to kill Dracula.
Re:Every five minutes (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.screwattack.com/AVGN/2006/Castlevania2 [screwattack.com]
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An unstoppable message stating: "What A Horrible Night To Have A Curse" or "The Morning Sun Has Vanquished The Horrible Night".
Or, "The Dark Eternal Night". ;)
Can they do anything wrong? (Score:5, Funny)
Warcraft(s), Diablo(s), Starcraft(s)....These guys are the Tom Petty of video games; they just can't write a bad game.
Maybe they'll get smart and include 40 hours of marriage counseling with this one...
Re:Can they do anything wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can they do anything wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ahh... Starcraft Ghost.
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Don't forget the aborted Warcraft-based game that looked similar to old Sierra games.
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Warcraft Adventure iirc.
I am still waiting on my damn Lost Vikings 3.
Re:Can they do anything wrong? (Score:4, Funny)
I am still waiting on my damn Lost Vikings 3.
I think that part near the end of LV2 where Erik had to jump over a shark was an indication that they don't think there's much left to do with the franchise.
Though on the other hand I made that up.
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That's actually a cool idea. Play the role of a Ghost doing espionage against the enemy. There's a lot of potential when you flesh out the roles. Next up: Galaxy of StarCraft (GoS) to replace WoW. I'd hate to be the zerg guy that gets turned into a building.
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Re:Can they do anything wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can they do anything wrong? (Score:4, Interesting)
There is no need to.
Just set up your own personal Battle.net server.
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It's this kind of garbage that leads me to never buy games from EA or via MS.
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The lost me when I found out the three races' campaigns were going to be spread out over three games. Part of the big interest for me for the original was seeing the war from three perspectives, and getting a chance to control all of them. Frankly, no matter how content much they put into any one of the campaigns, it just seems like it's not going to be as interesting as being able to play all three.
I'll probably wait until they sell the games as a 3-pack for the price of the original, so I suppose it mea
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Thing is it's looking increasingly likely that a Battlenet connection will be mandatory for all multiplayer, and possibly single player, as an anti-piracy method.
So a LAN patch may not be quite that simple.
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Warcraft III was pretty underwhelming.
I have to say, after being subjected to the abuse known as Age of Conan, I sure do appreciate World of Warcraft. I've never seen a game before so eager to alienate new players. Oh, and having voice overs for every single NPC doesn't help if the voice actors are so bad they could be classified as a war crime.
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While we're tilting at windmills, we might as well hope that they'll also stop suing and imposing over-reaching DRM on their fans and customers.
Sounds like a Standard Tower Defense Game (Score:5, Interesting)
This sounds suspiciously like a standard tower defense game. They were wildly popular when I played starcraft (9 way lurker defense anyone) and if you visit any flash gaming website you'll find a dozen. I'm not saying this is a bad thing (I'm addicted to gemcraft), but it does seem unoriginal. I wonder if they'll give you the ability to change it to nighttime at will.
Re:Sounds like a Standard Tower Defense Game (Score:5, Informative)
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The Horde (1994) had this same 'night monster rush' concept a long time ago. Blizzard isn't revolutionizing anything new.
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Blizzard never was a revolutionary company. Warcraft was just dune/c&c with a warhammer-like theme. Starcraft was "just" Warcraft in space, with non-identical sides this time (THE major difference, I would say). Diablo is just a 3rd person real-time dungeon hack. World of Warcraft was not the first mmorpg. What all these games have in common is this: they're well made. To increases sales, they also try not to murder your poor PC.
Re:Sounds like a Standard Tower Defense Game (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Sounds like a Standard Tower Defense Game (Score:5, Insightful)
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You stated your self what revolutionary things Blizzard has done. The big one being non-identical sides. Think of the major games before Starcraft. I honestly can't think of a single one that had teams that were more than different models and maybe a few variations on special abilities like Warcraft had.
The reason why you can't think of any is that Starcraft is pretty much the only game from that period that still survives. In truth, there were plenty - Dark Reign, for example. If you recall, in that age we called them all "C&C clones", and you had at least one new release of such every month or so. Most of them died almost straight away, some lasted for longer, and Starcraft was the king of the hill - but not the first by far, and the field was largely covered before it.
No, the real thing that Starcra
Re:Sounds like a Standard Tower Defense Game (Score:4, Interesting)
Archon had non-identical sides.......and the units fought each other and there was strategy. The only piece missing was the real-time aspect.....which in the head-to-head mode, you got.
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I love me some TA. Now THERE is a game that has stood the test of time with user created content keeping it alive.
Though didn't the two races boil down to "Get in these robots!" and "No we will not"?
