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Wow that was a hell of a read! Very well done to the OP in a very well structured and sourced post.
A few years a go EA was seen as being the big "evil" in the gaming industry and from reading this I would gladly stand behind the "Kotick is the big evil" now.
I think the precedent has been laid with all that has been done to WoW in terms of additional overpriced options but as we know the player base will chew it up anyway. So I don't know if there is any way to stop the train or just hold on and hope it doesn't crash and kill you.
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Still won't buy SC2, this article is just another reason why.
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If you want people to take you seriously try not to be so bias in your post.
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I doubt you will find anybody who doesn't think that the Activision side of ActiBlizz is horribly mismanaged. They used to have series like Call of Duty (that was still going strong with the early parts from IW), Quake, Wolfenstein, Mechwarrior, Jedi Knight, Vampire the Masquerade... Now they are left with the maker of the crappy parts of CoD, a bunch of movie license games and the less innovative band game studio. Meanwhile Blizzard was single-handedly making Vivendi Games profitable despite the rest of the company failing to sell anything. I don't think they want to influence Blizzard's development that heavily.
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Thanks to OP
I HATE Bob Kotick
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could'nt read the whole thing... made me way too angry.
People who loose their dignity and respect for themselves and what they do because of the greed for money are just pathetic.
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was realy angry to read that too . but great read .
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The main problem with this type of market is that gamers just have no will and the companies know it!
basicaly what I want to say is.... take a look at modern warfare 2. It had a petition where over 200,000 signee stated that they wouldn't even look at the game anymore since they wouldn't implement "dedicated server support".
Well... I'm pretty sure that if we took every signature and confronted the gamer to know if they bought the game.... we'd get what?... 10% success rate.
Same thing for SC2. Now everyone is a bit pissed at either BNET2.0 or the game itself but in the end... i'm pretty sure that everyone will buy it EVEN if they CLEARLY STATE that they won't right now!
and Bob Kotick sawks hard!
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Can someone spam this on SC 2 forums? Somehow I can't login to that forum. It's like it knows i'll just start a flamewar against Blizzard there.
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On May 31 2010 18:09 cHaNg-sTa wrote: Playing SC:BW with 2 other friends - $20
Playing SC2 with 2 other friends after all expansions are out - up to $540
For everything else, Activision is there to take your money.
A few points come to mind:
(1): I assume you know that the price for Starcraft + BW for most of its existence, and most definitely when it came out, was significantly higher than the $20 Battlechest. Blizzard today gives you these games almost for free, comparatively.
A little snooping around gets me to the BW FAQ on the Battle.net Compendium website, where the "retailers's suggested price" is given as 30 dollars. Adjusted for inflation from when it came out, that's about $38 dollars. I assume the original Starcraft cost significantly more money than the expansion, as is natural for a game as opposed to an expansion pack. When adjusted for inflation, it probably cost somewhere around the amount of SC2, through probably a bit less, considering its dev time was a lot smaller and it has less content. (If there's someone who remembers the release and the price then, I'd be very happy to hear it...)
So the actual comparison is much different from the one you're trying to make out.
If anything, the reason you can play BW for so little now is that Blizzard very recently has allowed you to do so by putting out the Battlechest, lowering the prices, allowing you to play the game without a CD, etc. Hardly a mark of greed, no?
Oh, and you're assuming that the SC2 expansions will cost exactly the same as the core game, an assumption that is totally unfounded and opposed by all of the facts we actually know at this point.
So yeah.
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On May 30 2010 10:50 Captain Peabody wrote:
(3): No LAN.
This is the best example you have. I could say that Blizzard made this decision because they thought it was for the best for the community and the game, but if you've already decided that they're greedy bastards, there's no reason you'd believe them anyway...
Sorry to cherry-pick from your post, and you already somewhat conceeded the above point, but I am genuinely curious how an argument can be made that the nixing of LAN support is for the best of the community and the game. With, of course, proper consideration being given for how it significantly degrades the end user experience.
Even my inner devil's advocate can't come up with anything that is more than just smoke.
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jesus, this needs to be in more places...
i am now fully supporting making a totally new sc and sc2 clone for competitive use, and for use in all esports. fuck activizzard.
