Starcraft 2 - Which campaign will you be buying?

[artemicion]

lol @ folks who think Blizzard has some sort of moral obligation to society to provide games at reasonable prices and distributed in a single package. Sorry. Affordable Starcraft isn't a human right. (well, maybe in Korea.)

 

[mav451]

My fav has always been Terran, so I'm covered regardless.

 

[simonizor]

Have you never heard the term 'LAN Party'? My friends and I get together Wednesday nights and have a SC LAN party and yes, we all have retail copies of the game. Getting all your friends together in one house to play is a lot more fun than playing together over Bnet.

For what reason can you not connect to Battle.net and play at your house? It would be the same experience.

 

[artemicion]

For what reason can you not connect to Battle.net and play at your house? It would be the same experience.

My educated guess would be that of the people outraged about the lack of LAN multiplayer in SC2:

99% are bummed because they can't play with pirated copies of SC2
1% are bummed because they think it will affect their LAN parties.

Of that 1%, it would be a combination of people who:
a) Play on a LAN that is not connected to the Internet (the Antarctic National Stacraft Team)
b) Have LAN parties so huge that their Internet bandwidth can't support SC2 over b.net; or
c) Are really picky that they think that think the difference in latency between a LAN game and a b.net game renders SC2 unplayable

Personally, some of those concerns are somewhat valid, but not enough for me to be outraged over. Yes, Blizzard is doing it to protect their profits. Yes, it hurts me as a consumer. No, I don't care because Blizzard has a right to protect their profits and I'm not mad at them for coming to the reasonable conclusion that omitting LAN support will result in a net profit for them

+income from people who would otherwise pirate the game (probably a not insignificant number)
vs.
-income from people who "boycot" the game in outrage (probably a smaller number)

Personally, I can only hope that the Blizzard devs are smart enough to design b.net such that private, non-ranked/non-ladder games are hosted locally such that you can, for all intents and purposes, still host a LAN game. Isn't that how Xbox live does its matchmaking (no dedicated servers)?

 

[soccerballtux]

I'm just terrified that I won't be able to play without having an internet connection.

 

[KeithTalent]

None until I play some demos.
And I wont boycott out of anger. If it doesnt interest me I wont buy. I know theres more than enough die-hard fans here in Anandtech who will test the game for me on opening day.

Definitely this.

Never played Starcaft before, so I will see what people have to say before I try the game.

KT

 

[Firsttime]

My educated guess would be that of the people outraged about the lack of LAN multiplayer in SC2:

99% are bummed because they can't play with pirated copies of SC2
1% are bummed because they think it will affect their LAN parties.

Of that 1%, it would be a combination of people who:
a) Play on a LAN that is not connected to the Internet (the Antarctic National Stacraft Team)
b) Have LAN parties so huge that their Internet bandwidth can't support SC2 over b.net; or
c) Are really picky that they think that think the difference in latency between a LAN game and a b.net game renders SC2 unplayable

Personally, some of those concerns are somewhat valid, but not enough for me to be outraged over. Yes, Blizzard is doing it to protect their profits. Yes, it hurts me as a consumer. No, I don't care because Blizzard has a right to protect their profits and I'm not mad at them for coming to the reasonable conclusion that omitting LAN support will result in a net profit for them

+income from people who would otherwise pirate the game (probably a not insignificant number)
vs.
-income from people who "boycot" the game in outrage (probably a smaller number)

Personally, I can only hope that the Blizzard devs are smart enough to design b.net such that private, non-ranked/non-ladder games are hosted locally such that you can, for all intents and purposes, still host a LAN game. Isn't that how Xbox live does its matchmaking (no dedicated servers)?

I think it's more a lot of us grew up playing SC at Lans, not on Battle.net. This is easily the release I've looked forward to the most in my life. It was supposed to be a better version of the original. But they've taken out the feature that made it so memorable to a lot of us. Lan play. I can't even count how many hours I've spent playing this game at Lans, it has a lot of nostalgia factor to it. You can say, just have everyone play on Battle.net, it's not the same. The nostalgia factor has just been ruined for a lot of us. For a feature that is basically nothing to add. They are doing it to curb piracy. So I guess I can see where it's coming from. It just seems like a change of direction in Blizzard from a company that did everything it could to make a game perfect to one that cuts corners or leaves out content that will save it money. I'll obviously reserve final judgment until I've played the game.

