There is no doubt for me that Starcraft 2 is awesome. I have spent a lot of hours enjoying it, and it has been the "main" game I have played for a long time now. Yet I often wonder if there will ever be a warcraft 4? While starcraft offers much more macro oriented gameplay where losing a unit here and there doesn't really matter I always preferred the smaller scale battles in warcraft 3. The mix between rpg and rts was my favorite part. Leveling up your hero, trying to save every one of your units, creeping and getting items - I just feel like the focus trough a game of warcraft is always on the battlefield there is more of a dynamic feeling as a whole. In starcraft there are often times where neither player can make a move for the 10 minutes after a macro opening.
Now we all know about that game called WoW, and many would say that it is the reason for no wc4 announcement yet. While I agree with this I still hope that when the rts team at Blizzard is done with sc2 expansions it will start working on warcraft 4. It will be interesting what would be the different races in the game taking WoW into consideration. If they somehow twist the story my best and most logical guesses would be horde (orc, troll tauren), alliance(dwarf, human, gnome, draenei), elf (blood and night elves), burning legion, and scourge? But if they do it this way I don't know how they can explain some races not being in the horde, alliance or teaming up together like blood and night elves.
Anyway what are your thoughts on wc4? Do you think there will ever be a return to the rts genre for the warcraft franchise?
I feel that they've really butchered the lore, so it's going to be really hard to recover from turning the franchise from an RTSRPG into an MMO into an RTS again. Plus, WoW is still a cash cow, so I can't say it looks promising.
I'm pretty sure Blizzard is planning on releasing SC2 expansions really, really slowly. I mean 2 years for an expansion for an RTS game is pretty unheard of and bad lol. When you think that they've got another one planned after this (and maybe another after that?) you've gotta know they're planning on milking this cow as long as they can. So long story short eventually there will be a WCIV if Blizz is still around by then, but it's gonna take a long time before they even start working on it.
I thought WC3 was a cool game with a unique concept and I like that they did something that different. I dunno if WCIV would be the exact same concept, but there's certainly more room for creativity than usual. If they tried to make an esport out of it I'd like a unique game that offered pros an opportunity to think outside the box rather than try to catch up to BW the way SC2 is trying to do.
Blizzard has Diablo to finish(?), two SC2 expansions to do (plus updates and patches), Pandaria Mists and the Titan project. I think there is many things in their plate so we doubtly will see WC4.
Also with all the lore developed for WoW and events in WC history, where would Blizzard start to tell something new? All the good stuff has been done. My theory is that after WoW, Blizzard won't revisit the Warcraft world, at least not in videogames. There is so much you can do with the same characters, right? Humans vs Orcs, The history of warchief Thrall, the fall of Arthas, the Lich king....After tolding the story of Warcraft, Blizzard should move on to other properties.
God I would absolutely LOVE WarCraft 4. This could really get the story back on track, since fucking Blizzard completely wrecked it with WoW. Now I played WoW for a while, and it's fun, but it doesn't compare to the emotional attachments I've developed to WarCraft since I have been playing it since my childhood.
man I need to go play that game again /cry.
EDIT: Also, I think that a WarCraft 4 would be really good too. I mean, they were out of practice with RTS games when StarCraft 2 came out, maybe if/when WarCraft 4 came out they would have learned from their mistakes.
I'm quite confident there will be a WC4, I can't really see any reason why there wouldn't be. That said, it took 10 years between SC1 and SC2, and Blizzard has several expansions planned for SC2, Wow, Titan, Diablo... don't hold out for it, it will take ages before WC4 sees the light of day.
There will probably be a War4 because it's a great money-cow, but I don't think it'll be released for a while. Also not sure if it'll be similar to War3. I hope it is; War3 is such a unique RTS game, and what's more, it works well, so I want them to continue along the same lines in the sequel.
I prefer playing War3 to SC2 even these days just to get my kicks. Not to mention, at least my computer can run War3 as opposed to SC2. :O
And this is why i refuse to give blizz 15 bucks for a month of running around in an mmo, lol biggest waste of money to me. besides isn't icons and models from wow rehashed shit from wc3?! and after all those years they cut off from diablo 3 and starcraft 2 to make the game, they wont even change those icons!
On February 22 2012 05:32 Jerubaal wrote: Sadly, I think the entire Warcraft franchise is ending.
Although I think the worst thing they ever did was let novelists like Golden and that other turd write things and then insert it as canon.
On February 22 2012 04:23 HackBenjamin wrote: I feel that they've really butchered the lore, so it's going to be really hard to recover from turning the franchise from an RTSRPG into an MMO into an RTS again. Plus, WoW is still a cash cow, so I can't say it looks promising.
I was under the impression that Blizzard have either outright stated or at least heavily implied that if they ever go back to the WarCraft RTS franchise they will just resume from where they left off after WC3.
