At BlizzCon StarCraftWire caught up with Chris Sigaty to find out the latest news on the game. Chris talks about when and how the 'StarCraft Trilogy' came to be, details on how you play with others in multiplayer, pricing, computer player AI and eSport.
The two more interesting topics are about how close the StarCraft 2 alpha and beta is and what Battle.net 2.0 features we will see.
Even though fans have been clamoring for a StarCraft 3 for years now, it seems like Blizzard really has no reason to spend time making one.
They sort of ran the story as far as it could go.
Also, it seems like blizzard is more busy with mediocrity at this point in time.
The problem with Blizzard is they have franchises that don't need sequels. People are happy playing the games that they previously made. What they need is new games, none of this business of trying to transport the old audience into a new version of an old game which only ends up nickle and dime'ing users.
Jason Hall, currently an indie developer and former Blizzard employee, has been sharing some really interesting stories from his long career in the industry for a while now. Some of them are truly insightful, while others may seem depressing.
I’m a little shocked that StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty sold only around 6 million copies. The original StarCraft did over 11 million. Maybe Blizzard was too leisurely in releasing StarCraft 2? Starcraft 2 came out 12 years after it’s predecessor.
Im surprised too. Starcraft was still a huge name in 2010. It was kinda the only new RTS around and other genres like MOBAs hadn't really kicked off yet. I do remember at the time sentiment around the game was
pretty angry the game was being split into 3 but I doubt that would have impacted sales to that degree
For a long time I believed StarCraft II sold on par or better than its predecessor. There was so much hype for the game. Plus it had a pretty strong E-Sports scene for a few years.
Myself and half a dozen friends all bought StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty and played it religiously for a full year. While I bought the expansions, most of my friends did not. RPGs seem to be a generally low selling genre.
I'm not shocked at all. This was an early example of Blizzard being greedy. Instead of releasing a complete experience, splitting Starcraft 2 in 3 parts so it could make us purchase it 3 times if we wanted to know the whole story and play story mode with the other races.
I originally had that stance. However, Wings of Liberty, was just as long, if not longer than StarCraft 1. The expansions were of decent length too and added a good amount of additional content.
and people wonder why we are having mtx in everything. i blame the people who actual buy them.
It's interesting he used Brazil as an example of the importance of regional pricing. Nowadays many companies on Steam are setting their prices in Brazil as high as, if not more than, their price in USA. I simply refused to buy a few games when I noticed that's the case.
Illogical Games has just announced the official release of Star Discord, the one-man indie dev's charming StarCraft lookalike on mobile.
I'm personally very happy about this change, I know some people are afraid that they will have to end up spending $150, but that's like over a 2 year period, and we'll get SO much content ;)
I somehow don't see how Dustin had not heard of the "Warcraft III project that was converting into Starcraft" project... Project Revolution was and is, a huge project that was converting Warcraft III into Starcraft, and they were made famous over the years, and even recently released a demo. Blizzard hides secrets, secrets I say! :P
I personally can't wait for SC II to come out, 3 seperate games.. meh who cares! 1 game you get the basic story while the others just add upon that and give the players more with each exp. Not to mention that the game will be coming with the Editor once it is released, so where there may be cause for concern, there's still the Editor to last a good while.
It's just like the other expansions that Blizzard has done in the past. I generally trust Blizzard to give me my money's worth.
For as long as cinematics and gameplay are awesome, and the lore is expanded in very cool ways, I don't mind the three episode trilogy. I would really love to play beta before summer.
Battle.net has really shaped since the first starcraft wonder what they will add this time :)