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Keep "my game is better than yours"-slapfights out of this. If the discussion devolves into simple bashing, this thread will be closed. |
On July 15 2014 23:05 Xiphos wrote:Show nested quote +On July 15 2014 09:47 Cheren wrote:On July 15 2014 05:09 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 04:43 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 04:10 SupLilSon wrote:On July 15 2014 02:55 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 02:03 SupLilSon wrote:On July 15 2014 01:38 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 01:12 SupLilSon wrote:
The time for the RTS genre to make a comeback was 2-3 years ago when SC2's popularity was surging and spearheading the E-Sports community. MOBA's, digital card games, FPS, and fighting games all surpass SC2 in Esports popularity now and thus there's going to be very little incentive for developers to work on RTS titles unless it's a passion project.
Let's face it, Blizzard had ample chances to rejuvenate the RTS genre but they seem to have other plans that don't involve SC2. Some people will look to LotV as a savior, but in the end it'll just introduce a few poorly designed units, a cookie cutter campaign, and absolutely nothing to fix the game.
Blizzard has largely given up on SC2... they are already developing their next titles (a MOBA and most likely a MMO) and I don't expect them to return to the RTS genre for a long while... if ever. They're developing LotV at the moment. You can only expect them to have one RTS project at a time. Its just not as profitable as their other stuff. After LotV is out they'll work on the next thing. RTS games are important to Blizzards brand identity. They might be the only big developer to not give up on the genre. I would even go so far as to say they'll support the genre even if it loses them money(which it won't). Also, SC2 is broken? That's a tough argument to make, but I'm willing to hear you out. RTS games are not crucial to Blizzard's brand identity... The Warcraft lore and franchise might be , but not the RTS genre. Activision Blizzard doesn't give a shit about anything BESIDES profits. If the genre is not producing revenue then they will give up on it, simple as that. If Blizzard had some sentimental attachment to RTS titles they wouldn't have failed so comically with SC2 and HotS and then withdrawn virtually all support. Blizzard knows they fucked up hard with SC2, they know they fucked up hard with Diablo 3 and they know that they missed the boat on the MOBA front. They are funneling resources into their next MMO, a genre where they still have some legitimacy. If they ever return to making RTS games it won't be for a very long time. Also about SC2 being "broken", I don't want to derail the thread but there have been tons of good posts about the topic. Check out the recent "Welcome to ZPCraft II" thread as it contains a massive amount of information and does a better job at explaining than I ever could. Obviously everyone's definition of "broken" can be different but just look at the harsh decline SC2 has experienced since it's inception and ask yourself if the game is really in good shape... A lot wrong here. SC2 and D3 were both enormously successful, selling millions of copies worldwide. Last I remember hearing about it SC2:WOL had sold over 6 million copies and D3 over 12 million. So I'm not sure from a business point of view how either of those could be considered fuck ups. I'm also not sure why you think Blizzard has withdrawn all support. Last I checked, Blizzard still releases patches for SC2, funds the WCS tournament system, and is currently developing an expansion pack which is essentially guaranteed to sell 2-3 million copies. SC2 has lost a large percentage of the playerbase it had at launch, but this is to be expected. Most people don't play one game, forever. There is no reason to believe a theoretical SC3 wouldn't have an enormously successful launch. Coming late to the party does not mean Blizzard missed the boat on the MOBA front. They were late to the party with MMO's as well (remember Everquest? Me neither). On the subject of branding, which is directly related to revenue: Brands have value. They help consumers create positive associations with a company which in turn drives sales. There's a reason GM maintains the Cadillac brand despite it being responsible for far less revenue than Chevy or Buick. You can think of Starcraft as the Cadillac of Blizzard-Activision, if that makes it easier for you. On being broken or not, which I won't get into detail here, except to point out that these balance issues are really only evident at the Korean GM level. For 99%+ of the player base the game works as intended. If your, for instance, quit the game because you kept losing to Protoss that wouldn't be evidence of the game being broken. A player on the micro scale shouldn't expect 50-50 in all their matchups. On a macro scale things work fine. Good post with a lot of merit, but I still disagree with you. First off, I think we have different definitions of success. I cannot argue against the fact that all of these games have had great opening sales numbers. I'll hand it to Blizzard, they are great at marketing with fantastic cinematics and playing off the success of their past titles. Even given how much I bash them online, I'm always hyped about their upcoming games. However, people often like to point only to the opening sales numbers for D3 and SC2 and claim them as successes, and in my eyes that is disingenuous. Despite their massive opening sales and success, neither of these games retained that popularity and dwindled (D3 much quicker than SC2 lol). When talking about E-Sports titles, such as SC2 (not so much D3) I consider that a failure. SC2 is like the Transformers movie franchise, tons of hype, tons of ticket sales but not much substance or longevity. You say losing your player base is to be expected, but that simply isn't what we see from other premier E-Sports titles. DotA2 and LoL have both been growing and surpassing SC2 since their releases, despite their modest grassroots beginnings (considering DotA1, I know Valve is a large company). And as for brands, I'm not saying Blizzard will completely scrap the Starcraft Universe. RTS titles are NOT the brand, the Starcraft Universe and name is. They can reuse the lore and framework from the Starcraft franchise but package it into a different genre. Think how they transitioned WC3 from an RTS into an MMO. Or how they are taking elements of Diablo, WC and SC and funneling them into a MOBA instead of their traditional platforms. Or WC into the CCG Hearthstone. Activision/Blizzard will sure as shit keep milking the Starcraft and Warcraft franchises for all they are worth but they don't care whether its as an RTS or not. I'm not saying Blizzard will 100% never make another RTS, that would be silly, but I am willing to bet that developing another RTS is not their priority. Considering World of Warcraft... while EQ was out for a while beforehand, WoW presented the first real alternative to my knowledge. The MOBA scene is much more established and has numerous titles besides just LoL and DotA2. I'd argue that the conditions surrounding the release of Heroes of the Storm is a much different environment than WoW's release. And as for the SC2 being broke stuff, it's not just about balance... posters like LaLush have pointed out flaws in SC2 that go beyond balance and the top pros. If the game is working as intended, then so be it, but obviously for many players the game was lacking something. Ah yes, we certainly have different ideas of what constitutes a success. I would argue that given SC2 and D3 (which I found lacking, tbh) were sold as full priced games, I think Blizzard must've been ecstatic with how these games were received(eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched). For the majority of the market these are essentially single player games (D3 is obviously a co-op game, but I don't think Blizzard expected the majority of the audience to keep playing after finishing the campaign once or twice). Remember outside of Korea, competitive Brood War was an even smaller niche than competitive SC2. These F2P MOBA's are a completely different business model and one that could never work for a game like SC. With Hearthstone, Blizzard has thrown it's hat into the F2P marketplace with phenomenal success and I wouldn't count them out of the MOBA game yet. RTS doesn't have to be a top priority for the company and it isn't. That just means we have to wait longer than WoW players to get expansions/sequels. Blizzard-Activision can budget every project accordingly; it's not a zero sum game. They don't need to take resources off of Hearthstone, for instance, to keep developing RTS games. SC2 didn't invent "esport" in non-Korean countries. If we were talking about "sport" along, Tetris can even be called one. The proper term we should be using is "professional gaming". WC3 was HUGE in European countries + China DotA was already HUGE in China. Halo competition was HUGE in North America through MLG Counter-Strike was being played pretty much as "the" team-based competition in all nations and was "the" game to watch during WCG. Hell, in Japan, there are many rhythm game competition. And all over the world, there are still fighting game competitions all around with Street Fighters, Tekken, and King of Fighters players. When SC2 came out, it wasn't evolutionary by any means. All it did manage to capture was introducing the ability to make cash while streaming online but that has been done even during the SC1 era with Afreeca balloon donation. SC2 might have coinced the term "esport", but while coining the term, we have to realize that "esport" was around even a decade before SC2's release. It wasn't on TV and there wasn't really HD streaming before 2010, so yeah esports existed outside Korea but TV-like broadcasts in HD certainly weren't around to a large extent before SC2. But SC2 weren't on non-Korean television either. The only time where SC2 came to be on TV was Boss from DH announced it for DH. But other games were also included. Therefore, it wasn't evolutionary in any sense. Show nested quote +On July 15 2014 07:18 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 06:32 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 06:12 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 05:09 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 04:43 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 04:10 SupLilSon wrote:On July 15 2014 02:55 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 02:03 SupLilSon wrote:On July 15 2014 01:38 sc2isnotdying wrote:
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They're developing LotV at the moment. You can only expect them to have one RTS project at a time. Its just not as profitable as their other stuff. After LotV is out they'll work on the next thing. RTS games are important to Blizzards brand identity. They might be the only big developer to not give up on the genre. I would even go so far as to say they'll support the genre even if it loses them money(which it won't).
Also, SC2 is broken? That's a tough argument to make, but I'm willing to hear you out. RTS games are not crucial to Blizzard's brand identity... The Warcraft lore and franchise might be , but not the RTS genre. Activision Blizzard doesn't give a shit about anything BESIDES profits. If the genre is not producing revenue then they will give up on it, simple as that. If Blizzard had some sentimental attachment to RTS titles they wouldn't have failed so comically with SC2 and HotS and then withdrawn virtually all support. Blizzard knows they fucked up hard with SC2, they know they fucked up hard with Diablo 3 and they know that they missed the boat on the MOBA front. They are funneling resources into their next MMO, a genre where they still have some legitimacy. If they ever return to making RTS games it won't be for a very long time. Also about SC2 being "broken", I don't want to derail the thread but there have been tons of good posts about the topic. Check out the recent "Welcome to ZPCraft II" thread as it contains a massive amount of information and does a better job at explaining than I ever could. Obviously everyone's definition of "broken" can be different but just look at the harsh decline SC2 has experienced since it's inception and ask yourself if the game is really in good shape... A lot wrong here. SC2 and D3 were both enormously successful, selling millions of copies worldwide. Last I remember hearing about it SC2:WOL had sold over 6 million copies and D3 over 12 million. So I'm not sure from a business point of view how either of those could be considered fuck ups. I'm also not sure why you think Blizzard has withdrawn all support. Last I checked, Blizzard still releases patches for SC2, funds the WCS tournament system, and is currently developing an expansion pack which is essentially guaranteed to sell 2-3 million copies. SC2 has lost a large percentage of the playerbase it had at launch, but this is to be expected. Most people don't play one game, forever. There is no reason to believe a theoretical SC3 wouldn't have an enormously successful launch. Coming late to the party does not mean Blizzard missed the boat on the MOBA front. They were late to the party with MMO's as well (remember Everquest? Me neither). On the subject of branding, which is directly related to revenue: Brands have value. They help consumers create positive associations with a company which in turn drives sales. There's a reason GM maintains the Cadillac brand despite it being responsible for far less revenue than Chevy or Buick. You can think of Starcraft as the Cadillac of Blizzard-Activision, if that makes it easier for you. On being broken or not, which I won't get into detail here, except to point out that these balance issues are really only evident at the Korean GM level. For 99%+ of the player base the game works as intended. If your, for instance, quit the game because you kept losing to Protoss that wouldn't be evidence of the game being broken. A player on the micro scale shouldn't expect 50-50 in all their matchups. On a macro scale things work fine. Good post with a lot of merit, but I still disagree with you. First off, I think we have different definitions of success. I cannot argue against the fact that all of these games have had great opening sales numbers. I'll hand it to Blizzard, they are great at marketing with fantastic cinematics and playing off the success of their past titles. Even given how much I bash them online, I'm always hyped about their upcoming games. However, people often like to point only to the opening sales numbers for D3 and SC2 and claim them as successes, and in my eyes that is disingenuous. Despite their massive opening sales and success, neither of these games retained that popularity and dwindled (D3 much quicker than SC2 lol). When talking about E-Sports titles, such as SC2 (not so much D3) I consider that a failure. SC2 is like the Transformers movie franchise, tons of hype, tons of ticket sales but not much substance or longevity. You say losing your player base is to be expected, but that simply isn't what we see from other premier E-Sports titles. DotA2 and LoL have both been growing and surpassing SC2 since their releases, despite their modest grassroots beginnings (considering DotA1, I know Valve is a large company). And as for brands, I'm not saying Blizzard will completely scrap the Starcraft Universe. RTS titles are NOT the brand, the Starcraft Universe and name is. They can reuse the lore and framework from the Starcraft franchise but package it into a different genre. Think how they transitioned WC3 from an RTS into an MMO. Or how they are taking elements of Diablo, WC and SC and funneling them into a MOBA instead of their traditional platforms. Or WC into the CCG Hearthstone. Activision/Blizzard will sure as shit keep milking the Starcraft and Warcraft franchises for all they are worth but they don't care whether its as an RTS or not. I'm not saying Blizzard will 100% never make another RTS, that would be silly, but I am willing to bet that developing another RTS is not their priority. Considering World of Warcraft... while EQ was out for a while beforehand, WoW presented the first real alternative to my knowledge. The MOBA scene is much more established and has numerous titles besides just LoL and DotA2. I'd argue that the conditions surrounding the release of Heroes of the Storm is a much different environment than WoW's release. And as for the SC2 being broke stuff, it's not just about balance... posters like LaLush have pointed out flaws in SC2 that go beyond balance and the top pros. If the game is working as intended, then so be it, but obviously for many players the game was lacking something. Ah yes, we certainly have different ideas of what constitutes a success. I would argue that given SC2 and D3 (which I found lacking, tbh) were sold as full priced games, I think Blizzard must've been ecstatic with how these games were received(eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched). For the majority of the market these are essentially single player games (D3 is obviously a co-op game, but I don't think Blizzard expected the majority of the audience to keep playing after finishing the campaign once or twice). Remember outside of Korea, competitive Brood War was an even smaller niche than competitive SC2. These F2P MOBA's are a completely different business model and one that could never work for a game like SC. With Hearthstone, Blizzard has thrown it's hat into the F2P marketplace with phenomenal success and I wouldn't count them out of the MOBA game yet. RTS doesn't have to be a top priority for the company and it isn't. That just means we have to wait longer than WoW players to get expansions/sequels. Blizzard-Activision can budget every project accordingly; it's not a zero sum game. They don't need to take resources off of Hearthstone, for instance, to keep developing RTS games. SC2 didn't invent "esport" in non-Korean countries. If we were talking about "sport" along, Tetris can even be called one. The proper term we should be using is "professional gaming". WC3 was HUGE in European countries + China DotA was already HUGE in China. Halo competition was HUGE in North America through MLG Counter-Strike was being played pretty much as "the" team-based competition in all nations and was "the" game to watch during WCG. Hell, in Japan, there are many rhythm game competition. And all over the world, there are still fighting game competitions all around with Street Fighters, Tekken, and King of Fighters players. When SC2 came out, it wasn't evolutionary by any means. All it did manage to capture was introducing the ability to make cash while streaming online but that has been done even during the SC1 era with Afreeca balloon donation. SC2 might have coinced the term "esport", but while coining the term, we have to realize that "esport" was around even a decade before SC2's release. Calm down. I wasn't talking broadly about competitive games with healthy tournament scenes and certainly didn't claim SC2 "invented" esports; that would be taking my post out of context. When I say at the time of SC2's release, esports wasn't really a thing(outside of Korea), I was making a reference to the business side. I think Blizzard thought the only money to be made from esports was in Korea. For a company like Blizzard, esports wasn't something they cared about. The money wasn't there. But then that all changed and it wasn't because of SC2. It was because of Twitch and it was because of LoL. Then all of sudden, Blizzard created the WCS and seemed to care about esports outside of Korea. Even talking about the business side, there were ALWAYS money to be made from competitive gaming so your entire point is moot. Now you are digressing to Blizzard caring about esport. No the point was that you said that "eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched". And regarding "esport" with Blizzard, they specifically said that SC2 was launching to cater toward "esports" and the reason why they added MBS, automine, unlimited unit selects WAS to cater toward the non-Koreans (aka the "casuals) from the get-go to shorten the gap b/w foreigners and Koreans. So they (Blizzard) absolutely knew that there were a non-Korean market for "esport". Until very recently whatever money there was in esports was small potatoes. I don't think that is such a controversial statement. Obviously Blizzard knew there was going to be a market for SC2 tournament play from the beginning of the design process; WC3 had such a scene. My point, which is clear through context, is that Blizzard wouldn't have considered the esports market to be an important part of their business strategy. SC2 was about selling as many copies as possible at full retail price. That was the model. They weren't investing in esports, because why would they? The upside wasn't there. That changed. WCS inserted a lot of money into the international scene, the exact same time Twitch exploded. Now that there was a viable platform for esports outside of Korea, Blizzard got in the game. Before Twitch esports wasn't really a thing. I stand by that. It's really not such a controversial notion. WCG is dead. MLG was a money loser. Still is. It's just now approaching profitability as a kind of premium version of Twitch. So no, there wasn't ALWAYS money to be made from competitive gaming. You are talking about now. Back then both MLG + WCG were the absolutely pinnacle of professional gaming. They were doing better financially than nowadays. WCG's bread and butter was WC3 + CS + BW. With the arrival of SC2 and CS:GO, all three assets were diluted for WCG and especially how they couldn't reach Riot or Valve for LoL and DotA2. So what end up happening was that the money made from WCG transferred into WCS for SC2. Thus there was ALWAYS money to be made from competitive gaming in non-Korean places. This shouldn't even be argued against xD. You are basically saying that how Blizzcon, WCG, QuakeCon, China DotA tournaments doesn't exist before SC2. No that's an extremely wrong mindset.
It's hard for me to speak to the financial viability of the Chinese scene. The nature of how China operates makes that kind of a non-point for a Western company like Blizzard at any rate. MLG, I can tell you for certain, has NEVER been profitable and is in better shape now than it has ever been. It's been able to keep attracting the type of investors that like to gamble on high-risk companies with potentially huge payoffs down the line. That's how Silicon Valley works.
You're arguing something completely besides my point. I'm not making the argument that professional gaming literately didn't exist before 2012, but rather that professional gaming was small potatoes. A tiny, high risk/low reward industry. Blizzard swims in a bigger pond. With the rise of Twitch, the game changed. All of a sudden the world of esports had billion dollar stakes. Google bought Twitch. Riot invests millions into the LoL scene. Valve, likewise, is doing the same with DoTA 2, and Blizzard has renewed interest in professional SC2. This is a far cry from Blizzard and id Software hosting promotional tournaments at their fan conventions. Sponsors have always found promotional value in the professional gaming market, but for the startups that actually ran these things, they either lost money or at the very best operated on thin margins.
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I'm just re-entering the discussion now. What do people think about team games in RTS? It seems to me like if one was going to deconstruct the genre and reconstruct it then team games would be a great place to start. I think it would be cool to see an RTS designed as a team game and as a 1v1 game and would be way more interested in that than an RTS designed as a1v1 game and as a single player game. (Though I absolutely adore the WC3 campaign, and the HoTS campeign isn't bad. But they have limited replayability).
Thoughts on what a team orientated RTS would look like?
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On July 15 2014 06:12 sc2isnotdying wrote:Show nested quote +On July 15 2014 05:09 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 04:43 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 04:10 SupLilSon wrote:On July 15 2014 02:55 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 02:03 SupLilSon wrote:On July 15 2014 01:38 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 01:12 SupLilSon wrote:
The time for the RTS genre to make a comeback was 2-3 years ago when SC2's popularity was surging and spearheading the E-Sports community. MOBA's, digital card games, FPS, and fighting games all surpass SC2 in Esports popularity now and thus there's going to be very little incentive for developers to work on RTS titles unless it's a passion project.
Let's face it, Blizzard had ample chances to rejuvenate the RTS genre but they seem to have other plans that don't involve SC2. Some people will look to LotV as a savior, but in the end it'll just introduce a few poorly designed units, a cookie cutter campaign, and absolutely nothing to fix the game.
