http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2008/10/13/blizzcon-brings-diablo-3-wizard-class-starcraft-ii-trilogy

Blizzard announced that each race will be a game/expansion pack. WTF? Thats like half the fun of SC (for me at least).

10/13/2008 9:27:37 PM

what exactly are you saying was half the fun?

Quote :

"Each campaign will have on the order of 26-30 missions. The path players take through the missions can vary — the storyline branches frequently — but they will end in the same place. The games will run alongside each other; there will not be cliffhanger endings leading from one to another, and each game will focus on a different part of the story. The Terran campaign will focus on Jim Raynor, and the Zerg campaign will be all about Kerrigan. Multiplayer functionality will be in place for all three races from the start."

sounds like they just made the single player parts way bigger, enough that they needed to split it into 3 products.

10/13/2008 9:41:40 PM

INSUFFICIENT VESPENE GAS

10/13/2008 10:00:51 PM

Dude, this news is years old. and I wouldn't exactly say they were 3 separate games. It's just the Xbox version had Spawn, The Gamecube version had Link, and the PS2 version had some weird guy from some other fighting game that no one had heard of.

10/13/2008 10:22:40 PM

Quote :

"sounds like they just made the single player parts way bigger, enough that they needed to split it into 3 products."

we would hope...but the case is probably more likely that they didn't have the time to make the other 2 campaigns to meet release dates

10/13/2008 10:54:18 PM

^could be the case. at least they've said that they'll price them in relation to how much play you get out of each. i'm sure none will be more than $50.... but hopefully they'll each be less. like $30-$40.

10/13/2008 11:16:43 PM

^ So my main point is, I now have to pay 120 for a game to get all sides...

Ok I can understand timing but I highly doubt that considering how much theyve been dragging along with it...

Empty- I get RTS's for the campaigns and stories. Multiplayer is second to me.

10/13/2008 11:29:11 PM

well, they claim each campaign is going to be as long as all campaigns from SC combined.

10/13/2008 11:30:21 PM

heh i know nacho is trying to be funny. i laughed, but i cant help but wonder if tekken has sold more games than soul calibur.

10/13/2008 11:31:48 PM

Quote :

"Dude, this news is years old. and I wouldn't exactly say they were 3 separate games. It's just the Xbox version had Spawn, The Gamecube version had Link, and the PS2 version had some weird guy from some other fighting game that no one had heard of."

wasn't that heihachi also from tekken in the ps2 version?

10/13/2008 11:58:40 PM

I just beat SC the other day. Such a great game. Looking forward to seeing if they bring the Protoss/Zerg hybrid into the game.

10/14/2008 12:07:01 AM

Great. This probably means they'll sell Diablo 3 five times. Once for each character class. Each class has acts that are longer than Diablo 2... of course we didn't say that all the acts were unique for each character, just that the acts were longer.

I'm not a RTS fan, but my guess is that the impact of this decision is one of the following:
1) I'll buy one and download the other two.
2) Great, now I've got to download 3 isos.
3) I'll download one iso that has all the games slipstreamed together.

10/14/2008 7:46:20 AM

You guys are over-reacting. Blizzard has revealed two things to us:

1) They committed themselves to making two expansion packs.
2) There won't be any Zerg or Protoss single player missions in the initial release.

Read this interview with wired and you'll get a full picture of what's going on.http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/10/qa-starcraft-ii.html. Here's the key part of the interview:

Quote :

"Wired: First off, you guys revealed the trilogy plan today. Is there a concern that ... I wrote a post on the announcement and a lot of people were saying “they’re gonna totally screw us and hold back information to put into the expansion.” Browder: No. Not at all. No, fuck that. We’re not doing that at all. The game, the Terran campaign, just got too big. It’s just too big for it. We coulda nerfed it. We totally could of. It was within our power. We talked about it, about like “we should make this a 12, 10-mission campaign, we’ll just go cram it all in,” but we just couldn't bring ourselves to do it. It would have sucked, right? It is not going to be cool. There’s just so many things that go on with Raynor and the marooned ships he has out there and the other characters. Plus, we wanted to do new stuff and introduce some new characters with their problems and see them interact. It was just too rich and too big and we started falling in love with it and we wanted to do it, so we looked at it and said, “Well, we can play the game and try to do it all. Like “a lot” play the game. And I don't think we want to do that. I don’t think the fans would be happy either. Or, we could just cram it down, which is something we are not going to do, so that’s done. Or we can break it up into 3 different products and have this really bitchin' Terran campaign. So that’s what we decided to do. And, y’know, looking back on it, there was much concern when we talked about it. We were all freaking out, saying “we can’t do that, but we have to, but we can’t!” We really went back and forth on it a lot. Looking at it now, after I’ve seen how much further we’ve come in the campaign, I am absolutely convinced it was the right move. Wired: Why’s that? Browder: Because it’s such a better experience, because it can breathe a little bit, because it’s not so constrained, because we’re not trying to jam one epic moment after another into a 10-mission campaign until it doesn’t make sense anymore."