I personally would LOVE a WarCraft 4. But I think it will come out around the same time as Half Life 2: Episode 3 - ie a short time before the Rapture.
On February 22 2012 06:06 Kipsate wrote: I would play Warcraft 4 for the singleplayer alone probably.
Really? The campaign in TFT was pretty awful, the multiplayer is really the only reason a lot of people played the game.
Strangely, I've been thinking of WC3 lately, I might have to hop on ladder later and play some games.... (if I can remember how to play O.O)
Saying it was awful is a bit harsh though don't you think? I played it through without getting the feeling of grinding until the next story segment, which made it enjoyable for me. I hope you don't run into lossbots on the ladder
On February 22 2012 06:06 Kipsate wrote: I would play Warcraft 4 for the singleplayer alone probably.
Really? The campaign in TFT was pretty awful, the multiplayer is really the only reason a lot of people played the game.
Strangely, I've been thinking of WC3 lately, I might have to hop on ladder later and play some games.... (if I can remember how to play O.O)
Saying it was awful is a bit harsh though don't you think? I played it through without getting the feeling of grinding until the next story segment, which made it enjoyable for me. I hope you don't run into lossbots on the ladder
On February 22 2012 07:29 nikj wrote: I'd prefer WC4 to be more like WC2 in all honesty.
With regard to the story or the gameplay?
Personally I'd see atmosphere or art style similar to WC2. If you ever thought about it, the storylines for WC3 seemed somewhat dark, but they never felt dark like in WC2. I don't know, whatever muse that Blizzard was using in the 90's (Warcraft, Diablo, and Starcraft) seemed darker than it is today. While they have gotten MUCH better at designing single player levels, there's a more subtle shift away from something I can't quite put my finger on.
That and they need to start adding more cutscenes back in. We used to get one every 4 missions, now its one at the very end of the campaign. I'd settle for several lower quality ones for cost sakes, but they really helped build the atmosphere as you played the game.
The graphics haven't aged well, but that intro has been burned into my mind.
Ah, and I miss the old narrator
But I would love to see a Warcraft IV in any event. Warcraft 2 introduced me to Blizzard games and I've finally played through WC3. I never played those games multiplayer, but I legitimately enjoyed the campaigns of both.
I think there's this huge karmic balance in the sky. For every one of Acitivision's cash-cow sequel releases, a Blizzard sequel gets delayed by "soon". :/
I was kind of young to properly have enjoyed WC3 but it was nonetheless a good time and we wouldn't have Dota etc without it. WC3 was a monumental game and I hope WC4 can be so as well.
Honestly, the lore was pretty skewered when WoW took over the story telling portion of the franchise. It like doesn't even make sense anymore. Pandarens? What next? Flying space marines? I'd love to have Blizzard just take the lore from WoW, redact it so all that nonsense is removed and then develop WC4 for a better canon experience.
On February 22 2012 06:06 Kipsate wrote: I would play Warcraft 4 for the singleplayer alone probably.
The WC3 single-player is fucking amazing. I'd do the same.
The SC2 single-player makes me cry at how much lost potential there is. Goddammit, Blizzard. Whyyyyy?
Absolutely. Though Gheed raises a valid point.
I think ultimately the reason WC4 will never exist is because they screwed up and forgot this was the age of simplification, thus DoTA and MOBAs happened and so WC4 never will
I think that Blizzard really was shocked and unprepared for how popular WoW was, and they just got completely sucked into concentrating on it. Now they have a team working on SC2, and Diablo3 (i guess small teams since everything takes so long), when they are finished with these projects I wouldn't be surprised if they made WC4. I just think it is awesome that they decided to finally get back to the kind of games they used to make before WoW. I mean, even if they decided to make a new MMO, it wouldn't have the same impact on the business as it did before because they already have the infrastructure in place. I played WC3 when it first came out (I still have the game), but only single player because tbh back in the day not everyone had internets available to them and online play was not a common thing like it is now. Maybe I will give WC3 online a try sometime, it seems like there are some people who still play it.
Edit: Nobody cares about the lore. They can make it in a alternative reality universe as far as I am concerned.
On March 06 2012 10:29 deathly rat wrote: I think that Blizzard really was shocked and unprepared for how popular WoW was, and they just got completely sucked into concentrating on it. Now they have a team working on SC2, and Diablo3 (i guess small teams since everything takes so long), when they are finished with these projects I wouldn't be surprised if they made WC4. I just think it is awesome that they decided to finally get back to the kind of games they used to make before WoW. I mean, even if they decided to make a new MMO, it wouldn't have the same impact on the business as it did before because they already have the infrastructure in place. I played WC3 when it first came out (I still have the game), but only single player because tbh back in the day not everyone had internets available to them and online play was not a common thing like it is now. Maybe I will give WC3 online a try sometime, it seems like there are some people who still play it.
Edit: Nobody cares about the lore. They can make it in a alternative reality universe as far as I am concerned.
EPT
