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I find the game still interesting as a spectator, but only if I take rather long breaks from it, say 2-3 months and then go back to it. I think the main reason why my interest isnt constant is because the game changes so slowly, if I see 5 pvz's, chances are the next games I see in the upcoming months will be very similar to those 5, so it feels like watching reruns of those 5 games. Same goes for the other matchups. Maybe what I just said seems stupid to some of you, but thats how it feels to me.
Interestingly, compared to broodwar, these shifts in the meta are quite fast but the viewing experience isnt as exciting. Cant really pinpoint the reason for this, but my best guess is that this is due to oversaturation in the sc2 scene: I consume too much in a short period of time that I get tired of it, dunno if that makes sense. Another thing that really bugs me is the map pools, or rather the lack of map rotations, its always the same maps, when I see Entombed Valley, Daybreak or Antiga it makes me wanna pull me hair out. When ProLeague came out with new maps it reignited the same passion I had 2 years ago, I even started playing the game again.
Don't have any closing thoughts except that, in my personal experience what keeps me interested in something is constant changes.
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Starcraft is never going to die because Broodwar will never die, pretty simple.
Rightnow SC2 is filled with so many people who just ride the bandwagon wave. Once a new wave arrives we will see how many of them will remain in the scene. Maybe it will be many, maybe it will be few, we won't know until 3 years after LotV, which probably means 6 years from now.
Blizzard was smart, they hook up the players based on future expectations instead of the actual game. Now Blizzard just needs to find the most profitable timing to launch LotV and match the end of that wave with the beginning of their new game.
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On March 11 2013 16:15 Integra wrote:You do know that Warcraft2, a game which was created 1995 still is being played online, right? I'm one of those people  I guess it all comes down to on how you choose to define a online game as being dead.
Amen brother.
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I basically played "dead" games all my life. Games that weren't accepted by fans of the prequel, games whose player count decline, games that are simply niche. Who cares as long as you have fun with the game? I must laugh when people genuinely fear that a Blizzard game is "dying". Its nothing compared to the player base of other games. Yes, prize money, prestige and viewer count could drop, but this isn't what I care for. A core that truly likes the game will stay independent of these things and a smaller community is not necessarily a worse one.
On the other hand, I don't understand the hate for the Destiny post and other people that utter pessimistic posts. Ignoring the attitude that dismiss the post solely because of personal reasons (or the tone), I think he has made valid points. Different than seemingly many others, I never percepted "Starcraft is dying" as a fear-mongering prophecy (for the reasons mentioned above), but as a warning and alarm bells that were justified at that time. HotS DID underwhelm at the beginning of the beta and Blizzard DID communicate very poorly at that time. They also really dropped the ball regarding custom games/UMS. Ignoring these warning signals because for some reason the community wants to purge all negativity would be detrimental to the game and the community, I feel.
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great read.
I myself only came in on teamliquid at around late 2010 but teamliquid showed me one verry important thing.
it is not about the game you are playing, but who you are sharing it with^^
I myself still think there is a legit chance that sc:bw might come back in korea, even thou that would take away sc2 i am fine with it. becouse 1 thing i know is when people truely love something, it is almost imposable to disapear from their heart.
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I think the term "dying" could easily be replaced by "maturing". The people who lost interest because the game is no longer new are gone. The people who have become convinced the game still has fundemental unfixable flaws are gone. The people who mostly sought the game as a social experience who had their friends quit are gone. The remaining people are the ones who still burn for the game, the community and the competitive atmosphere. This is what the BW community is/was. It is what lesser games will never have.
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The success/failure of the game ultimately at it's core comes down to the gameplay. There's some mysterious myth that it's the community, or this tournament, or that tournament.
If blizzard does not make the core game, in terms of balance, gameplay, user interface excellent then consumers will decide to stay or go on to other games/things.
Ofc the hardcore will stay regardless, but there can't be a blind eye, especially in terms of spectator/balance/e-sports-wise.
