Gaming StarCraft 2 Interview

We chat to Blizzard's Frank Pearce about piracy, mods and the relevance of e-sports in Europe.

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/pc/2010/05/29/starcraft-2-interview/1

 

Nice interview! too bad you didn't pester them about the LAN support. I know they've said various things in other interviews, but ultimately it's bad for the players. Hell, If i wanted to take a bunch of friends who are starcraft fans, go to some cottage and do a small lan party with some beers etc, i couldn't, as there is no stable internet there... bad, bad blizzard.

(also, this pic http://images.bit-tech.net/content_...nterview/starcraft-2-screenshot-7-614x250.jpg has a dot missing from the link, so gives a 404 error)

 

Fixed, thx

 

I'd have liked to know if we are going to be allowed to play with people from other regions on a single bnet account (eg US vs EU) as this isn't possible in the beta and would be something i'd be really interested in.

 

SC2 - best game ever. And I haven't even played SC1 in the last 10 years or so.

 

As a long time Brood War player and as someone who watches SC in Korea I have to say theres a lot of troubling things about SC2, especially with regards to e-sports. No LAN means latency is dependent on Blizz's servers not being pounded and latency means inability to micro units. It seems like they want to run everything through Bnet 2.0 but don't even have cross region support so global tournaments will be trickier to run. I have to say though, they have done a very good job with observer functions as well as replay functions so information is much more readily available to the viewer. It definitely makes watching the tournaments that have been going on since beta started much easier to watch. I hope that these concerns will be addressed before release, or at least by the time the last expansion is out.

As far as their balancing goes... thats another story that I could write pages on.

 

nice to see it as pc only one of the few developers that still do pc only titles, battlenet lag is minor for most if even there tbh. in this day and age everyone has a 2mb line of some discription. And wow doesnt lag in raids for most people unless your on some uber popular server with like 20k people on it all inthe same zone.

Id trust blizzards servers more than most companys.

Cant really see piracy been a big issue tbh, most people dont care for the single player mode and alot just want the online mode and wont even use the single player.

most people really would like to see 2 reviews.

1 by a dedicated online player

1 by somebody who would only play the offline mode.

it will sell by the boatload anyway they are one of the few developers were piracy probably is bottem of there list of worrys.

 

20 minutes?

Most RTS games I play end up with my matches lasting more than hours.

 

You clearly haven't played StarCraft. If you fall behind in the first five minutes, you're almost guaranteed to lose.

 

What's your point?

 

^^ Let me guess, you sit down and build up for an hour and send armies at each other?

 

The other day, two friends and myself tried playing a few matches with the beta. The bnet servers were down for maintenance and there's no LAN....

 

Oh man, just reading about their answers about the beta feedback made me rage a bit on the inside.
They say they are listening, but in reality they are listening/reading what they want to hear/see.
This game is broken in its current state - they have taken everything that was good in SC1 and overlooked it in SC2.
It is really discouraging seeing that a developer of this caliber with a game like this on their hands.

(Want to see how 'positive' the feedback is? Just look at the sites that are dedicated to SC1/SC2)
I know I just seem like another raging kid on the internets - but I really just had to post something about this.

 

Link?

 

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=128014


Basically the entire site is up-in-arms about SC2 and its current condition.
This is just one of the many threads there.

 

that is the same site that complained that multiple building selection would "let the noobs in" and ruin the game. team liquid is a bunch of elitist idiots.

"only losers play on B.net! real gamers play on LAN!"

"so what if Terrans are losing 54% of matches to Protoss? (other matchups were within 1% of 50-50) you don't need statistics, you just need TEAM LIQUID'S OPINIONS! our opinion is that terrans are TOO STRONG! why are you buffing them up???"

 

This interview was very dissapointing from a journalistic and objective perspective. You asked the same questions that have been asked and did not ask them questions the community here at Bit-tech has commented on.

No questions from regarding comments pulled from BT articles such as:

Lack of LAN in StarCraft 2 is "no big deal"
Cause of death: StarCraft
StarCraft 2 to be split into a trilogy


There are a myriad of great and non-hostile questions that could have been crafted from the comments within the forums here at BT.

 

If you disregard the childish banter, you would find that there are constructive opinions and posts being made. It is true that at Teamliquid (TL) comments like that are slung around there, but sites like that are open to posts like that. Why? because the website is dedicated to everything Starcraft - people will be biased to everything Starcraft and in it. But I digress.

The point is that, the community has actually united (somewhat) against the fact that Blizzard has turned a blind eye to a sizable amount of loyal players.

 

It's been far too long (I don't even remember when I last played it now ) since I last touched it - maybe that's why. I'm now too used to Supreme Commander (1 and 2), C&C's way of gameplay than SC.

 

perhaps, but when the first post says: "Would you give SC2 a one star amazon rating to protest BNET?" it's hard to disregard the entire thing as childish banter.

there are many websites dedicated to starcraft 2, like starcraft2forum.org, sc2armor.com, etc. the difference is that these are non-elitist sites. you can get a much more level-headed opinion elsewhere.

fixed. there may be some valid points being made there, but like the old saying goes, even broken clocks are right twice a day.