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If you're going to be tossing around RTS's with "non-identical sides" then the list would be incomplete without including the original Dune (not the 2000 remake).
You could choose Harkonan, Ordos or Atreides which had *very* different units available to them. That game ruled.
Re:Sounds like a Standard Tower Defense Game (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, I think you mean Dune II [wikipedia.org], the first RTS from Westwood. It was released in 1992. And yes, it was a great game. It runs great on DOSBox, and once in a while I still play it.
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Starcraft was "just" Warcraft in space, with non-identical sides this time (THE major difference, I would say).
Or just Warhammer 40K skinned ontop of Warcraft, depending on who you ask. Starcraft II looks in many ways to copy from 40K even more (space marines with jetpacks?), but hey, that doesn't stop them from making a very polished and well designed game.
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And yet I find myself returning to Nethack far more often than either Diablo game.
Re:Sounds like a Standard Tower Defense Game (Score:5, Insightful)
If just one mission is tower defense, I think that leaves a good degree of potential for the rest of them.
I wouldn't worry much about mission variety here -- if the originality Blizzard has been cranking out for of World of Warcraft quests in the expansions is any indicator, they'll have their hands full experimenting with mission structures.
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Re:Sounds like a Standard Tower Defense Game (Score:5, Funny)
Given about half the quests in WOW boil down to "Go get 20 Murloc penises".
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Hrm... I haven't done that quest yet, buti explains why Murloc make that strange gurgling scream and attack everytime you come in range of them.
On the other hand, I have done half a dozen scat based quests.
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I know I've played a flash game with the same kind of gameplay... oh yes, I remember -- it was Super Energy Apocalypse.
FWIW, I found the timed delay waves annoying. I prefer TD games with either constant waves, like Gemcraft or Desktop TD, or with on-demand waves like Protector.
BTW, are you playing Gemcraft 1 or 0? I stopped playing at lvl 185 in 0, but now I've restarted and am restricting myself to traps onl
Re:Sounds like a Standard Tower Defense Game (Score:4, Interesting)
It doesn't matter if it's technically a standard tower defense game, looking at the screenshot it looks like it's a little scary at night, so it will probably be a lot of fun, your classic standard tower defense game lacked that feeling. A lot of things technically are the same, but when you change the circumstances, they can become quite different. Technically, walking through an empty street after sunset is the same as walking the same street at midnight. If you go and try, though, it certainly doesn't feel the same.
You can hardly do much to introduce a new game type that is very different from what you had with the original Starcraft without straying from the genre, but you can improve the old ones to create something new, fresh, and exciting. And that's what they've done.
haha (Score:3, Interesting)
is it just me, or does anyone else get the feeling that when they play these strategy games all they are essentially doing is balancing a giant system of linear equations?
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is it just me, or does anyone else get the feeling that when they play these strategy games all they are essentially doing is balancing a giant system of linear equations?
Dunno, I rather feel that way when I'm on the level-up screen in any of Wizardry or Might & Magic games.
Omega Man? (Score:2)
So does the player character look or sound at all like Charlton Heston or Vincent Price?
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Or Will Smith?
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Or maybe the Infested sound like Anthony Zerbe?
Starcraft 2 will not be defined by single player (Score:5, Interesting)
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Glad to know that the only opinion that matters is yours. I'll be sure to consult you next time I need to know if a game is good or not.
Personally I couldn't care less about the multiplayer. My idea of a good time doesn't involve teenage boys calling me a faggot Mexican Jew Lizard, which is pretty much all that multiplayer games are.
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Re:Starcraft 2 will not be defined by single playe (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure. But how many copies will a pure single-player gamer (who will only play through the game once and then shelve it) buy? One. How many copies will a hardcore multi-player gamer (who will play it obsessively for years and years until he finally croaks in an internet café [slashdot.org]) buy? One. Once you've bought your copy, it doesn't matter how much or for how long you play it. The money's already changed hands.
Good multi-player is a selling point. But don't delude yourself for a minute that the fanatic cliché is who the game is developed for - it's developed to lure in as many customers as possible, and there are a hell of a lot more casual than hard-core gamers.
Like the Anonymous Coward, I don't really care about Starcraft II's multiplayer (and much for the same reasons) - but if its single-player mode is as good as Starcraft I's, I'll buy it in a heartbeat.
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Sure. But how many copies will a pure single-player gamer (who will only play through the game once and then shelve it) buy? One. How many copies will a hardcore multi-player gamer (who will play it obsessively for years and years until he finally croaks in an internet café [slashdot.org]) buy? One. Once you've bought your copy, it doesn't matter how much or for how long you play it.
