StarCraft II - Ghosts of the Past Trailer
Buy this ****ing game.
God I am annoyed because I am too damned broke and this is a game I could never ever pirate because I love Blizz too damned much. Arrrrrrrrrrgh.
Raynor is back and he’s pissed off. Kerrigen is bloody gorgeous. I can’t wait to see how Raynor saves the universe again while saving his true love her from herself.
Go go go troopers!
I’m waiting for Diablo III to give them my money again, I’m not into real time strategy games all that much. I’m not into games I’ll have to buy three times to get all the campaigns either (assuming the other titles will be at full price and not expansion-like at least, as has been more or less implied). Hopefully they don’t do the new trend of “deluxe” editions on top of that. Not to mention the premium price of $60 even though PC games are normally lower. Or the butchering of Battle.NET. If all these are their own decision and not Activision’s then bleh @ them, I’ll get Diablo III a year post-release for cheap. And if it’s all Activision’s doing then bleh anyway, Blizzard will keep going downhill then, perhaps not quality wise given they still employ so many talented people, but at least in terms of how customers think of them. Nickel and diming at every opportunity certainly wasn’t part of the strategy that made them what they are so over time it could bring them down a notch, even if not right away with the very first titles. Why couldn’t they stay independent with all the money they were making from WoW alone? Meh, I wish this was a positive comment, it started as one but then I remembered all that…
They are capitalists of the honest kind. They believe in delivering a good or better product. Simple. The market will decide. PC game prices usually drop fast anyway especially if few can afford it.
Each campaign is a big self-contained story and considering how highly cinematic it is going to be as well, this is worth it. This is going to be huge and for good reason.
I am the biggest anti-greed person you could meet, and I will be supporting this.
SC2 will tide us over until Cataclysm for WoW at least with the story alone, while the multiplayer online mode will be huge, HUGE in Korea.
Blizz aren’t perfect, but they UNDERSTAND the market perfectly. Give them some respect for that especially when they gather a lot of feedback from their fans.
Yes well, when I’m just out of playing Team Fortress 2 which has become a whole new game since its launch, for free, and out of enjoying a few hours of Alien Swarm, a free game, it doesn’t strike me that Blizzard does as much as they could for the consumer. That they understand the market doesn’t mean much to me. So does Activision for the most part, hence their profits. I hardly want to support them though.
Why does good business have to mean that you will attempt to exploit a given audience as much as you can possibly get away with (read: only take a step back when you have insane backlash like the recent real ID stuff) instead of simply strive to provide the best service you possibly can afford to in order to increase your business?
I’m sure most of the differences in attitude are because Valve is privately owned as opposed to Activision Blizzard, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t at least take a hint from them considering Valve’s growth in recent years.
As for the three campaigns being so cinematic they’re worth to be separate (I buy games for games, not movies, as much as I love Blizzard’s) what of the multiplayer then? That’s the same across all of them if they keep their original plan (though my guess is they’ll add the odd new feature and unit to make people want to buy it more) so how does that not justify a lower price point for the later stories, when 1/3rd or 1/4th of the game (more or less excluding the replayability value aspect, since in that case multiplayer would trash the single player side 1000fold) is the same across all of them?
So what’s the next step? Adding class-specific CG for Diablo IV and selling each character separately? Maybe doing the same thing to WoW?
I cannot speak for the multiplayer mode other than it will be balanced and rebalanced constantly knowing Blizzard with new units and gameplay tweaks.
All I know is, if it’s a good game, and by all accounts, this is going to be a great game for what it is, it’s worth buying. The end. Names, and makers are kind of irrelevant at that point when you just see it all from that point of view like they do.
They will supply the demand if there is one. It’s that simple. SC2 will have more than enough gameplay to last for the next 5 years. People still play SC and WC3 online for crying out loud.
The fact that this is story driven is not the kiss of death at all. It’s what we want.
I’m sure this will blow everyone away, but I’ve still never played the original Starcraft. 
I didn’t say anything about any kiss of death. I merely said all three campaigns are said to include the same multiplayer portion so that warrants a lower price point for the future campaigns since it may as well be that they don’t have multiplayer at all for the people who will already own one of the others, reducing their value. Unless of course you want to consider that you’re paying for the single player and the multiplayer is a free bonus across all three titles or something. Balancing for the duration of the game’s life is hardly something to brag about offering, it’s a feature that should be demanded as otherwise, the game is broken once the unbalanced features are figured out and in turn exploited by the player base. That’s certainly not what I implied Valve offered when I mentioned TF2 as a mere example of pleasing your customers and making money too.
If you think it’s not good value for money, then don’t buy it. I am positive that millions of gamers will, and will enjoy every moment of it.
I still cannot speak for the online modes and how that will evolve, but if there are big gaps between the sub-games, then I expect some big leaps too.
