Blogs Starcraft 2 is here

High mark set by supreme commander? i don't think supcom even managed to break SC1's sales numbers. SC2 will probably blow it out of the water within a week.

second, episodes: if you've ever bought any blizzard RTS, you already knew there would be an expansion pack. AT LEAST ONE expansion pack. they have stated there will be two this time. oh no, activision has taken over and blizz is just a money hog! bohoo!! wah wah wah!

 

Heh, I wasn't talking about its commercial success but its tactical depth. SupCom for me, and many RTS grognards, is the high water mark of the genre.

 

Oh please, enough with the crying about episodes. It's a TRILOGY. No one complained that the Mass Effect box didn't fully out line you were only getting 1/3 of the full story. You get a full game, you can buy another full game later if you want to continue the single player story. The only reason this is complicated is because of the multiplayer aspect, which is resolved by the fact that if you don't want new units you still get to play with other players that didn't buy the expansion.

 

How does the 'episodic format' affect the multiplayer ?

 

each expansion should bring about 2-3 new units per race, but that's about it.

and to Star*Dagger: personally i found that supreme commander was extremely lacking in tactical depth. the main problem was that it was trying to be too epic: tons and tons of units, teching up to ginormous units, but when you do that, it starts becoming a game of statistics. quick, small movements and attacks are almost impossible at that scale. controlling several small squads with precise, down-to-the-second timing really amounts to nothing, and is about equivalent to just sending a stream of units straight from the factories. the exponentially increasing power with each tech level quickly renders the early-game technology moot, so while the game itself may have dozens of units, only a few are useful at any given time.

i was psyched when i first heard about supcom, but after playing it for a while i felt that "giant epic battles and giant epic units" was just another gimmick that ultimately detracted from the gameplay by making things like micromangement, hit-and-run, etc. mostly irrelevant.

 

so basically after each new release people will bitch and moan about the balance of game being ruined


it's always the same story

 

oh, they'll bitch and moan regardless. for example, during the beta, blizz found that the 3 matchups (TvP, TvZ, and PvZ) were nearly perfectly balanced- close to 49-51% balance, except one was about 55-45%, with terrans being the weak race.

but people complained terrans were overpowered anyways.

 

funny

 

the game will be region locked on launch, but blizzard has said they are working on a way to allow cross region play in a future patch. My guess is that the ladder will always be region locked but you would be able to add peoples battlenet accounts to your friends list cross region and play in private lobbies with them.

Ive been playing beta for a few months and its quite fun, the first rts that ive played that ive really gotten into the competative multiplayer side of things

 

Afaik, it's going to work like WoW, if you have the EU version then you play with EU people, if you have the US version, then you play with US people.

 

its not about a diffrent version its the authentification server it connects too that you need to change alot like wow

wow eu will work with wow usa you just change relm to wow us

 

pre-ordered at EBGames. I shall have it tuesday

 

To the poster commenting on Supreme Commander...

Yes, StarCraft eclipsed SupCom 1 in terms of sales by a vast margin. Sometimes people struggle with new ideas / new concepts, and Supcom brought these to the table in bucket loads.

Its really hard these days playing any RTS that zooms you into the action 2 inches above the ground and doesnt let you zoom out. Starcraft 2 doesnt bring anything new to the table at all... just better graphics, more maps and a different campaign.... evolution for sure, but not revolution.

Meh.... It will sell millions, but innovative Starcraft 2 is most certainly not. (and thats exactly what the millions of Koreans wanted.. more of the same)

 

Yeah, I have to put in my 2c regarding SupCom also. Let's forget about SupCom2, because everyone knows it's a depressing pos (clumsy grab at console $$), but Forged Alliance was brilliant. Really, SupCom/FA were just modern remakes of Total Annihilation, perhaps THE best, and by far the most revolutionary RTS of all time.

TA was released around the same time as Starcraft v1, and was infinitely better in almost all respects. TA introduced so many new and exciting innovations it left the competition (C&C, SC, etc) looking archaic. The ability to instantly zoom in/out of the map to get a global assessment is now essential for any RTS, in my opinion. I think TA and SupCom/FA both suffered from the fact they're hard to play, with a very steep learning curve; noobs need not apply.

This is what I love about them, they're the only RTS games that truly allow you to play the game any way you like (true sandbox games), instead of being directed to 'play by numbers'. I've always been surprised boring, plodding RTS games like C&C never incorporated ANY of the ingenius innovations of TA/SupCom/FA, and the fact that SC2 hasn't bothered either instantly brands it as just another pretty, but ultimately boring and generic RTS.

We need the genre to move forward, break new ground and introduce new ideas, not just render bloom effects for explosions.

 

As far as I am concerned, SC and SupCom are THE two best RTS games around. I loved DoW2's campaign, but the multiplayer was really boring I felt, and don't even get me started on how crap Last Stand was. Still, it's easily the best at what it does, it's just that I don't like what it does as much as SC and SupCom.

While I'm here, I don't suppose anyone knows the cheapest place to get SC2 in the UK?

 

voice acting that can only put eastenders to shame... lol

 

with the hype I think I'll bite.... though episodic sh*t sucks

 

Oh please!

 

I only bought SCII for the potential in the modding community... I guess I'm a sucker.

 

The single-campaign for SC1 was very good, both main and expansion. I played through them several times. I hope there will really be three huge campaigns instead of small episodic content like Half life 2 and Sin/steam. Episodic releases does not work, they are too short and it is harder to implement new 3d technology, for instance physics and re-define the genre.

Half life episode 2 was fairly long, however.