Basically...we cannot have another "broodlord+infestor for 1.5 yrs" killing the game.
If blizzard balances the game this time around, people will watch. The core gameplay has to be there.
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You know avilo I agree with you. When I set out to talk about this issue yesterday I actually dove into points very similar to that. As I went on though, I started to realize there's a bigger picture to it all that's easy to forget in the day to day struggles of balance, or bnet, or anything related to the core game. It's easy to spend our days worrying about crap that at the end of the day might not even exist a month or two months from now. It's easy to lose sight of what's really important and what we all really want to see.
There's always been a bigger picture, at least for as long as I've been around since 2006. People were hardly even concerned about ESPORTS at all during this time and yet we still grew around a game which was seemingly glitchy as hell and had so many rage inducing problems and bugs.
In some ways the community carries the game. Things like broodlord+infestor will only kill the game if people let it. Simply having awareness of a small problem like that can help find a solution, whether it needs to be blizzard to come in and make a balance change, or the community to innovate and take things into our own hands. I guarantee you if something was left "broken" long enough maps would change or somebody would do something to help remedy whatever is "wrong"
There were all kinds of issues with broodwar which were overcome. Sure most of them weren't balance related but when things like the blizzard ladder and servers turned into utter shit and/or hacked, pgtour and iccup came along. When hacks in general started getting crazy people coded antihack programs. When the observing experience was weak things like chaoslauncher showed up. These kinds of things which came through the community enhanced the "core" product to fit the needs of what the community had expected. There was just a higher level that the community desired out of the game and time wasn't constantly spent crying over small obstacles, action was taken.
Sure Blizzard has sc2 on lockdown much harder than broodwar. Which makes things like custom ladders next to impossible without breaking the law. Sure we will never get LAN mode or other things which would greatly enhance the core product. But these "small" speedbumps only stop the train if people allow them to. There seems to be a bigger picture of why some of us are here and that I feel is important to keep in mind moving forward regardless of what our struggles today or tomorrow may be.
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You just made my shitty day a lot better; thanks for that.
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On March 11 2013 16:30 LuckyFool wrote:
The blog I spoke of last night had turned into such a convoluted mess I realized after taking a step back and asking myself what the larger picture really was, and what I really thought was going on...I realized my answer was 360 degrees different.
After getting over that mental roadblock this seemed to pop out of nowhere in less than half the time. Effortlessly too, Without having to make any edits or changes whatsoever. Can't remember EVER writing anything in recent times that came out as easily as this.
Your comments in that blog really confused me, since it didn't seem like it was your voice from what I've read of yours, but this definitely clears things up.
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Bisutopia19391 Posts
On March 11 2013 16:30 LuckyFool wrote:
The blog I spoke of last night had turned into such a convoluted mess I realized after taking a step back and asking myself what the larger picture really was, and what I really thought was going on...I realized my answer was 360 degrees different.
After getting over that mental roadblock this seemed to pop out of nowhere in less than half the time. Effortlessly too, Without having to make any edits or changes whatsoever. Can't remember EVER writing anything in recent times that came out as easily as this.
For some of us it's really easy to see what you have just realized. But I understand that sometimes the road to get there can be a hard travel.
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its not about surviving, its about growing. some people actually want to make something out of this.
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this blog words my feelings quite well (even though i wasn't around during bw days).
Thanks for it 
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On March 11 2013 20:09 FreakyDroid wrote:
I find the game still interesting as a spectator, but only if I take rather long breaks from it, say 2-3 months and then go back to it. I think the main reason why my interest isnt constant is because the game changes so slowly, if I see 5 pvz's, chances are the next games I see in the upcoming months will be very similar to those 5, so it feels like watching reruns of those 5 games. Same goes for the other matchups. Maybe what I just said seems stupid to some of you, but thats how it feels to me.
