Good point. I also thought of this idea earlier because it made the most sense to me. Time isn’t on their side, and if they were to wait until the whole game was complete, who knows how long that will take. They also have their plate full with DIII, WoW, and possibly Warcraft IV…
I’ve already lost some excitement for SC given the awesomeness of DIII and other non blizzard games. Like you said, if they wait too long it’s going to become irrelevant.
Well I wouldn’t say irrelevant, but they lose out on free marketing. When the internet is on fire, they can push it hard with money or they could do nothing and the word still gets out. Right now they don’t need that much of a marketing campaign for Starcraft 2. Releasing images of a new unit gets people excited. Oh well, I am off the Warcraft train, didn’t like WoW’s endgame job and hated WC3. D3 and SC2 are on my plate though and I will get both of them.
Another vid:
Nice new Q&A at http://www.sc2armory.com/. Here is something specific thats good to note and this was a review of information gained at Blizzcon 08’.
i think tiering wise, terrans were top, and zerg were bottom. this is by a thin margin though, and based on what races the top players in korea used to win tournaments. there was (is?) a slight preference toward using terran among the people who place 1st.
I remember the Terran dominance days, but that was a while ago. Nowadays, it’s widely accepted that the map being played on is what determines race advantage: Averetec/Intel Classic Season 1 finals. Jaedong destroyed Flash.
Well maps do help to determine, but each of the races have different strengths at different times. Like for example with the Zerg, if they fight Terran then Terrans have an early advantage vs Zerg due to Terran’s ability to easily defend and bunker rush Zerg to gain the advantage. Right after that Zerg gain the advantage with mobility when they tech to Muta/Lurkers and as the game goes on, Zerg just get stronger and stronger against Terran until late game where Terran gets Science Vessels to even it back up.
I think rather than maps favouring certain races, it’s more of the maps favouring certain tactics and it’s just trying to find the tactic that works on those maps. Like a lot of smaller maps with lots of symmetry and thick or absent ramps to mains when given the ability to build anywhere around the map makes proxies for Terran/Toss much more viable and the better choice than trying to play a macro game on those maps.
Right now I feel like Terrans are the best still followed by Zerg and then Protoss last still. Though you could easily switch Zerg and Protoss around, I think most people would agree that Terrans are the best in the game on most maps.
After Flash knock out Jaedong in the STAR Invitational and went on to win the whole thing.
SC is actually pretty damn balance, at the top level it really depend more on the player and map then the actual race match ups. I would say 70 player 30 map since it been clearly proven some map favor one race over the other.
As for all these expansions in SCII wtf are they trying to rape our pockets?
I would have to agree here. Hopefully, we won’t see more maps like Katrina (P75% vs T25%) in the pro leagues. The fact that Flash was still able to overcome with his dual armory build on that map supports player > map ratio.
As for SC2… I’m still not sure how to feel about their declared course of action. I mean, I’m starting to warm up to the idea of epic campaigns, but I’m VERY skeptical as to how this will affect race balance and online play.
Then we have the Flash build on Katrina that absolutely destroys any Carrier tactic for some reason and that map was thought to be heavily Protoss favoured.
…it still is. It’s not just double armory/goliath pwnz protoss carrier on that map. Flash had to position those goliaths, set traps, and micro his ass off to win that. His opponent just wasn’t prepared for it. What Flash did that game wasn’t and still isn’t typical. Protoss is still favored on that map because not every terran player is as badass as Flash is.
Some new videos up at Gametrailers, certainly validates their choice to split up the games.
Trilogy announcement:
Bar scene:
Mission 3:
I wholeheartedly agree.
Thanks for the epic video links.
So it’s basically those who are more into the SP storyline that will be having to churn up more cash…no problem with that.
okay, when does this shit come out… i’m not getting any younger here…
Karune speaks:
“If I buy StarCraft II but don’t buy any of the expansion sets, will I still be able to play online?
Yes. This will work similarly to Warcraft III and the original StarCraft, which maintained separate online gaming lobbies and ladders for expansion set players and players with the base Warcraft III or StarCraft.”
This is going to hurt the community beyond belief, and I don’t care what they are saying to sugar coat it. Multiplayer mode is going to suffer the most from this “experiment” while singleplayer will obviously flourish; however, we all know that the heart of SC was always MP. If I buy the first two releases, and somehow choose not to get the the third, then I can’t play with people who bought the third game.
I’m going to support them of course, but damn if they fuck up the series… And a side note: how the hell are the going to update THREE games at the same time??? Obviously the first two will be neglected for the final expansion, so I guess i’m SOL??? All this… for… singleplayer? I’ve never even BEAT the broodwar singplayer campaign. WoW.
^^ Yeah wtf is that… When I first heard about this, I thought no matter which campaign you have, you’ll still be able to play with others.
I don’t understand though… Are people with the Terran campaign only going to be able to play Terran vs Terran or what? I mean, if you can play all 3 races no matter which campaign you bought, what would be the point of having separate lobby rooms for each campaign?
Are they pulling a Guild Wars on us?? You can’t use all 3 races unless you own all 3 campaigns?
How is this going to hurt the MP community?
The way I honestly see it is like how SC/BW worked…a person who has only Starcraft can’t play anyone who is using Brood War. A person who is using Warcraft 3: RoT can’t play with anyone using Frozen Throne. This has been going on with many games and their expansions.
From what I understand, each game is stand-alone single-player and multiplayer.
Look at it this way: I have Starcraft: Terran edition. I can play through the Terran campaign single player and I can play any race online with anyone else who has Starcraft: Terran.
-and/or-
I have Starcraft: Zerg edition. I can play through the Zerg campaign single player and I can play any race online with anyone else who has Starcraft: Zerg.
-and/or-
I have Starcraft: Protoss edition. I can play through the Protoss campaign single player and I can play any race online with anyone else who has Starcraft: Protoss.
-SO-
If I have Starcraft: Terran edition, I can not play the game with someone who only bought Starcraft: Zerg edition or Starcraft: Protoss edition and vice versa. If I want to play a friend online, we both have to have the same edition, much like Vanilla SC players cannot play against Broodwar players.
-HOWEVER-
In the end, Starcraft: Protoss edition is going to be the most popular online edition because it is the only one that is going to have ALL of the units.
That’s how I understand it anyway.
Exactly. This is and will fracture the community like no other. Trust me, I’ve seen it happen with games like Age of Empires III. Again, my argument: How are they going to patch all three games when the need arises? Isn’t it better for me to wait for the last game to be released?
Look, i’m a Blizzard fan like everyone else; however, I believe that this model they are taking is going to be for the worse and won’t really help the community in the long run. Sure, at first it is going to be interesting but after a year or two I doubt anyone will care.