EPTThis post is about Blizzard and StarCraft II, about it's problems, and what we can do about it. I'm writing this in Blog, because I'm not sure where else could this belong, also I've got a feeling, that this would be closed very quickly as a thread.
First of all, I would like to begin by introducing myself a bit:
I've been playing BW for 6-7 years. I've always loved that game. At the time, I was playing many games, of many genres. I played a lot of FPS, RPGs, or other non RTS strategy games. But RTS remained my favorite. When WarCraft III came out, I started playing it, but I felt like this was more RPG (becuase of heroes) than it should be, so I stack with BW. At first I played a lot of UMS and fun maps, like Big Game Hunters, but a few years later I started to take it more seriously. I was still in BW e-Sport golden ages, but I was having fun. A lot of fun. Later, I switched to DotA, because of my brother and his friends, and also because BW was getting old. It was around 2007-8. And then StarCraft II came out. After finishing the campaign I decided that will try my best to accomplish whatever I can in this game. I've been practicing as much as I could (not so much, because gaming has always been secondary for me, so it was like 1-2 hours a day on average). Since the first season I've been in Master league, and always quite near to GM. I've never made it to GM, because I didn't play enough.
My first surprise at StarCraft II was that, I achieved Master so easily, even though I was never that good at it. First I thought, it was because of BW experience. But months later, when I was following SC2 progaming, I realized that it wasn't for BW skills. No, it was because this game is too easy. No real micro units are available to us, nor position control like Lurkers, Reavers, Tanks (well despite Tanks, but they have been nerfed to death). Also, I must mention that I play Zerg, because I chose Zerg back in BW days, when I first saw them. I utterly fell in love with that race. On the other hand, in SC2 that race is incredibly boring. You secure 3 bases, macro up for 15 minutes, and then max out and a-move, whether you win or lose depends on one fight. About half year ago, you could actually see a lot of builds, which required some level of micro management and multitasking to pull off. But nowadays, it's just camping for 15 minutes, then proceed to a big maxed fight, where you can't see anything, everything just blows up, and you win or lose. It's became incredibly boring to play and to watch. Now I don't want to play this game at all. No micro is required, no multitasking, any scrub can destroy me who knows how to make 2 base immo sentry push. Whether I hold it or not, won't depend that much on skill. I think everyone knows the problems of SC2, beside, that's not even the purpose of this thread.
Why I'm actually writing this, is because there is a big boom on TL about SC2's future. Every second post is about how fast and why will SC2 fail. Many people have spoken their minds, but Blizzard doesn't really care. Whoever believes that they care, is fooling himself. There are reasons why they don't care. First of all, Blizzard has become enormous capitalistic company which has bought many smaller gaming companies. Blizzard is like Microsoft, and they both are killing the gaming industry. Let's see how:
Microsoft:
X-box 360 came out around 2005. Since then, they have never upgraded their hardware. Never. Not a little bit. Programmers have been optimizing their games as best as they could, but since about 2008, every game has the same graphics. That's because they just can't pull more out of it. It's impossible. That's hardware of year 2003, not 2012, for god's sake. But why does this affect PC games? That's simple. Because the most developers want to make as much money as they can, but due to piracy and amount of people who play on PC, it's quite obvious that they will release games on X-box. But whenever they release on PC and X-box simultaneously, the graphics on both platforms is the same. I guess Microsoft doesn't let smaller companies to release games on X-box without ensuring that PC's version won't have better graphics.
RTS was the genre that has suffered too much. You can't play RTS on consoles, so you can't have money from RTS. If you think about it, SC2 is the only recent RTS game.
And here comes the Blizzard:
I've played every Blizzard game since WarCraft I, and I love every one of those. Blizzard has made only exceptional products till WoW. I've never played WoW, because I'm not into MMO-s, but I've heard that after the original WoW, the next expansions were all trash. I don't know whether it's true or not, but I wouldn't be surprised. The original WoW has made so much money, that it changed the company and it's faith completely. Blizzard is no more a little company which produces games for hardcore gamers and for themselves to be proud of, but instead is a big capitalistic black hole which sucked many small companies, and which is the worst of all, they have no concurrent. No wonder that SC2 and Diablo III was crap. Becuase they don't care. They no longer make games for hardcore players, now they only care about money and make for 13-year old kids, who don't want to spend their time on micro, macro and whatever, they don't even know what that is. The problem is that these kids can switch to new CoD any day, and we can see this happening today. They all switch to other games, for example LoL. This caused chaos and crisis in SC2's world, which we are experiencing today. Every second post on TL is about this crisis. Here I will link few, which are the most popular:
Destiny's post
Slayer's disband
Grubby's post
And my favorite is this one:
StarCraft Crisis
This guy tells my every thought, it's like I'm hearing myself. Definitely check it out, and his video!!
Also there are more reasons why this is happening, more core problems of SC2, for example these:
Shitty UI
No LAN
But the question is: what happens now? Well CatZ and few other progamers want to talk to Blizzard about the game, and how to make it better. That's a good idea, except that Blizzard will NEVER listen to them. They don't care. They really don't. If they didn't implement these simple things in 2 years and came with that piece of shit (HotS), then why would they listen now? They will say, you don't make games, so we don't care. So will 13-year old Blizzard fanboys.
Overall, the SC2 is dead. The older BW/W3 fans either switched to LoL, Dota or stack with SC2 because this is the only RTS game out there. We need another RTS. Fortunately PC platform is reviving. People began to make free-to-play games, like League of Legends, and there is great opportunity to get money for these projects, with the help of kickstarter.com. And it works. It really does work. The thing we need to achieve is to show young and enthusiastic programmers, who want to create good games, that we, the hardcore RTS gamers are still out there. Sure you can tell me to shut up and go play Dota, but no. I like Dota, I like many other game genres, but I can't see myself compete in other genre. RTS is everything for me. When you feel in control of your whole army. When you can outmicro your opponent, to make beautiful moves, which can shock others. When you know that everything you do will have effect on you and your opponent. I love RTS, and I'm sure as hell there are many people out there who love RTS as much as I do. We need RTS which would not repeat the same mistakes as SC2 and learn from best RTS games like BW or W3. There are older threads which describe the core problems of SC2, but nobody has cares until now. Now, when everyone knows, that this won't get any better.
These threads describe these problems very well:
EternalLegacy's first part
Second post
LaLush's post
Abillities which kill micro
And finally, I'd like to see what you guys think about it, and how many people actually want a new, fresh RTS, which could become the real e-Sport RTS game.
Poll: Would you like to see new RTS?
Hell yes (54)
72%
No, you're dumb, GTFO (13)
17%
Maybe, but SC2 could still be good... (8)
11%
75 total votes
No, you're dumb, GTFO (13)
Maybe, but SC2 could still be good... (8)
75 total votes
Your vote: Would you like to see new RTS?
(Vote): Hell yes
(Vote): No, you're dumb, GTFO
(Vote): Maybe, but SC2 could still be good...
EDIT: Newest thread about sc2s problems here
