Network now...NEWS
StarCraft 2 is a Trilogy
At BlizzCon late Friday, Blizzard surprised everyone by announcing that its RTS will be split into three games.
Each release will focus on one of the game's races and will offer up to 30 missions. The single-player trilogy will be released as Terran: Wings of Liberty; Zerg: Heart of the Swarm, and Protoss: Legacy of the Void. No release dates have been announced.
I think it's a terrible idea - the single player campaigns were a way to introduce the factions' various units and train you with them before playing the multiplayer. StarCraft's then-unique three race balancing worked because you got to try them all out properly before just being thrown into the chaos of multiplayer... SC2 abandoning that basic principle of the game is a real shame and greatly reduces the odds of my buying it until all three parts are actually available together.
I like what they are doing. AS long as the pricing is good they are not losing anything in my eyes. I could see them releasing the first game with only the Terran single player campaign but the whole multiplayer for $40-50 then releasing $20 dollar expansions that would add the other two races single player campaigns.
They said nothing about only being able to play multiplayer after owning all three disks. The first disk has all the models and sounds effects.
You have to buy all three if you want the whole story from each race's perspective. If your don't care for the Zerg or the Protoss and their view of the story, you don't have to buy it. It does kind of suck that you are locked into having to get the Terrans but oh well. Deal with it. IF all you care about is multiplayer, then it should be fine.
What would have been even cooler is if they had released a multiplayer only version of the game as the primary game disk and then had each race's single player campaigns as add-on content. That way, you could choose which race to play the story for.
Yes you're probably right. They're testing their fans' loyalty, but now it's more than that. After WoW there are 11-12 million potential buyers (and subscribers) out there, and the guys at Blizz/Activision know that. It's not about the fanbase anymore, it's about the consumer who decides to buy (or not buy) those excellent games. (This is the point where the aforementioned vitriol comes into play.)
there's no question it'll have to be excellent to warrant a purchase but, because of the route they're taking, we're beyond that now. simply being an "excellent" game isn't enough.
what we're seeing here is the result of years of fierce consumer loyalty being tested, to which the question begs; just how much can we squeeze out of that fanbase now? in this case you've got a company selling a game, that's always been sold to fans in a specific way, now being broken into three seperate products to be sold individually.
of course that''s fleecing 101. decisions like that aren't made "to ensure the best product possible for the consumer", (laughing) they're made to maximize profits at the height of one's popularity at the expense of the consumer. quality is always secondary in those types of decisions, if it's even a consideration at all...
it doesn't matter how good the games are, not when you don't have your customers best interests at heart.
This, and paid character customization in WoW. Now they are looking to monetize Battle.Net too.
http://www.destructoid.com/in-the-future-battle-net-will-cost-money-1073...
I don't think forums vitriol matters a lot in the end. If Blizzard keeps making good games, well, they can be greedy. They'll lose some fans, right, and earn some insane amount of money. As usual. My private opinion doesn't matter much, but if the games are excellent and I have the proper hardware I'll be happy to pay for their service and their trilogy. But it has to be excellent.
EDIT: Destructoid probably misquoted the sentence. The other variation talks about monetizing certain features of Diablo III.
didn't see that one coming.
and judging by the mostly negative reactions by fans on many other gaming sites (joystiq, d-toid, kotaku, gamespot, IGN) niether did they. i mean, to say the majority of fans are pissed off would be an understatement. there's some serious vitriol being spewed.