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Captain Peabody,
I appreciate your effort to try to paint Blizzard in a better light based on their past performance but I find that most of your long post, especially the middle/end makes quite the subtle assumptions to make each of your points.
A lot of it also focuses on the single player campaign and quality and whatever else. Maybe that suggests that the development team is still interested in delivering a quality product and so forth. I'll let you have that point even though I'm thinking "there's just no way to whore a single player campaign for money"... unless you make 2 expansions.
As you know, many of the concerns of the community are about multiplayer and money whoring. Your argument being "look at how the actual game has developed, doesn't that tell you that Blizzard cares about quality still?"
My argument to this is simply that SC2 is a copy of SC1. There's not much you can tell me about "6 years in development" that is going to make me feel like 4 of those were justified. When I think of Blizzard, I think of what D2 did for D1. What SC did for RTS in general and what WC3 did for WC2. Being the most recent example, let's consider WC2. That game had 2 races that had the exact same units on both sides with different skins (orcs or humans). WC3 not only introduced 4 distinct playable races, but they added a brand new hero system that really innovated the old playstyle of WC2/SC. Compare this to SC1 -> SC2 and you realize that you got a new coat of paint and some new units were replaced or rehashed (hellion = fire bat vulture, medivac = medic + dropship, thor = goliath + viagra, mothership = arbiter + viagra, etc).
So when I consider your opinion on the matter I don't see how you can reach the conclusions you reach. The campaign may be fun and great and that will be a wonderful 20-30 hours. We don't know yet, we haven't seen it. What we have seen is what is in multiplayer melee and how bnet and its features are being implemented today. I would argue that multiplayer melee has BARELY innovated on SC1 and that bnet is a piece of shit. Considering most people are going to play custom games, I don't see how anything they've implemented has the player's best interest in mind.
And besides, "the suits" in your arguments didn't show up until July 2008.
So yes, we all loved Blizzard and their games were leetsauce for a bunch of reasons. But SC2 isn't changing things up and bnet is a piece of shit. That is the product of your "6 years in development, quality etc" argument.
Things might change and I suggest that people pick up the game when things change. Until then, if you don't want the future of PC gaming to resemble Xbox live then I suggest you make a stand with your wallet.
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On June 01 2010 00:21 Captain Peabody wrote:Show nested quote +On May 31 2010 18:09 cHaNg-sTa wrote: Playing SC:BW with 2 other friends - $20
Playing SC2 with 2 other friends after all expansions are out - up to $540
For everything else, Activision is there to take your money. A few points come to mind: (1): I assume you know that the price for Starcraft + BW for most of its existence, and most definitely when it came out, was significantly higher than the $20 Battlechest. Blizzard today gives you these games almost for free, comparatively. A little snooping around gets me to the BW FAQ on the Battle.net Compendium website, where the "retailers's suggested price" is given as 30 dollars. Adjusted for inflation from when it came out, that's about $38 dollars. I assume the original Starcraft cost significantly more money than the expansion, as is natural for a game as opposed to an expansion pack. When adjusted for inflation, it probably cost somewhere around the amount of SC2, through probably a bit less, considering its dev time was a lot smaller and it has less content. (If there's someone who remembers the release and the price then, I'd be very happy to hear it...) So the actual comparison is much different from the one you're trying to make out. If anything, the reason you can play BW for so little now is that Blizzard very recently has allowed you to do so by putting out the Battlechest, lowering the prices, allowing you to play the game without a CD, etc. Hardly a mark of greed, no? Oh, and you're assuming that the SC2 expansions will cost exactly the same as the core game, an assumption that is totally unfounded and opposed by all of the facts we actually know at this point. So yeah.
I understand what you're saying, but that's not the point of my post...
I was just saying how if I wanted to play with my friends down the road after all the SC2 expansions are out, we can either go out and buy SC:BW and play together (about $20 nowadays for the battlechest) or.. buy all the expansions to SC2 seperately for "up to $540". I also never assumed that the expansions would cost exactly the same as the core game hence the "up to" part. I don't think it would be completely out of the realm of possibility either though considering even though it's
1. a PC game that normally cost at the very most $50 now cost $60. 2. a PC game that already has 2 expansions announced years before the core game even released
Who says it would be completely ignorant to guess that there's a chance that Blizzard/Activision would argue that even though these are 2 expansions, they are full-bred giant new campaigns to the other 2 races. They may even add "new features" to bnet 2.0 to justify the high price that they could have easily inserted into the original core game.
