Blizzard today announced that StarCraft II will be released as a trilogy of separate games, each concentrating on one of the universe's three factions.
The first game in the trilogy will consist of the Terran campaign, and is set to be titled "Terrans: Wings of Liberty."
The second Zerg-focused title will be "Zerg: Heart of the Swarm," with the third game being "Protoss: Legacy of the Void."
"[The second and third games] will be like expansion packs, but we really want them to feel like standalone products," said Blizzard's Rob Pardo.
Each campaign will be very different, with Pardo saying the Zerg campaign will contain RPG elements. The Protoss campaigin will likewise be differentiated by elements of diplomacy. In addition, the Terran campaign will contain a Protoss mini-campaign./quote]
The original StarCraft, according to Pardo, had 32 missions; 12 for the Terrans, and 10 each for the Zerg and the Protoss. According to Blizzard, each of these StarCraft II games will consist of more than 30 missions.
Pardo explained that the multiplayer remains relatively unchanged; each StarCraft II game will have a fully functioning multiplayer suite with all three races playable. "[In] the shipping product, all three races will be fully featured and balanced in gameplay and also in content," he said. We asked whether that meant the multiplayer suite in each game would be exactly the same, and he said, "More than likely, the successive products will add multiplayer content; we haven't decided right now what that is." That brought up the question as to how multiplayer would work if some players only buy the first game while others only buy the second or third games. He said that they haven't made any determinations yet as to how that would work.
Well that other link said, "About as long..."As long as they can keep doing different things, probably adding units as you go along, and variety galore, it can be done, I bet.
http://au.pc.ign.com/articles/918/918895p1.html
You guys should check out the comments section of that article. :P
Also, while I am excited about the deeper story etc., I have to agree with Que a bit. I am a big RTS fan, but I too am worried about exhaustion. Will they really be able to keep up the intensity if they split the game into three massive bits?
StarCraft 2 Trilogy Releases May Be Years Apart
by Chris Faylor Oct 13, 2008 9:52am CST tags: StarCraft 2, BlizzCon 08
With the single-player portions of StarCraft 2 now split into three distinct games, Blizzard lead producer Chris Sigaty and VP Rob Pardo have revealed that the individual titles will ideally be released at least a year apart from one another.
"With any luck, it would be like a year for each successive one, but that's going to be a target date, that's not a promise," Pardo noted in a Joystiq interview.
"In a lot of ways, you should think about the follow-ups as being kind of expansion sets to the original," Pardo explained. "It's just that the campaigns are not going to feel like expansions, they're going to feel like full, independent stories."
"I don't know how long it's going to take...it could be [a year or more between each one]," producer Sigaty revealed to MTV Multplayer. "We want to hit the shortest amount of time possible."
"Let's spin that in a positive light," he laughed, attributing the uncertainty to the time it takes to complete each story made and their respective in-engine cinematics. Sigaty also noted that the team has yet to discuss pricing details for the individual games.
Though Blizzard has yet to say when the PC real-time strategy trilogy will start making its way into stores, the first release, Terrans: Wings of Liberty, will feature the main Terran campaign and a Protoss mini-campaign.
The second release, Zerg: Heart of the Swarm will contain some RPG elements, with the third entry, Protoss: Legacy of the Void sporting some diplomatic gameplay.
StarCraft 2's multiplayer component is said to be unchanged by the split, though some units will be unique to the campaigns and will not be playable in multiplayer.
Also, while I am excited about the deeper story etc., I have to agree with Que a bit. I am a big RTS fan, but I too am worried about exhaustion. Will they really be able to keep up the intensity if they split the game into three massive bits?Who knows, but there is a large framework to work with in the Starcraft universe. I thought they sullied it a bit with the whole United Earth Directorate in the expansion, but the story in the original game was simply a masterpiece. If they can come anywhere close, I think it can only spell good things.
In this case, I think the full price is fine. Each SC2 game will be longer than the first.
I've never been to a LAN party either. Neither do I want to go to a LAN party.