Blizzard has largely given up on SC2... they are already developing their next titles (a MOBA and most likely a MMO) and I don't expect them to return to the RTS genre for a long while... if ever. They're developing LotV at the moment. You can only expect them to have one RTS project at a time. Its just not as profitable as their other stuff. After LotV is out they'll work on the next thing. RTS games are important to Blizzards brand identity. They might be the only big developer to not give up on the genre. I would even go so far as to say they'll support the genre even if it loses them money(which it won't). Also, SC2 is broken? That's a tough argument to make, but I'm willing to hear you out. RTS games are not crucial to Blizzard's brand identity... The Warcraft lore and franchise might be , but not the RTS genre. Activision Blizzard doesn't give a shit about anything BESIDES profits. If the genre is not producing revenue then they will give up on it, simple as that. If Blizzard had some sentimental attachment to RTS titles they wouldn't have failed so comically with SC2 and HotS and then withdrawn virtually all support. Blizzard knows they fucked up hard with SC2, they know they fucked up hard with Diablo 3 and they know that they missed the boat on the MOBA front. They are funneling resources into their next MMO, a genre where they still have some legitimacy. If they ever return to making RTS games it won't be for a very long time. Also about SC2 being "broken", I don't want to derail the thread but there have been tons of good posts about the topic. Check out the recent "Welcome to ZPCraft II" thread as it contains a massive amount of information and does a better job at explaining than I ever could. Obviously everyone's definition of "broken" can be different but just look at the harsh decline SC2 has experienced since it's inception and ask yourself if the game is really in good shape... A lot wrong here. SC2 and D3 were both enormously successful, selling millions of copies worldwide. Last I remember hearing about it SC2:WOL had sold over 6 million copies and D3 over 12 million. So I'm not sure from a business point of view how either of those could be considered fuck ups. I'm also not sure why you think Blizzard has withdrawn all support. Last I checked, Blizzard still releases patches for SC2, funds the WCS tournament system, and is currently developing an expansion pack which is essentially guaranteed to sell 2-3 million copies. SC2 has lost a large percentage of the playerbase it had at launch, but this is to be expected. Most people don't play one game, forever. There is no reason to believe a theoretical SC3 wouldn't have an enormously successful launch. Coming late to the party does not mean Blizzard missed the boat on the MOBA front. They were late to the party with MMO's as well (remember Everquest? Me neither). On the subject of branding, which is directly related to revenue: Brands have value. They help consumers create positive associations with a company which in turn drives sales. There's a reason GM maintains the Cadillac brand despite it being responsible for far less revenue than Chevy or Buick. You can think of Starcraft as the Cadillac of Blizzard-Activision, if that makes it easier for you. On being broken or not, which I won't get into detail here, except to point out that these balance issues are really only evident at the Korean GM level. For 99%+ of the player base the game works as intended. If your, for instance, quit the game because you kept losing to Protoss that wouldn't be evidence of the game being broken. A player on the micro scale shouldn't expect 50-50 in all their matchups. On a macro scale things work fine. Good post with a lot of merit, but I still disagree with you. First off, I think we have different definitions of success. I cannot argue against the fact that all of these games have had great opening sales numbers. I'll hand it to Blizzard, they are great at marketing with fantastic cinematics and playing off the success of their past titles. Even given how much I bash them online, I'm always hyped about their upcoming games. However, people often like to point only to the opening sales numbers for D3 and SC2 and claim them as successes, and in my eyes that is disingenuous. Despite their massive opening sales and success, neither of these games retained that popularity and dwindled (D3 much quicker than SC2 lol). When talking about E-Sports titles, such as SC2 (not so much D3) I consider that a failure. SC2 is like the Transformers movie franchise, tons of hype, tons of ticket sales but not much substance or longevity. You say losing your player base is to be expected, but that simply isn't what we see from other premier E-Sports titles. DotA2 and LoL have both been growing and surpassing SC2 since their releases, despite their modest grassroots beginnings (considering DotA1, I know Valve is a large company). And as for brands, I'm not saying Blizzard will completely scrap the Starcraft Universe. RTS titles are NOT the brand, the Starcraft Universe and name is. They can reuse the lore and framework from the Starcraft franchise but package it into a different genre. Think how they transitioned WC3 from an RTS into an MMO. Or how they are taking elements of Diablo, WC and SC and funneling them into a MOBA instead of their traditional platforms. Or WC into the CCG Hearthstone. Activision/Blizzard will sure as shit keep milking the Starcraft and Warcraft franchises for all they are worth but they don't care whether its as an RTS or not. I'm not saying Blizzard will 100% never make another RTS, that would be silly, but I am willing to bet that developing another RTS is not their priority. Considering World of Warcraft... while EQ was out for a while beforehand, WoW presented the first real alternative to my knowledge. The MOBA scene is much more established and has numerous titles besides just LoL and DotA2. I'd argue that the conditions surrounding the release of Heroes of the Storm is a much different environment than WoW's release. And as for the SC2 being broke stuff, it's not just about balance... posters like LaLush have pointed out flaws in SC2 that go beyond balance and the top pros. If the game is working as intended, then so be it, but obviously for many players the game was lacking something. Ah yes, we certainly have different ideas of what constitutes a success. I would argue that given SC2 and D3 (which I found lacking, tbh) were sold as full priced games, I think Blizzard must've been ecstatic with how these games were received(eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched). For the majority of the market these are essentially single player games (D3 is obviously a co-op game, but I don't think Blizzard expected the majority of the audience to keep playing after finishing the campaign once or twice). Remember outside of Korea, competitive Brood War was an even smaller niche than competitive SC2. These F2P MOBA's are a completely different business model and one that could never work for a game like SC. With Hearthstone, Blizzard has thrown it's hat into the F2P marketplace with phenomenal success and I wouldn't count them out of the MOBA game yet. RTS doesn't have to be a top priority for the company and it isn't. That just means we have to wait longer than WoW players to get expansions/sequels. Blizzard-Activision can budget every project accordingly; it's not a zero sum game. They don't need to take resources off of Hearthstone, for instance, to keep developing RTS games. SC2 didn't invent "esport" in non-Korean countries. If we were talking about "sport" along, Tetris can even be called one. The proper term we should be using is "professional gaming". WC3 was HUGE in European countries + China DotA was already HUGE in China. Halo competition was HUGE in North America through MLG Counter-Strike was being played pretty much as "the" team-based competition in all nations and was "the" game to watch during WCG. Hell, in Japan, there are many rhythm game competition. And all over the world, there are still fighting game competitions all around with Street Fighters, Tekken, and King of Fighters players. When SC2 came out, it wasn't evolutionary by any means. All it did manage to capture was introducing the ability to make cash while streaming online but that has been done even during the SC1 era with Afreeca balloon donation. SC2 might have coinced the term "esport", but while coining the term, we have to realize that "esport" was around even a decade before SC2's release. Calm down. I wasn't talking broadly about competitive games with healthy tournament scenes and certainly didn't claim SC2 "invented" esports; that would be taking my post out of context. When I say at the time of SC2's release, esports wasn't really a thing(outside of Korea), I was making a reference to the business side. I think Blizzard thought the only money to be made from esports was in Korea. For a company like Blizzard, esports wasn't something they cared about. The money wasn't there. But then that all changed and it wasn't because of SC2. It was because of Twitch and it was because of LoL. Then all of sudden, Blizzard created the WCS and seemed to care about esports outside of Korea.
You need to do a lot more research so you won't have that opinion because its not correct by any means. He didn't take anything out of context because you think that there wasn't billions already in esports communities and circulating in tournament circuits literally DECADES before SC2 was even a conceived idea. Blizzard stuffed a ton of their own money to jumpstart the competitive scene of SC2 with hopes they could rekindle the long-lived BW golden days. Money was their ONLY objective. There was no emotion or any sort of hopeful beginning they were creating. Money is their God. SC2 is little more than a single fart compared to the whole atmosphere that is eSports. Nothing special when it came out, nothing special now.
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On July 16 2014 01:41 sc2isnotdying wrote:Show nested quote +On July 15 2014 23:05 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 09:47 Cheren wrote:On July 15 2014 05:09 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 04:43 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 04:10 SupLilSon wrote:On July 15 2014 02:55 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 02:03 SupLilSon wrote:On July 15 2014 01:38 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 01:12 SupLilSon wrote:
The time for the RTS genre to make a comeback was 2-3 years ago when SC2's popularity was surging and spearheading the E-Sports community. MOBA's, digital card games, FPS, and fighting games all surpass SC2 in Esports popularity now and thus there's going to be very little incentive for developers to work on RTS titles unless it's a passion project.
Let's face it, Blizzard had ample chances to rejuvenate the RTS genre but they seem to have other plans that don't involve SC2. Some people will look to LotV as a savior, but in the end it'll just introduce a few poorly designed units, a cookie cutter campaign, and absolutely nothing to fix the game.
Blizzard has largely given up on SC2... they are already developing their next titles (a MOBA and most likely a MMO) and I don't expect them to return to the RTS genre for a long while... if ever. They're developing LotV at the moment. You can only expect them to have one RTS project at a time. Its just not as profitable as their other stuff. After LotV is out they'll work on the next thing. RTS games are important to Blizzards brand identity. They might be the only big developer to not give up on the genre. I would even go so far as to say they'll support the genre even if it loses them money(which it won't). Also, SC2 is broken? That's a tough argument to make, but I'm willing to hear you out. RTS games are not crucial to Blizzard's brand identity... The Warcraft lore and franchise might be , but not the RTS genre. Activision Blizzard doesn't give a shit about anything BESIDES profits. If the genre is not producing revenue then they will give up on it, simple as that. If Blizzard had some sentimental attachment to RTS titles they wouldn't have failed so comically with SC2 and HotS and then withdrawn virtually all support. Blizzard knows they fucked up hard with SC2, they know they fucked up hard with Diablo 3 and they know that they missed the boat on the MOBA front. They are funneling resources into their next MMO, a genre where they still have some legitimacy. If they ever return to making RTS games it won't be for a very long time. Also about SC2 being "broken", I don't want to derail the thread but there have been tons of good posts about the topic. Check out the recent "Welcome to ZPCraft II" thread as it contains a massive amount of information and does a better job at explaining than I ever could. Obviously everyone's definition of "broken" can be different but just look at the harsh decline SC2 has experienced since it's inception and ask yourself if the game is really in good shape... A lot wrong here. SC2 and D3 were both enormously successful, selling millions of copies worldwide. Last I remember hearing about it SC2:WOL had sold over 6 million copies and D3 over 12 million. So I'm not sure from a business point of view how either of those could be considered fuck ups. I'm also not sure why you think Blizzard has withdrawn all support. Last I checked, Blizzard still releases patches for SC2, funds the WCS tournament system, and is currently developing an expansion pack which is essentially guaranteed to sell 2-3 million copies. SC2 has lost a large percentage of the playerbase it had at launch, but this is to be expected. Most people don't play one game, forever. There is no reason to believe a theoretical SC3 wouldn't have an enormously successful launch. Coming late to the party does not mean Blizzard missed the boat on the MOBA front. They were late to the party with MMO's as well (remember Everquest? Me neither). On the subject of branding, which is directly related to revenue: Brands have value. They help consumers create positive associations with a company which in turn drives sales. There's a reason GM maintains the Cadillac brand despite it being responsible for far less revenue than Chevy or Buick. You can think of Starcraft as the Cadillac of Blizzard-Activision, if that makes it easier for you. On being broken or not, which I won't get into detail here, except to point out that these balance issues are really only evident at the Korean GM level. For 99%+ of the player base the game works as intended. If your, for instance, quit the game because you kept losing to Protoss that wouldn't be evidence of the game being broken. A player on the micro scale shouldn't expect 50-50 in all their matchups. On a macro scale things work fine. Good post with a lot of merit, but I still disagree with you. First off, I think we have different definitions of success. I cannot argue against the fact that all of these games have had great opening sales numbers. I'll hand it to Blizzard, they are great at marketing with fantastic cinematics and playing off the success of their past titles. Even given how much I bash them online, I'm always hyped about their upcoming games. However, people often like to point only to the opening sales numbers for D3 and SC2 and claim them as successes, and in my eyes that is disingenuous. Despite their massive opening sales and success, neither of these games retained that popularity and dwindled (D3 much quicker than SC2 lol). When talking about E-Sports titles, such as SC2 (not so much D3) I consider that a failure. SC2 is like the Transformers movie franchise, tons of hype, tons of ticket sales but not much substance or longevity. You say losing your player base is to be expected, but that simply isn't what we see from other premier E-Sports titles. DotA2 and LoL have both been growing and surpassing SC2 since their releases, despite their modest grassroots beginnings (considering DotA1, I know Valve is a large company). And as for brands, I'm not saying Blizzard will completely scrap the Starcraft Universe. RTS titles are NOT the brand, the Starcraft Universe and name is. They can reuse the lore and framework from the Starcraft franchise but package it into a different genre. Think how they transitioned WC3 from an RTS into an MMO. Or how they are taking elements of Diablo, WC and SC and funneling them into a MOBA instead of their traditional platforms. Or WC into the CCG Hearthstone. Activision/Blizzard will sure as shit keep milking the Starcraft and Warcraft franchises for all they are worth but they don't care whether its as an RTS or not. I'm not saying Blizzard will 100% never make another RTS, that would be silly, but I am willing to bet that developing another RTS is not their priority. Considering World of Warcraft... while EQ was out for a while beforehand, WoW presented the first real alternative to my knowledge. The MOBA scene is much more established and has numerous titles besides just LoL and DotA2. I'd argue that the conditions surrounding the release of Heroes of the Storm is a much different environment than WoW's release. And as for the SC2 being broke stuff, it's not just about balance... posters like LaLush have pointed out flaws in SC2 that go beyond balance and the top pros. If the game is working as intended, then so be it, but obviously for many players the game was lacking something. Ah yes, we certainly have different ideas of what constitutes a success. I would argue that given SC2 and D3 (which I found lacking, tbh) were sold as full priced games, I think Blizzard must've been ecstatic with how these games were received(eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched). For the majority of the market these are essentially single player games (D3 is obviously a co-op game, but I don't think Blizzard expected the majority of the audience to keep playing after finishing the campaign once or twice). Remember outside of Korea, competitive Brood War was an even smaller niche than competitive SC2. These F2P MOBA's are a completely different business model and one that could never work for a game like SC. With Hearthstone, Blizzard has thrown it's hat into the F2P marketplace with phenomenal success and I wouldn't count them out of the MOBA game yet. RTS doesn't have to be a top priority for the company and it isn't. That just means we have to wait longer than WoW players to get expansions/sequels. Blizzard-Activision can budget every project accordingly; it's not a zero sum game. They don't need to take resources off of Hearthstone, for instance, to keep developing RTS games. SC2 didn't invent "esport" in non-Korean countries. If we were talking about "sport" along, Tetris can even be called one. The proper term we should be using is "professional gaming". WC3 was HUGE in European countries + China DotA was already HUGE in China. Halo competition was HUGE in North America through MLG Counter-Strike was being played pretty much as "the" team-based competition in all nations and was "the" game to watch during WCG. Hell, in Japan, there are many rhythm game competition. And all over the world, there are still fighting game competitions all around with Street Fighters, Tekken, and King of Fighters players. When SC2 came out, it wasn't evolutionary by any means. All it did manage to capture was introducing the ability to make cash while streaming online but that has been done even during the SC1 era with Afreeca balloon donation. SC2 might have coinced the term "esport", but while coining the term, we have to realize that "esport" was around even a decade before SC2's release. It wasn't on TV and there wasn't really HD streaming before 2010, so yeah esports existed outside Korea but TV-like broadcasts in HD certainly weren't around to a large extent before SC2. But SC2 weren't on non-Korean television either. The only time where SC2 came to be on TV was Boss from DH announced it for DH. But other games were also included. Therefore, it wasn't evolutionary in any sense. On July 15 2014 07:18 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 06:32 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 06:12 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 05:09 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 04:43 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 04:10 SupLilSon wrote:On July 15 2014 02:55 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 02:03 SupLilSon wrote:
[quote]
RTS games are not crucial to Blizzard's brand identity... The Warcraft lore and franchise might be , but not the RTS genre. Activision Blizzard doesn't give a shit about anything BESIDES profits. If the genre is not producing revenue then they will give up on it, simple as that. If Blizzard had some sentimental attachment to RTS titles they wouldn't have failed so comically with SC2 and HotS and then withdrawn virtually all support. Blizzard knows they fucked up hard with SC2, they know they fucked up hard with Diablo 3 and they know that they missed the boat on the MOBA front. They are funneling resources into their next MMO, a genre where they still have some legitimacy. If they ever return to making RTS games it won't be for a very long time.
Also about SC2 being "broken", I don't want to derail the thread but there have been tons of good posts about the topic. Check out the recent "Welcome to ZPCraft II" thread as it contains a massive amount of information and does a better job at explaining than I ever could. Obviously everyone's definition of "broken" can be different but just look at the harsh decline SC2 has experienced since it's inception and ask yourself if the game is really in good shape...