Basically, the Terran campaign is going to be as long as the single player campaign in the original starcraft. If each race has a campaign that long, then we can look forward to a good 75 - 90 mission single player campaign when it's all said and done. I'm looking forward to it.

10/14/2008 8:26:54 AM

OK, Ill pull the long campaigns (I like that they are taking it that throughly). They could have and filled in the story with movies and such as well. That said, they better have some good movies and whatnot. Knowing how C&C3 is with its storyline, they will be hard pressed if they dont. Honestly though, lately they almost need to do about 50 missions in a game, so a big main campaign and then follow up with 2 shorter ones and expand them in the expansion packs.

^^Hopefully they dont go the path of EA with DRM... Im waiting to see it for RA3 here soon.

10/14/2008 9:09:29 AM

No no, it's going to the fine

The only thing you'll have to pay for is crystals

Gas will be included in the game, but for each 150 crystals you would like to use, you have to pay $1

10/14/2008 9:26:58 AM

Quote :

"i'm sure none will be more than $50.... but hopefully they'll each be less. like $30-$40."

I actually expect each one to be $50 minimum, with the first probably being $60. This is fucking Starcraft II after all, they can charge whatever they want for it. And anyone saying "i'm not buying it now" is just kidding themselves. You'll shell out the cash and smile while doing it.

For fucks sakes, it's Blizzard. If there is any company we can give the benefit of the doubt to, it's them. Don't forget that they have outright canceled multiple games in the past that were deep into development because they weren't up to their standards. They are probably the only company in the gaming industry that cares more about their reputation than money (only because they are already swimming in it).

Exhibit A why you'll pay for Starcraft II 3 times:

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/41396.html

Exhibit B:

http://www.blizzard.com/blizzcon/video/archive.xml (the Starcraft 2 match)

Also here,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9LdHu23ekU&fmt=18

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01k7jyOYNMw&fmt=18

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhxxwmWvR9k&fmt=18

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGCg_aRABQs&fmt=18

[Edited on October 14, 2008 at 9:31 AM. Reason : woops]

10/14/2008 9:28:47 AM

can i get this game on steam?

10/14/2008 10:05:05 AM

^^ and they wonder why we pirate all this shit and PC gaming is declining...

If its 60, fuck it, Ill warez it.

10/14/2008 1:12:05 PM

So their best argument is that it's big, so they have to either split it into 3 games or scale back. They can't possibly release one massive game.

At least cite the real reason. Why sell one product for $60 when you can sell three products for $60. Looks like another factor is release now with what you've got, release the rest when it's ready. Either way the too big excuse it pretty lame.

[Edited on October 14, 2008 at 1:28 PM. Reason : -]

10/14/2008 1:21:42 PM

Who's they? You can warez it if you like, but most people will want to play on Battle.net. PC Gaming isn't declining, it's just being consolidated to fewer companies, namely Blizzard, Valve, and Will Wright.

Quote :

"So their best argument is that it's big, so they have to either split it into 3 games or scale back. They can't possibly release one massive game."

That's not their argument at all. I suggest actually reading what they have to say. They could release one massive game, but it wouldn't be released until 2012. This is the best way they could think of not cutting anything and still getting it into our hands within a reasonable time frame. As I said, I'd be skeptical if it were any other company, but Blizzard deserves our trust.

[Edited on October 14, 2008 at 1:34 PM. Reason : :]

10/14/2008 1:23:12 PM