Blizzard Might Lose My Business

I'm not a WoW subscriber, I'm a Warcraft III and Starcraft player, so maybe they don't care...

BUT, releasing Starcraft 2 in three pieces under the guise of a focus on single player (rather than being honest about wanting to get as much money from people as they can) just seems like a disaster waiting to happen. Everyone and their pet hamster knows multiplayer is the heart and soul of Starcraft. Maybe each release will also include a multiplayer expansion, but I didn't read anything on that. They seemed to focus on the single player. Plus two multiplayer expansions would be excessive. One is the magic number. Is the sudden focus on single player some idiot attempt by Activision to get people to return to WoW when they are done playing Starcraft 2?

Blizzard, you are NOT Valve. It takes Valve time to make Episodes. It doesn't take that long to whip together a single player Starcraft 2 map. You aren't fooling anybody.

AND they are also talking about charging for Battle.net. Sorry, but all Battle.net does is host chat and help players find games. Ads alone probably more than cover the cost of Battle.net. The only time they might get taxed are when updates are released. But I'm sure Activision knows what they are doing. Listen to them some more.

WoW would not be the cash cow it is if Blizzard had done this crap on the original Starcraft, Diablo, or Warcraft 2/3. WoW had something no other MMO had, and that was Blizzard's reputation. I think Activision sees Blizzard make more money off of WoW in a few months than with all of the Warcraft 3 sales combined and says "screw that!" If you don't think making games the old way is worth it... fine. Get Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 out and be done with it. But don't be so stupid as to sacrifice the companies reputation to make a few extra dollars on two games you don't care about. If you want Blizzard to be an MMO only company, fine, but there are a lot of other gamers that don't want to pay subscription fees and it might be a good idea to be in touch with as many gamers as possible - it helps with that whole reputation thing.

Things will probably get weird when Diablo III is ready for release. They are probably afraid people will cancel their WoW subscriptions to play Diablo III. If Blizzard plays their cards right, this shouldn't be a problem, and they can walk away with an even better reputation, but I have a feeling like Activision's influence is going to turn this "delaticate" situation (its actually not delicate, its very simple, just release a good game) into a fiasco.

Unfortunately, it looks like Blizzard will end up losing my business. I already made plans with people for a LAN party with lots of beer on release date, but things change.

Umm... You waited about six months to a year to make an argument that's far too late.

I think I started making a similar argument about eight months ago... Then I remembered I never really liked Starcraft anyway. Then I learned how to repair a washing machine. Then... much later... I got a piano.

They're much heavier than they look...

Anyway... jesus... Lost my train of thought...

Oh yeah... Starcraft. Whatever.

rainless said:

Umm... You waited about six months to a year to make an argument that's far too late.

I think I started making a similar argument about eight months ago... Then I remembered I never really liked Starcraft anyway. Then I learned how to repair a washing machine. Then... much later... I got a piano.

They're much heavier than they look...

Anyway... jesus... Lost my train of thought...

Oh yeah... Starcraft. Whatever.

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haha

but ye, old pointless argument.

1. WoW is an MMO so them charging monthly for that is part of the genre if you dont like it dont play MMOs

2. Starcraft in 3 parts, is this really a new concept to games? Dawn of war currently has 3 expansions. So thats FOUR parts. Diablo 2 had 1 expansion = 2parts. I mean come on!!! this isn't a new concept in the slightest so why the moan? you want to get 3 games for the price of 1, is that the limit of your argument?

3. Battle net, correct me if I am wrong but dont blizzard host the servers for it? These cost quite abit to maintain, especially with the number of people that will likely play SC2 and D3. And I am sure the mod community will give you the ability to play on private servers if you wish. but then of course cheating etc becomes more prolific. Basically you get what you pay for.

I might not be happy spending money, but you cannot really blame blizzard for these choices.

what they are doing makes perfect sense for them business wise, just like what squaresoft is doing by remaking games such as chrono trigger for the third time without adding any graphical changes and charging 40 bucks a pop makes perfect sense.

"there are a lot of other gamers that don't want to pay subscription fees and it might be a good idea to be in touch with as many gamers as possible - it helps with that whole reputation thing."

tell that to sony and squaresoft (SOny by the way they treat the psp as their back and forth from and to the ps2 port toilet box).

I don't get it.

You buy the first game, then play online. If you only care about multiplayer, who's forcing you to buy the other two?

Negative_3 said:

I'm not a WoW subscriber, I'm a Warcraft III and Starcraft player, so maybe they don't care...