A lot wrong here. SC2 and D3 were both enormously successful, selling millions of copies worldwide. Last I remember hearing about it SC2:WOL had sold over 6 million copies and D3 over 12 million. So I'm not sure from a business point of view how either of those could be considered fuck ups. I'm also not sure why you think Blizzard has withdrawn all support. Last I checked, Blizzard still releases patches for SC2, funds the WCS tournament system, and is currently developing an expansion pack which is essentially guaranteed to sell 2-3 million copies. SC2 has lost a large percentage of the playerbase it had at launch, but this is to be expected. Most people don't play one game, forever. There is no reason to believe a theoretical SC3 wouldn't have an enormously successful launch. Coming late to the party does not mean Blizzard missed the boat on the MOBA front. They were late to the party with MMO's as well (remember Everquest? Me neither). On the subject of branding, which is directly related to revenue: Brands have value. They help consumers create positive associations with a company which in turn drives sales. There's a reason GM maintains the Cadillac brand despite it being responsible for far less revenue than Chevy or Buick. You can think of Starcraft as the Cadillac of Blizzard-Activision, if that makes it easier for you. On being broken or not, which I won't get into detail here, except to point out that these balance issues are really only evident at the Korean GM level. For 99%+ of the player base the game works as intended. If your, for instance, quit the game because you kept losing to Protoss that wouldn't be evidence of the game being broken. A player on the micro scale shouldn't expect 50-50 in all their matchups. On a macro scale things work fine. Good post with a lot of merit, but I still disagree with you. First off, I think we have different definitions of success. I cannot argue against the fact that all of these games have had great opening sales numbers. I'll hand it to Blizzard, they are great at marketing with fantastic cinematics and playing off the success of their past titles. Even given how much I bash them online, I'm always hyped about their upcoming games. However, people often like to point only to the opening sales numbers for D3 and SC2 and claim them as successes, and in my eyes that is disingenuous. Despite their massive opening sales and success, neither of these games retained that popularity and dwindled (D3 much quicker than SC2 lol). When talking about E-Sports titles, such as SC2 (not so much D3) I consider that a failure. SC2 is like the Transformers movie franchise, tons of hype, tons of ticket sales but not much substance or longevity. You say losing your player base is to be expected, but that simply isn't what we see from other premier E-Sports titles. DotA2 and LoL have both been growing and surpassing SC2 since their releases, despite their modest grassroots beginnings (considering DotA1, I know Valve is a large company). And as for brands, I'm not saying Blizzard will completely scrap the Starcraft Universe. RTS titles are NOT the brand, the Starcraft Universe and name is. They can reuse the lore and framework from the Starcraft franchise but package it into a different genre. Think how they transitioned WC3 from an RTS into an MMO. Or how they are taking elements of Diablo, WC and SC and funneling them into a MOBA instead of their traditional platforms. Or WC into the CCG Hearthstone. Activision/Blizzard will sure as shit keep milking the Starcraft and Warcraft franchises for all they are worth but they don't care whether its as an RTS or not. I'm not saying Blizzard will 100% never make another RTS, that would be silly, but I am willing to bet that developing another RTS is not their priority. Considering World of Warcraft... while EQ was out for a while beforehand, WoW presented the first real alternative to my knowledge. The MOBA scene is much more established and has numerous titles besides just LoL and DotA2. I'd argue that the conditions surrounding the release of Heroes of the Storm is a much different environment than WoW's release. And as for the SC2 being broke stuff, it's not just about balance... posters like LaLush have pointed out flaws in SC2 that go beyond balance and the top pros. If the game is working as intended, then so be it, but obviously for many players the game was lacking something. Ah yes, we certainly have different ideas of what constitutes a success. I would argue that given SC2 and D3 (which I found lacking, tbh) were sold as full priced games, I think Blizzard must've been ecstatic with how these games were received(eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched). For the majority of the market these are essentially single player games (D3 is obviously a co-op game, but I don't think Blizzard expected the majority of the audience to keep playing after finishing the campaign once or twice). Remember outside of Korea, competitive Brood War was an even smaller niche than competitive SC2. These F2P MOBA's are a completely different business model and one that could never work for a game like SC. With Hearthstone, Blizzard has thrown it's hat into the F2P marketplace with phenomenal success and I wouldn't count them out of the MOBA game yet. RTS doesn't have to be a top priority for the company and it isn't. That just means we have to wait longer than WoW players to get expansions/sequels. Blizzard-Activision can budget every project accordingly; it's not a zero sum game. They don't need to take resources off of Hearthstone, for instance, to keep developing RTS games. SC2 didn't invent "esport" in non-Korean countries. If we were talking about "sport" along, Tetris can even be called one. The proper term we should be using is "professional gaming". WC3 was HUGE in European countries + China DotA was already HUGE in China. Halo competition was HUGE in North America through MLG Counter-Strike was being played pretty much as "the" team-based competition in all nations and was "the" game to watch during WCG. Hell, in Japan, there are many rhythm game competition. And all over the world, there are still fighting game competitions all around with Street Fighters, Tekken, and King of Fighters players. When SC2 came out, it wasn't evolutionary by any means. All it did manage to capture was introducing the ability to make cash while streaming online but that has been done even during the SC1 era with Afreeca balloon donation. SC2 might have coinced the term "esport", but while coining the term, we have to realize that "esport" was around even a decade before SC2's release. Calm down. I wasn't talking broadly about competitive games with healthy tournament scenes and certainly didn't claim SC2 "invented" esports; that would be taking my post out of context. When I say at the time of SC2's release, esports wasn't really a thing(outside of Korea), I was making a reference to the business side. I think Blizzard thought the only money to be made from esports was in Korea. For a company like Blizzard, esports wasn't something they cared about. The money wasn't there. But then that all changed and it wasn't because of SC2. It was because of Twitch and it was because of LoL. Then all of sudden, Blizzard created the WCS and seemed to care about esports outside of Korea. Even talking about the business side, there were ALWAYS money to be made from competitive gaming so your entire point is moot. Now you are digressing to Blizzard caring about esport. No the point was that you said that "eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched". And regarding "esport" with Blizzard, they specifically said that SC2 was launching to cater toward "esports" and the reason why they added MBS, automine, unlimited unit selects WAS to cater toward the non-Koreans (aka the "casuals) from the get-go to shorten the gap b/w foreigners and Koreans. So they (Blizzard) absolutely knew that there were a non-Korean market for "esport". Until very recently whatever money there was in esports was small potatoes. I don't think that is such a controversial statement. Obviously Blizzard knew there was going to be a market for SC2 tournament play from the beginning of the design process; WC3 had such a scene. My point, which is clear through context, is that Blizzard wouldn't have considered the esports market to be an important part of their business strategy. SC2 was about selling as many copies as possible at full retail price. That was the model. They weren't investing in esports, because why would they? The upside wasn't there. That changed. WCS inserted a lot of money into the international scene, the exact same time Twitch exploded. Now that there was a viable platform for esports outside of Korea, Blizzard got in the game. Before Twitch esports wasn't really a thing. I stand by that. It's really not such a controversial notion. WCG is dead. MLG was a money loser. Still is. It's just now approaching profitability as a kind of premium version of Twitch. So no, there wasn't ALWAYS money to be made from competitive gaming. You are talking about now. Back then both MLG + WCG were the absolutely pinnacle of professional gaming. They were doing better financially than nowadays. WCG's bread and butter was WC3 + CS + BW. With the arrival of SC2 and CS:GO, all three assets were diluted for WCG and especially how they couldn't reach Riot or Valve for LoL and DotA2. So what end up happening was that the money made from WCG transferred into WCS for SC2. Thus there was ALWAYS money to be made from competitive gaming in non-Korean places. This shouldn't even be argued against xD. You are basically saying that how Blizzcon, WCG, QuakeCon, China DotA tournaments doesn't exist before SC2. No that's an extremely wrong mindset. It's hard for me to speak to the financial viability of the Chinese scene. The nature of how China operates makes that kind of a non-point for a Western company like Blizzard at any rate. MLG, I can tell you for certain, has NEVER been profitable and is in better shape now than it has ever been. It's been able to keep attracting the type of investors that like to gamble on high-risk companies with potentially huge payoffs down the line. That's how Silicon Valley works. You're arguing something completely besides my point. I'm not making the argument that professional gaming literately didn't exist before 2012, but rather that professional gaming was small potatoes. A tiny, high risk/low reward industry. Blizzard swims in a bigger pond. With the rise of Twitch, the game changed. All of a sudden the world of esports had billion dollar stakes. Google bought Twitch. Riot invests millions into the LoL scene. Valve, likewise, is doing the same with DoTA 2, and Blizzard has renewed interest in professional SC2. This is a far cry from Blizzard and id Software hosting promotional tournaments at their fan conventions. Sponsors have always found promotional value in the professional gaming market, but for the startups that actually ran these things, they either lost money or at the very best operated on thin margins.
Except that MLG now relied on their own streaming service to bring out their contents. Before, they were on TV such as ESPN that had sure viewership revenue in ads rather than being adblocked. That's a fact.
Also all those things are things NON-related to SC2. So SC2 weren't the one to revolutionize "esport". It was Riot + Valve. Blizzard wasn't involved for the most of it.
And also really professional gaming were a small potatoe?
Check again:
People can't even grasp how big Starcraft was in Korea during Broodwars. You cannot even compare Broodwars with Starcraft II in terms of popularity. Even with how big League of Legends is in Korea right now, it still doesn't match Broodwars.
To understand how popular Broodwar was, during the 2002 Fifa World Cup that took place in Korea, before a game the Korean national team brought in Starcraft players to pump up the players. The soccer players were the biggest stars in Korea during the World Cup, yet their idols were the Starcraft players. This was mentioned in Valve's Dota 2 documentary, Free To Play.
BW had AirForce Ace of Korea to take on the game specifically to train people in war-like situation. And when SC2 took over, AirForce Ace pulled out.
So conclusion, while SC2 was a prominent actor in the stage of "esport", it didn't in nowhere revolutionize the market.
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On July 16 2014 02:01 sCCrooked wrote:Show nested quote +On July 15 2014 06:12 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 05:09 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 04:43 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 04:10 SupLilSon wrote:On July 15 2014 02:55 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 02:03 SupLilSon wrote:On July 15 2014 01:38 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 01:12 SupLilSon wrote:
The time for the RTS genre to make a comeback was 2-3 years ago when SC2's popularity was surging and spearheading the E-Sports community. MOBA's, digital card games, FPS, and fighting games all surpass SC2 in Esports popularity now and thus there's going to be very little incentive for developers to work on RTS titles unless it's a passion project.
Let's face it, Blizzard had ample chances to rejuvenate the RTS genre but they seem to have other plans that don't involve SC2. Some people will look to LotV as a savior, but in the end it'll just introduce a few poorly designed units, a cookie cutter campaign, and absolutely nothing to fix the game.
Blizzard has largely given up on SC2... they are already developing their next titles (a MOBA and most likely a MMO) and I don't expect them to return to the RTS genre for a long while... if ever. They're developing LotV at the moment. You can only expect them to have one RTS project at a time. Its just not as profitable as their other stuff. After LotV is out they'll work on the next thing. RTS games are important to Blizzards brand identity. They might be the only big developer to not give up on the genre. I would even go so far as to say they'll support the genre even if it loses them money(which it won't). Also, SC2 is broken? That's a tough argument to make, but I'm willing to hear you out. RTS games are not crucial to Blizzard's brand identity... The Warcraft lore and franchise might be , but not the RTS genre. Activision Blizzard doesn't give a shit about anything BESIDES profits. If the genre is not producing revenue then they will give up on it, simple as that. If Blizzard had some sentimental attachment to RTS titles they wouldn't have failed so comically with SC2 and HotS and then withdrawn virtually all support. Blizzard knows they fucked up hard with SC2, they know they fucked up hard with Diablo 3 and they know that they missed the boat on the MOBA front. They are funneling resources into their next MMO, a genre where they still have some legitimacy. If they ever return to making RTS games it won't be for a very long time. Also about SC2 being "broken", I don't want to derail the thread but there have been tons of good posts about the topic. Check out the recent "Welcome to ZPCraft II" thread as it contains a massive amount of information and does a better job at explaining than I ever could. Obviously everyone's definition of "broken" can be different but just look at the harsh decline SC2 has experienced since it's inception and ask yourself if the game is really in good shape... A lot wrong here. SC2 and D3 were both enormously successful, selling millions of copies worldwide. Last I remember hearing about it SC2:WOL had sold over 6 million copies and D3 over 12 million. So I'm not sure from a business point of view how either of those could be considered fuck ups. I'm also not sure why you think Blizzard has withdrawn all support. Last I checked, Blizzard still releases patches for SC2, funds the WCS tournament system, and is currently developing an expansion pack which is essentially guaranteed to sell 2-3 million copies. SC2 has lost a large percentage of the playerbase it had at launch, but this is to be expected. Most people don't play one game, forever. There is no reason to believe a theoretical SC3 wouldn't have an enormously successful launch. Coming late to the party does not mean Blizzard missed the boat on the MOBA front. They were late to the party with MMO's as well (remember Everquest? Me neither). On the subject of branding, which is directly related to revenue: Brands have value. They help consumers create positive associations with a company which in turn drives sales. There's a reason GM maintains the Cadillac brand despite it being responsible for far less revenue than Chevy or Buick. You can think of Starcraft as the Cadillac of Blizzard-Activision, if that makes it easier for you. On being broken or not, which I won't get into detail here, except to point out that these balance issues are really only evident at the Korean GM level. For 99%+ of the player base the game works as intended. If your, for instance, quit the game because you kept losing to Protoss that wouldn't be evidence of the game being broken. A player on the micro scale shouldn't expect 50-50 in all their matchups. On a macro scale things work fine. Good post with a lot of merit, but I still disagree with you. First off, I think we have different definitions of success. I cannot argue against the fact that all of these games have had great opening sales numbers. I'll hand it to Blizzard, they are great at marketing with fantastic cinematics and playing off the success of their past titles. Even given how much I bash them online, I'm always hyped about their upcoming games. However, people often like to point only to the opening sales numbers for D3 and SC2 and claim them as successes, and in my eyes that is disingenuous. Despite their massive opening sales and success, neither of these games retained that popularity and dwindled (D3 much quicker than SC2 lol). When talking about E-Sports titles, such as SC2 (not so much D3) I consider that a failure. SC2 is like the Transformers movie franchise, tons of hype, tons of ticket sales but not much substance or longevity. You say losing your player base is to be expected, but that simply isn't what we see from other premier E-Sports titles. DotA2 and LoL have both been growing and surpassing SC2 since their releases, despite their modest grassroots beginnings (considering DotA1, I know Valve is a large company). And as for brands, I'm not saying Blizzard will completely scrap the Starcraft Universe. RTS titles are NOT the brand, the Starcraft Universe and name is. They can reuse the lore and framework from the Starcraft franchise but package it into a different genre. Think how they transitioned WC3 from an RTS into an MMO. Or how they are taking elements of Diablo, WC and SC and funneling them into a MOBA instead of their traditional platforms. Or WC into the CCG Hearthstone. Activision/Blizzard will sure as shit keep milking the Starcraft and Warcraft franchises for all they are worth but they don't care whether its as an RTS or not. I'm not saying Blizzard will 100% never make another RTS, that would be silly, but I am willing to bet that developing another RTS is not their priority. Considering World of Warcraft... while EQ was out for a while beforehand, WoW presented the first real alternative to my knowledge. The MOBA scene is much more established and has numerous titles besides just LoL and DotA2. I'd argue that the conditions surrounding the release of Heroes of the Storm is a much different environment than WoW's release. And as for the SC2 being broke stuff, it's not just about balance... posters like LaLush have pointed out flaws in SC2 that go beyond balance and the top pros. If the game is working as intended, then so be it, but obviously for many players the game was lacking something. Ah yes, we certainly have different ideas of what constitutes a success. I would argue that given SC2 and D3 (which I found lacking, tbh) were sold as full priced games, I think Blizzard must've been ecstatic with how these games were received(eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched). For the majority of the market these are essentially single player games (D3 is obviously a co-op game, but I don't think Blizzard expected the majority of the audience to keep playing after finishing the campaign once or twice). Remember outside of Korea, competitive Brood War was an even smaller niche than competitive SC2. These F2P MOBA's are a completely different business model and one that could never work for a game like SC. With Hearthstone, Blizzard has thrown it's hat into the F2P marketplace with phenomenal success and I wouldn't count them out of the MOBA game yet. RTS doesn't have to be a top priority for the company and it isn't. That just means we have to wait longer than WoW players to get expansions/sequels. Blizzard-Activision can budget every project accordingly; it's not a zero sum game. They don't need to take resources off of Hearthstone, for instance, to keep developing RTS games. SC2 didn't invent "esport" in non-Korean countries. If we were talking about "sport" along, Tetris can even be called one. The proper term we should be using is "professional gaming". WC3 was HUGE in European countries + China DotA was already HUGE in China. Halo competition was HUGE in North America through MLG Counter-Strike was being played pretty much as "the" team-based competition in all nations and was "the" game to watch during WCG. Hell, in Japan, there are many rhythm game competition. And all over the world, there are still fighting game competitions all around with Street Fighters, Tekken, and King of Fighters players. When SC2 came out, it wasn't evolutionary by any means. All it did manage to capture was introducing the ability to make cash while streaming online but that has been done even during the SC1 era with Afreeca balloon donation. SC2 might have coinced the term "esport", but while coining the term, we have to realize that "esport" was around even a decade before SC2's release. Calm down. I wasn't talking broadly about competitive games with healthy tournament scenes and certainly didn't claim SC2 "invented" esports; that would be taking my post out of context. When I say at the time of SC2's release, esports wasn't really a thing(outside of Korea), I was making a reference to the business side. I think Blizzard thought the only money to be made from esports was in Korea. For a company like Blizzard, esports wasn't something they cared about. The money wasn't there. But then that all changed and it wasn't because of SC2. It was because of Twitch and it was because of LoL. Then all of sudden, Blizzard created the WCS and seemed to care about esports outside of Korea. You need to do a lot more research so you won't have that opinion because its not correct by any means. He didn't take anything out of context because you think that there wasn't billions already in esports communities and circulating in tournament circuits literally DECADES before SC2 was even a conceived idea. Blizzard stuffed a ton of their own money to jumpstart the competitive scene of SC2 with hopes they could rekindle the long-lived BW golden days. Money was their ONLY objective. There was no emotion or any sort of hopeful beginning they were creating. Money is their God. SC2 is little more than a single fart compared to the whole atmosphere that is eSports. Nothing special when it came out, nothing special now.
Where do you get your ideas? Not from what I wrote. Decades before SC2(2010-20=1990) was the 80's. Hardly billions. BW was far from the golden days(from Blizzard's perspective). Blizzard didn't see a dime from professional BW play. And BW wasn't a big thing outside of Korea. Blizzard didn't stuff a ton of their own money into jumpstarting SC2's competitive scene until 2012. Before that, Blizzard's only involvement in the scene was hosting Blizzcon (a fan convention primarily, not part of a broader esports strategy) and some licensing deals. Blizzard didn't become more involved until later. I never claimed SC2 was anything special (I made that claim for LoL) nor did I suggest Blizzard cared about something other than money. (In fact, I pointed out that when Blizzard noticed that there was money to be made, that's when they started caring)
Time for some numbers:
Blizzard-Activision has a market cap of 16.18 billion dollars.
Worldwide the esports industry is worth about 5 billion dollars(2013). That's the entire industry. That's also after a year of explosive growth. Esports viewership has increased nearly 800% since the release of SC2. Over a 5th of that market share is still the Korean scene(~1.2 billion dollars)
When I called esports small potatoes outside of Korea prior to 2012, that's because its true. There just wasn't a lot of money to be made there. Now, esports looks like a potential goldmine. That wasn't true in 2010. Do you have evidence to the contrary?
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On July 16 2014 02:37 Xiphos wrote:Show nested quote +On July 16 2014 01:41 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 23:05 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 09:47 Cheren wrote:On July 15 2014 05:09 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 04:43 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 04:10 SupLilSon wrote:On July 15 2014 02:55 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 02:03 SupLilSon wrote:On July 15 2014 01:38 sc2isnotdying wrote:
[quote]
They're developing LotV at the moment. You can only expect them to have one RTS project at a time. Its just not as profitable as their other stuff. After LotV is out they'll work on the next thing. RTS games are important to Blizzards brand identity. They might be the only big developer to not give up on the genre. I would even go so far as to say they'll support the genre even if it loses them money(which it won't).