Maybe true now, where digital download is the new thing..But my gamer friends and I (6 of us) have paid for at least 10 copies of Starcraft over the years, due to lost CD-keys and hardware failures/upgrades.
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Korea is one of their biggest markets, and in Korea multi-player is where the market is.
By releasing a good single-player mode, they can expect a good years worth of sales world wide. But by making it fun to play multiplayer wise, they can guarantee sales for the next 10 years - like Starcraft. Starcraft has a multi-billion dollar industry based around the professional Starcraft gaming sector, with two TV channels dedicated to 24/7 broadcasts of Starcraft matches and Starcraft-related things 10 years into t
Another Day/Night RTS?? (Score:2)
I'm remembering another game that had a day/night theme. Two sides fighting and one had the advantage in the daytime, the other at night time. Sad if this is just a rip-off of that game. :(
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Did you forget this is /. and so reading (or atleast comprehension of the article) is not a requirement before posting... :p
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Could be wrong though, it's from a good few years ago..
SC2 will require internet to install (Score:4, Informative)
quote: In order to install the game, "you need to connect once to install the game," StarCraft II lead designer Browder revealed. A player will also either have or sign up for a Battle.net account during the installation process.
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Honestly, this is one of the things I like better about consoles. The ability to play a game is inherent in the physical possession of the disc. That'll probably go away in a gen or two, though.
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But odds are, most of the people crying about the LAN issues on here are going to buy it anyways. There haven't been many good RTS games out lately. If
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But odds are, most of the people crying about the LAN issues on here are going to buy it anyways. There haven't been many good RTS games out lately. If you are a gamer...particularly one that like RTS's...you are like a moth to the flame. You know it is going to burn, but you are going to go anyways and enjoy the ride.
I won't.
I was planning to buy Starcraft II as soon as it was available. I no longer intend to do so, and LAN gaming is the reason why. If Blizzard pulls their head out of their ass and enables LAN gaming without Battle.net, then I will buy it. If a third-party hack becomes available, then I will evaluate whether the most convenient solution is to buy it and hack it, or to illegally download a pre-hacked copy. If such a hack does not become available, I simply won't play it.
I have no objection to Battle.
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It goes without saying, though, that this "phone home" feature will be used to enforce an inevitable lifetime install limit. It also goes without saying that this limit will be arbitrarily small.
What I find more troubling, however, is that this DRM is a vehicle to violate the privacy of the user and otherwise subvert the operation of the computer it is running on against the interests of its owner. I have no interest in joining Blizzard's organization (Battle.net) or being subjected to its terms of servic
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It goes without saying, though, that this "phone home" feature will be used to enforce an inevitable lifetime install limit. It also goes without saying that this limit will be arbitrarily small.
Not necessarily. They could allow installing on any number of machines, but disallow more than one copy from connecting to Battle.net at once. Sure, people who only want to play the single-player game could pirate it more easily (unless single-player also requires a bnet connection), but that might be sufficient deterrent for Blizzard's purposes. It's a little premature to assume Blizzard will be using Microsoft-level DRM tactics on SC2.
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Why connect to some distance server for all that traffic when the overhead could be kept on the local LAN for strictly local gameplay?
You've apparently never played on Battle.net before. Battle.net has never worked this way. The people all directly connect to each other there is no remote server involved at all. There is no reason to expect this behavior to change.
System Requirements (Score:2)
Anyone have an idea of the recommended system requirements?
DRM + Restricted off-line play = FAIL (Score:2)
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I hate and distrust non-free software more than most, but I actually am OK with this type of non-free for big-budget computer games. Basically, I must be able to run them in the userland, privilege wise, and I want my privacy preserved (no submitting hardware/other software specs without my consent). Beyond that, they can do whatever chit-chat with the home-base they want. They can require uninterrupted Internet connection. (I do, so why cannot they? Being on the Internet is quite a priority for me, and I a
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Infested Terrans? Try Zerglings, Dark Templar, Zealots, Firebats, Broodlings, Ultralisks, and possibly Archons as well.
My favorite trick to use against the AI.
Re:Question is... (Score:5, Funny)
Hmm, I can see it now. " BRAINS! BRAIIIII- what? Oh, right, well we're attacking your bunkers, you see, we're all hungry for BRAINS! BRAAAAII--right, sorry. ...The Supply Depots? Really? Are there brains there? No. So what.....munitions. Er, munitions? ARe they delicious? No? So why would....the contract? What contract? I see. Yes. Section 11(b)...in every case the zombies shall attack the supply depots.....bunkers are off limits until such time... Hm. I had no idea. Well let us get to it then, and we'll meet again here in a few. Off we go chaps! MUNITIONS! MUNIIIIIITTIOOOOOONS!"