BUT, releasing Starcraft 2 in three pieces under the guise of a focus on single player (rather than being honest about wanting to get as much money from people as they can) just seems like a disaster waiting to happen. Everyone and their pet hamster knows multiplayer is the heart and soul of Starcraft. Maybe each release will also include a multiplayer expansion, but I didn't read anything on that. They seemed to focus on the single player. Plus two multiplayer expansions would be excessive. One is the magic number. Is the sudden focus on single player some idiot attempt by Activision to get people to return to WoW when they are done playing Starcraft 2?

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Then don't buy all 3. They have said that all 3 races will be playable over LAN, and over Battle.net on release. Unless you are interested in the story, you don't need the other 2 games at all. So if multiplayer is the only real important thing to you ( in starcraft ), then just buy the 1st release, and ignore the other 2.

Now, if they add extra stuff in the 2nd and 3rd release...then you're screwed. Won't be able to play the new maps, If they add more units, you won't be able to use those....

But so far, they have not once said that the 2nd and 3rd releases will have any extra new content, except for that specific race's campaign. So going off on them about this, is pretty much moot, as it's nothing more than speculation.

Negative_3 said:

AND they are also talking about charging for Battle.net. Sorry, but all Battle.net does is host chat and help players find games. Ads alone probably more than cover the cost of Battle.net. The only time they might get taxed are when updates are released. But I'm sure Activision knows what they are doing. Listen to them some more.

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No, they are not talking about charging for Battle.net They said, they are looking at ways to make money from battle.net. People then flipped out, instantly thinking they were going to charge for it ( I myself included. I made a thread about it a while back ), They released a press statement, saying that they had no plans charging the customers for battle.net

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3170622

Read what blizzards Vice president of game design himself said. He said that they are thinking about charging for things like switching servers, changing names, and other little things that are not core to the game itself. AKA: Battle.net will be FREE unless you want to do one of these type of things. So you can quit sweating over it.

Negative_3 said:

Unfortunately, it looks like Blizzard will end up losing my business. I already made plans with people for a LAN party with lots of beer on release date, but things change.

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Also, did you read the part where they said that each individual race's campaign will be about as long as the entire campaign for StarCraft 1?? Each of the race's campaign will be about 26 - 30 missions long. While StarCraft 1 had a TOTAL of 30 missions. 10 mission for each race.

Yeah, i agree that they could fit all 90 missions into one box set ( even if it has to use multiple DVD's ), But as you said yourself, battle.net costs money to keep up. With people still playing Diablo/Diablo 2, and StarCraft ( and those numbers have increased quite a bit in the past few months due to the confirmation of Diablo 3, and StarCraft 2 ), along with a MASSIVE amount of people going to be playing over battle.net, they need to pay for those servers SOME HOW. ( think about how many people will be logging onto battle.net in the 1st week of SC2's release. Hell, think about how many people for Korea ALONE will be on battle.net. That's A LOT of people. )

They said they won't, and don't want to charge for Battle.net. And you yourself said that Ad's alone won't pay for the server costs. So they have to get the money from somewhere. And their doing that by splitting SC2 into 3 parts.

Take your pick, Charge for battle.net and only buy 1 game. Or buy 3 games, but get battle.net for free. ( And then Diablo 3 will be released, most likely once all the massive hype for SC2 dies down a bit. Which will cause most of those same SC2 players to log back into battle.net. So with SC2, then months ( if not longer ) later, Diablo 3's release...many players will be on battle.net for more than a year straight. If they charged for battle.net, that would add up to a good chunk of money. )

Or, you could just not play either game. But know the truth. You know what will happen. the hype will break you. And if it isn't the hype, It will be all the youtube video's, Your friends talking about it constantly, your friends telling you they want to battle you. And eventually, you will cave and buy the game. Whether you buy all 3 is up to whether blizzard adds more content. This will happen to MANY of the people who are currently complaining about SC2 being a 3 part game.

I was pretty annoyed too, when i heard about the 3 part thing. But I knew that I'd cave, and get the 3 games anyways. So i just stopped complaining, and now i'm happy as can be, eagerly awaiting the release of SC2.

Plus, there are more important things to complain about in the gaming world. I don't feel like bogging myself down with ANOTHER complaint, that in the end..will hit upon deaf ears, and mean nothing anyways, as i know I'll end up getting all 3 versions anyways.

While the language they are using sounds a little different sometimes, I honestly don't see where they are doing anything out of the ordinary.