Also, SC2 is broken? That's a tough argument to make, but I'm willing to hear you out. RTS games are not crucial to Blizzard's brand identity... The Warcraft lore and franchise might be , but not the RTS genre. Activision Blizzard doesn't give a shit about anything BESIDES profits. If the genre is not producing revenue then they will give up on it, simple as that. If Blizzard had some sentimental attachment to RTS titles they wouldn't have failed so comically with SC2 and HotS and then withdrawn virtually all support. Blizzard knows they fucked up hard with SC2, they know they fucked up hard with Diablo 3 and they know that they missed the boat on the MOBA front. They are funneling resources into their next MMO, a genre where they still have some legitimacy. If they ever return to making RTS games it won't be for a very long time. Also about SC2 being "broken", I don't want to derail the thread but there have been tons of good posts about the topic. Check out the recent "Welcome to ZPCraft II" thread as it contains a massive amount of information and does a better job at explaining than I ever could. Obviously everyone's definition of "broken" can be different but just look at the harsh decline SC2 has experienced since it's inception and ask yourself if the game is really in good shape... A lot wrong here. SC2 and D3 were both enormously successful, selling millions of copies worldwide. Last I remember hearing about it SC2:WOL had sold over 6 million copies and D3 over 12 million. So I'm not sure from a business point of view how either of those could be considered fuck ups. I'm also not sure why you think Blizzard has withdrawn all support. Last I checked, Blizzard still releases patches for SC2, funds the WCS tournament system, and is currently developing an expansion pack which is essentially guaranteed to sell 2-3 million copies. SC2 has lost a large percentage of the playerbase it had at launch, but this is to be expected. Most people don't play one game, forever. There is no reason to believe a theoretical SC3 wouldn't have an enormously successful launch. Coming late to the party does not mean Blizzard missed the boat on the MOBA front. They were late to the party with MMO's as well (remember Everquest? Me neither). On the subject of branding, which is directly related to revenue: Brands have value. They help consumers create positive associations with a company which in turn drives sales. There's a reason GM maintains the Cadillac brand despite it being responsible for far less revenue than Chevy or Buick. You can think of Starcraft as the Cadillac of Blizzard-Activision, if that makes it easier for you. On being broken or not, which I won't get into detail here, except to point out that these balance issues are really only evident at the Korean GM level. For 99%+ of the player base the game works as intended. If your, for instance, quit the game because you kept losing to Protoss that wouldn't be evidence of the game being broken. A player on the micro scale shouldn't expect 50-50 in all their matchups. On a macro scale things work fine. Good post with a lot of merit, but I still disagree with you. First off, I think we have different definitions of success. I cannot argue against the fact that all of these games have had great opening sales numbers. I'll hand it to Blizzard, they are great at marketing with fantastic cinematics and playing off the success of their past titles. Even given how much I bash them online, I'm always hyped about their upcoming games. However, people often like to point only to the opening sales numbers for D3 and SC2 and claim them as successes, and in my eyes that is disingenuous. Despite their massive opening sales and success, neither of these games retained that popularity and dwindled (D3 much quicker than SC2 lol). When talking about E-Sports titles, such as SC2 (not so much D3) I consider that a failure. SC2 is like the Transformers movie franchise, tons of hype, tons of ticket sales but not much substance or longevity. You say losing your player base is to be expected, but that simply isn't what we see from other premier E-Sports titles. DotA2 and LoL have both been growing and surpassing SC2 since their releases, despite their modest grassroots beginnings (considering DotA1, I know Valve is a large company). And as for brands, I'm not saying Blizzard will completely scrap the Starcraft Universe. RTS titles are NOT the brand, the Starcraft Universe and name is. They can reuse the lore and framework from the Starcraft franchise but package it into a different genre. Think how they transitioned WC3 from an RTS into an MMO. Or how they are taking elements of Diablo, WC and SC and funneling them into a MOBA instead of their traditional platforms. Or WC into the CCG Hearthstone. Activision/Blizzard will sure as shit keep milking the Starcraft and Warcraft franchises for all they are worth but they don't care whether its as an RTS or not. I'm not saying Blizzard will 100% never make another RTS, that would be silly, but I am willing to bet that developing another RTS is not their priority. Considering World of Warcraft... while EQ was out for a while beforehand, WoW presented the first real alternative to my knowledge. The MOBA scene is much more established and has numerous titles besides just LoL and DotA2. I'd argue that the conditions surrounding the release of Heroes of the Storm is a much different environment than WoW's release. And as for the SC2 being broke stuff, it's not just about balance... posters like LaLush have pointed out flaws in SC2 that go beyond balance and the top pros. If the game is working as intended, then so be it, but obviously for many players the game was lacking something. Ah yes, we certainly have different ideas of what constitutes a success. I would argue that given SC2 and D3 (which I found lacking, tbh) were sold as full priced games, I think Blizzard must've been ecstatic with how these games were received(eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched). For the majority of the market these are essentially single player games (D3 is obviously a co-op game, but I don't think Blizzard expected the majority of the audience to keep playing after finishing the campaign once or twice). Remember outside of Korea, competitive Brood War was an even smaller niche than competitive SC2. These F2P MOBA's are a completely different business model and one that could never work for a game like SC. With Hearthstone, Blizzard has thrown it's hat into the F2P marketplace with phenomenal success and I wouldn't count them out of the MOBA game yet. RTS doesn't have to be a top priority for the company and it isn't. That just means we have to wait longer than WoW players to get expansions/sequels. Blizzard-Activision can budget every project accordingly; it's not a zero sum game. They don't need to take resources off of Hearthstone, for instance, to keep developing RTS games. SC2 didn't invent "esport" in non-Korean countries. If we were talking about "sport" along, Tetris can even be called one. The proper term we should be using is "professional gaming". WC3 was HUGE in European countries + China DotA was already HUGE in China. Halo competition was HUGE in North America through MLG Counter-Strike was being played pretty much as "the" team-based competition in all nations and was "the" game to watch during WCG. Hell, in Japan, there are many rhythm game competition. And all over the world, there are still fighting game competitions all around with Street Fighters, Tekken, and King of Fighters players. When SC2 came out, it wasn't evolutionary by any means. All it did manage to capture was introducing the ability to make cash while streaming online but that has been done even during the SC1 era with Afreeca balloon donation. SC2 might have coinced the term "esport", but while coining the term, we have to realize that "esport" was around even a decade before SC2's release. It wasn't on TV and there wasn't really HD streaming before 2010, so yeah esports existed outside Korea but TV-like broadcasts in HD certainly weren't around to a large extent before SC2. But SC2 weren't on non-Korean television either. The only time where SC2 came to be on TV was Boss from DH announced it for DH. But other games were also included. Therefore, it wasn't evolutionary in any sense. On July 15 2014 07:18 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 06:32 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 06:12 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 05:09 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 04:43 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 04:10 SupLilSon wrote:On July 15 2014 02:55 sc2isnotdying wrote:
[quote]
A lot wrong here. SC2 and D3 were both enormously successful, selling millions of copies worldwide. Last I remember hearing about it SC2:WOL had sold over 6 million copies and D3 over 12 million. So I'm not sure from a business point of view how either of those could be considered fuck ups. I'm also not sure why you think Blizzard has withdrawn all support. Last I checked, Blizzard still releases patches for SC2, funds the WCS tournament system, and is currently developing an expansion pack which is essentially guaranteed to sell 2-3 million copies. SC2 has lost a large percentage of the playerbase it had at launch, but this is to be expected. Most people don't play one game, forever. There is no reason to believe a theoretical SC3 wouldn't have an enormously successful launch.
Coming late to the party does not mean Blizzard missed the boat on the MOBA front. They were late to the party with MMO's as well (remember Everquest? Me neither).
On the subject of branding, which is directly related to revenue: Brands have value. They help consumers create positive associations with a company which in turn drives sales. There's a reason GM maintains the Cadillac brand despite it being responsible for far less revenue than Chevy or Buick. You can think of Starcraft as the Cadillac of Blizzard-Activision, if that makes it easier for you.
On being broken or not, which I won't get into detail here, except to point out that these balance issues are really only evident at the Korean GM level. For 99%+ of the player base the game works as intended. If your, for instance, quit the game because you kept losing to Protoss that wouldn't be evidence of the game being broken. A player on the micro scale shouldn't expect 50-50 in all their matchups. On a macro scale things work fine.
Good post with a lot of merit, but I still disagree with you. First off, I think we have different definitions of success. I cannot argue against the fact that all of these games have had great opening sales numbers. I'll hand it to Blizzard, they are great at marketing with fantastic cinematics and playing off the success of their past titles. Even given how much I bash them online, I'm always hyped about their upcoming games. However, people often like to point only to the opening sales numbers for D3 and SC2 and claim them as successes, and in my eyes that is disingenuous. Despite their massive opening sales and success, neither of these games retained that popularity and dwindled (D3 much quicker than SC2 lol). When talking about E-Sports titles, such as SC2 (not so much D3) I consider that a failure. SC2 is like the Transformers movie franchise, tons of hype, tons of ticket sales but not much substance or longevity. You say losing your player base is to be expected, but that simply isn't what we see from other premier E-Sports titles. DotA2 and LoL have both been growing and surpassing SC2 since their releases, despite their modest grassroots beginnings (considering DotA1, I know Valve is a large company). And as for brands, I'm not saying Blizzard will completely scrap the Starcraft Universe. RTS titles are NOT the brand, the Starcraft Universe and name is. They can reuse the lore and framework from the Starcraft franchise but package it into a different genre. Think how they transitioned WC3 from an RTS into an MMO. Or how they are taking elements of Diablo, WC and SC and funneling them into a MOBA instead of their traditional platforms. Or WC into the CCG Hearthstone. Activision/Blizzard will sure as shit keep milking the Starcraft and Warcraft franchises for all they are worth but they don't care whether its as an RTS or not. I'm not saying Blizzard will 100% never make another RTS, that would be silly, but I am willing to bet that developing another RTS is not their priority. Considering World of Warcraft... while EQ was out for a while beforehand, WoW presented the first real alternative to my knowledge. The MOBA scene is much more established and has numerous titles besides just LoL and DotA2. I'd argue that the conditions surrounding the release of Heroes of the Storm is a much different environment than WoW's release. And as for the SC2 being broke stuff, it's not just about balance... posters like LaLush have pointed out flaws in SC2 that go beyond balance and the top pros. If the game is working as intended, then so be it, but obviously for many players the game was lacking something. Ah yes, we certainly have different ideas of what constitutes a success. I would argue that given SC2 and D3 (which I found lacking, tbh) were sold as full priced games, I think Blizzard must've been ecstatic with how these games were received(eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched). For the majority of the market these are essentially single player games (D3 is obviously a co-op game, but I don't think Blizzard expected the majority of the audience to keep playing after finishing the campaign once or twice). Remember outside of Korea, competitive Brood War was an even smaller niche than competitive SC2. These F2P MOBA's are a completely different business model and one that could never work for a game like SC. With Hearthstone, Blizzard has thrown it's hat into the F2P marketplace with phenomenal success and I wouldn't count them out of the MOBA game yet. RTS doesn't have to be a top priority for the company and it isn't. That just means we have to wait longer than WoW players to get expansions/sequels. Blizzard-Activision can budget every project accordingly; it's not a zero sum game. They don't need to take resources off of Hearthstone, for instance, to keep developing RTS games. SC2 didn't invent "esport" in non-Korean countries. If we were talking about "sport" along, Tetris can even be called one. The proper term we should be using is "professional gaming". WC3 was HUGE in European countries + China DotA was already HUGE in China. Halo competition was HUGE in North America through MLG Counter-Strike was being played pretty much as "the" team-based competition in all nations and was "the" game to watch during WCG. Hell, in Japan, there are many rhythm game competition. And all over the world, there are still fighting game competitions all around with Street Fighters, Tekken, and King of Fighters players. When SC2 came out, it wasn't evolutionary by any means. All it did manage to capture was introducing the ability to make cash while streaming online but that has been done even during the SC1 era with Afreeca balloon donation. SC2 might have coinced the term "esport", but while coining the term, we have to realize that "esport" was around even a decade before SC2's release. Calm down. I wasn't talking broadly about competitive games with healthy tournament scenes and certainly didn't claim SC2 "invented" esports; that would be taking my post out of context. When I say at the time of SC2's release, esports wasn't really a thing(outside of Korea), I was making a reference to the business side. I think Blizzard thought the only money to be made from esports was in Korea. For a company like Blizzard, esports wasn't something they cared about. The money wasn't there. But then that all changed and it wasn't because of SC2. It was because of Twitch and it was because of LoL. Then all of sudden, Blizzard created the WCS and seemed to care about esports outside of Korea. Even talking about the business side, there were ALWAYS money to be made from competitive gaming so your entire point is moot. Now you are digressing to Blizzard caring about esport. No the point was that you said that "eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched". And regarding "esport" with Blizzard, they specifically said that SC2 was launching to cater toward "esports" and the reason why they added MBS, automine, unlimited unit selects WAS to cater toward the non-Koreans (aka the "casuals) from the get-go to shorten the gap b/w foreigners and Koreans. So they (Blizzard) absolutely knew that there were a non-Korean market for "esport". Until very recently whatever money there was in esports was small potatoes. I don't think that is such a controversial statement. Obviously Blizzard knew there was going to be a market for SC2 tournament play from the beginning of the design process; WC3 had such a scene. My point, which is clear through context, is that Blizzard wouldn't have considered the esports market to be an important part of their business strategy. SC2 was about selling as many copies as possible at full retail price. That was the model. They weren't investing in esports, because why would they? The upside wasn't there. That changed. WCS inserted a lot of money into the international scene, the exact same time Twitch exploded. Now that there was a viable platform for esports outside of Korea, Blizzard got in the game. Before Twitch esports wasn't really a thing. I stand by that. It's really not such a controversial notion. WCG is dead. MLG was a money loser. Still is. It's just now approaching profitability as a kind of premium version of Twitch. So no, there wasn't ALWAYS money to be made from competitive gaming. You are talking about now. Back then both MLG + WCG were the absolutely pinnacle of professional gaming. They were doing better financially than nowadays. WCG's bread and butter was WC3 + CS + BW. With the arrival of SC2 and CS:GO, all three assets were diluted for WCG and especially how they couldn't reach Riot or Valve for LoL and DotA2. So what end up happening was that the money made from WCG transferred into WCS for SC2. Thus there was ALWAYS money to be made from competitive gaming in non-Korean places. This shouldn't even be argued against xD. You are basically saying that how Blizzcon, WCG, QuakeCon, China DotA tournaments doesn't exist before SC2. No that's an extremely wrong mindset. It's hard for me to speak to the financial viability of the Chinese scene. The nature of how China operates makes that kind of a non-point for a Western company like Blizzard at any rate. MLG, I can tell you for certain, has NEVER been profitable and is in better shape now than it has ever been. It's been able to keep attracting the type of investors that like to gamble on high-risk companies with potentially huge payoffs down the line. That's how Silicon Valley works. You're arguing something completely besides my point. I'm not making the argument that professional gaming literately didn't exist before 2012, but rather that professional gaming was small potatoes. A tiny, high risk/low reward industry. Blizzard swims in a bigger pond. With the rise of Twitch, the game changed. All of a sudden the world of esports had billion dollar stakes. Google bought Twitch. Riot invests millions into the LoL scene. Valve, likewise, is doing the same with DoTA 2, and Blizzard has renewed interest in professional SC2. This is a far cry from Blizzard and id Software hosting promotional tournaments at their fan conventions. Sponsors have always found promotional value in the professional gaming market, but for the startups that actually ran these things, they either lost money or at the very best operated on thin margins. Except that MLG now relied on their own streaming service to bring out their contents. Before, they were on TV such as ESPN that had sure viewership revenue in ads rather than being adblocked. That's a fact. Also all those things are things NON-related to SC2. So SC2 weren't the one to revolutionize "esport". It was Riot + Valve. Blizzard wasn't involved for the most of it. And also really professional gaming were a small potatoe? Check again: People can't even grasp how big Starcraft was in Korea during Broodwars. You cannot even compare Broodwars with Starcraft II in terms of popularity. Even with how big League of Legends is in Korea right now, it still doesn't match Broodwars. To understand how popular Broodwar was, during the 2002 Fifa World Cup that took place in Korea, before a game the Korean national team brought in Starcraft players to pump up the players. The soccer players were the biggest stars in Korea during the World Cup, yet their idols were the Starcraft players. This was mentioned in Valve's Dota 2 documentary, Free To Play. BW had AirForce Ace of Korea to take on the game specifically to train people in war-like situation. And when SC2 took over, AirForce Ace pulled out. So conclusion, while SC2 was a prominent actor in the stage of "esport", it didn't in nowhere revolutionize the market.
Why do you think I claimed that SC2 revolutionized the market? I wrote that Twitch revolutionized the market (and to a lesser extent LoL).
I was also specifically talking about the scene outside of Korea. I've made sure to mention that multiple times.
MLG on ESPN was a bust. Canceled after one (maybe two, can't remember) season(s).
So in conclusion, please respond to points I've actually made, and not just points you wish I'd made so you can refute them.
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On July 16 2014 03:16 sc2isnotdying wrote:Show nested quote +On July 16 2014 02:37 Xiphos wrote:On July 16 2014 01:41 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 23:05 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 09:47 Cheren wrote:On July 15 2014 05:09 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 04:43 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 04:10 SupLilSon wrote:On July 15 2014 02:55 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 02:03 SupLilSon wrote:
[quote]
RTS games are not crucial to Blizzard's brand identity... The Warcraft lore and franchise might be , but not the RTS genre. Activision Blizzard doesn't give a shit about anything BESIDES profits. If the genre is not producing revenue then they will give up on it, simple as that. If Blizzard had some sentimental attachment to RTS titles they wouldn't have failed so comically with SC2 and HotS and then withdrawn virtually all support. Blizzard knows they fucked up hard with SC2, they know they fucked up hard with Diablo 3 and they know that they missed the boat on the MOBA front. They are funneling resources into their next MMO, a genre where they still have some legitimacy. If they ever return to making RTS games it won't be for a very long time.
Also about SC2 being "broken", I don't want to derail the thread but there have been tons of good posts about the topic. Check out the recent "Welcome to ZPCraft II" thread as it contains a massive amount of information and does a better job at explaining than I ever could. Obviously everyone's definition of "broken" can be different but just look at the harsh decline SC2 has experienced since it's inception and ask yourself if the game is really in good shape...
A lot wrong here. SC2 and D3 were both enormously successful, selling millions of copies worldwide. Last I remember hearing about it SC2:WOL had sold over 6 million copies and D3 over 12 million. So I'm not sure from a business point of view how either of those could be considered fuck ups. I'm also not sure why you think Blizzard has withdrawn all support. Last I checked, Blizzard still releases patches for SC2, funds the WCS tournament system, and is currently developing an expansion pack which is essentially guaranteed to sell 2-3 million copies. SC2 has lost a large percentage of the playerbase it had at launch, but this is to be expected. Most people don't play one game, forever. There is no reason to believe a theoretical SC3 wouldn't have an enormously successful launch. Coming late to the party does not mean Blizzard missed the boat on the MOBA front. They were late to the party with MMO's as well (remember Everquest? Me neither). On the subject of branding, which is directly related to revenue: Brands have value. They help consumers create positive associations with a company which in turn drives sales. There's a reason GM maintains the Cadillac brand despite it being responsible for far less revenue than Chevy or Buick. You can think of Starcraft as the Cadillac of Blizzard-Activision, if that makes it easier for you. On being broken or not, which I won't get into detail here, except to point out that these balance issues are really only evident at the Korean GM level. For 99%+ of the player base the game works as intended. If your, for instance, quit the game because you kept losing to Protoss that wouldn't be evidence of the game being broken. A player on the micro scale shouldn't expect 50-50 in all their matchups. On a macro scale things work fine. Good post with a lot of merit, but I still disagree with you. First off, I think we have different definitions of success. I cannot argue against the fact that all of these games have had great opening sales numbers. I'll hand it to Blizzard, they are great at marketing with fantastic cinematics and playing off the success of their past titles. Even given how much I bash them online, I'm always hyped about their upcoming games. However, people often like to point only to the opening sales numbers for D3 and SC2 and claim them as successes, and in my eyes that is disingenuous. Despite their massive opening sales and success, neither of these games retained that popularity and dwindled (D3 much quicker than SC2 lol). When talking about E-Sports titles, such as SC2 (not so much D3) I consider that a failure. SC2 is like the Transformers movie franchise, tons of hype, tons of ticket sales but not much substance or longevity. You say losing your player base is to be expected, but that simply isn't what we see from other premier E-Sports titles. DotA2 and LoL have both been growing and surpassing SC2 since their releases, despite their modest grassroots beginnings (considering DotA1, I know Valve is a large company). And as for brands, I'm not saying Blizzard will completely scrap the Starcraft Universe. RTS titles are NOT the brand, the Starcraft Universe and name is. They can reuse the lore and framework from the Starcraft franchise but package it into a different genre. Think how they transitioned WC3 from an RTS into an MMO. Or how they are taking elements of Diablo, WC and SC and funneling them into a MOBA instead of their traditional platforms. Or WC into the CCG Hearthstone. Activision/Blizzard will sure as shit keep milking the Starcraft and Warcraft franchises for all they are worth but they don't care whether its as an RTS or not. I'm not saying Blizzard will 100% never make another RTS, that would be silly, but I am willing to bet that developing another RTS is not their priority. Considering World of Warcraft... while EQ was out for a while beforehand, WoW presented the first real alternative to my knowledge. The MOBA scene is much more established and has numerous titles besides just LoL and DotA2. I'd argue that the conditions surrounding the release of Heroes of the Storm is a much different environment than WoW's release. And as for the SC2 being broke stuff, it's not just about balance... posters like LaLush have pointed out flaws in SC2 that go beyond balance and the top pros. If the game is working as intended, then so be it, but obviously for many players the game was lacking something. Ah yes, we certainly have different ideas of what constitutes a success. I would argue that given SC2 and D3 (which I found lacking, tbh) were sold as full priced games, I think Blizzard must've been ecstatic with how these games were received(eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched). For the majority of the market these are essentially single player games (D3 is obviously a co-op game, but I don't think Blizzard expected the majority of the audience to keep playing after finishing the campaign once or twice). Remember outside of Korea, competitive Brood War was an even smaller niche than competitive SC2. These F2P MOBA's are a completely different business model and one that could never work for a game like SC. With Hearthstone, Blizzard has thrown it's hat into the F2P marketplace with phenomenal success and I wouldn't count them out of the MOBA game yet. RTS doesn't have to be a top priority for the company and it isn't. That just means we have to wait longer than WoW players to get expansions/sequels. Blizzard-Activision can budget every project accordingly; it's not a zero sum game. They don't need to take resources off of Hearthstone, for instance, to keep developing RTS games. SC2 didn't invent "esport" in non-Korean countries. If we were talking about "sport" along, Tetris can even be called one. The proper term we should be using is "professional gaming". WC3 was HUGE in European countries + China DotA was already HUGE in China. Halo competition was HUGE in North America through MLG Counter-Strike was being played pretty much as "the" team-based competition in all nations and was "the" game to watch during WCG. Hell, in Japan, there are many rhythm game competition. And all over the world, there are still fighting game competitions all around with Street Fighters, Tekken, and King of Fighters players. When SC2 came out, it wasn't evolutionary by any means. All it did manage to capture was introducing the ability to make cash while streaming online but that has been done even during the SC1 era with Afreeca balloon donation. SC2 might have coinced the term "esport", but while coining the term, we have to realize that "esport" was around even a decade before SC2's release. It wasn't on TV and there wasn't really HD streaming before 2010, so yeah esports existed outside Korea but TV-like broadcasts in HD certainly weren't around to a large extent before SC2. But SC2 weren't on non-Korean television either. The only time where SC2 came to be on TV was Boss from DH announced it for DH. But other games were also included. Therefore, it wasn't evolutionary in any sense. On July 15 2014 07:18 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 06:32 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 06:12 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 05:09 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 04:43 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 04:10 SupLilSon wrote:
[quote]
Good post with a lot of merit, but I still disagree with you.