Well, it's definitely true. Blizzard has killed LAN support in the upcoming StarCraft II, and here's the official word from Bob Colayco at Blizzard PR:Its like they don't understand what LAN is for. Ok, so B.net is all improved and great but people don't want to have everyone connect to b.net at a LAN party. Even if you have a connection fast enough to handle everyones bandwidth (doubtful), why add lag by sending data out to a server only to have it come back to another PC in the same freaking room?
"We don't currently plan to support LAN play with StarCraft II, as we are building Battle.net to be the ideal destination for multiplayer gaming with StarCraft II and future Blizzard Entertainment games. While this was a difficult decision for us, we felt that moving away from LAN play and directing players to our upgraded Battle.net service was the best option to ensure a quality multiplayer experience with StarCraft II and safeguard against piracy.
Several Battle.net features like advanced communication options, achievements, stat-tracking, and more, require players to be connected to the service, so we're encouraging everyone to use Battle.net as much as possible to get the most out of StarCraft II. We're looking forward to sharing more details about Battle.net and online functionality for StarCraft II in the near future."
If they are so worried about piracy and letting people play on a LAN not having legit copies, why don't they let LAN portion of the game require disc in the drive?There's a good chance a no-cd crack could go around that. It seems to me that they're trying to figure out a way to manage it without officially saying "DRM."
6. Anti-piracy paranoia
The damage that piracy does to our industry is impossible to calculate but also impossible to ignore. Few company heads can be as brave as Stardock’s Brad Wardell, who chose to leave out copy protection altogether for the Galactic Civilization series (They encourage paying customers by providing on-line updates to players with legitimate serial numbers.).
Having some sort of mechanism to stop casual piracy is a given in the industry, but what is not a given is the hoops companies will make their customers jump through just to be able to start the game. The most important question to ask is “will this added security layer actually increase our sales?”
A good place to be lenient, for example, is with local multi-player games -- in other words, can players without the CD join a multi-player game hosted by a legitimate copy. Starcraft let you “spawn” extra copies of the game that could only join local multi-player games.
Allowing unlimited LAN play was our unofficial policy for Civ 4 as well. The game does a disk check when opening the executable but not when you actually launch the game; thus, a group of 4 friends could just pass one disk around for local multiplayer games.
We do not believe players are willing to buy extra discs just for LAN parties, which are rare events. However, we would love for new players to be introduced to Civ in these environments, encouraged by their friends who are already fans. At some point, they are going to want to try single-player -- in which case, it is time for a trip down to the local retailer to buy their own copy.
Acknowledging the considerable effect mods like Defense of the Ancients have had on the Blizzard community, Blizzard design head Rob Pardo has revealed that mod-makers will be able to sell the custom maps they create for the upcoming StarCraft II through an official marketplace.First, I'm of the hippy old-school "modding for the love of modding" line of thought, so the idea of people doing this all for profit just seems strange.
At launch, the marketplace will immediately allow free distribution of mods, but commerce functionality will be added in later. Still, Pardo said, it is under active development at Blizzard.
"Imagine what could happen if you could hire a small dev team and use StarCraft II almost as an engine," he said. "This is an opportunity for [modders] to share in the rewards of our success."
After all, Pardo said, Defense of the Ancients has a measurable impact on the game industry as a whole -- "The tower defense [genre] came out of the WarCraft III mod community, and now you see tower defense [games] on the PlayStation Store, and in [PopCap's] Plants vs. Zombies."
He pointed to mods for Valve-developed games, such as Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat, as further examples of the possibility of the mod space -- but was sure to add, "We want to make sure the best amateur game designers out there are making content for StarCraft II, and not for Kongregate or Steam or anything like that."
Kotaku sat down with Blizzard's executive vice president of game design Rob Pardo this weekend to talk Battle.net, but we couldn't resist touching on the subject of the lack of LAN in StarCraft II.
Pardo was in good spirits when we spoke to him yesterday afternoon when I touched on the controversial subject, which has spawned a wave of forum rage and countless petitions calling for the reinstatement of feature. "You're the first person who asked me about that this weekend," he joked. When I asked if the company was still receiving flack over the decision, his good humor continued. "Only from you guys. Only from the press. Everyone else has accepted it."
Once I finished giggling, Rob got down to brass tacks.