If I end up buying any version of it it will be the Zerg version.

 

[lothar]

Definitely this.

Never played Starcaft before, so I will see what people have to say before I try the game.

KT

WTF?

Get off your laurels and go buy the original game and Brood Wars.
It's no more than $10-15.
Worth it for the storyline alone.

 

[ScorcherDarkly]

For what reason can you not connect to Battle.net and play at your house? It would be the same experience.

Can you imagine trying to share your single internet connection at your house with 11 other people all trying to play games online simultaneously? Snail. Crawl.

 

[Gothgar]

none fuck them

 

[Bryf50]

b) Have LAN parties so huge that their Internet bandwidth can't support SC2 over b.net; or
c) Are really picky that they think that think the difference in latency between a LAN game and a b.net game renders SC2 unplayable

To address these two issues, I can almost guarantee they won't be issues. From what I understand blizzard isn't going to host any dedicated servers for actual game play and rts games have been perfectly fine with locally hosted matches for a long time. It would be moronic to route your traffic up to blizzards servers and back down to the person sitting next to you. I highly doubt blizzards net code won't be smart enough to take the shortest route to the people you're directly connected to.

In fact even the original starcraft was capable of this when playing on battle.net. Frequently while playing starcraft on battle.net a message would pop up saying you lost connection with battle.net servers. Yet the match would still go on unobstructed.

 

[Bateluer]

Odds are, I will wait until all three are available in a battlechest version before I pick them up. I don't have a lot of time to game these days and dropping 60+ dollars 3 times isn't something I particularly want to do.

I'm not going to pirate it, I'm just going to hold off on buying it until the pricing is more palatable.

 

[Kromis]

Odds are, I will wait until all three are available in a battlechest version before I pick them up. I don't have a lot of time to game these days and dropping 60+ dollars 3 times isn't something I particularly want to do.

I'm not going to pirate it, I'm just going to hold off on buying it until the pricing is more palatable.

Who the hell pirates a Blizzard game? The multiplayer is where is at! j/k

Same here! I'm going to wait for a Battlechest version but then again I don't really want Blizzard to take away my life so...

 

[Lotheron]

Doesn't appear to be an issue.

Everyone buying them will get all three I'm sure or just the first one released for multiplayer. Also, the full MP is in all three games

We asked about the timeline for the three StarCraft II games, using Valve's original prediction of shipping all three episodes of the Half-Life 2 episodes within a single year, but reality is that it will take more than more like three years. Pardo thought that was a great example and said, "It's a little bit similar to that in that it would be great if we could have them follow one year from one another; I think that's going to be our target, but certainly that's not a promise in any way. But I think that's going to be around the realm that we're going to be hoping for."

http://pc.ign.com/articles/918/918895p1.html

 

[KeypoX]

But they already said that you'll get the full multi-play experience with any of the stand-alone games you buy. The only difference so far they've said is the single play.

LOL i doubt they will do that. Talk about piracy. (I know they have said they would)

Anyways im sick of this blizzard is god and can do no wrong philosophy. Most of blizzards 'gamers' were prob still in pampers when blizzard was in its golden age. WOW ruined blizzard.

But i will prob only buy the first one. Though since War 3 i havent been able to play a game as much as i played SC and War2/3.

 

[Fenixgoon]

My educated guess would be that of the people outraged about the lack of LAN multiplayer in SC2:

99% are bummed because they can't play with pirated copies of SC2
1% are bummed because they think it will affect their LAN parties.

Of that 1%, it would be a combination of people who:
a) Play on a LAN that is not connected to the Internet (the Antarctic National Stacraft Team)
b) Have LAN parties so huge that their Internet bandwidth can't support SC2 over b.net; or
c) Are really picky that they think that think the difference in latency between a LAN game and a b.net game renders SC2 unplayable

Personally, some of those concerns are somewhat valid, but not enough for me to be outraged over. Yes, Blizzard is doing it to protect their profits. Yes, it hurts me as a consumer. No, I don't care because Blizzard has a right to protect their profits and I'm not mad at them for coming to the reasonable conclusion that omitting LAN support will result in a net profit for them

+income from people who would otherwise pirate the game (probably a not insignificant number)
vs.
-income from people who "boycot" the game in outrage (probably a smaller number)

Personally, I can only hope that the Blizzard devs are smart enough to design b.net such that private, non-ranked/non-ladder games are hosted locally such that you can, for all intents and purposes, still host a LAN game. Isn't that how Xbox live does its matchmaking (no dedicated servers)?

it's completely stupid to have to connect to battle.net to play on a LAN. everyone is already connected. all you're going to do is add latency.

