StarCraft II Official! (Pictures)

[Legion]

I've thought about this a bit, and decided its a very good thing.  As someone pointed out before, Half Life 2, Half Life 2 Episode I and II, both 'expansions' were worthy of plucking down more money even though it was the same basic game.  An RTS is drastically different from a first person shooter, and its going to depend largely on Blizzards ability to go beyond simple build and destroy RTS gaming.  I'm not angry or anything by this choice, and am actually glad they are doing this.  If anything, it will extend the life of the game significantly.  In other words, we've already been promised 2 extensions to the games life. 

Do you guys honestly believe that Blizzard of all companies somehow screwed up on this one and is simply being greedy or won't provide a good pricing structure for the relative gaming experience they offer?  Give them a lot more credit then that.  If they want to take the scope of their single player experience to the extent where they believe it will require 3 distinct releases, I say all the better for us.  My goodness, this is the heart of the StarCraft campaign community for crying out loud.  If anyone would have been excited for a load of single player content, I would say it would be here.

I welcome this news, and I'm sure they'll handle it correctly.

All true, I am not angry at all. First and foremost, I am very happy and excited about new Starcraft material, always.

For the most part, I dig this method, except I can't get my around the fact that they're taking all their time to complete ONE faction, and the leave the other two for the following years. THAT IS NOT STARCRAFT TWO. THAT IS STARCRAFT 1.33333 OR SOMETHING.

[WB]

It'll essentially be SC2, and then 2 expansion packs.

[Marco]

I'd rather have the option of getting the game sooner rather than later Legion.  If you have to wait a 'year or two' for the additional missions, thats time you'd have to wait for anyways, just without any of the game.

[Legion]

I'd rather have the option of getting the game sooner rather than later Legion.  If you have to wait a 'year or two' for the additional missions, thats time you'd have to wait for anyways, just without any of the game.

Yeah, I know.  That's why they shouldn't have announced it last year!

I'd still rather have the full product instead of installments.  To me, it looks like Blizz figured out they wouldn't be able to deliver a complete product in another year, even though they already announced this motherfucker last year.  I know they never give any release dates at the announcement, but Blizz never announces anything that needs at least 3 years to be totally finished.  I think they realized this too, and so went for this option.  Given a choice, I'd vote for the real thing and wait longer. 

As for modding, does this mean we'll only be able to make Terran campaigns for the first year?

[AA7Dragoon]

I agree with Legion, it just doesn't sound right.  And honestly, does it take a whole year to finish one campaign?  The game engine, design, and balance is suppose to take the longest.  Why would a campaign take forever?  The only hold-up I can think of would be the cinematics.

Again, there is more than what they are telling us, but regardless, I don't want to wait two years to finally play the Protoss campaign (which is also my favorite race).  In addition, part of learning how to play the Zerg and Protoss is done within the campaign.  It seems so awkward to receive the full game, be exposed to the design mechanics of the Terran race, but have no tutorial for the Zerg or Protoss.  Does this also mean we will not have a chance to play the Zerg or Protoss in the Terran campaign?  Perhaps the Protoss, but I cannot imagine a scenario where you would get to play the Zerg on Raynor's storyline.

[WB]

Why not? If the Xel Naga have returned I don't think theyre hippies, I think they are pissed off and want to kill everything - or at least the zerg (who killed a lot of xelnaga prior to SC1), Protoss, Terrans, and Zerg. So why wouldn't you play as zerg? It could happen.

[mAc Chaos]

I'm not sure how to feel about how the story is probably going to go.  It's probably going to be yet another "everyone teams up to fight the super bad guy" story.  I always love those, especially with the Overmind because he was so awesome, but the Xel Naga have less "development" as a bad guy and it's been done so so many times before.  Maybe they'll develop it more over those 90 missions.

[Thalraxal]

Again, there is more than what they are telling us, but regardless, I don't want to wait two years to finally play the Protoss campaign (which is also my favorite race).  In addition, part of learning how to play the Zerg and Protoss is done within the campaign.  It seems so awkward to receive the full game, be exposed to the design mechanics of the Terran race, but have no tutorial for the Zerg or Protoss.  Does this also mean we will not have a chance to play the Zerg or Protoss in the Terran campaign?  Perhaps the Protoss, but I cannot imagine a scenario where you would get to play the Zerg on Raynor's storyline.