Look at WoW. I don't know how much the original WoW retailed for ($50?), but I'm looking at the suggested retail prices right now for Cataclysm and it's anywhere from $40-$50. That's BARELY a price differential. It's not a bad assumption to think that the SC2 expansions will cost at least $50 up to $60.
No one is saying that Blizzard was greedy when SC:BW was out. That's why we all loved it. The game was great, the price was very low despite the wonderful Bnet system doing tons of great service over the years. But this is now also a different time. Blizzard's idea of a great game/reasonable price has changed now to what their games are today.
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This post basically made me stop playing blizzard games.
I'm going to support the next awesome indie game company until this happens to it and then I'll move on again. The public can have WoW and all the rest of it.
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On June 01 2010 02:25 Vexx wrote: My argument to this is simply that SC2 is a copy of SC1. There's not much you can tell me about "6 years in development" that is going to make me feel like 4 of those were justified. When I think of Blizzard, I think of what D2 did for D1. What SC did for RTS in general and what WC3 did for WC2. Being the most recent example, let's consider WC2. That game had 2 races that had the exact same units on both sides with different skins (orcs or humans). WC3 not only introduced 4 distinct playable races, but they added a brand new hero system that really innovated the old playstyle of WC2/SC. Compare this to SC1 -> SC2 and you realize that you got a new coat of paint and some new units were replaced or rehashed (hellion = fire bat vulture, medivac = medic + dropship, thor = goliath + viagra, mothership = arbiter + viagra, etc).
It's pretty clear that most of SC2's development time was spent on the engine, the single-player, and Bnet. The SC2 multiplayer has been in fully playable condition for years before beta even started. We've seen that with our own eyes due to all the constant press events, conventions, and interviews. So I definitely feel that the single-player has been taking up a lot of Blizzard's development time, and I also feel that it's ridiculous to act like Blizzard hasn't been putting effort into the game. Just a mere cursory glance at the cinematics shows a lot about how much time is being put into that campaign. After seeing all the single-player content that's going into SC2, I find it insane that people still go on about the trilogy being a rip-off.
And as for SC2's multiplayer, keep in mind that the whole reason why SC2 is similar to SC1 is because that's what the players specifically wanted. You can't just accuse Blizzard of not listening to the community, then get mad when they do just that. Hell, when you look at all the SC2 gameplay complaints right now, pretty much all of them can be summed up as "it's too different from SC1". Examples: no moving shot micro like in SC1, pathing not like SC1, magic box not like SC1, counter system not like SC1, high ground not like SC1, and so on. It just seems to me like "lack of innovation" is basically an empty complaint. People always bring it up as a black mark against other games, but it never actually stops them from buying it, enjoying it, and praising it as a good game. Just look at Nintendo, who suffers daily complaints about rehashing, but their rehashes are still seen as the best games in the industry.
A lot of the complaints regarding SC2 in this thread seem pretty arbitrary to me. The only thing that deserves hate and criticism is Bnet 0.2. Battle.net has always been the major thing holding SC2 back, and it's that part of the game that should get our utmost focus. I just find it bad that people are starting to get distracted by once again complaining about issues (trilogy, innovation, Activision) that should have been put to rest a long time ago.
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On June 01 2010 02:41 Spawkuring wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2010 02:25 Vexx wrote: My argument to this is simply that SC2 is a copy of SC1. There's not much you can tell me about "6 years in development" that is going to make me feel like 4 of those were justified. When I think of Blizzard, I think of what D2 did for D1. What SC did for RTS in general and what WC3 did for WC2. Being the most recent example, let's consider WC2. That game had 2 races that had the exact same units on both sides with different skins (orcs or humans). WC3 not only introduced 4 distinct playable races, but they added a brand new hero system that really innovated the old playstyle of WC2/SC. Compare this to SC1 -> SC2 and you realize that you got a new coat of paint and some new units were replaced or rehashed (hellion = fire bat vulture, medivac = medic + dropship, thor = goliath + viagra, mothership = arbiter + viagra, etc).
