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Good Evening TL,
So this blog is more to start a healthy discussion of what SC2 is as opposed to what it could be.
With the recently announced selling of Blizz/Activision, I became extremely concerned with the future
of Starcraft. However, It's not because I'm bothered because of the thought of the game being ruined
by some new hands that want to take it in a new direction, I'm more disturbed by the thought of SC
being cancelled completely. Before you take a harsh reaction to this blog post, please visit the the
thread on the sale of the company and read and think about some of the posts, for some people those
posts maybe something they wrote themselves. As an entity buying the company the first thing I
would do is put some feelers out to decide which games to continue with and which games to cancel
completely, this first and foremost would exclusively be games that require a regular maintenance
without a monthly fee or continuous income to help out with the costs of upkeep. This is exactly
where Starcraft falls. What better place to do this research than on the forefront of progaming forums,
Teamliquid.net. However, after a glance through the many responses to the sale of Blizz/Activision, I
don't think I would consider Starcraft a viable option for income. With the costs of development,
upkeep, and advertising, coupled with the lowered viewership of pay per view events, and lower number
of players, I think this would be a concern for most people who actually love and appreciate the game
for what it is (imbalances, mixed up mechanics, and all). While this will most definitely not effect
"Heart of The Swarm", it could definitely cause a problem for the release of "Legacy of the Void". I've
stated before I am a only a Diamond player, so strategy and balance discussions are not my forte,
however I do have common sense and bashing a game I really enjoy to get it to be exactly the way
I want it to be seems counter productive. I really love the SC community and everything it involves
I'd hate to see it reduced to a niche following without a followup because of a few bad apples in a
great community. I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you have a positive opinion of the game,
please start posting it, if you enjoy the way ZvT plays out (regardless of queen buffs) or how
excited you are about the new graphics are, say something about it. We definitely live in a time
(all over the world) where it is easy to simply dismiss things as "terribad" and overlook the great
things about them. I don't believe that everything is perfect with the game, however in the clouds
of dissent for the game it is hard to see the few rays of sunlight that make the game great,
playable, and most of all WATCHABLE. Please discuss your opinions to this thread, I'd love to
hear from people who agree and disagree with me.
 
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retard
User was warned for this post
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On July 21 2012 09:09 Kolpher wrote:
retard
Hey there reader,
Of course I was looking for some creative discussion on this subject. I appreciate your view, however a one word post addressing my mental acuity is of no help. I would love to hear your idea on why you think I am "mentally handicapped" to further stimulate some type of conversation within the community.
Thanks and hope to hear from you further,
Skadumdums
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Why do you bold everything and double-space?
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On July 21 2012 09:14 Torte de Lini wrote:
Why do you bold everything and double-space?
Torte,
Thank you for the feedback, I double space and bold because my eyes are not the great, and double space helps it from blending together and me losing my place on the discussion, I thought it would help everyone from reading the dreaded "Wall of Text". However, if it is harder for everyone else to read I will definitely knock it off.
Thank you again reader,
Skadumdums
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If you want to make it friendly to the eyes, just use the formatting tools in the BBC code thingies.
Make it center spaced(so it goes down). Then after 2 paragraphs, you can have a picture in between.
I feel blah about blah You see, its like ____ We're here not to do shit, but to do shit. Rome wasn't built in a day
I like actually putting it normal after the picture, so its more attracticve. Like i did.
Don't bold it or double space it though, people just will be turned off by it and won't read it.
I like the idea though(of your post)
Brood 
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Austin10833 Posts
I think just standard formatting will serve you better. This is disconcerting to read and just as visually dense as a block of text.
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Weird formatting deters me from reading. So I don't have an actual response to the original post, but I just thought I would offer my experience with this topic so you can have better responses in the future. My eyes are used to text the way it is. If you have bad eyes, ctrl + mousewheel up or ctrl+"+" (ctrl+(Shift+=)) will serve you better personally than altering your format for others.
Edit: Also double-spacing makes it seem longer than it actually is, which makes it look like a bigger wall of text... 
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I actually think your post is wrong, you vastly underestimate where Starcraft sits in the Blizzard system I think. First, you've not considered that Blizzard will be making money from tournament licensing and from game and expansion sales. It also hooks people up to Battle.Net which is clearly where they want people to be, and whilst it's certainly not WoW level popular, it's still an extremely popular franchise. Finally you've not considered the monetization options Blizzard will be implementing as the game goes on such as their marketplace idea.
Realisitcally I think the worst that will happen in the near future is a change of business model, rather than some trolls and the dicontent scaring off potential investment in the brand. There are so many other places people can look to see how the community is and how the game is recieved than the forum and reddit topics we see, like streaming numbers for instance.