First off, I think we have different definitions of success. I cannot argue against the fact that all of these games have had great opening sales numbers. I'll hand it to Blizzard, they are great at marketing with fantastic cinematics and playing off the success of their past titles. Even given how much I bash them online, I'm always hyped about their upcoming games. However, people often like to point only to the opening sales numbers for D3 and SC2 and claim them as successes, and in my eyes that is disingenuous.
Despite their massive opening sales and success, neither of these games retained that popularity and dwindled (D3 much quicker than SC2 lol). When talking about E-Sports titles, such as SC2 (not so much D3) I consider that a failure. SC2 is like the Transformers movie franchise, tons of hype, tons of ticket sales but not much substance or longevity. You say losing your player base is to be expected, but that simply isn't what we see from other premier E-Sports titles. DotA2 and LoL have both been growing and surpassing SC2 since their releases, despite their modest grassroots beginnings (considering DotA1, I know Valve is a large company).
And as for brands, I'm not saying Blizzard will completely scrap the Starcraft Universe. RTS titles are NOT the brand, the Starcraft Universe and name is. They can reuse the lore and framework from the Starcraft franchise but package it into a different genre. Think how they transitioned WC3 from an RTS into an MMO. Or how they are taking elements of Diablo, WC and SC and funneling them into a MOBA instead of their traditional platforms. Or WC into the CCG Hearthstone. Activision/Blizzard will sure as shit keep milking the Starcraft and Warcraft franchises for all they are worth but they don't care whether its as an RTS or not. I'm not saying Blizzard will 100% never make another RTS, that would be silly, but I am willing to bet that developing another RTS is not their priority.
Considering World of Warcraft... while EQ was out for a while beforehand, WoW presented the first real alternative to my knowledge. The MOBA scene is much more established and has numerous titles besides just LoL and DotA2. I'd argue that the conditions surrounding the release of Heroes of the Storm is a much different environment than WoW's release.
And as for the SC2 being broke stuff, it's not just about balance... posters like LaLush have pointed out flaws in SC2 that go beyond balance and the top pros. If the game is working as intended, then so be it, but obviously for many players the game was lacking something. Ah yes, we certainly have different ideas of what constitutes a success. I would argue that given SC2 and D3 (which I found lacking, tbh) were sold as full priced games, I think Blizzard must've been ecstatic with how these games were received(eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched). For the majority of the market these are essentially single player games (D3 is obviously a co-op game, but I don't think Blizzard expected the majority of the audience to keep playing after finishing the campaign once or twice). Remember outside of Korea, competitive Brood War was an even smaller niche than competitive SC2. These F2P MOBA's are a completely different business model and one that could never work for a game like SC. With Hearthstone, Blizzard has thrown it's hat into the F2P marketplace with phenomenal success and I wouldn't count them out of the MOBA game yet. RTS doesn't have to be a top priority for the company and it isn't. That just means we have to wait longer than WoW players to get expansions/sequels. Blizzard-Activision can budget every project accordingly; it's not a zero sum game. They don't need to take resources off of Hearthstone, for instance, to keep developing RTS games. SC2 didn't invent "esport" in non-Korean countries. If we were talking about "sport" along, Tetris can even be called one. The proper term we should be using is "professional gaming". WC3 was HUGE in European countries + China DotA was already HUGE in China. Halo competition was HUGE in North America through MLG Counter-Strike was being played pretty much as "the" team-based competition in all nations and was "the" game to watch during WCG. Hell, in Japan, there are many rhythm game competition. And all over the world, there are still fighting game competitions all around with Street Fighters, Tekken, and King of Fighters players. When SC2 came out, it wasn't evolutionary by any means. All it did manage to capture was introducing the ability to make cash while streaming online but that has been done even during the SC1 era with Afreeca balloon donation. SC2 might have coinced the term "esport", but while coining the term, we have to realize that "esport" was around even a decade before SC2's release. Calm down. I wasn't talking broadly about competitive games with healthy tournament scenes and certainly didn't claim SC2 "invented" esports; that would be taking my post out of context. When I say at the time of SC2's release, esports wasn't really a thing(outside of Korea), I was making a reference to the business side. I think Blizzard thought the only money to be made from esports was in Korea. For a company like Blizzard, esports wasn't something they cared about. The money wasn't there. But then that all changed and it wasn't because of SC2. It was because of Twitch and it was because of LoL. Then all of sudden, Blizzard created the WCS and seemed to care about esports outside of Korea. Even talking about the business side, there were ALWAYS money to be made from competitive gaming so your entire point is moot. Now you are digressing to Blizzard caring about esport. No the point was that you said that "eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched". And regarding "esport" with Blizzard, they specifically said that SC2 was launching to cater toward "esports" and the reason why they added MBS, automine, unlimited unit selects WAS to cater toward the non-Koreans (aka the "casuals) from the get-go to shorten the gap b/w foreigners and Koreans. So they (Blizzard) absolutely knew that there were a non-Korean market for "esport". Until very recently whatever money there was in esports was small potatoes. I don't think that is such a controversial statement. Obviously Blizzard knew there was going to be a market for SC2 tournament play from the beginning of the design process; WC3 had such a scene. My point, which is clear through context, is that Blizzard wouldn't have considered the esports market to be an important part of their business strategy. SC2 was about selling as many copies as possible at full retail price. That was the model. They weren't investing in esports, because why would they? The upside wasn't there. That changed. WCS inserted a lot of money into the international scene, the exact same time Twitch exploded. Now that there was a viable platform for esports outside of Korea, Blizzard got in the game. Before Twitch esports wasn't really a thing. I stand by that. It's really not such a controversial notion. WCG is dead. MLG was a money loser. Still is. It's just now approaching profitability as a kind of premium version of Twitch. So no, there wasn't ALWAYS money to be made from competitive gaming. You are talking about now. Back then both MLG + WCG were the absolutely pinnacle of professional gaming. They were doing better financially than nowadays. WCG's bread and butter was WC3 + CS + BW. With the arrival of SC2 and CS:GO, all three assets were diluted for WCG and especially how they couldn't reach Riot or Valve for LoL and DotA2. So what end up happening was that the money made from WCG transferred into WCS for SC2. Thus there was ALWAYS money to be made from competitive gaming in non-Korean places. This shouldn't even be argued against xD. You are basically saying that how Blizzcon, WCG, QuakeCon, China DotA tournaments doesn't exist before SC2. No that's an extremely wrong mindset. It's hard for me to speak to the financial viability of the Chinese scene. The nature of how China operates makes that kind of a non-point for a Western company like Blizzard at any rate. MLG, I can tell you for certain, has NEVER been profitable and is in better shape now than it has ever been. It's been able to keep attracting the type of investors that like to gamble on high-risk companies with potentially huge payoffs down the line. That's how Silicon Valley works. You're arguing something completely besides my point. I'm not making the argument that professional gaming literately didn't exist before 2012, but rather that professional gaming was small potatoes. A tiny, high risk/low reward industry. Blizzard swims in a bigger pond. With the rise of Twitch, the game changed. All of a sudden the world of esports had billion dollar stakes. Google bought Twitch. Riot invests millions into the LoL scene. Valve, likewise, is doing the same with DoTA 2, and Blizzard has renewed interest in professional SC2. This is a far cry from Blizzard and id Software hosting promotional tournaments at their fan conventions. Sponsors have always found promotional value in the professional gaming market, but for the startups that actually ran these things, they either lost money or at the very best operated on thin margins. Except that MLG now relied on their own streaming service to bring out their contents. Before, they were on TV such as ESPN that had sure viewership revenue in ads rather than being adblocked. That's a fact. Also all those things are things NON-related to SC2. So SC2 weren't the one to revolutionize "esport". It was Riot + Valve. Blizzard wasn't involved for the most of it. And also really professional gaming were a small potatoe? Check again: People can't even grasp how big Starcraft was in Korea during Broodwars. You cannot even compare Broodwars with Starcraft II in terms of popularity. Even with how big League of Legends is in Korea right now, it still doesn't match Broodwars. To understand how popular Broodwar was, during the 2002 Fifa World Cup that took place in Korea, before a game the Korean national team brought in Starcraft players to pump up the players. The soccer players were the biggest stars in Korea during the World Cup, yet their idols were the Starcraft players. This was mentioned in Valve's Dota 2 documentary, Free To Play. BW had AirForce Ace of Korea to take on the game specifically to train people in war-like situation. And when SC2 took over, AirForce Ace pulled out. So conclusion, while SC2 was a prominent actor in the stage of "esport", it didn't in nowhere revolutionize the market. Why do you think I claimed that SC2 revolutionized the market? I wrote that Twitch revolutionized the market (and to a lesser extent LoL). I was also specifically talking about the scene outside of Korea. I've made sure to mention that multiple times. MLG on ESPN was a bust. Canceled after one (maybe two, can't remember) season(s). So in conclusion, please respond to points I've actually made, and not just points you wish I'd made so you can refute them.
No you've said " I'm not making the argument that professional gaming literately didn't exist before 2012, but rather that professional gaming was small potatoes. "
In the future, be more specific in your postings. Its a useful talent toi have.
But good that we both agreed that the release of SC2's impact on the total professional gaming scene is rather minuscule.
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On July 16 2014 03:28 Xiphos wrote:Show nested quote +On July 16 2014 03:16 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 16 2014 02:37 Xiphos wrote:On July 16 2014 01:41 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 23:05 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 09:47 Cheren wrote:On July 15 2014 05:09 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 04:43 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 04:10 SupLilSon wrote:On July 15 2014 02:55 sc2isnotdying wrote:
[quote]
A lot wrong here. SC2 and D3 were both enormously successful, selling millions of copies worldwide. Last I remember hearing about it SC2:WOL had sold over 6 million copies and D3 over 12 million. So I'm not sure from a business point of view how either of those could be considered fuck ups. I'm also not sure why you think Blizzard has withdrawn all support. Last I checked, Blizzard still releases patches for SC2, funds the WCS tournament system, and is currently developing an expansion pack which is essentially guaranteed to sell 2-3 million copies. SC2 has lost a large percentage of the playerbase it had at launch, but this is to be expected. Most people don't play one game, forever. There is no reason to believe a theoretical SC3 wouldn't have an enormously successful launch.
Coming late to the party does not mean Blizzard missed the boat on the MOBA front. They were late to the party with MMO's as well (remember Everquest? Me neither).
On the subject of branding, which is directly related to revenue: Brands have value. They help consumers create positive associations with a company which in turn drives sales. There's a reason GM maintains the Cadillac brand despite it being responsible for far less revenue than Chevy or Buick. You can think of Starcraft as the Cadillac of Blizzard-Activision, if that makes it easier for you.
On being broken or not, which I won't get into detail here, except to point out that these balance issues are really only evident at the Korean GM level. For 99%+ of the player base the game works as intended. If your, for instance, quit the game because you kept losing to Protoss that wouldn't be evidence of the game being broken. A player on the micro scale shouldn't expect 50-50 in all their matchups. On a macro scale things work fine.
Good post with a lot of merit, but I still disagree with you. First off, I think we have different definitions of success. I cannot argue against the fact that all of these games have had great opening sales numbers. I'll hand it to Blizzard, they are great at marketing with fantastic cinematics and playing off the success of their past titles. Even given how much I bash them online, I'm always hyped about their upcoming games. However, people often like to point only to the opening sales numbers for D3 and SC2 and claim them as successes, and in my eyes that is disingenuous. Despite their massive opening sales and success, neither of these games retained that popularity and dwindled (D3 much quicker than SC2 lol). When talking about E-Sports titles, such as SC2 (not so much D3) I consider that a failure. SC2 is like the Transformers movie franchise, tons of hype, tons of ticket sales but not much substance or longevity. You say losing your player base is to be expected, but that simply isn't what we see from other premier E-Sports titles. DotA2 and LoL have both been growing and surpassing SC2 since their releases, despite their modest grassroots beginnings (considering DotA1, I know Valve is a large company). And as for brands, I'm not saying Blizzard will completely scrap the Starcraft Universe. RTS titles are NOT the brand, the Starcraft Universe and name is. They can reuse the lore and framework from the Starcraft franchise but package it into a different genre. Think how they transitioned WC3 from an RTS into an MMO. Or how they are taking elements of Diablo, WC and SC and funneling them into a MOBA instead of their traditional platforms. Or WC into the CCG Hearthstone. Activision/Blizzard will sure as shit keep milking the Starcraft and Warcraft franchises for all they are worth but they don't care whether its as an RTS or not. I'm not saying Blizzard will 100% never make another RTS, that would be silly, but I am willing to bet that developing another RTS is not their priority. Considering World of Warcraft... while EQ was out for a while beforehand, WoW presented the first real alternative to my knowledge. The MOBA scene is much more established and has numerous titles besides just LoL and DotA2. I'd argue that the conditions surrounding the release of Heroes of the Storm is a much different environment than WoW's release. And as for the SC2 being broke stuff, it's not just about balance... posters like LaLush have pointed out flaws in SC2 that go beyond balance and the top pros. If the game is working as intended, then so be it, but obviously for many players the game was lacking something. Ah yes, we certainly have different ideas of what constitutes a success. I would argue that given SC2 and D3 (which I found lacking, tbh) were sold as full priced games, I think Blizzard must've been ecstatic with how these games were received(eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched). For the majority of the market these are essentially single player games (D3 is obviously a co-op game, but I don't think Blizzard expected the majority of the audience to keep playing after finishing the campaign once or twice). Remember outside of Korea, competitive Brood War was an even smaller niche than competitive SC2. These F2P MOBA's are a completely different business model and one that could never work for a game like SC. With Hearthstone, Blizzard has thrown it's hat into the F2P marketplace with phenomenal success and I wouldn't count them out of the MOBA game yet. RTS doesn't have to be a top priority for the company and it isn't. That just means we have to wait longer than WoW players to get expansions/sequels. Blizzard-Activision can budget every project accordingly; it's not a zero sum game. They don't need to take resources off of Hearthstone, for instance, to keep developing RTS games. SC2 didn't invent "esport" in non-Korean countries. If we were talking about "sport" along, Tetris can even be called one. The proper term we should be using is "professional gaming". WC3 was HUGE in European countries + China DotA was already HUGE in China. Halo competition was HUGE in North America through MLG Counter-Strike was being played pretty much as "the" team-based competition in all nations and was "the" game to watch during WCG. Hell, in Japan, there are many rhythm game competition. And all over the world, there are still fighting game competitions all around with Street Fighters, Tekken, and King of Fighters players. When SC2 came out, it wasn't evolutionary by any means. All it did manage to capture was introducing the ability to make cash while streaming online but that has been done even during the SC1 era with Afreeca balloon donation. SC2 might have coinced the term "esport", but while coining the term, we have to realize that "esport" was around even a decade before SC2's release. It wasn't on TV and there wasn't really HD streaming before 2010, so yeah esports existed outside Korea but TV-like broadcasts in HD certainly weren't around to a large extent before SC2. But SC2 weren't on non-Korean television either. The only time where SC2 came to be on TV was Boss from DH announced it for DH. But other games were also included. Therefore, it wasn't evolutionary in any sense. On July 15 2014 07:18 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 06:32 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 06:12 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 05:09 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 04:43 sc2isnotdying wrote:
[quote]
Ah yes, we certainly have different ideas of what constitutes a success. I would argue that given SC2 and D3 (which I found lacking, tbh) were sold as full priced games, I think Blizzard must've been ecstatic with how these games were received(eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched). For the majority of the market these are essentially single player games (D3 is obviously a co-op game, but I don't think Blizzard expected the majority of the audience to keep playing after finishing the campaign once or twice). Remember outside of Korea, competitive Brood War was an even smaller niche than competitive SC2. These F2P MOBA's are a completely different business model and one that could never work for a game like SC. With Hearthstone, Blizzard has thrown it's hat into the F2P marketplace with phenomenal success and I wouldn't count them out of the MOBA game yet.
RTS doesn't have to be a top priority for the company and it isn't. That just means we have to wait longer than WoW players to get expansions/sequels. Blizzard-Activision can budget every project accordingly; it's not a zero sum game. They don't need to take resources off of Hearthstone, for instance, to keep developing RTS games. SC2 didn't invent "esport" in non-Korean countries. If we were talking about "sport" along, Tetris can even be called one. The proper term we should be using is "professional gaming". WC3 was HUGE in European countries + China DotA was already HUGE in China. Halo competition was HUGE in North America through MLG Counter-Strike was being played pretty much as "the" team-based competition in all nations and was "the" game to watch during WCG. Hell, in Japan, there are many rhythm game competition. And all over the world, there are still fighting game competitions all around with Street Fighters, Tekken, and King of Fighters players. When SC2 came out, it wasn't evolutionary by any means. All it did manage to capture was introducing the ability to make cash while streaming online but that has been done even during the SC1 era with Afreeca balloon donation. SC2 might have coinced the term "esport", but while coining the term, we have to realize that "esport" was around even a decade before SC2's release. Calm down. I wasn't talking broadly about competitive games with healthy tournament scenes and certainly didn't claim SC2 "invented" esports; that would be taking my post out of context. When I say at the time of SC2's release, esports wasn't really a thing(outside of Korea), I was making a reference to the business side. I think Blizzard thought the only money to be made from esports was in Korea. For a company like Blizzard, esports wasn't something they cared about. The money wasn't there. But then that all changed and it wasn't because of SC2. It was because of Twitch and it was because of LoL. Then all of sudden, Blizzard created the WCS and seemed to care about esports outside of Korea. Even talking about the business side, there were ALWAYS money to be made from competitive gaming so your entire point is moot. Now you are digressing to Blizzard caring about esport. No the point was that you said that "eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched". And regarding "esport" with Blizzard, they specifically said that SC2 was launching to cater toward "esports" and the reason why they added MBS, automine, unlimited unit selects WAS to cater toward the non-Koreans (aka the "casuals) from the get-go to shorten the gap b/w foreigners and Koreans. So they (Blizzard) absolutely knew that there were a non-Korean market for "esport". Until very recently whatever money there was in esports was small potatoes. I don't think that is such a controversial statement. Obviously Blizzard knew there was going to be a market for SC2 tournament play from the beginning of the design process; WC3 had such a scene. My point, which is clear through context, is that Blizzard wouldn't have considered the esports market to be an important part of their business strategy. SC2 was about selling as many copies as possible at full retail price. That was the model. They weren't investing in esports, because why would they? The upside wasn't there. That changed. WCS inserted a lot of money into the international scene, the exact same time Twitch exploded. Now that there was a viable platform for esports outside of Korea, Blizzard got in the game. Before Twitch esports wasn't really a thing. I stand by that. It's really not such a controversial notion. WCG is dead. MLG was a money loser. Still is. It's just now approaching profitability as a kind of premium version of Twitch. So no, there wasn't ALWAYS money to be made from competitive gaming. You are talking about now. Back then both MLG + WCG were the absolutely pinnacle of professional gaming. They were doing better financially than nowadays. WCG's bread and butter was WC3 + CS + BW. With the arrival of SC2 and CS:GO, all three assets were diluted for WCG and especially how they couldn't reach Riot or Valve for LoL and DotA2. So what end up happening was that the money made from WCG transferred into WCS for SC2. Thus there was ALWAYS money to be made from competitive gaming in non-Korean places. This shouldn't even be argued against xD. You are basically saying that how Blizzcon, WCG, QuakeCon, China DotA tournaments doesn't exist before SC2. No that's an extremely wrong mindset. It's hard for me to speak to the financial viability of the Chinese scene. The nature of how China operates makes that kind of a non-point for a Western company like Blizzard at any rate. MLG, I can tell you for certain, has NEVER been profitable and is in better shape now than it has ever been. It's been able to keep attracting the type of investors that like to gamble on high-risk companies with potentially huge payoffs down the line. That's how Silicon Valley works. You're arguing something completely besides my point. I'm not making the argument that professional gaming literately didn't exist before 2012, but rather that professional gaming was small potatoes. A tiny, high risk/low reward industry. Blizzard swims in a bigger pond. With the rise of Twitch, the game changed. All of a sudden the world of esports had billion dollar stakes. Google bought Twitch. Riot invests millions into the LoL scene. Valve, likewise, is doing the same with DoTA 2, and Blizzard has renewed interest in professional SC2. This is a far cry from Blizzard and id Software hosting promotional tournaments at their fan conventions. Sponsors have always found promotional value in the professional gaming market, but for the startups that actually ran these things, they either lost money or at the very best operated on thin margins. Except that MLG now relied on their own streaming service to bring out their contents. Before, they were on TV such as ESPN that had sure viewership revenue in ads rather than being adblocked. That's a fact. Also all those things are things NON-related to SC2. So SC2 weren't the one to revolutionize "esport". It was Riot + Valve. Blizzard wasn't involved for the most of it. And also really professional gaming were a small potatoe? Check again: People can't even grasp how big Starcraft was in Korea during Broodwars. You cannot even compare Broodwars with Starcraft II in terms of popularity. Even with how big League of Legends is in Korea right now, it still doesn't match Broodwars. To understand how popular Broodwar was, during the 2002 Fifa World Cup that took place in Korea, before a game the Korean national team brought in Starcraft players to pump up the players. The soccer players were the biggest stars in Korea during the World Cup, yet their idols were the Starcraft players. This was mentioned in Valve's Dota 2 documentary, Free To Play. BW had AirForce Ace of Korea to take on the game specifically to train people in war-like situation. And when SC2 took over, AirForce Ace pulled out. So conclusion, while SC2 was a prominent actor in the stage of "esport", it didn't in nowhere revolutionize the market. Why do you think I claimed that SC2 revolutionized the market? I wrote that Twitch revolutionized the market (and to a lesser extent LoL). I was also specifically talking about the scene outside of Korea. I've made sure to mention that multiple times. MLG on ESPN was a bust. Canceled after one (maybe two, can't remember) season(s). So in conclusion, please respond to points I've actually made, and not just points you wish I'd made so you can refute them. No you've said " I'm not making the argument that professional gaming literately didn't exist before 2012, but rather that professional gaming was small potatoes. " In the future, be more specific in your postings. Its a useful talent toi have. But good that we both agreed that the release of SC2's impact on the total professional gaming scene is rather minuscule.