Meh, if all you got out of the discussion was Blizzard’s almost guaranteed success which I never disputed or my personal purchase intent which was 100% clear from my very first comment, then you had no reason to respond to my thoughts about Blizzard’s attitude as a company at all… Yet you did, so I think you know what I was talking about despite this cheap end you’re putting to this. As for the “the market decides”, that’s true for every company so I suppose there’s no reason to think of Blizzard as anything special compared to others if that’s what’s most important then. In any case, I suppose we disagree and there’s nothing further to discuss.
That’s kind of needlessly argumentative Alex. I’m a nice guy you know?
I don’t even know what we are talking about now.
I am saying that this game is going to be ****ing awesome by all indications, and I know Blizz well enough to know, yeah, it’s all business. They have a straightforward work ethic which some hate, but it WORKS.
If there’s a demand for perfection, then that will be met, but that’s only going to happen with a lot of competition.
Now to spam my friends to make sure they buy this masterpiece in the making!
The trailer looks nice, and makes the game seem quite story driven.
I’m not really informed with what’s happening in Starcraft 2, but I can see why gamers might be against some of the decisions made by Blizzard (or Activision?). For example, the lack of LAN play seems unnecessary especially if that was a defining part of the original Starcraft’s appeal.
Regarding the scenarios being sold as separate games, isn’t this just like making a trilogy and selling each installment on it’s own? Mass Effect or Shining Force III, for example?
Multiplayer: Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST both feature the same multiplayer component (with ODST including all the map packs for Halo 3). It makes sense to support a single version of the multiplayer online, rather than dividing the userbase. I suppose they could sell the multiplayer as a spare game/expansion, but that would exclude all the people who only play multiplayer causally and wouldn’t pay for it if sold separately.
I don’t think LANs are very popular anymore tbh. However I agree it should be supported. I guess Blizz want people on BNET, which of course they do. The online mode was the biggest selling point undeniably imo among the competitive gamers especially in Korea.
Btw, this trailer has had 2 million views since yesterday. Lol.
I have to admit, the trailer really does look great.
Makes me wish I was into RTS games.
What makes you think LANs aren’t popular anymore? There’s something about gaming with friends in the same room that can’t be reproduced online. LANs can be a social function. I have many fond memories of them myself, and would be surprised if gamers are moving away from local multiplayer gaming.
I don’t know why they removed the option other than to encourage people going online. With voice comms these days, it’s pretty much the same thing and maybe Blizz don’t see the money in LANs.
LAN is a popular way to play over the Internet with pirated copies of Starcraft. If you don’t max out the players services like Tuggle work pretty well.
So in the end it’s all about money and control.
I’m currently replaying StarCraft and Brood War. I already finished the original campaign, now playing through the expansion pack.
The mix of two generations of prerendered animations is interesting to behold. Especially in the briefings, when you see old and new character portraits side to side.
Starcraft and Brood War are already pretty character-driven, I think it’s the right way to tell a story in an RTS game. Even my beloved Red Alert series can’t compete in this aspect, it just has an interesting backdrop that is used for the lulz - but not to tell a story.
[quote=“SenorKaffee”]LAN is a popular way to play over the Internet with pirated copies of Starcraft. If you don’t max out the players services like Tuggle work pretty well.
So in the end it’s all about money and control.[/quote]
Yeah, I think that’s probably the case too. Maybe once someone figures out how to set up a fake server, they’ll release a LAN version?
How’s that cinematic story? RPS said “bloody awful” but I won’t jump to conclusions. Maybe they didn’t get its perfection among “every scifi and western cliche” that made them think “that?s almost the point. They don?t want to get in the way of the game too much” 
I’m nearly through the solo campaign and seriously like the Firefly / Serenity vibe I get from the Terrans. We have a rocket train robbery like in the Firefly pilot, a level centered around mass media like in the Serenity movie plus a wild-west version of the level music from the original Starcraft.
The story is really not too deep and sometimes doesn’t make too much sense - but it is well told and doesn’t get in the way of the gameplay. Plus the pre-zerged Kerrigan is just <3.
Much much MUCH better storytelling and direction given by the story than Command & Conquer 4, that’s for sure. It’s almost as if EA knew they couldn’t compete so rushed out C&C4 before SC2 hit when C&C3 was a masterpiece in my eyes because so much heart and soul went into it from the original concepts.
The same can be said for SC2. Back during the early SC modding days there was a popular campaign that continued Raynor’s story, but SC2 just makes that dream so much more real, albeit still naturally cliche. It’s a revenge story coupled with a typical struggle for freedom against the tightening grip of tyranny.
I’m really glad they brought Raynor’s old voice actor back too, to add to the sense of contunuity. Shame about Kerrigen. Damn she’s hot though.
I’ve got to love all the critics, honestly. It’s like they have nothing better to do than find faults. I still remember when the original SC received mediocre ratings, then the moment it sold millions, suddenly, oh let’s change our minds.
Why can’t people just judge a game on its own merits?
Blizz timed this well or badly imo. They brought it out before the Cataclysm expansion for WoW to fill the gap, but maybe with a bit more time, the critics would have had nothing to criticize. I think the story mode will be more popular among western gamers while the online mode will skyrocket in Korea even when everyone goes back to WoW.