EPTMany of you have probably never played the game. Heck, many of you are probably wondering "uhh is that like War3?" War2 was an amazing game for its time. Back in 1995, it was the most popular RTS game.
This was before Battle.net, so people had to use Kali to play other people. I never used Kali myself (could never get parents to buy it) but I can remember the days when I used to connect dial-up to a friend and play 1v1 for hours.
There was no progaming scene, there were no major tournaments, and there was no teamliquid equivalent. But it was my obsession back in grade school. I would "mod" the game by changing up unit stats and playing my own version of War2. I would try obsessively to beat my friend, who always kicked my ass.
Players were dedicated. Thankfully, some of them happened to be programmers and legit modding tools became available. Once I found PUDDraft, I could not live without it. It allowed me to place custom doodads, edit the missiles fired by units, and a whole lot of other things. It was everything that a map editor should have had. I still remember the creator's name -- Alexander Ceche. I was a huge fan.
All these developments were happening, and then Starcraft was released.
It was like War2, but with better graphics, better sound, one extra race, and Battle.net.
I can recollect my first time playing it. I was Terran and I moved some marines around.
"Marines. Big deal."
My fear that War2 would fade into oblivion forced me to ignore it. "Starcraft is cool, but Warcraft 2 is my favorite game."
I soon moved to Korea, and because War2 wasn't equipped with Battle.net, I couldn't play with my friend in the states anymore. I was basically forced to quit War2.
In that time, however, I did pick up Starcraft. It was the cyber boom in Korea. PC-bangs everywhere, shitty economy a la IMF crisis. If you were a male in Korea circa 1999 and you didn't know Starcraft, you weren't awake. I was Terran and I played the game tirelessly.
After all those years, War2 still had a special place in my heart. When I heard that War2 Battle.net addition was going to come out, I was ecstatic. When I was back in the states in 2000, I started War2 gaming again.
Battle.net revived War2 like no other. It was as if the dormant passions of War2 players suddenly awoke all at once. I could play the game with anyone in the world. Like USEast Starcraft servers, War2 was mostly filled with 3v3 BGH-type maps. I joined a clan. I racked up a lot of games. The ladder, as always, was corrupt and hacking was rampant. Organizations started hosting tourneys.
In any case, it got me back in the game. I made new PUDs, new unit statistics, new everything. Some independent programmers would eventually develop replays for the game. Yea, War2 never had replays. You could never watch or share your awesome games with anyone. I would always be on the lookout for the next piece of modding tool so I can try out some new things.
But new things stopped happening. Development stopped.
Alexander Ceche had stopped making updates a long time ago. The community reached its peak and started dwindling. There were no longer pages of games to choose from on Battle.net. No more clans vying for position and trash-talking each other, only a few random UMS games and maybe a few 2v2s. 3v3s were impossible to fill.
Truth be told, War2 was deficient on many levels. In the Battle.net edition, Blizzard added an extra speed that was faster than before. That made the game incredibly hard to play accurately. Micro was near impossible. Also, Orcs had Bloodlust which was just ridiculously overpowered.
Luckily, by the time War2 was truly fading, I was into Starcraft. It was the new awesome favorite game. Then War3 came out. We hated it. We were the older sibling and War3 was the newborn. It got all the attention. Soon, SC would very rarely get updates and Battle.net was abandoned by Blizzard. But we stayed on because, simply, SC was a better game.
The release of SC2 reminds me of all these things. War2 is now an old shell of what it used to be. The only remnants are a few players on private servers and still-die-hard fans posting once in a while about the game on Starcraft forums trying to get more players interested. War2 was a great game for its time. Starcraft turned out to be better. War3 was unable to replace Starcraft. What about SC2?
At least back then, there was no centralized "go to" place for War2 news. People migrated slowly, if at all. People like me still hanging on which kept the exodus from accelerating too quickly. Now we have teamliquid, all the streams, and information that spreads like wildfire.
Will SC's fire dim to embers only to be found sporadically in SC2 forums, to make people aware of "this awesome game you should check out"? Will it fade to darkness as quickly as War2 only to be revived with a Battle.net 2.0 upgrade? It seems like yesterday when all the top players were competing fiercely for titles in SC and developers trying hard to make mods and tools to analyze replays.
War2 went through a number of stages before demise.
1) Loss of Battle.net players
2) Loss of clans
3) Loss of tournaments
4) Loss of Blizzard support
5) Loss of 3rd party development
6) Loss of community websites
I'm seeing some of these symptoms from SC already.
1) We'll have to see if ICCup user count diminishes.
2) Clans have definitely been thinning out.
3) Tournaments might still stay alive, if only because of Korea.
4) Blizzard has already stopped.
5) MasterOfChaos?
6) Teamliquid! The SC2 section is huge and will soon overtake everything.
I got over War2. Maybe I'll get over SC.