Go back and read the thread. Deriving meaning from context is also a pretty useful talent, although I suppose I'll try to be more specific in the future. It was sloppy of me to forget the qualifier.
From when I first brought up the point: "...(eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched)..."
And again: "When I say at the time of SC2's release, esports wasn't really a thing(outside of Korea)..."
One more time: " Now that there was a viable platform for esports outside of Korea, Blizzard got in the game"
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On July 16 2014 03:49 sc2isnotdying wrote:Show nested quote +On July 16 2014 03:28 Xiphos wrote:On July 16 2014 03:16 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 16 2014 02:37 Xiphos wrote:On July 16 2014 01:41 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 23:05 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 09:47 Cheren wrote:On July 15 2014 05:09 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 04:43 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 04:10 SupLilSon wrote:
[quote]
Good post with a lot of merit, but I still disagree with you.
First off, I think we have different definitions of success. I cannot argue against the fact that all of these games have had great opening sales numbers. I'll hand it to Blizzard, they are great at marketing with fantastic cinematics and playing off the success of their past titles. Even given how much I bash them online, I'm always hyped about their upcoming games. However, people often like to point only to the opening sales numbers for D3 and SC2 and claim them as successes, and in my eyes that is disingenuous.
Despite their massive opening sales and success, neither of these games retained that popularity and dwindled (D3 much quicker than SC2 lol). When talking about E-Sports titles, such as SC2 (not so much D3) I consider that a failure. SC2 is like the Transformers movie franchise, tons of hype, tons of ticket sales but not much substance or longevity. You say losing your player base is to be expected, but that simply isn't what we see from other premier E-Sports titles. DotA2 and LoL have both been growing and surpassing SC2 since their releases, despite their modest grassroots beginnings (considering DotA1, I know Valve is a large company).
And as for brands, I'm not saying Blizzard will completely scrap the Starcraft Universe. RTS titles are NOT the brand, the Starcraft Universe and name is. They can reuse the lore and framework from the Starcraft franchise but package it into a different genre. Think how they transitioned WC3 from an RTS into an MMO. Or how they are taking elements of Diablo, WC and SC and funneling them into a MOBA instead of their traditional platforms. Or WC into the CCG Hearthstone. Activision/Blizzard will sure as shit keep milking the Starcraft and Warcraft franchises for all they are worth but they don't care whether its as an RTS or not. I'm not saying Blizzard will 100% never make another RTS, that would be silly, but I am willing to bet that developing another RTS is not their priority.
Considering World of Warcraft... while EQ was out for a while beforehand, WoW presented the first real alternative to my knowledge. The MOBA scene is much more established and has numerous titles besides just LoL and DotA2. I'd argue that the conditions surrounding the release of Heroes of the Storm is a much different environment than WoW's release.
And as for the SC2 being broke stuff, it's not just about balance... posters like LaLush have pointed out flaws in SC2 that go beyond balance and the top pros. If the game is working as intended, then so be it, but obviously for many players the game was lacking something. Ah yes, we certainly have different ideas of what constitutes a success. I would argue that given SC2 and D3 (which I found lacking, tbh) were sold as full priced games, I think Blizzard must've been ecstatic with how these games were received(eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched). For the majority of the market these are essentially single player games (D3 is obviously a co-op game, but I don't think Blizzard expected the majority of the audience to keep playing after finishing the campaign once or twice). Remember outside of Korea, competitive Brood War was an even smaller niche than competitive SC2. These F2P MOBA's are a completely different business model and one that could never work for a game like SC. With Hearthstone, Blizzard has thrown it's hat into the F2P marketplace with phenomenal success and I wouldn't count them out of the MOBA game yet. RTS doesn't have to be a top priority for the company and it isn't. That just means we have to wait longer than WoW players to get expansions/sequels. Blizzard-Activision can budget every project accordingly; it's not a zero sum game. They don't need to take resources off of Hearthstone, for instance, to keep developing RTS games. SC2 didn't invent "esport" in non-Korean countries. If we were talking about "sport" along, Tetris can even be called one. The proper term we should be using is "professional gaming". WC3 was HUGE in European countries + China DotA was already HUGE in China. Halo competition was HUGE in North America through MLG Counter-Strike was being played pretty much as "the" team-based competition in all nations and was "the" game to watch during WCG. Hell, in Japan, there are many rhythm game competition. And all over the world, there are still fighting game competitions all around with Street Fighters, Tekken, and King of Fighters players. When SC2 came out, it wasn't evolutionary by any means. All it did manage to capture was introducing the ability to make cash while streaming online but that has been done even during the SC1 era with Afreeca balloon donation. SC2 might have coinced the term "esport", but while coining the term, we have to realize that "esport" was around even a decade before SC2's release. It wasn't on TV and there wasn't really HD streaming before 2010, so yeah esports existed outside Korea but TV-like broadcasts in HD certainly weren't around to a large extent before SC2. But SC2 weren't on non-Korean television either. The only time where SC2 came to be on TV was Boss from DH announced it for DH. But other games were also included. Therefore, it wasn't evolutionary in any sense. On July 15 2014 07:18 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 06:32 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 06:12 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 05:09 Xiphos wrote:
[quote]
SC2 didn't invent "esport" in non-Korean countries.
If we were talking about "sport" along, Tetris can even be called one. The proper term we should be using is "professional gaming".
WC3 was HUGE in European countries + China
DotA was already HUGE in China.
Halo competition was HUGE in North America through MLG
Counter-Strike was being played pretty much as "the" team-based competition in all nations and was "the" game to watch during WCG.
Hell, in Japan, there are many rhythm game competition.
And all over the world, there are still fighting game competitions all around with Street Fighters, Tekken, and King of Fighters players.
When SC2 came out, it wasn't evolutionary by any means.
All it did manage to capture was introducing the ability to make cash while streaming online but that has been done even during the SC1 era with Afreeca balloon donation.
SC2 might have coinced the term "esport", but while coining the term, we have to realize that "esport" was around even a decade before SC2's release. Calm down. I wasn't talking broadly about competitive games with healthy tournament scenes and certainly didn't claim SC2 "invented" esports; that would be taking my post out of context. When I say at the time of SC2's release, esports wasn't really a thing(outside of Korea), I was making a reference to the business side. I think Blizzard thought the only money to be made from esports was in Korea. For a company like Blizzard, esports wasn't something they cared about. The money wasn't there. But then that all changed and it wasn't because of SC2. It was because of Twitch and it was because of LoL. Then all of sudden, Blizzard created the WCS and seemed to care about esports outside of Korea. Even talking about the business side, there were ALWAYS money to be made from competitive gaming so your entire point is moot. Now you are digressing to Blizzard caring about esport. No the point was that you said that "eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched". And regarding "esport" with Blizzard, they specifically said that SC2 was launching to cater toward "esports" and the reason why they added MBS, automine, unlimited unit selects WAS to cater toward the non-Koreans (aka the "casuals) from the get-go to shorten the gap b/w foreigners and Koreans. So they (Blizzard) absolutely knew that there were a non-Korean market for "esport". Until very recently whatever money there was in esports was small potatoes. I don't think that is such a controversial statement. Obviously Blizzard knew there was going to be a market for SC2 tournament play from the beginning of the design process; WC3 had such a scene. My point, which is clear through context, is that Blizzard wouldn't have considered the esports market to be an important part of their business strategy. SC2 was about selling as many copies as possible at full retail price. That was the model. They weren't investing in esports, because why would they? The upside wasn't there. That changed. WCS inserted a lot of money into the international scene, the exact same time Twitch exploded. Now that there was a viable platform for esports outside of Korea, Blizzard got in the game. Before Twitch esports wasn't really a thing. I stand by that. It's really not such a controversial notion. WCG is dead. MLG was a money loser. Still is. It's just now approaching profitability as a kind of premium version of Twitch. So no, there wasn't ALWAYS money to be made from competitive gaming. You are talking about now. Back then both MLG + WCG were the absolutely pinnacle of professional gaming. They were doing better financially than nowadays. WCG's bread and butter was WC3 + CS + BW. With the arrival of SC2 and CS:GO, all three assets were diluted for WCG and especially how they couldn't reach Riot or Valve for LoL and DotA2. So what end up happening was that the money made from WCG transferred into WCS for SC2. Thus there was ALWAYS money to be made from competitive gaming in non-Korean places. This shouldn't even be argued against xD. You are basically saying that how Blizzcon, WCG, QuakeCon, China DotA tournaments doesn't exist before SC2. No that's an extremely wrong mindset. It's hard for me to speak to the financial viability of the Chinese scene. The nature of how China operates makes that kind of a non-point for a Western company like Blizzard at any rate. MLG, I can tell you for certain, has NEVER been profitable and is in better shape now than it has ever been. It's been able to keep attracting the type of investors that like to gamble on high-risk companies with potentially huge payoffs down the line. That's how Silicon Valley works. You're arguing something completely besides my point. I'm not making the argument that professional gaming literately didn't exist before 2012, but rather that professional gaming was small potatoes. A tiny, high risk/low reward industry. Blizzard swims in a bigger pond. With the rise of Twitch, the game changed. All of a sudden the world of esports had billion dollar stakes. Google bought Twitch. Riot invests millions into the LoL scene. Valve, likewise, is doing the same with DoTA 2, and Blizzard has renewed interest in professional SC2. This is a far cry from Blizzard and id Software hosting promotional tournaments at their fan conventions. Sponsors have always found promotional value in the professional gaming market, but for the startups that actually ran these things, they either lost money or at the very best operated on thin margins. Except that MLG now relied on their own streaming service to bring out their contents. Before, they were on TV such as ESPN that had sure viewership revenue in ads rather than being adblocked. That's a fact. Also all those things are things NON-related to SC2. So SC2 weren't the one to revolutionize "esport". It was Riot + Valve. Blizzard wasn't involved for the most of it. And also really professional gaming were a small potatoe? Check again: People can't even grasp how big Starcraft was in Korea during Broodwars. You cannot even compare Broodwars with Starcraft II in terms of popularity. Even with how big League of Legends is in Korea right now, it still doesn't match Broodwars. To understand how popular Broodwar was, during the 2002 Fifa World Cup that took place in Korea, before a game the Korean national team brought in Starcraft players to pump up the players. The soccer players were the biggest stars in Korea during the World Cup, yet their idols were the Starcraft players. This was mentioned in Valve's Dota 2 documentary, Free To Play. BW had AirForce Ace of Korea to take on the game specifically to train people in war-like situation. And when SC2 took over, AirForce Ace pulled out. So conclusion, while SC2 was a prominent actor in the stage of "esport", it didn't in nowhere revolutionize the market. Why do you think I claimed that SC2 revolutionized the market? I wrote that Twitch revolutionized the market (and to a lesser extent LoL). I was also specifically talking about the scene outside of Korea. I've made sure to mention that multiple times. MLG on ESPN was a bust. Canceled after one (maybe two, can't remember) season(s). So in conclusion, please respond to points I've actually made, and not just points you wish I'd made so you can refute them. No you've said " I'm not making the argument that professional gaming literately didn't exist before 2012, but rather that professional gaming was small potatoes. " In the future, be more specific in your postings. Its a useful talent toi have. But good that we both agreed that the release of SC2's impact on the total professional gaming scene is rather minuscule. Go back and read the thread. Deriving meaning from context is also a pretty useful talent, although I suppose I'll try to be more specific in the future. It was sloppy of me to forget the qualifier. From when I first brought up the point: "...(eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched)..." And again: "When I say at the time of SC2's release, esports wasn't really a thing (outside of Korea)..." One more time: " Now that there was a viable platform for esports outside of Korea, Blizzard got in the game"
Once again, "esport" was a thing outside of Korea (before SC2's release).
Sure it is a bit bigger than before, but SC2's involvement in such were quite minuscule in comparing to what Valve + Riot achieved.
It was viable (outside of Korea) for a decade prior to SC2's release w/ WC3, DotA, CS, Quake, Street Fighters, Halo, etc.
If you are good at an entertaining game to watch, the audience will be there and you will get sponsored.
And even before Twitch, you could make money through YouTube videos by posting gameplay of popular games with the ad revenue. Twitch only made it so that content creators can interact with the audience in real time.
So "esport" was definitely and absolutely a thing outside of Korea. Get that right.
EDIT: Now that we got this settled, let's get back on track on topic.
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On July 15 2014 23:05 Xiphos wrote:Show nested quote +On July 15 2014 09:47 Cheren wrote:On July 15 2014 05:09 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 04:43 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 04:10 SupLilSon wrote:On July 15 2014 02:55 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 02:03 SupLilSon wrote:On July 15 2014 01:38 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 01:12 SupLilSon wrote:
The time for the RTS genre to make a comeback was 2-3 years ago when SC2's popularity was surging and spearheading the E-Sports community. MOBA's, digital card games, FPS, and fighting games all surpass SC2 in Esports popularity now and thus there's going to be very little incentive for developers to work on RTS titles unless it's a passion project.
Let's face it, Blizzard had ample chances to rejuvenate the RTS genre but they seem to have other plans that don't involve SC2. Some people will look to LotV as a savior, but in the end it'll just introduce a few poorly designed units, a cookie cutter campaign, and absolutely nothing to fix the game.
Blizzard has largely given up on SC2... they are already developing their next titles (a MOBA and most likely a MMO) and I don't expect them to return to the RTS genre for a long while... if ever. They're developing LotV at the moment. You can only expect them to have one RTS project at a time. Its just not as profitable as their other stuff. After LotV is out they'll work on the next thing. RTS games are important to Blizzards brand identity. They might be the only big developer to not give up on the genre. I would even go so far as to say they'll support the genre even if it loses them money(which it won't). Also, SC2 is broken? That's a tough argument to make, but I'm willing to hear you out. RTS games are not crucial to Blizzard's brand identity... The Warcraft lore and franchise might be , but not the RTS genre. Activision Blizzard doesn't give a shit about anything BESIDES profits. If the genre is not producing revenue then they will give up on it, simple as that. If Blizzard had some sentimental attachment to RTS titles they wouldn't have failed so comically with SC2 and HotS and then withdrawn virtually all support. Blizzard knows they fucked up hard with SC2, they know they fucked up hard with Diablo 3 and they know that they missed the boat on the MOBA front. They are funneling resources into their next MMO, a genre where they still have some legitimacy. If they ever return to making RTS games it won't be for a very long time. Also about SC2 being "broken", I don't want to derail the thread but there have been tons of good posts about the topic. Check out the recent "Welcome to ZPCraft II" thread as it contains a massive amount of information and does a better job at explaining than I ever could. Obviously everyone's definition of "broken" can be different but just look at the harsh decline SC2 has experienced since it's inception and ask yourself if the game is really in good shape... A lot wrong here. SC2 and D3 were both enormously successful, selling millions of copies worldwide. Last I remember hearing about it SC2:WOL had sold over 6 million copies and D3 over 12 million. So I'm not sure from a business point of view how either of those could be considered fuck ups. I'm also not sure why you think Blizzard has withdrawn all support. Last I checked, Blizzard still releases patches for SC2, funds the WCS tournament system, and is currently developing an expansion pack which is essentially guaranteed to sell 2-3 million copies. SC2 has lost a large percentage of the playerbase it had at launch, but this is to be expected. Most people don't play one game, forever. There is no reason to believe a theoretical SC3 wouldn't have an enormously successful launch. Coming late to the party does not mean Blizzard missed the boat on the MOBA front. They were late to the party with MMO's as well (remember Everquest? Me neither). On the subject of branding, which is directly related to revenue: Brands have value. They help consumers create positive associations with a company which in turn drives sales. There's a reason GM maintains the Cadillac brand despite it being responsible for far less revenue than Chevy or Buick. You can think of Starcraft as the Cadillac of Blizzard-Activision, if that makes it easier for you. On being broken or not, which I won't get into detail here, except to point out that these balance issues are really only evident at the Korean GM level. For 99%+ of the player base the game works as intended. If your, for instance, quit the game because you kept losing to Protoss that wouldn't be evidence of the game being broken. A player on the micro scale shouldn't expect 50-50 in all their matchups. On a macro scale things work fine. Good post with a lot of merit, but I still disagree with you. First off, I think we have different definitions of success. I cannot argue against the fact that all of these games have had great opening sales numbers. I'll hand it to Blizzard, they are great at marketing with fantastic cinematics and playing off the success of their past titles. Even given how much I bash them online, I'm always hyped about their upcoming games. However, people often like to point only to the opening sales numbers for D3 and SC2 and claim them as successes, and in my eyes that is disingenuous. Despite their massive opening sales and success, neither of these games retained that popularity and dwindled (D3 much quicker than SC2 lol). When talking about E-Sports titles, such as SC2 (not so much D3) I consider that a failure. SC2 is like the Transformers movie franchise, tons of hype, tons of ticket sales but not much substance or longevity. You say losing your player base is to be expected, but that simply isn't what we see from other premier E-Sports titles. DotA2 and LoL have both been growing and surpassing SC2 since their releases, despite their modest grassroots beginnings (considering DotA1, I know Valve is a large company). And as for brands, I'm not saying Blizzard will completely scrap the Starcraft Universe. RTS titles are NOT the brand, the Starcraft Universe and name is. They can reuse the lore and framework from the Starcraft franchise but package it into a different genre. Think how they transitioned WC3 from an RTS into an MMO. Or how they are taking elements of Diablo, WC and SC and funneling them into a MOBA instead of their traditional platforms. Or WC into the CCG Hearthstone. Activision/Blizzard will sure as shit keep milking the Starcraft and Warcraft franchises for all they are worth but they don't care whether its as an RTS or not. I'm not saying Blizzard will 100% never make another RTS, that would be silly, but I am willing to bet that developing another RTS is not their priority. Considering World of Warcraft... while EQ was out for a while beforehand, WoW presented the first real alternative to my knowledge. The MOBA scene is much more established and has numerous titles besides just LoL and DotA2. I'd argue that the conditions surrounding the release of Heroes of the Storm is a much different environment than WoW's release. And as for the SC2 being broke stuff, it's not just about balance... posters like LaLush have pointed out flaws in SC2 that go beyond balance and the top pros. If the game is working as intended, then so be it, but obviously for many players the game was lacking something. Ah yes, we certainly have different ideas of what constitutes a success. I would argue that given SC2 and D3 (which I found lacking, tbh) were sold as full priced games, I think Blizzard must've been ecstatic with how these games were received(eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched). For the majority of the market these are essentially single player games (D3 is obviously a co-op game, but I don't think Blizzard expected the majority of the audience to keep playing after finishing the campaign once or twice). Remember outside of Korea, competitive Brood War was an even smaller niche than competitive SC2. These F2P MOBA's are a completely different business model and one that could never work for a game like SC. With Hearthstone, Blizzard has thrown it's hat into the F2P marketplace with phenomenal success and I wouldn't count them out of the MOBA game yet. RTS doesn't have to be a top priority for the company and it isn't. That just means we have to wait longer than WoW players to get expansions/sequels. Blizzard-Activision can budget every project accordingly; it's not a zero sum game. They don't need to take resources off of Hearthstone, for instance, to keep developing RTS games. SC2 didn't invent "esport" in non-Korean countries. If we were talking about "sport" along, Tetris can even be called one. The proper term we should be using is "professional gaming". WC3 was HUGE in European countries + China DotA was already HUGE in China. Halo competition was HUGE in North America through MLG Counter-Strike was being played pretty much as "the" team-based competition in all nations and was "the" game to watch during WCG. Hell, in Japan, there are many rhythm game competition. And all over the world, there are still fighting game competitions all around with Street Fighters, Tekken, and King of Fighters players. When SC2 came out, it wasn't evolutionary by any means. All it did manage to capture was introducing the ability to make cash while streaming online but that has been done even during the SC1 era with Afreeca balloon donation. SC2 might have coinced the term "esport", but while coining the term, we have to realize that "esport" was around even a decade before SC2's release. It wasn't on TV and there wasn't really HD streaming before 2010, so yeah esports existed outside Korea but TV-like broadcasts in HD certainly weren't around to a large extent before SC2. But SC2 weren't on non-Korean television either. The only time where SC2 came to be on TV was Boss from DH announced it for DH. But other games were also included. Therefore, it wasn't evolutionary in any sense. Show nested quote +On July 15 2014 07:18 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 06:32 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 06:12 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 05:09 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 04:43 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 04:10 SupLilSon wrote:On July 15 2014 02:55 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 02:03 SupLilSon wrote:On July 15 2014 01:38 sc2isnotdying wrote:
[quote]
They're developing LotV at the moment. You can only expect them to have one RTS project at a time. Its just not as profitable as their other stuff. After LotV is out they'll work on the next thing. RTS games are important to Blizzards brand identity. They might be the only big developer to not give up on the genre. I would even go so far as to say they'll support the genre even if it loses them money(which it won't).