"Everyone is going to give us flack until it's out. None of us is going to know how big a deal it is until it's out. We believe that it's really not that big of a deal - that most people are not really going to notice that it's missing. There's a lot of people out there I think that are just afraid that they're suddenly not going to be able to connect to the internet tonight and they won't be able to play. I actually think that case is extremely rare, and I think we're going to be okay."
And what of the rare cases where no direct-connection option wouldn't be okay?
"There's a few legitimate cases that we're going to try and address over time. Location-based tournaments, or let's say I'm in a dorm with a firewall or something like that, hopefully there's a way to determine that and maybe start a peer-to-peer game."
So it really doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but as Pardo said, we won't really know until the game comes out.
It looks as if no maps were included in the download with the beta client, and each map is downloaded separately before it's played. You can arrange the maps by official Blizzard releases, popular maps, your own published content, or simply maps you've recently played. It only takes five to ten seconds to download a map, and it looks as if the selection will be constantly moving once the editor is released.Looks like its taking a "LittleBigPlanet" approach to custom maps.
During match-making you can vote maps up or down, making sure that you won't have to play on maps you don't like. You can search for maps by name, see the name of the author, and get a quick description.
This is exciting. Anyone will be able to create maps, upload them directly to Battle.net, and then play on them. Maps are easy to get, easy to share, and it's easy to see how some map-makers are going to become famous in the community as their maps become popular with players. The way maps are set up is genius: you'll always have new content, and the community will constantly be finding good maps to try. This is going to take off like a rocket when the final game is released.
* The Art of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, a 176-page book featuring artwork from the game
* An exclusive 2GB USB flash drive replica of Jim Raynor's dog tag, which comes preloaded with the original StarCraft and the StarCraft: Brood War expansion set
* A behind-the-scenes DVD containing over an hour of developer interviews, cinematics with director's commentary, and more
* The official StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty soundtrack CD, containing 14 epic tracks from the game along with exclusive bonus tracks
* StarCraft comic book issue #0, a prequel to the comic series
* A World of Warcraft mini Thor in-game pet that can be applied to all World of Warcraft characters on a single Battle.net account
* Exclusive Battle.net downloadable content, including special portraits for your Battle.net profile, decals to customize your units in-game, and a visually unique version of the terran Thor unit
Hmmm.... (http://kotaku.com/5512576/does-starcraft-ii-require-an-internet-connection)
Starcraft is all about the multiplayer anyway. Requiring an internet connection for it is pretty much a nonissue, even though it appears to be just speculation at this time.
I might get the CE for this if I get a new computer before it comes out. It is likely that this game is getting a midnight release as well so I'm gonna have to preorder it... I don't feel like waiting until midnight to pick up a game.
Sounds like a one-time activation, like during install. Which sadly is par for the course now.
Sounds like a one-time activation, like during install. Which sadly is par for the course now.
"We're pleased to be working with Facebook to integrate their platform with Battle.net to enhance the social-entertainment experience for our players," said Blizzard COO Paul Sams. "This new functionality will make it easier than ever to connect with friends on Battle.net and play StarCraft II and future Blizzard Entertainment games together."...
To close, we got a little superficial and delved into graphics. Those who've played the beta (or just watched the videos) know that it looks great, even on a mid-range machine, but will we be able to anti-alias the boxed game when it's released?
"No; but we will be releasing 3D in the first few months, for those Nvidia cards and screens that support it," Chris states, before we quickly pursue Nvidia's presence at the event, and ask about those players running ATI cards. We receive a stock but believable response: "we're optimising for all systems."
Release-date style DRM is preventing those who got it early from playing it right now. (http://kotaku.com/5594743/starcraft-ii-is-shipping-but-you-still-cant-play-it)
Anyone surprised? No, I sure ain't...
why did you even bother posting this?You knew some people were gonna get their hands on it early b/c this always happens for major releases and all i.e. Borderlands and any new Steam games. I wouldn't be surprised if GameStop or any other retailers selling this early - like they've done many times before for a big release.
I saw that on Kotaku, and don't see anything wrong with it.Honestly, if we're talking about the MP portion - yeah, I see nothing wrong w/ this. You gotta' wait for their servers to be up to play online - end of story. I got no problem for online activation for MP games - that makes sense to me, since you need the Net to play.
