It was a bit underwhelming this year. Very little was streamed on the net and as I expected, most announcements centered around the single player campaign for Stacraft. I don't know who is in charge of communication at Blizzard, but they did a very poor job this year. Instead of just announcing that Starcraft 2 will only feature an extended Terran campaign, they announced that it would be three different games! Obviously everyone took that as a way to maximize the amount of money that Blizzard can make. Now, no one knows the retail prices for the 3 Starcraft II games or when they will be released, but I guess it simply means that Starcraft II will have (at least) two expansion packs.
As I plan on showing my extreme suckage in multi-player more than playing the campaign, then it makes little difference to me. In a way having two expansion packs may extend the online life of the game and thus give me more people to play against!
Another ill-informed rumor was that Battle.net would cost money. The source was Shacknews' article on Diablo 3, which said that they did not want to have a subscription fee for Battle.net, but that if they had to do new feature they would need a business case for it. I.e. a way to make money of it. I guess that means banner ads, fees for downloadable content and so forth. I expect that Starcraft will not be included as they want it to become an eSport and for that they need a lot of players and a level playing field. Despite the rumor I sleep soundly at night.
In the tournaments IdrA impressed me by actually winning a game! The final between Savior and Nada was kind of boring, with Savior winning easily. Nada vs. Jangbi in the semifinals was actually more exciting to watch. Finally, very late at night, we got to see Yellow play two games against Canadian Sonkie in Starcraft 2. More on that later!
You know, Starcraft 2 is the only video game I will buy for the rest of my life. Since halo 3 came out it's the only other thing I'm waiting for anymore. I bought a freaking xbox 360 to play halo 3 online and got it all for about 100 dollars (a friend gave me his 360). But now starcraft is coming with three trilogies! Gosh after all this time of this being the last game I'd ever buy they just HAD to make it more pricey. But I'd buy it anyway. I've been too excited so far. But if they make us pay for play on b.net I'm not buying it; the only reason I'm buying it in the first place is to play with my friends, and I know damn well they won't pay so much for it lol. Bummer.
ReplyDeleteAh, it probably wont be the last game you are going to buy :-)
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, playing with and against friends is definetly a major reason to buy game like Starcraft.
Oh and hi there in Tennessee ;-)