IIRC blizzard is working on a way to include LAN. but really, it should be included regardless.

 

[Bryf50]

it's completely stupid to have to connect to battle.net to play on a LAN. everyone is already connected. all you're going to do is add latency.

We need to get someone more versed in networking in here but I really doubt that's how it would work. The matches are hosted locally. There's no reason why it would send that data all the way to blizzards servers and back down to the people your playing with. Instead I think it would be smart enough to find the shortest route.

 

[GundamW]

Odds are, I will wait until all three are available in a battlechest version before I pick them up. I don't have a lot of time to game these days and dropping 60+ dollars 3 times isn't something I particularly want to do.

I'm not going to pirate it, I'm just going to hold off on buying it until the pricing is more palatable.

Same.
It's perfect since I mostly play single player games. (Finished SC and SC:BW.) I will get all 3 when they are cheap. Maybe under $50 for all.
I have a full time job and enough games from Steam sales to last me a long time. I can wait.

 

[Raduque]

To those of you who are "boycotting" SC2 because of these pre-planned expansion packs, good riddance.. Less idiots to deal with in game.

I never played Starcraft multiplayer. I have no desire to. I never intended to play Starcraft 2 multiplayer. I was only going to buy it to experience an epic single player story, but not anymore. So fuck you for lumping me into your "buying sc2 to only play online!" category.

The only reason that I can see for anyone to absolutely need LAN play is if they're too cheap to afford multiple copies of the game and want to have a single copy running on multiple machines, which is EXACTLY what blizzard is trying to get rid of. If you want to play with your friends, have them buy their own copy and connect to Battle.net. What's so hard about that?

The thing is, Starcraft originally had the ability (like Warcraft and Warcraft 2 before it) to spawn "multiplayer only" copies. They ONLY worked when connecting to the original copy that spawned them; you couldn't play with any other copy. There's no reason to remove that functionality except for the fact that they now want to control your multiplayer experience, like they control WoW.

 

[Qbah]

I'm definitely not a diehard fan of Blizzard, but I enjoyed SC. If the reviews will be good, I'll get all 3 campaigns.

EDIT: And only for the single-player part. I am not into multi-player gaming anymore (2 years of playing WoW is enough for a lifetime for me).

 

[PeteRoy]

I might end up buying all of them.

 

[KMFJD]

I will buy the first one for sure, only for multiplayer, if they add new units for the expansions and i enjoyed the first one i'd buy the expansions.

 

[TheVrolok]

Like KT, I missed out on SC the first time around so I was looking forward to giving SC2 a shot but I really haven't been following it. I didn't realize it was supposed to be episodic (hopefully Blizzard does this better than Valve). Is each pack going to be a complete game at full price? Or a smaller game at a smaller price?

<edit>
Did a quick search and saw a WoL preorder for 50 bucks. So I imagine each one of these campaigns is going to be significantly longer than it's SC1/WC3/etc. counterpart? Rather than a (numbers are just for example) 30 hour game with 3 10 hour campaigns, we're going to get 3 30 hour campaigns?

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Like KT, I missed out on SC the first time around so I was looking forward to giving SC2 a shot but I really haven't been following it. I didn't realize it was supposed to be episodic (hopefully Blizzard does this better than Valve). Is each pack going to be a complete game at full price? Or a smaller game at a smaller price?

I suspect the first will be full blown priced and the next two will be episodic priced, but noonoe really knows at this point.

 

[ussfletcher]

They include full multiplayer with each game, however they have insinuated that new units will be added to single and multiplayer with each new campaign.

Additionally, I don't know how mostly everyone seems to miss this, but with the new Battle.net they are allowing map developers to charge for maps, like iTunes for maps. So to play any popular maps you better be ready to fork over some cash.