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Starcraft II - THE TRILOGY?!


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Multiplayer will ship with Wings of Liberty for all 3 races.

Thanks for the update.

I could see each installment be worth the 50 bucks, actually. I mean, if it was like in Starcraft where you just have 10 missions with little briefings in between with a few cutscenes thrown in then there's no way I could justify paying $150 for the whole package. But we don't really know just how expansive the single player is. If they're each as long and epic and varied as Blizzard would have us believe then I have no problem with episodic content.

Also, I'd rather get full multiplayer capabilities in 2009 then wait who knows how long for them to release the whole shebang.

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It wont be full on complete multiplayer compatabilities according to most stuff I've read. The other two releases will add capabilities to the other races that will be introduced with the discs themselves. So protoss and zerg sound like they will just have basic abilities compared to probably a full powered terran force. Plus, no single player campaigns available on the start for the other races will make it to where everyone will have to learn the other races by multiplayer only, making it a huge terran usage rate for most new people, IE TF2 update "Im a pyro!/medic!/heavy" for a while.

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More news: Battle.net will possibly no longer be a free service.

'Speaking at yesterday's Diablo III Gameplay panel, Blizzard's Julian Wilson was asked one of the questions that's been hiding in the back of all of our brains, "Is Battle.Net going to remain free?"

His response probably wasn't what you'd want to hear. "We are looking to monetize Battle.Net so that we get to keep making these games and updating features," said Wilson. "We kind of have to." He went on to say that they do recognize that everyone loves having it as a free service, and that they don't have a strong desire to make a subscription-based game.

What does that mean for our beloved free online gaming service? We're hoping to find out when we talk to Blizzard bigwig Rob Pardo later this afternoon.'

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/11/blizz ... monetized/

Well, uh...um...

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Well, son of a bitch. What the hell, man? Since when does the cost of running servers for non-MMOs necessitate charging for online play? I don't have to pay to play any of the many Valve games online, so why this?

@Edgecrusher: Source on that? It was my understanding that, for each installment, all of the races would be on equal footing. For each new installment, changes would be made to the multiplayer for all three races, like what Brood War did for Starcraft. No one race would ever be "fully developed" until all three games come out. That's what I took from this dude, anyway.

Agreeing on the whole overpopulation of terran players though. That's pretty much undeniable.

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Huuunh? :|

Dig around in the bowels of the internet, it was one of the ideas they were suggesting that they wanted to do with the PS3 before it launched. Make each game "register" to the system it played on, so it wouldn't work on any other system.

Pissed Gamestop off something fierce, as well, as every single gamer.

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More news: Battle.net will possibly no longer be a free service.

'Speaking at yesterday's Diablo III Gameplay panel, Blizzard's Julian Wilson was asked one of the questions that's been hiding in the back of all of our brains, "Is Battle.Net going to remain free?"

His response probably wasn't what you'd want to hear. "We are looking to monetize Battle.Net so that we get to keep making these games and updating features," said Wilson. "We kind of have to." He went on to say that they do recognize that everyone loves having it as a free service, and that they don't have a strong desire to make a subscription-based game.

What does that mean for our beloved free online gaming service? We're hoping to find out when we talk to Blizzard bigwig Rob Pardo later this afternoon.'

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/11/blizz ... monetized/

Well, uh...um...

And with a little word swapping:

Diablo III director Jay Wilson said today that the company does not have a great desire to charge a subscription fee for the upcoming revision of its multiplayer client Battle.net. However, the developer did note that Blizzard will likely monetize unknown features of the game.

"We are going to monetize features so that we get to make them," said Wilson. "We kind of have to."

Wilson noted that whatever the content would be, it would have an appropriate value to users.

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/55271

Video game journalism is getting as bad as politics!

Anyway, I WANT to be angry at this, but really it falls under 2 possibilities:

A)

Blizzard is trying to capitalize on it's fanbase. It's seeing the renewable resource that WoW is, what other people are doing like Microsoft with XBL, like Valve is doing with HL2/3, and trying to milk it for all it's worth. They're going to release all 3 games AS expansions with changes to game play, and mulitplayer, including new units and buildings, and all that jazz, FORCING you to buy all 3 of them to get the full experience of the multiplayer.

OR

B)

They're going to make the games either super expansive so they really do each feel like a FULL GAME or they're going to make them super affordable, and the the bulk of B.net features will remain free, while certain, specialized things are available for a small fee. Which...release SC2, a new PC game with YEARS of resources and development put into it for under $30 would be AWESOME for sales, but ballsy for profit.

Personally I won't be surprised at either, but Blizzard really hasn't let me down like....ever? So I'm REALLY hoping it's the latter, but I have no expectations either way.

I WILL say if it's the former, I think Blizzard is going to have a train wreck on their hands that'll make Spore's DRM fiasco look like a tea party.

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-- Warning Opinions Ahead --:tomatoface:

I attribute this crap to huge development costs.

I mean things arn't cheap these days.