It's pretty clear that most of SC2's development time was spent on the engine, the single-player, and Bnet. The SC2 multiplayer has been in fully playable condition for years before beta even started. We've seen that with our own eyes due to all the constant press events, conventions, and interviews. So I definitely feel that the single-player has been taking up a lot of Blizzard's development time, and I also feel that it's ridiculous to act like Blizzard hasn't been putting effort into the game. Just a mere cursory glance at the cinematics shows a lot about how much time is being put into that campaign. After seeing all the single-player content that's going into SC2, I find it insane that people still go on about the trilogy being a rip-off. And as for SC2's multiplayer, keep in mind that the whole reason why SC2 is similar to SC1 is because that's what the players specifically wanted. You can't just accuse Blizzard of not listening to the community, then get mad when they do just that. Hell, when you look at all the SC2 gameplay complaints right now, pretty much all of them can be summed up as "it's too different from SC1". Examples: no moving shot micro like in SC1, pathing not like SC1, magic box not like SC1, counter system not like SC1, high ground not like SC1, and so on. It just seems to me like "lack of innovation" is basically an empty complaint. People always bring it up as a black mark against other games, but it never actually stops them from buying it, enjoying it, and praising it as a good game. Just look at Nintendo, who suffers daily complaints about rehashing, but their rehashes are still seen as the best games in the industry. A lot of the complaints regarding SC2 in this thread seem pretty arbitrary to me. The only thing that deserves hate and criticism is Bnet 0.2. Battle.net has always been the major thing holding SC2 back, and it's that part of the game that should get our utmost focus. I just find it bad that people are starting to get distracted by once again complaining about issues (trilogy, innovation, Activision) that should have been put to rest a long time ago.
tbh i rather have 1 part game/campaign and good multiplayer... You will get fun out of campaign for about 1-2 weeks, but multiplayer, as we can see in sc:bw, can grant you entertainment for years.
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I'm not entirely sold on SC2, just because of the gamemechanics, but B.Net2.0 and all this Activision-BS is just beyond acceptable.
I mean:
- What if they want us to pay for new shitty Mappacks or even Fan-made Maps/Mods? It's easily possible, because they control everything in B.Net.2.0, even the user-made content! They can start making us pay for playing on Maps or Mods the fans made themselves! - What if Activision suddenly wants ppl to pay to play or pay for every little thing? Again, it's entirely possible, because you always have to be connected to B.Net.2.0. - What if they start making questionable decisions like the one with GomTV and KeSpa - one wrong move by some CEO and they could cut off a huge part of competetive gaming. - What if a fan makes a nice Pro-Mod or sth, that would make proper Micro possible, but Blizzard doesn't allow us to play it, for whatever reason? Same could happen to other Mods - if they don't like it, they can easily just shut it down.
And why do they do all this stuff? Not because of the dubious reasons they present us, but just because of the $$$: - They want to destroy piracy (which is a good thing, but not at the cost of the ppl PAYING!) - They want full control over every aspect of the game, like Mods, Maps, eSports (you need permission to make a tournament or to broadcast etc.) - They want the possibility to implement LOTS of Microtransactions to cash in on every little thing there is. We probably will have to pay for additional Maps, additional B.Net.2.0-features, the Addons and maybe even fan-made content. And this is surely Activision thats behind this stuff - THEY ARE EVIL!
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On June 01 2010 02:34 mint_julep wrote: I'm going to support the next awesome indie game company until this happens to it and then I'll move on again. The public can have WoW and all the rest of it.
lol. This is kind of funny. If I've heard of it, it's already to mainstream for you huh?
But seriously though, go try out
http://www.frozensynapse.com/. http://www.crypticcomet.com/games/SI/Solium_Infernum.html
and some more mainstream but still indie at heart:
CD projekt Red (They redid their entire game, VA and like 5 new modules included, and gave it to customers for free because they felt their original wasn't good enough, despite being the best RPG I've played :o+They're polish, and poles are awesome) http://www.thewitcher.com/
Arena.net(Guys from blizzard go to make competitve MMO with no monthly fee :D+Most amazing art direction I've seen since Myst.) http://www.arena.net/
Hope those are edgy enuff for ya...
edit:
@ the guy below me.
