Blizzard to Rape Your Wallet

By Ayepecks
in PC Gaming

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Kupo-Cheer

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Can't say much until pricing and release dates are revealed (will they be released all at once, or months to years apart?). Also, I'd need to know if that means that each campaign is going to be as long as all three put together in the original game, and how they would pull that off without making things really boring and/or really difficult (if you remember, each Starcraft campaign mission gets slightly harder than the last all the way up to the end, so balancing it for a specific race and a whole lot more missions could be difficult).

I suppose that if there is one thing we can count on from Blizzard, it is a polished game. However, the price to gameplay length/quality issue is still my biggest fear. If they are truly just milking it to get the most cash they think they can get from the game then, well, I guess they know what they're doing, because most people are stupid enough to play right into that because it's freaking Starcraft. They also have the upper hand on game piraters; most of whom buy games like this for the multiplayer alone.

But anyway... my immediate reaction to this, no matter what Blizzard's plans or motives are, is disappointment. Why can't all of this content be one single package... why can't it be, you know, a game? A full, retail game? You have each of these races already plotted out, modeled, tweaked, and ready to go, so why hold them back?

And the only thing I can come up with is greed.

Grand Master

+BeLGaRaTh Subscriber¹

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TBH it's not really a new idea, Steam have been doing it for ages with the Half-Life Episodes, Sin Episodes (which never got passed Episode 1 for some reason) and the Sam n Max games (though these weren't steam exclusives). It seems that Penny Arcade is doing the same thing with the Adventure/RPG type games they are releasing on the 360/PC :(

As per Raa though, if they try this on Diablo III then I won't be buying it, no matter how good it is. I doubt they will though, but I have been proven wrong on occasion.

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hsraffety

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My brother is a developer w/ Blizz. Here's what he said:

"The game is huge. The Terrian Campaign itself is longer then all 3 from SC1 combined...and the other 2 reflect a similar length. With the game engine, graphics, cinematics, etc they'd have to make 3 or 4 seperate discs anyway. This way, you can buy whichever Single Player Campaign you want and still have access to all the Multiplayer modes."

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Stinky Newb

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My brother is a developer w/ Blizz. Here's what he said:

"The game is huge. The Terrian Campaign itself is longer then all 3 from SC1 combined...and the other 2 reflect a similar length. With the game engine, graphics, cinematics, etc they'd have to make 3 or 4 seperate discs anyway. This way, you can buy whichever Single Player Campaign you want and still have access to all the Multiplayer modes."

My name is Jesus

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Minimoose

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^:laugh:

If the campaigns are that long then lets hope they aren't boring.

I loved playing LAN matches with friends on SC1 (2vs1 and me and my friend only won one match vs. his older brother :p massive zerg air attacks ftw), so singleplayer doesn't bother me much.

I'll still be buying D3 if they do this with it, although I won't be happy about it.

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WigglesTheFish

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Wow, one of my biggest disappointments with buying my new pc was the fact I'd be giving up DX10 support for Starcraft 2 (was pc, now mac) and though I still hoped to taste SC2... multiple games is insane, I don't care the amount of play they already have a cash cow in WoW... a treat now and then isn't too much to ask for...

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Crompee

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Awww, this sounds pretty crappy.

Are these going to be forced expansions? or can i buy Starcraft 2 (Episode 1) and play it online all the time.. or will Starcraft 2 (Episode 2) bring new units etc and be incompatable with Episode 1? Cuz either way its pretty bad.. one way the episodes are just extended single player missions with nothing new and the other way is they are forcing you to buy all three.

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lalalawawawa

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They are probably going to do something despicable like adding extra units in Episode 2, giving people that bought both an extra edge.

No they are not. I haven't watched the videos from BlizzCon yet, but the way I see it, the game will be the same, but the campaigns will be different. The multiplayer mode will be the same for all 3 versions.

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Crompee

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Well... Thinking about it, its like this:

1. No extra units.. They are just single player campaign missions. Episode 1 is Terran, so no new units can be added in Episode 2/3 as they are Zerg/Protoss Campaigns.

2. They cant launch them at seperate times, as they are just the same game with different mission packs and how much outcry would there be if you cant play Zery/Protoss single player at launch?

3. So all 3 versions will be launched at the same time, one lets you play Terran Singleplayer, one lets you play Protoss Singleplayer, one lets you play Zerg Singleplayer.

Basically.. Activision said to Blizzard, Milk your customers for more money and Blizzard did. Either that or Blizzard saw that gamers were always saying Blizzard was like the perfect game developer and Blizzard decided it didnt want gamers giving them free PR so decided to shut them up. Either way.. WTF Blizzard.

or, on the other hand.. its buy one version, pirate the other two.