Think about it, back in the day you had games like DooM and Hexen... Half Life 1 ... ect, they were all made by a team of 8-12 people. Yeah that's right, no rendering farm, no huge billion dollar studio... just some nerds working in their basements. (extreme example) It was the same with the sega and s-nes, and hell the nes and atari age. Now adays most companies seem to have huge development costs for AAA titles... that frankly, are never as good as the origionals(Dont argue, because there are tons of exceptions to every rule).

I also strongly believe that most companies are now out to make money.

Why not, its big buisness now. More to the point though, it just seems like the mentality now adays. Even with the failing market economy, most companies like to gross twice as much as minimum wage for themselves. Thats all well and good... till it starts becoming more than twice as much as a 40$ an hour job or some s**t.

Anyways, back to this buisness about starcraft being split up in to 3 seperate games. I for one, think its pure and simply a money grab... I mean look at Blizzards website, they are comming close to making the same mistakes in the marketing department as Magic the Gathering has. There are some people there who are trying to make things right, but most there just seem to be forgetting to do one thing. If its not broken, dont fix it. Magic the gatherings website seems to be split up in to something broken with 6 layers of advertising before you get to anything usefull. Blizzard follows suit with their marketing stratagey, make the game so large, that you split it in to 3 peices. Then to make any sense out of the cool story line they have going for it... you have to buy all three games.

I dont know, I just feel that blizzards aquisition or partnership with activision (I think it was) has changed them for the worse. Oh well... if they do this I will wait till the game has been dropped to 20-30$ and then buy it, or wait for a package deal.

Happy Canadian Thanks Giving weekend all!! :razz:

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If we're lucky' date=' characters and story from Ghost might be cannibalized into StarCraft II.[/quote']

I've heard that they're utilising plot elements from the starcraft novels... including the one about Nova. And the Dark Templar series of novels, and I think the Queen of Blades one.

Only Starcraft novel I've ever read was Liberty's Crusade, and that was oh heck what felt like years and years ago. (And it was like the first Starcraft novel.) Not bad a read as well, iirc.

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See, now I don't usually say much about companies being greedy. I mean, it's their money. But let's be honest. When I quit WoW a year ago, they'd just capped 10 million players. Figure 12 to 15 bucks a month for each of those accounts, and Blizzard rakes in around 150 MILLION a month on WoW alone. These people pay for the dev costs of a new game every month. They don't NEED to charge for anything to make it financially viable. Outside of MAYBE Electronic Arts, they are probably the single most financially successful 3rd party game studio in the world.

That said, it's their properties, their games, and if they wanna charge monthly fees for their goods, they can go right ahead and do it, it's a free country. I'm not sure I'll pay for it, but they can do it.

Now if they mix it up crazy and make a kind of WoW/Starcraft mixup where a ton of players get together and each control a separate unit on an entire battlefield a la WoW Battlegrounds, then hell yes I'm paying for it. I really have a hunch we'll see something like that with the new SC multiplayer too. WoW style battleground matches are far to popular to ignore that formula.

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StarCraft Battlefront' date=' eh?

That would be really cool. Maybe have humans control hero units while a "general" oversees the building and recruiting of everything else from a normal RTS perspective.[/quote']

I think combining RTS with FPS/Avatar-RPG has been the dream of many a gamer.

I just love the idea of being in a squad and getting orders from a real general who can see the whole battlefield and make decisions on how to beat the enemy, and then being able to adapt to the circumstances without having to worry about the general telling us what to do.

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I just love the idea of being in a squad and getting orders from a real general who can see the whole battlefield and make decisions on how to beat the enemy

If you've played WoW Battlegrounds before, you know there's a problem in the execution of this though. BG's randomly assign a BG master who's supposed to instruct everyone else on the field. But all it really ever comes down to is everyone bitching about the uselessness of every class but their own, other people's mothers, the size of their genitalia, etc.

In other words, if they were to have actual generals for these matches, I'd like to see an actual EARNED ranking system, perhaps based on the number of traditional RTS matches won, or better yet, based on the votes and ratings of people who have played with them before. If rank advancement was based on other people's opinions of your skills, it would give everyone an incentive to play well and cooperate, so everyone can advance.

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I think combining RTS with FPS/Avatar-RPG has been the dream of many a gamer.

I just love the idea of being in a squad and getting orders from a real general who can see the whole battlefield and make decisions on how to beat the enemy, and then being able to adapt to the circumstances without having to worry about the general telling us what to do.

I fully support this line of thought. This sounds like a bloody brilliant bonus mode for multiplayer, combining the feel of StarCraft with the teamwork of Team Fortress 2 and the Battlefield games. I would *definitely* be willing to pay for this as an additional B.Net feature.

Out of pure curiosity, how would vehicles work? When produced would they pop into the battlefield motionless until someone got in them, or would a player directly spawn as one, or would they be under the direct control of the general player?

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Out of pure curiosity, how would vehicles work? When produced would they pop into the battlefield motionless until someone got in them, or would a player directly spawn as one, or would they be under the direct control of the general player?

I would think the "normal" vehicles would be controlled by a general, like all normal units. Once the tech tree advances to the point where they are available though, the heroes can switch to a hero version of the vehicle they wish to pilot.

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