Also, SC2 is broken? That's a tough argument to make, but I'm willing to hear you out. RTS games are not crucial to Blizzard's brand identity... The Warcraft lore and franchise might be , but not the RTS genre. Activision Blizzard doesn't give a shit about anything BESIDES profits. If the genre is not producing revenue then they will give up on it, simple as that. If Blizzard had some sentimental attachment to RTS titles they wouldn't have failed so comically with SC2 and HotS and then withdrawn virtually all support. Blizzard knows they fucked up hard with SC2, they know they fucked up hard with Diablo 3 and they know that they missed the boat on the MOBA front. They are funneling resources into their next MMO, a genre where they still have some legitimacy. If they ever return to making RTS games it won't be for a very long time. Also about SC2 being "broken", I don't want to derail the thread but there have been tons of good posts about the topic. Check out the recent "Welcome to ZPCraft II" thread as it contains a massive amount of information and does a better job at explaining than I ever could. Obviously everyone's definition of "broken" can be different but just look at the harsh decline SC2 has experienced since it's inception and ask yourself if the game is really in good shape... A lot wrong here. SC2 and D3 were both enormously successful, selling millions of copies worldwide. Last I remember hearing about it SC2:WOL had sold over 6 million copies and D3 over 12 million. So I'm not sure from a business point of view how either of those could be considered fuck ups. I'm also not sure why you think Blizzard has withdrawn all support. Last I checked, Blizzard still releases patches for SC2, funds the WCS tournament system, and is currently developing an expansion pack which is essentially guaranteed to sell 2-3 million copies. SC2 has lost a large percentage of the playerbase it had at launch, but this is to be expected. Most people don't play one game, forever. There is no reason to believe a theoretical SC3 wouldn't have an enormously successful launch. Coming late to the party does not mean Blizzard missed the boat on the MOBA front. They were late to the party with MMO's as well (remember Everquest? Me neither). On the subject of branding, which is directly related to revenue: Brands have value. They help consumers create positive associations with a company which in turn drives sales. There's a reason GM maintains the Cadillac brand despite it being responsible for far less revenue than Chevy or Buick. You can think of Starcraft as the Cadillac of Blizzard-Activision, if that makes it easier for you. On being broken or not, which I won't get into detail here, except to point out that these balance issues are really only evident at the Korean GM level. For 99%+ of the player base the game works as intended. If your, for instance, quit the game because you kept losing to Protoss that wouldn't be evidence of the game being broken. A player on the micro scale shouldn't expect 50-50 in all their matchups. On a macro scale things work fine. Good post with a lot of merit, but I still disagree with you. First off, I think we have different definitions of success. I cannot argue against the fact that all of these games have had great opening sales numbers. I'll hand it to Blizzard, they are great at marketing with fantastic cinematics and playing off the success of their past titles. Even given how much I bash them online, I'm always hyped about their upcoming games. However, people often like to point only to the opening sales numbers for D3 and SC2 and claim them as successes, and in my eyes that is disingenuous. Despite their massive opening sales and success, neither of these games retained that popularity and dwindled (D3 much quicker than SC2 lol). When talking about E-Sports titles, such as SC2 (not so much D3) I consider that a failure. SC2 is like the Transformers movie franchise, tons of hype, tons of ticket sales but not much substance or longevity. You say losing your player base is to be expected, but that simply isn't what we see from other premier E-Sports titles. DotA2 and LoL have both been growing and surpassing SC2 since their releases, despite their modest grassroots beginnings (considering DotA1, I know Valve is a large company). And as for brands, I'm not saying Blizzard will completely scrap the Starcraft Universe. RTS titles are NOT the brand, the Starcraft Universe and name is. They can reuse the lore and framework from the Starcraft franchise but package it into a different genre. Think how they transitioned WC3 from an RTS into an MMO. Or how they are taking elements of Diablo, WC and SC and funneling them into a MOBA instead of their traditional platforms. Or WC into the CCG Hearthstone. Activision/Blizzard will sure as shit keep milking the Starcraft and Warcraft franchises for all they are worth but they don't care whether its as an RTS or not. I'm not saying Blizzard will 100% never make another RTS, that would be silly, but I am willing to bet that developing another RTS is not their priority. Considering World of Warcraft... while EQ was out for a while beforehand, WoW presented the first real alternative to my knowledge. The MOBA scene is much more established and has numerous titles besides just LoL and DotA2. I'd argue that the conditions surrounding the release of Heroes of the Storm is a much different environment than WoW's release. And as for the SC2 being broke stuff, it's not just about balance... posters like LaLush have pointed out flaws in SC2 that go beyond balance and the top pros. If the game is working as intended, then so be it, but obviously for many players the game was lacking something. Ah yes, we certainly have different ideas of what constitutes a success. I would argue that given SC2 and D3 (which I found lacking, tbh) were sold as full priced games, I think Blizzard must've been ecstatic with how these games were received(eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched). For the majority of the market these are essentially single player games (D3 is obviously a co-op game, but I don't think Blizzard expected the majority of the audience to keep playing after finishing the campaign once or twice). Remember outside of Korea, competitive Brood War was an even smaller niche than competitive SC2. These F2P MOBA's are a completely different business model and one that could never work for a game like SC. With Hearthstone, Blizzard has thrown it's hat into the F2P marketplace with phenomenal success and I wouldn't count them out of the MOBA game yet. RTS doesn't have to be a top priority for the company and it isn't. That just means we have to wait longer than WoW players to get expansions/sequels. Blizzard-Activision can budget every project accordingly; it's not a zero sum game. They don't need to take resources off of Hearthstone, for instance, to keep developing RTS games. SC2 didn't invent "esport" in non-Korean countries. If we were talking about "sport" along, Tetris can even be called one. The proper term we should be using is "professional gaming". WC3 was HUGE in European countries + China DotA was already HUGE in China. Halo competition was HUGE in North America through MLG Counter-Strike was being played pretty much as "the" team-based competition in all nations and was "the" game to watch during WCG. Hell, in Japan, there are many rhythm game competition. And all over the world, there are still fighting game competitions all around with Street Fighters, Tekken, and King of Fighters players. When SC2 came out, it wasn't evolutionary by any means. All it did manage to capture was introducing the ability to make cash while streaming online but that has been done even during the SC1 era with Afreeca balloon donation. SC2 might have coinced the term "esport", but while coining the term, we have to realize that "esport" was around even a decade before SC2's release. Calm down. I wasn't talking broadly about competitive games with healthy tournament scenes and certainly didn't claim SC2 "invented" esports; that would be taking my post out of context. When I say at the time of SC2's release, esports wasn't really a thing(outside of Korea), I was making a reference to the business side. I think Blizzard thought the only money to be made from esports was in Korea. For a company like Blizzard, esports wasn't something they cared about. The money wasn't there. But then that all changed and it wasn't because of SC2. It was because of Twitch and it was because of LoL. Then all of sudden, Blizzard created the WCS and seemed to care about esports outside of Korea. Even talking about the business side, there were ALWAYS money to be made from competitive gaming so your entire point is moot. Now you are digressing to Blizzard caring about esport. No the point was that you said that "eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched". And regarding "esport" with Blizzard, they specifically said that SC2 was launching to cater toward "esports" and the reason why they added MBS, automine, unlimited unit selects WAS to cater toward the non-Koreans (aka the "casuals) from the get-go to shorten the gap b/w foreigners and Koreans. So they (Blizzard) absolutely knew that there were a non-Korean market for "esport". Until very recently whatever money there was in esports was small potatoes. I don't think that is such a controversial statement. Obviously Blizzard knew there was going to be a market for SC2 tournament play from the beginning of the design process; WC3 had such a scene. My point, which is clear through context, is that Blizzard wouldn't have considered the esports market to be an important part of their business strategy. SC2 was about selling as many copies as possible at full retail price. That was the model. They weren't investing in esports, because why would they? The upside wasn't there. That changed. WCS inserted a lot of money into the international scene, the exact same time Twitch exploded. Now that there was a viable platform for esports outside of Korea, Blizzard got in the game. Before Twitch esports wasn't really a thing. I stand by that. It's really not such a controversial notion. WCG is dead. MLG was a money loser. Still is. It's just now approaching profitability as a kind of premium version of Twitch. So no, there wasn't ALWAYS money to be made from competitive gaming. You are talking about now. Back then both MLG + WCG were the absolutely pinnacle of professional gaming. They were doing better financially than nowadays. WCG's bread and butter was WC3 + CS + BW. With the arrival of SC2 and CS:GO, all three assets were diluted for WCG and especially how they couldn't reach Riot or Valve for LoL and DotA2. So what end up happening was that the money made from WCG transferred into WCS for SC2. Thus there was ALWAYS money to be made from competitive gaming in non-Korean places. This shouldn't even be argued against xD. You are basically saying that how Blizzcon, WCG, QuakeCon, China DotA tournaments doesn't exist before SC2. No that's an extremely wrong mindset.
HD streaming is in some ways better than having esports on TV, especially with fewer young people having cable.
The big problem is lack of ad revenue.
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On July 16 2014 08:19 Cheren wrote:Show nested quote +On July 15 2014 23:05 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 09:47 Cheren wrote:On July 15 2014 05:09 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 04:43 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 04:10 SupLilSon wrote:On July 15 2014 02:55 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 02:03 SupLilSon wrote:On July 15 2014 01:38 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 01:12 SupLilSon wrote:
The time for the RTS genre to make a comeback was 2-3 years ago when SC2's popularity was surging and spearheading the E-Sports community. MOBA's, digital card games, FPS, and fighting games all surpass SC2 in Esports popularity now and thus there's going to be very little incentive for developers to work on RTS titles unless it's a passion project.
Let's face it, Blizzard had ample chances to rejuvenate the RTS genre but they seem to have other plans that don't involve SC2. Some people will look to LotV as a savior, but in the end it'll just introduce a few poorly designed units, a cookie cutter campaign, and absolutely nothing to fix the game.
Blizzard has largely given up on SC2... they are already developing their next titles (a MOBA and most likely a MMO) and I don't expect them to return to the RTS genre for a long while... if ever. They're developing LotV at the moment. You can only expect them to have one RTS project at a time. Its just not as profitable as their other stuff. After LotV is out they'll work on the next thing. RTS games are important to Blizzards brand identity. They might be the only big developer to not give up on the genre. I would even go so far as to say they'll support the genre even if it loses them money(which it won't). Also, SC2 is broken? That's a tough argument to make, but I'm willing to hear you out. RTS games are not crucial to Blizzard's brand identity... The Warcraft lore and franchise might be , but not the RTS genre. Activision Blizzard doesn't give a shit about anything BESIDES profits. If the genre is not producing revenue then they will give up on it, simple as that. If Blizzard had some sentimental attachment to RTS titles they wouldn't have failed so comically with SC2 and HotS and then withdrawn virtually all support. Blizzard knows they fucked up hard with SC2, they know they fucked up hard with Diablo 3 and they know that they missed the boat on the MOBA front. They are funneling resources into their next MMO, a genre where they still have some legitimacy. If they ever return to making RTS games it won't be for a very long time. Also about SC2 being "broken", I don't want to derail the thread but there have been tons of good posts about the topic. Check out the recent "Welcome to ZPCraft II" thread as it contains a massive amount of information and does a better job at explaining than I ever could. Obviously everyone's definition of "broken" can be different but just look at the harsh decline SC2 has experienced since it's inception and ask yourself if the game is really in good shape... A lot wrong here. SC2 and D3 were both enormously successful, selling millions of copies worldwide. Last I remember hearing about it SC2:WOL had sold over 6 million copies and D3 over 12 million. So I'm not sure from a business point of view how either of those could be considered fuck ups. I'm also not sure why you think Blizzard has withdrawn all support. Last I checked, Blizzard still releases patches for SC2, funds the WCS tournament system, and is currently developing an expansion pack which is essentially guaranteed to sell 2-3 million copies. SC2 has lost a large percentage of the playerbase it had at launch, but this is to be expected. Most people don't play one game, forever. There is no reason to believe a theoretical SC3 wouldn't have an enormously successful launch. Coming late to the party does not mean Blizzard missed the boat on the MOBA front. They were late to the party with MMO's as well (remember Everquest? Me neither). On the subject of branding, which is directly related to revenue: Brands have value. They help consumers create positive associations with a company which in turn drives sales. There's a reason GM maintains the Cadillac brand despite it being responsible for far less revenue than Chevy or Buick. You can think of Starcraft as the Cadillac of Blizzard-Activision, if that makes it easier for you. On being broken or not, which I won't get into detail here, except to point out that these balance issues are really only evident at the Korean GM level. For 99%+ of the player base the game works as intended. If your, for instance, quit the game because you kept losing to Protoss that wouldn't be evidence of the game being broken. A player on the micro scale shouldn't expect 50-50 in all their matchups. On a macro scale things work fine. Good post with a lot of merit, but I still disagree with you. First off, I think we have different definitions of success. I cannot argue against the fact that all of these games have had great opening sales numbers. I'll hand it to Blizzard, they are great at marketing with fantastic cinematics and playing off the success of their past titles. Even given how much I bash them online, I'm always hyped about their upcoming games. However, people often like to point only to the opening sales numbers for D3 and SC2 and claim them as successes, and in my eyes that is disingenuous. Despite their massive opening sales and success, neither of these games retained that popularity and dwindled (D3 much quicker than SC2 lol). When talking about E-Sports titles, such as SC2 (not so much D3) I consider that a failure. SC2 is like the Transformers movie franchise, tons of hype, tons of ticket sales but not much substance or longevity. You say losing your player base is to be expected, but that simply isn't what we see from other premier E-Sports titles. DotA2 and LoL have both been growing and surpassing SC2 since their releases, despite their modest grassroots beginnings (considering DotA1, I know Valve is a large company). And as for brands, I'm not saying Blizzard will completely scrap the Starcraft Universe. RTS titles are NOT the brand, the Starcraft Universe and name is. They can reuse the lore and framework from the Starcraft franchise but package it into a different genre. Think how they transitioned WC3 from an RTS into an MMO. Or how they are taking elements of Diablo, WC and SC and funneling them into a MOBA instead of their traditional platforms. Or WC into the CCG Hearthstone. Activision/Blizzard will sure as shit keep milking the Starcraft and Warcraft franchises for all they are worth but they don't care whether its as an RTS or not. I'm not saying Blizzard will 100% never make another RTS, that would be silly, but I am willing to bet that developing another RTS is not their priority. Considering World of Warcraft... while EQ was out for a while beforehand, WoW presented the first real alternative to my knowledge. The MOBA scene is much more established and has numerous titles besides just LoL and DotA2. I'd argue that the conditions surrounding the release of Heroes of the Storm is a much different environment than WoW's release. And as for the SC2 being broke stuff, it's not just about balance... posters like LaLush have pointed out flaws in SC2 that go beyond balance and the top pros. If the game is working as intended, then so be it, but obviously for many players the game was lacking something. Ah yes, we certainly have different ideas of what constitutes a success. I would argue that given SC2 and D3 (which I found lacking, tbh) were sold as full priced games, I think Blizzard must've been ecstatic with how these games were received(eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched). For the majority of the market these are essentially single player games (D3 is obviously a co-op game, but I don't think Blizzard expected the majority of the audience to keep playing after finishing the campaign once or twice). Remember outside of Korea, competitive Brood War was an even smaller niche than competitive SC2. These F2P MOBA's are a completely different business model and one that could never work for a game like SC. With Hearthstone, Blizzard has thrown it's hat into the F2P marketplace with phenomenal success and I wouldn't count them out of the MOBA game yet. RTS doesn't have to be a top priority for the company and it isn't. That just means we have to wait longer than WoW players to get expansions/sequels. Blizzard-Activision can budget every project accordingly; it's not a zero sum game. They don't need to take resources off of Hearthstone, for instance, to keep developing RTS games. SC2 didn't invent "esport" in non-Korean countries. If we were talking about "sport" along, Tetris can even be called one. The proper term we should be using is "professional gaming". WC3 was HUGE in European countries + China DotA was already HUGE in China. Halo competition was HUGE in North America through MLG Counter-Strike was being played pretty much as "the" team-based competition in all nations and was "the" game to watch during WCG. Hell, in Japan, there are many rhythm game competition. And all over the world, there are still fighting game competitions all around with Street Fighters, Tekken, and King of Fighters players. When SC2 came out, it wasn't evolutionary by any means. All it did manage to capture was introducing the ability to make cash while streaming online but that has been done even during the SC1 era with Afreeca balloon donation. SC2 might have coinced the term "esport", but while coining the term, we have to realize that "esport" was around even a decade before SC2's release. It wasn't on TV and there wasn't really HD streaming before 2010, so yeah esports existed outside Korea but TV-like broadcasts in HD certainly weren't around to a large extent before SC2. But SC2 weren't on non-Korean television either. The only time where SC2 came to be on TV was Boss from DH announced it for DH. But other games were also included. Therefore, it wasn't evolutionary in any sense. On July 15 2014 07:18 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 06:32 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 06:12 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 05:09 Xiphos wrote:On July 15 2014 04:43 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 04:10 SupLilSon wrote:On July 15 2014 02:55 sc2isnotdying wrote:On July 15 2014 02:03 SupLilSon wrote:
[quote]
RTS games are not crucial to Blizzard's brand identity... The Warcraft lore and franchise might be , but not the RTS genre. Activision Blizzard doesn't give a shit about anything BESIDES profits. If the genre is not producing revenue then they will give up on it, simple as that. If Blizzard had some sentimental attachment to RTS titles they wouldn't have failed so comically with SC2 and HotS and then withdrawn virtually all support. Blizzard knows they fucked up hard with SC2, they know they fucked up hard with Diablo 3 and they know that they missed the boat on the MOBA front. They are funneling resources into their next MMO, a genre where they still have some legitimacy. If they ever return to making RTS games it won't be for a very long time.