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Crompee

Posted
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Well... Thinking about it, its like this:

1. No extra units.. They are just single player campaign missions. Episode 1 is Terran, so no new units can be added in Episode 2/3 as they are Zerg/Protoss Campaigns.

2. They cant launch them at seperate times, as they are just the same game with different mission packs and how much outcry would there be if you cant play Zery/Protoss single player at launch?

3. So all 3 versions will be launched at the same time, one lets you play Terran Singleplayer, one lets you play Protoss Singleplayer, one lets you play Zerg Singleplayer.

Basically.. Activision said to Blizzard, Milk your customers for more money and Blizzard did. Either that or Blizzard saw that gamers were always saying Blizzard was like the perfect game developer and Blizzard decided it didnt want gamers giving them free PR so decided to shut them up. Either way.. WTF Blizzard.

or, on the other hand.. its buy one version, pirate the other two.

Wait sorry i was wrong, watched the video now.. and they are launched at seperate times? So no Protoss/Zerg Singleplayer at launch.. sounds like a good choice.

Grand Master

Ayepecks

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TBH it's not really a new idea, Steam have been doing it for ages with the Half-Life Episodes, Sin Episodes (which never got passed Episode 1 for some reason) and the Sam n Max games (though these weren't steam exclusives). It seems that Penny Arcade is doing the same thing with the Adventure/RPG type games they are releasing on the 360/PC :(

As per Raa though, if they try this on Diablo III then I won't be buying it, no matter how good it is. I doubt they will though, but I have been proven wrong on occasion.

Not the same thing. This is a brand new game, and these supposedly aren't "episodes." They consider them all new games even though they're just new campaigns, along the lines of StarCraft: Brood War according to Blizzard themselves.

that doesn't say anything, seriously, stop "OMG OMG thats EA move"'ing

Oh please, if this was EA you'd be ready to start nuclear war! Let's not pretend otherwise :p

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Crompee

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Oh please, if this was EA you'd be ready to start nuclear war! Let's not pretend otherwise :p

Yeah, i absolutly love Starcraft.. so i'm trying to view this from a "what happends if EA did this.. what would i think" mentality, to stop me defending something which really is a bad move.

To quote DTDominion from TeamLiquid forums:

Wow, this is really, really bad. Extra missions are irrelevant. The original games had ~55 missions and barely had enough diversity in ideas to keep that up. Between the 90 missions in the new games, and any future expansion packs, they're simply going to run out of ideas. You also figure that a lot of Protoss and Zerg players won't have a way to acclimate to the game. Why all the extra RPG elements and ****? It's an RTS, make an RTS. It's not like the expansions will be cheap either.

Basically, it's a way for Blizzard to get tons and tons of money. If piracy is a problem for the PC gaming industry, doing something like this to encourage it seems like the wrong move.

Also, from a story perspective - We already did the Terran > Zerg > Protoss thing. They should have done Zerg > Protoss > Terran. Begin the game controlling Kerrigan's invasion of the Dominion. End it with Raynor's revenge against her.

On the most basic level, what's the fun in buying one campaign that's way too long, slogging through it and beating it, waiting for the next game, repeating, doing it one more time, then realizing this took you over a year to do and a bunch of money. And you couldn't even choose to not buy the extra campaigns because each new expansion was them trying to work out the balance.

My confidence in the single player campaign is basically shot to pieces. It seems like them trying to do way too much.

EDIT: I like the people who don't seem to mind. If this was some other franchise you were vaguely interested in, you would immediately give up and call the creators idiots. But because it's StarCraft, you'll bend over. Having the trust of your audience is a good thing, it means you can ask them to make leaps of faith so you can create value for them. But Blizzard isn't creating value, they're getting in over their heads and making their fans pay more money for that.

And yes, this will promote piracy. Study basic economics. Talking about how people feel entitled to free stuff makes you sound morally superior, but it misses the real issue. People pay for things that are of value to them. If StarCraft II is a product worth paying money for, people will pay. If it isn't, people won't pay. It's not anymore complicated than that. With this movie, StarCraft becomes less a product worth buying. Simple economics dictates less people will pay money for it. Thus, piracy.

Grand Master

Xerxes

Posted
Posted

I'm not surprised, kinda saw it coming. Valve started it with Half-Life 2 and it was very successful, so why wouldn't Blizzard wanna piece of the action? :p Personally I got no problem with it, providing the pricing is good (i.e. each "episode" doesn't cost the same amount as a full game, cause no way would I shell out AU$70 to AU$99.95 per episode - that would be AU$210/~AU$299 for a game! I don't think so...)

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