Interestingly, compared to broodwar, these shifts in the meta are quite fast but the viewing experience isnt as exciting. Cant really pinpoint the reason for this, but my best guess is that this is due to oversaturation in the sc2 scene: I consume too much in a short period of time that I get tired of it, dunno if that makes sense. Another thing that really bugs me is the map pools, or rather the lack of map rotations, its always the same maps, when I see Entombed Valley, Daybreak or Antiga it makes me wanna pull me hair out. When ProLeague came out with new maps it reignited the same passion I had 2 years ago, I even started playing the game again.
Don't have any closing thoughts except that, in my personal experience what keeps me interested in something is constant changes.
2011 SC2, the meta game was changing so rapidly. Most exciting time in WoL imo. I'm super excited for HotS because it's going to be like the magical 2011 WoL times
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On March 12 2013 07:52 MattBarry wrote:Show nested quote +On March 11 2013 20:09 FreakyDroid wrote:
I find the game still interesting as a spectator, but only if I take rather long breaks from it, say 2-3 months and then go back to it. I think the main reason why my interest isnt constant is because the game changes so slowly, if I see 5 pvz's, chances are the next games I see in the upcoming months will be very similar to those 5, so it feels like watching reruns of those 5 games. Same goes for the other matchups. Maybe what I just said seems stupid to some of you, but thats how it feels to me.
Interestingly, compared to broodwar, these shifts in the meta are quite fast but the viewing experience isnt as exciting. Cant really pinpoint the reason for this, but my best guess is that this is due to oversaturation in the sc2 scene: I consume too much in a short period of time that I get tired of it, dunno if that makes sense. Another thing that really bugs me is the map pools, or rather the lack of map rotations, its always the same maps, when I see Entombed Valley, Daybreak or Antiga it makes me wanna pull me hair out. When ProLeague came out with new maps it reignited the same passion I had 2 years ago, I even started playing the game again.
Don't have any closing thoughts except that, in my personal experience what keeps me interested in something is constant changes. 2011 SC2, the meta game was changing so rapidly. Most exciting time in WoL imo. I'm super excited for HotS because it's going to be like the magical 2011 WoL times
imo it'll be a lot better due to a better map pool and hopefully blizzard doesn't let any sort of composition (like bl/corr/infestor and how sky toss is looking in zvp) not be overpowered for to long. One thing that I feel really killed wol was the bl/corr/infestor composition in terms of enjoyment anyway. It wasn't dead, far from it but you could tell people were getting bored (especially playing as zerg got super boring since it was the only way to win consistently.)
Also to address Avilo's comment bl/corr/infestor wasn't a problem until may of 2012 (this is when the queen patch came and this is when zvt balance shifted from terran to zerg favored). All before that tvz was slightly terran favored almost the whole time (some parts being very terran favored as we all remember :D).
zvp it didn't start becoming so strong that they couldn't deal with it until about the same time as well, maybe a couple months later. Once all zergs started spreading bl's and stuff wasn't until about may-july of 2012 so didn't become a serious problem until then.
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Very nice writing, certainly very romantic.. However, won't SCII be dead as soon as Blizzard stops maintaining their servers? Broodwar, AoE2, and I believe CS would all be dead without private servers keeping them alive, since the official servers for those games have long stopped being maintained. And private servers are an impossibility with Star2.
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What you wrote about the game being the community and the beauty of the smallness and passion of the bw community reminded me of some thoughts I had last night while contemplating a blog I have to do for a uni subject.
I was thinking about how a lot of people are always excitedly looking forwards to a time when esports will be thriving, they'll be able to watch sc2 on tv channels and sc2/LoL etc etc will be considered sports up there with basketball, cricket and soccer and it will have such widespread popularity that little kids will grow up with it like they might with any other sport.
But I think this is unlikely in the extreme. And upon further thought, I don't think I even want this. There's something nice about a niche community and doing something and enjoying watching it that not everyone does, or even knows about.
Edit: good read. 5/5
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EPT