MysterD, supporter of piracy since 1986.
No way, man.
I could kick myself. gogamer.com was still selling SC2 CE when I last posted in this thread but I waited until last night to actually try to order it. gogamer.com was out of stock and I ended up having to order from walmart.com. It sucks because I could have got it with free shipping from gogamer.com but had to spend more at walmart.com becuase I had to pay for shipping.
Wow those are some terrible articles, one guy tries to make news out of Amazon reviews and the other apparently has never played an RTS game before and most of all, there isnt any word at all on how long the SP game is.
bad news bro..looks like you wont be able to sell your thor pet seperately (it is tied to your game key)
I installed SC2 and the pet just showed up on my WoW account
The Day of Reckoning Draws Near
StarCraft II is almost flawless. It is what most Real-Time Strategy games hope to be: incredibly fun, huge variety, and lots of replayability. There are, however, some major issues with the way Blizzard allows people to play their game.
The first issue has to do with the game’s enforced use of battle.net. This is basically a version of DRM in that you will need to link a Battle.net account to the CD key in order to play the game. (Yeah, you can forget about selling that game used.) Additionally, in the original StarCraft, you could spawn your disk, meaning that your friends could install the multiplayer component of the game without having to purchase it for themselves. This is one reason StarCraft became so popular in Internet cafes across Asia and LAN parties across the world. Now with StarCraft II, players will need to own their own copy of the game, which is linked to their personal battle.net account. There is no LAN support, so you will have to play this game online through battle.net even if everyone is in the same room.
The second issue also relates to Battle.net. Blizzard is heavily pushing their RealID system for StarCraft II, and while they abandoned its use for their forums, it remains to be seen if they will back off of it for StarCraft II. If you want to add a friend in StarCraft II through Battle.net, that friend will see your real name--first and last--and so will any of their friends. This is a huge problem for a lot of people. Maybe you beat someone unstable in multiplayer, and then threats start showing up at your house (it’s not hard to find out where people live for $20 from some shady website). Their insistence on RealID is strange, and I personally don’t feel like I need to give out my real name to play an RTS skirmish online. There is even a place to enter your Facebook information! I don’t know if Blizzard is trying to turn Battle.net into a social network, or if they are just trying to make a moral stand on Internet anonymity, but it is something to be concerned about. You can remain anonymous online and you can add a “character friend” if you know their character name and their character code, but you need to read the settings carefully and be aware that Blizzard is dying to share your personal information.
While I do agree that Blizzard’s insistence on Battle.net and RealID are strange and self-defeating, it does not change the fact that the game itself is great. The game gets a 5, while the framework gets a 1. In the world of X-Play, that does not average out to a 3. The game is fantastic and deserves its score, but I do hope people read the reviews and understand what they are purchasing so they are not upset by what they receive.
ArsTechnica - Why Lack of StarCraft 2 LAN Play Still Matters. (http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/07/why-lack-of-starcraft-2-lan-play-still-matters.ars)
The lack of LAN sucks, especially for people like me, but anyway, people really are whining like bitches about all sorts of crazy stuff.I can kind of see the LAN support complaint - since a lot of Diablo, Warcraft, and Starcraft MP stuff were built off LAN parties.
Go to amazon and check out the user reviews. I can't imagine how hard it must be to make a PC game because of how bi-polar the PC gaming community is.Actually, I think it's $15 for 5 maps per pack for MW2 (3 new maps, 2 re-imagined maps) - PC and consoles. :P
I know we mock the console crowd for paying $10 for 3 MW2 maps, but sometimes I wonder if they are better off. At least they are happy, and don't seem to work themselves into a frenzy over every minute change in every game. I am not saying that we should take it in the rear without any protest -- that sorta inaction results in horse armor --, but surely, there has to be some balance. If console gamers seem to let big publishers rape them without a struggle, then I think PC gamers seem to cry rape far too often.
Anyway, some dude was crying about how the game felt short and incomplete because of only one campaign.Short? No. 20 hours these days is pretty good for a SP-component. Especially if it ALSO packs a MP component.