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this guys blogs are pretty lol
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starcraft sits alongside (world of) warcraft as the flagship brand of blizzard. i dont know the numbers but im sure the money they make off starcraft from esports at least puts a dent in subscription fees from WoW.
and if you really wanna worry about games be more worried about diablo 3. yeah they made a shit ton on release but how much more money can they really get from that game without it being obvious that the changes they implement are for the RMAH only? new items etc
starcraft is one of the iconic brands in all of PC gaming let alone RTS. only when PC gaming dies will starcraft die.
edit: just look at brood war. i know it was a different time and subscription wasnt really mainstream yet. but they made squat from that game after release. yet they still supported the game for years and years. they knew what they had back then and they know what they have know. surely the same marketing principles still apply
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umm i'm pretty sure that acti/blizz is the publishing portion of blizzard and has NOTHING to do with the development of the games blizzard (the developers) is a subsidiary of acti/blizz the sale will have no effect on the release of the games
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lyerbeth, Parkway,
You both provide very interesting points, both about the past and the future of Starcraft. Iyerbeth, I agree some type of market would be great to help capitalize on the success of initial sales of SC2 however, it seems that Blizz/Activision hasn't done enough to realize the earning potential of the game, especially with genius (however exploitative) of the Skylanders collection. However, I think you're failing to realize the money, time, and personnel it takes to run a game of this scale without any type of return outside of initial sales. The tournament licensing is a very good counterpoint, but I did address the falling numbers of pay per view sales of streams such as MLG, which would dissuade potential investors/sponsors from continuing with this type of advertising/licensing. You are right, they do need to change the current business model to continue to make the business viable, they do need to be able to make something more beyond initial sales of expansions.
Parkway, you are fully correct the first thing that someone thinks of when they think Blizzard is ***craft whether it be WOW, SC, or WC3. In terms of business it is the one thing they are doing correctly, associating themselves with a brand and staying true to it. My concern in this post was whether or not the future investors would see it the same way.
You both raise great counterpoints and I really appreciate you reading and contributing. Great food for thought.
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On July 21 2012 09:14 Torte de Lini wrote:
Why do you bold everything and double-space?
On July 21 2012 09:14 Torte de Lini wrote:
Why do you bold everything and double-space?
It's easier to read for me when it's double spaced, I don't really care if it's bolded or not though.
On topic though, Although Activision bought the game, the game producers are still the same.
You said you were looking from a business standpoint but I don't think you're considering the value of a game such as starcraft, even if it does not have a monthly pay to play. Starcraft is one of the highest earning games for a release in the world, only topped by a couple other games (from the same company)
So my question is this, why would blizzard/activision throw away a game that has a huge burst selling point that makes up for the fact that it's free to play once purchased?
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Because thats exactly what EA does with almost all their releases.
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Canada1470 Posts
Well they already have the base game done, the expansions are easy to do. This is exactly the kind of thing they wouldn't cut cause it's sure income.
Just add a few units, a new campaign (which, other than the cut scenes and voice acting, is easily done in any rts), and some minor battle-net updates that took them years to do indicating their team is very small anyway, and you get ~$40 per copy (or two-thirds of a full game price).
I'd be more worried about the possibility of a wc4 or sc3 either being whored out with dlc and microtransactions or even not being made at all.
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Objectively, aside from the cheaper version of Dark Swarm and Spider mines, Heart of the Swarm is still terribad.
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On July 21 2012 15:07 Black[CAT] wrote:
Objectively, aside from the cheaper version of Dark Swarm and Spider mines, Heart of the Swarm is still terribad.
This is the exact opposite of what this post was trying to foster. I personally don't hate SCII right now, its an eye pleasing game that is actually much better than most people on the forums give it credit, it isn't as developd as BW, but the magic will be there if the community makes it 10 years. BW is objectively just too hard for most gamers, and if one did not grow up with it, there is no way they would get into it without first discovering teamliquid. You see what that statement serves? Its a subjective view that is presented as an objective view, its exactly what you just did and its just a fallacy. You cannot say that a subjective view is objectively true for everyone. Right now SCII is turning into a much different game than that of BW and I think that is a good thing, we all know that SCII is not BWII and therefore it should be treated as such. IF the fan base wanted a BWII, it would be very helpful to have people play the BW mod on SCII rather than BW, that would be BWII, and yet very few people play BWII, they play the original. The point is you cannot say that SCII is a cheap rip when it is nothing like BW other than the fact it has the word Starcraft in it.
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doc,
I'm really glad you got the important message of the post, which is just to enjoy the game, instead of making comparisons to BW and how much more developed it was. While I was not a BW player, I can imagine that it took a very long time to take it to the level it is at. 10 years is an incredibly long time to work on one game, I definitely believe that all these problems with SC2 are simply just the growing pains of an incredibly advanced and deep strategy game.
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EPT