I wouldn't be surprised if they included short tutorial campaigns for the other races with the Terran campaign just because of that.  Use that as a chance to show what the editor can do without the cinematics?

I think I will ultimately be frustrated by this while waiting for the next expansion, but right now I don't think it's a bad idea.  Blizzard seems to be taking the singleplayer alot more seriously then they did for WC3.  I like that.  I like that alot.

On top of that, it should increase intrest in custom-campaigns between expansions (especially if we're going to be waiting about a year between each installment).  People are going to want to play more, especially with the Protoss and Zerg while waiting for Heart of the Swarm and Legandacy of the Void to be released.

What I want to know is what incentive are they going to give for the multiplayer crowd to buy the expansions if their main focus is on the singleplayer campaigns.

I'm not sure how to feel about how the story is probably going to go.  It's probably going to be yet another "everyone teams up to fight the super bad guy" story.  I always love those, especially with the Overmind because he was so awesome, but the Xel Naga have less "development" as a bad guy and it's been done so so many times before.  Maybe they'll develop it more over those 90 missions.

I'm really hoping that the whole return of the Xel'Naga is a red herring, or atleast not in the way we're all expecting.  The "Super Advanced aliens are coming to kick our ass!" has been done before.  Personally, having the hybrids running around is dangerous enough without having the Xel'Naga be directly involved in the story.

[IskatuMesk]

What I want to know is what incentive are they going to give for the multiplayer crowd to buy the expansions if their main focus is on the singleplayer campaigns.

Well for starters they've confirmed the expansions will be adding new units.

[Thalraxal]

What I want to know is what incentive are they going to give for the multiplayer crowd to buy the expansions if their main focus is on the singleplayer campaigns.

Well for starters they've confirmed the expansions will be adding new units.

So we are looking at full expansions rather then just story-packs.  Cool.

I'm just going to hope they don't bring back the Protoss Surfer Dude from the early Alpha as one of the new expansion units. 

[WB]

It is Legacy of the Void, Wings of Liberty, and Heart of the Swarm

http://www.shacknews.com/screenshots.x? ... #img127295

http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?story= ... r_18152717

[Meta]

I agree with Desler on this - I'd rather see it sooner than later. We're basically talking about something similar to Starcraft + Brood War + a third expansion, except this time the vanilla game will only cover the Terran campaign (Blizzard said it will feature a minicampaign involving Zeratul though). It'd take Blizzard a long time to finish the extra campaigns, especially since so many technologies and cinematics are being developed for them.

Xeris from TeamLiquid.net said it about the game he played - mostly with gameplay and competitive gaming in perspective:

SC2 was REALLY fun to play. I think that if you approach SC2 from a non competitive standpoint and are playing because you love gaming/starcraft then you will thoroughly enjoy the game. It has beautiful graphics, the AI is clever enough that the learning curve is not too steep because micro is essentially done for you at times (Zergling auto-surround, etc) and you can just have a lot of fun playing the game and fooling around with abilities and shit.

From a competitive standpoint I think the game has a LOOOOOOOONG way to go before it can be close to what BW has been. Watching SC2 competitively was not nearly as exciting as watching BW games, and playing competitive SC2 games wasn't nearly as stressful / demanding as playing a competitive BW game is.

Also a problem I had with the game is that they need to rework the color schemes. It is really difficult to see zerg units on creep, and also it really gets hard to differentiate your own units. For example, zealots and templars end up looking really similar if they are clumped together; same thing with the terran melee units.

I would say that I really like SC2, but it is far from being ready as a competitive game to replace BW. I hope that Blizzard is patient and keeps working on it and doesn't release it any time soon.

2 more years until we get a perfect product I'd say!

Since most people here view competitive gaming and melee games as something secondary to mapmaking, I think it's a good signal for us. Granted, knowledge of the melee aspects, the micro and the macromanagement never hurt, but the editor is what we're interested in...

[WB]

And that is all that is important. I'm glad to see Xeris looking at the game from correct point of view - is the game fun? And yes. It is loads of fun.

[Lavarinth]

Guys.

Gas Mechanic, coming from someone who PLAYED SC2:

Your gas down run out, and takes time to recharge. You do NOT need to manually move your workers, they instantly go to mine, and when the building is ready, they will go back to mining gas automatically. You start off with TWO geysers, not one, and to be honest- It wasn't an issue at all.

[IskatuMesk]

You need to move your workers because they're not doing anything. It's a crappy mechanic and I do expect it to change again soon.