EPTThere is one topic I have made several posts (replies, to be exact) about in that forum however: my desire for Starcraft 2 to have a centralized Blizzard-operated replay database. The comparison I always draw in Command and Conquer 3 which had the ability after every ladder game to choose 'upload to EA Online' or something like that. Personally I think it should save the replay automatically and not even ask, and the rest of this post follows that train of thought.
The replays all went to this EA website and it allowed you to do some fantastic stuff. In truth, this is a feature they seemed to half-finish in CnC3. The website was painful to use and didn't give much power in the way of querying. But, Blizzard can do better. They always do.
First of all: convenient place to store replays. The maker of the game should be fully ready to provide some awesome repDepot style parsing of the replays. No longer do we have to worry about rapidshare or it's brethren in the strategy forum: just link directly to your game in the Blizzard database.
Then there is the value in having a 'replay pack' automatically available for every player in the world. How fast would the evolution of the game (not to mention Blizzard's ability to balance it) if at any time anyone can go check out the recent replays of the top ladder players? How much depth is this going to add to clan wars when each player is going to have an easy go-to source for analyzing the way their opponents play? And for the really hard-core fans among us, how could you resist following your favorite player's un-televised games on the ladder?
It goes beyond this, if done really well. For example: if every ladder game is automatically going to be uploaded to this site, why wait for the game to finish to do that? Just stream the game up to the site, perhaps putting in a time-delay to prevent abuse, and you have a potential way to watch live-streams of top ladder players which are ultra-low bandwidth and ultra-high quality (replays). Awesome.
Apply this to tournaments as well. Go to the site and look up a given tournament: bam, all the replays could be there laid out in brackets (with spoiler tags to prevent you from seeing further along then you want to!). Or to watch a tournament with the live replay-stream. It doesn't just have to be official Blizzard-hosted tournaments either: they could easily give people the ability to create their own tournaments.
Lets Web2.0 it up with user-ratings on replays too, eh?
Finally, if the query tool on the site were robust enough it would be a really powerful tool for advancing your knowledge of the game and for the strategy discussion. "10 most recent replays from the top 10 protoss on this map vs terran please", "10 top rated replays by Nony against zerg on this map please", "20 most recent replays by (guy I am playing in next clanwar) against my race on this map please".
So.. The reason I was inspired to write this post up is this:
http://www.gosugamers.net/starcraft/news/8624-blog-starcraft-2-is-amazingly-fun
"What's really unique with StarCraft 2 is that multiplayer is actually being finished before singleplayer. We never did that before", Karune said. "We're really focusing on the eSports development for the game. We'll also include some neat features that helps you guys to organize and share the replays a lot easier, following matches easier and such things. "
So.. Maybe there is a hope that Blizzard is doing exactly what I am hoping for.
The other reason is I wanted to use the safety of blog-land to vet this idea out and see what everyone thinks about it? If it seems like a good idea I can always make a post in the Starcraft 2 forum where it is perhaps more likely to be seen by Blizzard... But I have avoided making a whole topic about it so far since the Starcraft 2 forum is.. well it is what it is.