Also about SC2 being "broken", I don't want to derail the thread but there have been tons of good posts about the topic. Check out the recent "Welcome to ZPCraft II" thread as it contains a massive amount of information and does a better job at explaining than I ever could. Obviously everyone's definition of "broken" can be different but just look at the harsh decline SC2 has experienced since it's inception and ask yourself if the game is really in good shape...
A lot wrong here. SC2 and D3 were both enormously successful, selling millions of copies worldwide. Last I remember hearing about it SC2:WOL had sold over 6 million copies and D3 over 12 million. So I'm not sure from a business point of view how either of those could be considered fuck ups. I'm also not sure why you think Blizzard has withdrawn all support. Last I checked, Blizzard still releases patches for SC2, funds the WCS tournament system, and is currently developing an expansion pack which is essentially guaranteed to sell 2-3 million copies. SC2 has lost a large percentage of the playerbase it had at launch, but this is to be expected. Most people don't play one game, forever. There is no reason to believe a theoretical SC3 wouldn't have an enormously successful launch. Coming late to the party does not mean Blizzard missed the boat on the MOBA front. They were late to the party with MMO's as well (remember Everquest? Me neither). On the subject of branding, which is directly related to revenue: Brands have value. They help consumers create positive associations with a company which in turn drives sales. There's a reason GM maintains the Cadillac brand despite it being responsible for far less revenue than Chevy or Buick. You can think of Starcraft as the Cadillac of Blizzard-Activision, if that makes it easier for you. On being broken or not, which I won't get into detail here, except to point out that these balance issues are really only evident at the Korean GM level. For 99%+ of the player base the game works as intended. If your, for instance, quit the game because you kept losing to Protoss that wouldn't be evidence of the game being broken. A player on the micro scale shouldn't expect 50-50 in all their matchups. On a macro scale things work fine. Good post with a lot of merit, but I still disagree with you. First off, I think we have different definitions of success. I cannot argue against the fact that all of these games have had great opening sales numbers. I'll hand it to Blizzard, they are great at marketing with fantastic cinematics and playing off the success of their past titles. Even given how much I bash them online, I'm always hyped about their upcoming games. However, people often like to point only to the opening sales numbers for D3 and SC2 and claim them as successes, and in my eyes that is disingenuous. Despite their massive opening sales and success, neither of these games retained that popularity and dwindled (D3 much quicker than SC2 lol). When talking about E-Sports titles, such as SC2 (not so much D3) I consider that a failure. SC2 is like the Transformers movie franchise, tons of hype, tons of ticket sales but not much substance or longevity. You say losing your player base is to be expected, but that simply isn't what we see from other premier E-Sports titles. DotA2 and LoL have both been growing and surpassing SC2 since their releases, despite their modest grassroots beginnings (considering DotA1, I know Valve is a large company). And as for brands, I'm not saying Blizzard will completely scrap the Starcraft Universe. RTS titles are NOT the brand, the Starcraft Universe and name is. They can reuse the lore and framework from the Starcraft franchise but package it into a different genre. Think how they transitioned WC3 from an RTS into an MMO. Or how they are taking elements of Diablo, WC and SC and funneling them into a MOBA instead of their traditional platforms. Or WC into the CCG Hearthstone. Activision/Blizzard will sure as shit keep milking the Starcraft and Warcraft franchises for all they are worth but they don't care whether its as an RTS or not. I'm not saying Blizzard will 100% never make another RTS, that would be silly, but I am willing to bet that developing another RTS is not their priority. Considering World of Warcraft... while EQ was out for a while beforehand, WoW presented the first real alternative to my knowledge. The MOBA scene is much more established and has numerous titles besides just LoL and DotA2. I'd argue that the conditions surrounding the release of Heroes of the Storm is a much different environment than WoW's release. And as for the SC2 being broke stuff, it's not just about balance... posters like LaLush have pointed out flaws in SC2 that go beyond balance and the top pros. If the game is working as intended, then so be it, but obviously for many players the game was lacking something. Ah yes, we certainly have different ideas of what constitutes a success. I would argue that given SC2 and D3 (which I found lacking, tbh) were sold as full priced games, I think Blizzard must've been ecstatic with how these games were received(eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched). For the majority of the market these are essentially single player games (D3 is obviously a co-op game, but I don't think Blizzard expected the majority of the audience to keep playing after finishing the campaign once or twice). Remember outside of Korea, competitive Brood War was an even smaller niche than competitive SC2. These F2P MOBA's are a completely different business model and one that could never work for a game like SC. With Hearthstone, Blizzard has thrown it's hat into the F2P marketplace with phenomenal success and I wouldn't count them out of the MOBA game yet. RTS doesn't have to be a top priority for the company and it isn't. That just means we have to wait longer than WoW players to get expansions/sequels. Blizzard-Activision can budget every project accordingly; it's not a zero sum game. They don't need to take resources off of Hearthstone, for instance, to keep developing RTS games. SC2 didn't invent "esport" in non-Korean countries. If we were talking about "sport" along, Tetris can even be called one. The proper term we should be using is "professional gaming". WC3 was HUGE in European countries + China DotA was already HUGE in China. Halo competition was HUGE in North America through MLG Counter-Strike was being played pretty much as "the" team-based competition in all nations and was "the" game to watch during WCG. Hell, in Japan, there are many rhythm game competition. And all over the world, there are still fighting game competitions all around with Street Fighters, Tekken, and King of Fighters players. When SC2 came out, it wasn't evolutionary by any means. All it did manage to capture was introducing the ability to make cash while streaming online but that has been done even during the SC1 era with Afreeca balloon donation. SC2 might have coinced the term "esport", but while coining the term, we have to realize that "esport" was around even a decade before SC2's release. Calm down. I wasn't talking broadly about competitive games with healthy tournament scenes and certainly didn't claim SC2 "invented" esports; that would be taking my post out of context. When I say at the time of SC2's release, esports wasn't really a thing(outside of Korea), I was making a reference to the business side. I think Blizzard thought the only money to be made from esports was in Korea. For a company like Blizzard, esports wasn't something they cared about. The money wasn't there. But then that all changed and it wasn't because of SC2. It was because of Twitch and it was because of LoL. Then all of sudden, Blizzard created the WCS and seemed to care about esports outside of Korea. Even talking about the business side, there were ALWAYS money to be made from competitive gaming so your entire point is moot. Now you are digressing to Blizzard caring about esport. No the point was that you said that "eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched". And regarding "esport" with Blizzard, they specifically said that SC2 was launching to cater toward "esports" and the reason why they added MBS, automine, unlimited unit selects WAS to cater toward the non-Koreans (aka the "casuals) from the get-go to shorten the gap b/w foreigners and Koreans. So they (Blizzard) absolutely knew that there were a non-Korean market for "esport". Until very recently whatever money there was in esports was small potatoes. I don't think that is such a controversial statement. Obviously Blizzard knew there was going to be a market for SC2 tournament play from the beginning of the design process; WC3 had such a scene. My point, which is clear through context, is that Blizzard wouldn't have considered the esports market to be an important part of their business strategy. SC2 was about selling as many copies as possible at full retail price. That was the model. They weren't investing in esports, because why would they? The upside wasn't there. That changed. WCS inserted a lot of money into the international scene, the exact same time Twitch exploded. Now that there was a viable platform for esports outside of Korea, Blizzard got in the game. Before Twitch esports wasn't really a thing. I stand by that. It's really not such a controversial notion. WCG is dead. MLG was a money loser. Still is. It's just now approaching profitability as a kind of premium version of Twitch. So no, there wasn't ALWAYS money to be made from competitive gaming. You are talking about now. Back then both MLG + WCG were the absolutely pinnacle of professional gaming. They were doing better financially than nowadays. WCG's bread and butter was WC3 + CS + BW. With the arrival of SC2 and CS:GO, all three assets were diluted for WCG and especially how they couldn't reach Riot or Valve for LoL and DotA2. So what end up happening was that the money made from WCG transferred into WCS for SC2. Thus there was ALWAYS money to be made from competitive gaming in non-Korean places. This shouldn't even be argued against xD. You are basically saying that how Blizzcon, WCG, QuakeCon, China DotA tournaments doesn't exist before SC2. No that's an extremely wrong mindset. HD streaming is in some ways better than having esports on TV, especially with fewer young people having cable. The big problem is lack of ad revenue.
Yes absolutely agreed with that.
But SC2 didn't exactly go in mainstream media such as one television station specifically dedicating to a SC2 tournament outside of Korea beside DH's initiative.
Only OGN went "HD" to attract new fans and that's in Korea.
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Good News Regarding CoH2
my biggest criticism of CoH2 was "1 match up" for $60... ouch... Germans v. Russians
CoH2 has added 2 more factions.... we now have 4 matchups.. 4 factions.. and guess what....
CoH2's player base is higher than its ever been... now we're only talking 6,000 concurrent online.. so its not like CoH2 is sweeping the planet.
http://steamcharts.com/app/231430#1y
sure RTS is in decline .. .but i think any hard core RTS fan can have a shit-tonne of fun as the RTS genre goes through a long and agonizing death spiral.
its going to be a while before the RTS genre dies... and its "clash of clans" that is killing it... C of C is where total nOObs go to watch giant armies smash together in an orgy of death.
i think SC2 is Blizzard's last RTS game though..enjoy these next few years people.
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On July 25 2014 10:23 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
i think SC2 is Blizzard's last RTS game though..enjoy these next few years people.
Its almost hard not to laugh when you read someone posting that Blizzard wouldn't make another RTS after SC2 became the 8th best selling PC game of all time.
Do you think computers are going away or perhaps a giant EMP will knock out all circuitry in the world?
StarCraft, Warcraft III, and StarCraft 2 are all in the top 15 selling PC games of all time in units moved. Blizzard is going to come out with Warcraft IV in 2018 or 2019 as they continue landing games in the top 15 with their RTS titles.
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its almost hard not to laugh when you read someone posting that Blizzard will have WC4 out by 2018.
SC2 took 5 years to make and was announced in May 2007 and released in July 2010.
LotV isn't even really in development because the "RTS Team" has been relabelled the "Strategy Team" and they are working on Heroes of the Storm.
so unless they are working on WC4 right now and a WC4 announcement is IMMINENT then there is
ZERO CHANCE .. WC4 is coming out in 2018.
they won't start on WC4 until ... Heroes of the Storm and LotV are completed... both are being handled by one Dustin Browder and the "Strategy Team".
there is no secret stealth team working behind the scenes making WC4 in secret.
Starcraft and RTS is so low down on Blizzard's to do list they are no where on their main page.. but there 4 other main products sure are there.. Diablo, Hearthstone, WoW, and HeroesotS.
http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/
RTS makes fuck-all in terms of profit for Blizzard's tastes.
don't expect anything at Blizzcon about LotV or WC4 or any other RTS dream project you may be hoping for.
nuttin... nada ..zero .. rien.
and that will be your indicator of Blizzard's commitment to future RTS development.
1. Heroes of the Storm is going to be more profitable than any RTS game Blizzard could make.
2. Blizzard completes LotV
3. Blizzard makes the "strategy team" change permanent and the RTS guys all have jobs working on the Blizz MOBA.
4. After LotV is done the strategy team will be dedicated to pumping out improvements to their MOBA and SC2 will go into maintenance mode.
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On July 25 2014 18:08 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Starcraft and RTS is so low down on Blizzard's to do list they are no where on their main page.. but there 4 other main products sure are there.. Diablo, Hearthstone, WoW, and HeroesotS. http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/
Okay...I'm curious why you think that their main page that is almost completely devoted to products being released would have something about StarCraft when nothing from StarCraft is being released. That's some interesting mental gymnastics to think that shows their overall concern of a product.
They have 4 news stories listed on their main page.
1 is the "Blizzard Awards"
1 is the release of Naxx for Hearthstone
1 is the release of Diablo III in China
1 is the start of Warlords of Draenor Beta
So even though their news is about events hosted by Blizzard and game releases you think they would have something about StarCraft there...even though Heroes of the Storm is coming suppose to be such a big splash it isn't in their recent news on their home page...
Sure they have 4 games listed with tabs...their two most recent releases and their two under development titles. Although those aren't the only games they are working on which haven't been released yet...
However, if your measuring stick for whether Blizzard cares about something is whether it is currently featured on their front page, do you also think Blizzard doesn't care about Blizzcon?
There isn't any big news currently in development or release of StarCraft 2 titles so there is no real reason for an advertisement page to be focusing on a game that is last year's news.
And by the way, unlike you I'm not waiting for a mythical RTS to be released...since it already has been released and is playable on servers that blizzard is paying to keep going today.
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On July 26 2014 03:32 Eliezar wrote:
However, if your measuring stick for whether Blizzard cares about something is whether it is currently featured on their front page, do you also think Blizzard doesn't care about Blizzcon?
Blizzcon is a money-loser and a waste of space on Blizzard's very valuable front page. Blizzcon is also already sold out.
Blizzcon is an event not a prime revenue driver software product.
Blizzard makes money selling games not holding live money losing events wth over the hill rock stars.
That is why Blizzcon is not on their front page. Every current software product Blizzard has not named Starcraft is on their front page.
Also, on their Battle.Net page... talk to anyone in advertising and promotion...
in a list of 5 items ordered horizontally. the least important item is placed 3rd... and there is SC2.. buried in the middle.
Starcraft is no longer strategic.
Hearthstone is playable any time any where on any platform from Android Smart Phone to Tablet to PC.
WoW makes so much money it doesn't matter how "strategic" it is.
Diablo is playable on PC and Console and playable with a console controller.
Heroes of the Storm is attempting to enter the most lucrative genre in gaming right now... the MOBA.
Starcraft is part of a declining genre... in 2011 SC2 had a player base of 2.2 million and it is now at 250K.
in the past 4 years Blizzard's amazing RTS team has produced 25 campaign levels , the widow mine, mothership core, oracle, and <<cough>> the Swarmhost.
Blizzard is pulling away from the RTS genre and has been for a while now... i wonder if the GSL will go down to 2 seasons next year 
On July 26 2014 03:32 Eliezar wrote:
There isn't any big news currently in development or release of StarCraft 2 titles so there is no real reason for an advertisement page to be focusing on a game that is last year's news.
yep, Blizz is doing so little with Starcraft its pointless to put it on the front page
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I guess you are the marketing genius that would promote a game that came out 4 years ago...
EA had Mass Effect 2 come out in 2010...EA's front page does not include any links to Mass Effect 2 information. Clearly EA has given up on the FPSRPG.
Bethesda had Skyrim come out in 2011...Bethesda's front page no longer includes any links to Skyrim but instead advertises their MMO Elder Scrolls online. Clearly Bethesda has given up on the single player open world RPG.
Also...if you go to battle.net then STARCRAFT is Blizzard's central title on the main page with other titles flanking it.
Under games on the main page just below the game icons is a list of games that includes StarCraft 2 FIRST with WoW following, then Diablo III, then Hearthstone...oh where is that MOBA title? Guess they are giving up on it since on the main battle.net page its hardly mentioned compared to other titles...
Just try it...
http://us.battle.net/en/
Oh...I guess Blizzard actually does care about and promote StarCraft on its battle.net website which has been the key internet site for Blizzard's internet gaming revolution since StarCraft came out in the 90s.
This is common sense and everything seems how it should be...unless you are wrapped up in conspiracy theories and think that companies actually will only do projects that net the maximum possible profit and refuse to do anything else. I mean...that's why nobody wastes their time selling lottery tickets, because why would you when you get 5 cents off the cost of a lottery ticket but could just sell a fountain drink and make over $1 or 20 times as much...
They are pacing their games like they always have and making sure they release quality games. Sure at the same time they are expanding on current titles into new genres which is also something they have both tried to do before (StarCraft Ghost, Warcraft Adventures) and actually done before (World of Warcraft).
The sky isn't falling...Blizzard is treating StarCraft the same way companies with releases of major hit games of around the same time are treating their 3-4 year old major hit games on their websites...StarCraft 2 is still listed on Battle.net.
But logic and common sense aren't the norm on the internet...
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Except that both EA + Bethesda have replacement product for MF2 and Skyrim so naturally they are going to promote those games instead while Blizz doesn't.
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Blizzard never actually gives up on any game. Diablo II servers are still up, so are SC1's and WC3's. The legacy games will stick around for a while, even if it very likely causes Blizzard to lose money. It's just what they do.
LotV is also very clearly in development. They stated they wanted to release it in 2015 I believe? Or that it was to be released 2 years after HotS.. It's in that area.
Heroes of the Storm is, I would say, something Blizzard is banking on. They're kind of seeing a new, constantly growing success with Hearthstone. They announced and made that game as a fun little side project created by a small team of Blizzard employees, and now it's probably making them more money than SC2 is. One thing for sure: it's more popular, and constantly gets more viewers on Twitch. On day 1 of Naxxramas, Hearthstone had 135k viewers (did SC2 ever get above the 100k viewers mark at any point?). Compare that to the ~400k of Dota 2 during TI, and I would say that, with a game that isn't as "serious", has a MUCH smaller budget, and hasn't been out a year... It's pretty damn good.
I think Blizzard is kind of shifting priorities as a result. They tried to go all-in on esports with SC2, and it didn't really work. They micromanaged everything and smothered the scene, among other things. Add that to the fact that SC2's pure RTS style doesn't appeal to the current gaming crowd as much as MOBAs do, and you've got a game that isn't as successful as a lot of its players would like it to be. Don't get me wrong though, SC2 is here to stay for a couple of years longer at least, but it's simply up against absolute giants in terms of popularity (LoL & Dota 2), and that's pretty harsh.
With Hearthstone, Blizzard focused more on fun than competition, and in the end the competition is still there. They're just letting other organizations take care of it, and are focusing more on adding fun stuff and making a profit solely with the game, rather than through esport. And it seems to be working. Thus, I think we'll see the same strategy with HotS. They'll focus on the fun aspect, not meddle too much in esports and not try to make it happen so damn hard, and if the game is actually worth it, it should be smooth sailing for them.
I doubt HotS will actually catch up to Dota 2 and LoL, though it's doable. It is Blizzard after all.
Now, we all know what we really want though: WC4! Or better yet, a HD remake of WC3. Blizzard, you don't need to roll out WC4, just take what you did in WC3 and remake it! Create new maps, tweak the balance a bit, update the graphics, and you've got the next #1 game on Twitch. BELIEVE! WC3:The Frozen Throne Reborn!
Back to reality now...
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On May 14 2014 05:09 Garrl wrote:pretty... sweeping statement you have there. You really think mobas have a lack of strategic depth?
Compared to SC2... yes.... there is a lack of depth. If SC2 is 500 meters down... a MOBA might be 150 meters deep.
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EPT