First, the multiple parts... Developers commonly design based on a predetermined number of expansions. Sometimes the expansions are more tentative and end up being loosely tacked on to the initial release game - other times they are well planned and integrated. Blizzard and Starcraft are big enough that they *know* they will be doing multiple expansions, so they are just calling them parts and likely making them well planned and highly integrated. That's a good thing versus piece-meal. The only difference is the words used..."part" makes it sound like you're not getting the whole thing, "expansion" makes it sound like extra gravy. It's the same thing, don't worry about it. Judge it based on actual content and gameplay.

Emphasis on single player... People forget just how long ago Starcraft came out and what things were like back then. Now, people think of Starcraft and they think of great multiplayer. Back when it came out, not very many people had good enough ISP's and computers and such to play on Battle.net. Few people were even used to the idea of playing games online, yet. The type of folks nerdy enough to actually haul PC's around, have add-on net-cards, and setup LANs to play were very rare indeed. Yet, the game was immediately successful and mainstream. Why? Because it had great single player. Single player is what made the game mainstream and acclimated players to the gameplay so that it had a chance of being a great multiplayer game. Great multiplayer is what made the game last far beyond normal game life-span - after average players were done enjoying the single player.

Time spent on the game... It takes a lot of time to make a great game. They are not whipping together maps and calling it a campaign. (I would hope not anyway.) Even whipping together maps is only fast after a large amount of time is already spent creating all the artwork and modeling in the tileset.

each one will probably only allow you to play online with the race you bought the copy for. You might not even be able to play with the players owning another version except your own.

Supposedly, it's a trilogy. The "story" is broken up into Terran, Zerg, and Protoss for each part of the trilogy, respectively. Each one long and large enough to warrant being a single game.

From the start with any parts of the trilogy, all three races are supposed to be playable in single player skirmish, multiplayer, and online modes.

People seem to keep looking for ways that Blizzard might sneak in a way to screw them without any basis at all.

i suppose that each part of the game would contain online. so a quick fix for the campaign would be to get each one of your friends to buy a different part? lol.

Negative_3 said:

Blizzard, you are NOT Valve. It takes Valve time to make Episodes. It doesn't take that long to whip together a single player Starcraft 2 map. You aren't fooling anybody.

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this is what gets me, almost as if its ok for valve to do it but not blizzard?
i know its not what you meant but its how it comes across as. and it really wouldnt matter.

the halflife episodes are generally cheap, like $10, and are usually pretty long for that price. i can only comare it with the half life episodes because thats all i have ever bought.

Starcraft and diablo forever!!!!!

Money? what money?

Starcraft required near nothing when it came out. I used to play on a Pentium-133 w/ 14.4k modem connection and I would connect with 3y bars, and wouldnt lag unless it was more than 6 players.

Starcraft has always been an online game, that was the beauty of it.

they can do wahtever they want and they will still get my money

technoViking said:

they can do whatever they want and they will still get my money

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being as blizzard and valve are the only companies I trust to make a good games (a few pother exceptions like cod4) they will virtually always get my cash

I'm going to to wait until it comes out to know whether I'll lash at it or not.

They better be putting all that WOW cash monies into development into this game is all I can say :/

technoViking said:

they can do wahtever they want and they will still get my money

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same for me

but they can't make me like it!

doz said:

Starcraft required near nothing when it came out. I used to play on a Pentium-133 w/ 14.4k modem connection and I would connect with 3y bars, and wouldnt lag unless it was more than 6 players.

Starcraft has always been an online game, that was the beauty of it.

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That kind of PC didn't always work well for everyone. You probably had plenty of ram at least and a good ISP and I suspect a hardware modem.

I had a Cyrix 166 with integrated video, something like 16 meg of ram shared with video, sorry AOL ISP, 33.6k modem.

It ran single player campaign just fine, but if I tried to play online with any number of players, it was a lag fest. A lot of people I knew had worse PC's than I did because they were a year or two older. A lot of people certainly had AOL back then (unfortunately) and software modems.

I am in no way saying that the game didn't have great and playable multiplayer right from the start - because it did. The reality is just that the game was initially popular because of single player gameplay, just like Warcraft II that preceeded it. That is because people were familiar and confortable with single player PC games and market penetration of internet gameplay (and LAN) was still low. For Starcraft II to be as successful as they want it to be, Blizzard needs a confluence of both great single player and multiplayer.

lol, diablo 2 didnt need anything either.

Im not a fan of WoW, ive played starcraft, but i CANT WAIT FOR DIABLO 3