He said that it took him "only" 22 hours to finish the SP, and he felt cheated. Over twenty hours for a game with such variety in singleplayer is pretty fantastic.22 hours for a SP component these days is pretty good - especially if it has a variety to it. And from the way you talking, that doesn't include the dude's MP component thoughts - if he gonna even play the MP.
Where the fuck do these people come from?
You could have the greatest PC game come out tomorrow morning, and I guarantee that people will be bitchin' about it on Amazon.
You know, I don't know if I'm going to even log into MP once. RTS MP seems to be overly all about memorizing tech trees and very efficient resource management....which isn't anything bad at all, just not really my thing. I remember playing WCIII and probably never winning a single match.
You know, I don't know if I'm going to even log into MP once. RTS MP seems to be overly all about memorizing tech trees and very efficient resource management....which isn't anything bad at all, just not really my thing. I remember playing WCIII and probably never winning a single match.
So I finished the SCII campaign a few days ago. I have to say... it sucks. Well, it is fun, but the story is godawful.
It's a real shame because I hold the original SC in high regard (it is in my top 3 of all time) because of the story. This one... nothing of any real importance seems to happen. Well except for the end, but I think that was just a waste of a character.(click to show/hide)
I know I'm in the minority because SCII is a multiplayer game before a single player game, but I was hoping the story in the campaign would be as good as the first game.
ALSO NOTE THAT QUOTES WHICH ARE SPOILER TAGGED STILL SHOW UP FULLY WHEN YOU QUOTE THE POST. Fuck me, I wish I knew that before.
You need to log on at least once on your Battle.net account on that computer on a working connection before Offline Mode can be enabled. It only works for 30 days before you need to reauthorize it.It worked for laptops and such.
Hello,Which is a shitty move since people have already bought it expecting the old method, and now it has changed. And you can't just install it from disc and continue to use the old method...because you have to log in to authorize, and logging in triggers auto-patching. So the only thing for people to do now is download a crack.
Thank you for your inquiry regarding StarCraft II.
At this time, StarCraft II requires an active internet connection to play. This is stated in the System Requirements on the retail box, as well as our online System Requirements. Without an active internet connection, you will not be able to log in to Battle.net to authenticate your copy of StarCraft II.
The 'offline mode' currently only lasts until the computer is turned off, and then requires a fresh authentication. There are plans to review this, but there is no ETA on that.
If you have any further questions, please feel free to let us know.
Thank you for your time,
Patrick C.
Customer Services
Blizzard Entertainment
Aside from that, the game's implementation of Battle.net and its features are very much so that one would actually want to be online to play Starcraft 2, even if you're playing single player.
Yea they rarely get used. Has the patch made zerg anymore effective? I mean no one even plays them much at pro level.
Are you guys serious? I am considering shelling out the $60 for the game, and it isn't going to be for multiplayer.The story is hampered by the fact that Blizzard made the SP somewhat non-linear. And really we only have 1/3 of the story so far unlike the first game that had the whole thing. iPPi is right, the variety of the missions is good and the missions are fun. But my beef is story.
Apparently Heart of the Swarm comes out on Tuesday.I didn't even know that. I went ahead and pre-ordered the Collector's Edition, if only because I am a big fan of the original SC and have the one for Wings of Liberty. Frankly, I'm not too excited about it. I found the story of SCII:WOL to be a big let-down. I'm sure the multiplayer was good, but I'm not really into that.
I didn't even know that. I went ahead and pre-ordered the Collector's Edition, if only because I am a big fan of the original SC and have the one for Wings of Liberty. Frankly, I'm not too excited about it. I found the story of SCII:WOL to be a big let-down. I'm sure the multiplayer was good, but I'm not really into that.
Kinda sad, but it's hard to get all worked up for anything Blizzard does right now.
So after countless hours of Civilization 5 I decided I was in the mood for a different type of strategy game.Did you play single player or multiplayer?
Played Wings of Liberty for the first time after I bought it so many years ago. Played about 4 hours and not sure why it wasn't received well on OW, but the game is awesome. Having loads of fun!
It does feel like a RTS lite after playing Company of Heroes and DOW2. Not being able to take cover felt off. That being said, a tightly developed Blizzard RTS map is a lot of fun.