EPTI first heard of you in 1998, when I was still 7 years old. My friend's dad was playing the recently released game, Starcraft: Broodwar on his PC while we watched from over his shoulder. The game was the coolest thing I had ever seen. My dad owned a mac, and there weren't very many games available for mac at the time. But Starcraft was. And damn, was it cool. I would turn down the speakers at night while my parents slept and play on the computer in their room, because it was the only computer in the house. The lights had to stay off, so I learned how to type to chat with the other players in game because I couldn't see the keys. If I didn't get in trouble when dialing up the internet, I knew I was free.
Over the years, my family got DSL and newer computers. There were new games and I played some of them. But Starcraft was always there. In the 3rd grade, my parents were going through some rocky parts of their marriage; shit that most couples would normally get a divorce over. While they were doing their thing, I could escape into the world of Starcraft. Eventually, things sorted themselves out, amazingly enough. We moved away and into the city where I now live, sometime in 4th grade.
It was late 2002 and I was 12; my 4th grade teacher in the new school was young, attractive, and very engaging in the classroom. I still played constantly, though. There were more impressive UMS games and people were figuring out some amazing things you could do with the units. Eventually, I would stop playing around 2006, when in the 8th grade, I met some cute girls.
Those cute girls turned out to be emotional, insane, and almost definitely succubi. But that is another story. I rediscovered Starcraft mid-2008 and found an entirely new beast in front of me. Between iCCup and the Korean pro-gaming scene, Starcraft had changed drastically. There were paid professionals who played, and legions of gamers wanting to be just like them. I watched GOMtv's season 3, and absolutely loved it. Flash was this rising monster of a player, but still couldn't beat Jaedong no matter what he tried. The fan designed map pool was brilliant. It had its flaws, but they were at least trying. There was a semblance of balance, and I'd honestly say that the current map pool is actually 99% there.
During the time between 1998 and 2008, you had several new Warcraft games out; and between Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft, had royally pissed fans off. Warcraft 3 was imbalanced to the point that as far as the fans were concerned you threw the game out the window and said, "Fuck it, I'm tired of trying to make this work." With WoW, you did the reverse and so over balanced the game, there were scores of comments claiming that picking a race and class were purely implemented for aesthetics- they all played more or less the same.
The question never was IF Starcraft would have a sequel, it was when. And you took your sweet time about it. Between playing Starcraft and learning new rumors about Starcraft 2, I was off at the local community college. In addition to homework, every day I would come home, play on iCCup, and watch the pro Korean leagues when I could find a stream. The community was on edge about Starcraft 2. What would happen? After the horrors of Warcraft 3 and the over balancing of WoW, a lot of the community didn't have much faith in your latest project.
What we hoped in was perfection, which was a high bar to reach. Of any company that could do it though, most would have said that you were our best bet. I was hoping for something spectacular that could follow in its predecessor's footsteps. You had reached some magic formula with Broodwar, and after patch 1.05 (less than 2 of Broodwar's release) the game reached a balance that is still played today. With so many years to develop Starcraft 2, we could only hope that you could remember that formula and apply it to the game.
The thing that really got the community's panties in a bunch was that you decided to take over the professional community. After seeing what KeSPA did to Starcraft, there were those in favor of this decision. You had a history of supporting long outdating games even after they stopped making you real profit. This was countered with the bullshit pulled in Warcraft 3. Without an evolving map pool in addition to the horrible balancing act in the game, others didn't have much faith in you. Besides this elephant of a problem, there were other complaints on how you were intending to run things. The removal of LAN play was a bitch move, but we would live.
Over the summer before the release in July, I managed to scrape up enough money for the game before going back to class. I played in the beta, and had hoped that the obvious balance issues were fixed. The first thing I did when unwrapping my newly arrived game was play the campaign through. I wasn't impressed. It was horrible. With a history of fantastic campaigns, dating all the way back to Warcraft 2, Wings of Liberty was like being served shit on a silver platter while expecting something gourmet. After beating the campaign inside of a couple days and being thoroughly disappointed, I decided to try my luck on your new battle.net.
None of my friends in real life played Starcraft anymore, and most of the people I played regularly were now limited to the European and Asian servers. So, I was left with playing with some randomly matched people who I had no history with, and no reason to abide by a sense of honor. The game wasn't even remotely balanced beyond the absolute basics. At least everybody had fighting units and workers, right? I gave it a chance, though. I had to- this was a game I'd been waiting, literally, the majority of my life to be released. What I found was exactly what I knew I was going to find, though.
I placed into Diamond league, hoping for some genuinely good games, and found the exact opposite. It was filled with cheesy bullshit. My race of choice since I first played, Zerg, was so uncomfortably balanced that I kept trying to switch to Protoss with little success- I just couldn't think like a toss. So I stopped playing. After the first Starcraft 2 GOMtv series, I stopped watching the games. The battle.net website was filled with propaganda to calm the masses, but the b.net forums were a place of garbage and noobs ranting about how void rays and marines were underpowered and that broodlords were overpowered.
My forum of choice, Teamliquid, filled with whiney little brats getting into the game and as much as I hate to admit it, I knew I was turning into one of them. I had Zerg tears, and resisted the urge countless times to bitch about how much the game infuriated me. Before quitting, I tried to GG every game; but occasionally I couldn't do anything besides 'command+q' (quit, for non-mac users). My wins were hollow, rarely would I play a truly good game.
This brings us to today; its been almost exactly 7 months since the original release. I've read that you released a new patch, but that still, nobody is happy. And I'd like to say, thanks for the fantastic games, and for helping me through my parents' drama when I was just a little kid. Thanks for the entertainment, and for a sport that I could actually watch and get excited about. Please, fix your mistake though. I had high standards for Starcraft 2, but was eager to forgive it for any shortcomings it might have had- those could be patched. It doesn't look like you genuinely care. And if you don't care about something I valued so highly, I don't want anything to do with such total garbage.
Starcraft 2 isn't fun. Sure, its competitive. But so was Command and Conquer, and look at where they are. The community is trash. I can't even play my friends from around the world without spending another 100 dollars on two more copies of the game. When Heart of the Swarm is released, I'll read reviews of the game and check in on the community once again hoping for a spark of the glory that Starcraft once had. Until then, though, peace.