Paragraphs are your friends.
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I suppose everyone here feels that Battle.net 2.0 has taken several steps backwards. However, I'm still going to buy and play SC2. Maybe it won't be as hard of an addiction as D2 or Brood war, but there is a good reason why those games had such levels of replayability. Blizzard is Fantastic at giving their games continued support and more updates. I can say that I enjoy SC2, but am unhappy with many things in the Beta, but I have faith that Blizzard, of all companies, knows how to support their fanbase, and that a shallow walking dick like Kotic (he's a CEO, that's his job description, get over it) isn't going to be able to force too much BS down Blizzards throats before they clamp up. I don't think SC2 will be Competitively ready on its release, but I have faith that Blizzard will only improve it in the years to come. Vanilla SC 1.0 was actually not very good. Diablo 2 got a massive facelift long after the expansion came out, with patch 1.10 Completely redesigining the skill mechanic. Not only do they have a history of continued polishing of games, but they already have SC2 slated for their main focus for a while, with 2 expansions being a major part of their future plans. That being said, SC2 has taken many many steps backwards, the reasoning of which is so absolutely ludricrous that it really makes you wonder wtf Blizzard is thinking. Someone posted that an XboxLive creator is helping make Bnet, but for the record XboxLive is a horrible horrible online playing system. Functionally, it works with not much lag, but you can't do anything to choose any sort of game or do anything about it. I see a lot of similar problems in Bnet currently. Honestly if they ported the original Bnet interface and ran it on the 2.0 networking engine, it would be better (they really should go back and list all the features of it, and see how much they're leaving out of the new one) For one, the inability to mute someone if they aren't on your buddy list. That actually might be the reason why I would want to mute them. Apparently SPAM is the reason they don't have chat rooms. I remember making chat channels for my friends and I so that we could AVOID the Spam. Also, I am baffled at current lack of support for Tournaments (the HDH invitiational had to be organized through freaking Email and random people constantly would jump in the games waiting for the tourney participants). Maybe they wanted to hold off in beta, but if they expect SC2 to be a big competitive game, then Bnet needs to let you contact people/leave messages, and actually be able to HOST A FREAKING TOURNAMENT. Where is the LAN? WHERE IS IT? There is NO REASON NOT TO HAVE LAN. Even Blizzard has said that they are not at all concerned with piracy and that piracy is not the reason they aren't including LAN support. Seriously does anyone remember Vanilla Starcraft with its absolutely revolutionary SPAWN feature? Anyone at all? This is one of the greatest ideas ever (maybe not as profitable as Activision might like, but it got people HOOKED on Starcraft who still play 12 years later). For those of you younger players not as familiar, after purchasing Starcraft and installing it on your computer, you could then spawn your copy to friend's computers. Spawning allowed you to install the Starcraft game on anyone's computer using your game disc, up to 8 times. Those spawn copies could not play singleplayer, but they COULD ONLY play Battle.net games Created by the Original disk owner (Not sure if spawns could play LAN, I think so. think it still had to be the spawner creating it though). This actually encouraged us to show off to our friends how the game was not Warcraft in Space, play with them over internet (this was new and awesome then) and convince them to buy this game so they could join any friend whenever instead of just being able to play with the Spawner. Now the company that encouraged us to spread their game out and get a huge fanbase is making us buy extra accounts for different regions (SC let you choose US East, US West, Europe and Asia), making communication on Bnet ridiculously bare with horrible controls (again, I have to friend them to mute them? really blizzard?), possibly charging extra for tournaments (probably, if it ever actually gets in the game, probably after beta, and they have mentioned extra fees. no more LAN tourneys of my friends anymore to see who is best), and completely ignoring LAN support. Given my previous Blizzard whoring and reverence for their impeccable game (and game maintenence) record, my idealist side has hope for SC2, both before release and long after, but my realist side is constantly having it's expectations lowered.
Edit: Paragraphs are my friends, but not when the Teamliqiud box doesn't recognize me entering them. Fixed now, sorry.
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