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[Orbert]

Everyone beats the Lions.  Shit, my high school team could beat the Lions.

[satsugaikaze]

I was going to say something about Starcraft 2, but - jeez, guys.

Jeez.

[est]

You mean Monkey?

Yeah, same thing.

[KvP]

Starcraft II won't have LAN support. People are blaming pirates.

[Covetous]

I blame Blizzard wanting in on the Xfire/Steam market.

[est]

The way I see it happening is that you all connect to Battlenet to authenticate your separate cd keys, someone hosts a room with a password, you all join it & it gets hosted locally just like a LAN game.  Authenticating through BNet lets them make sure you have a proper cd key, and then at the end of the game it'll probably report game stats back to Battlenet.

[scarred]

That means every computer needs an internet connection though.

[KvP]

I've hosted LAN parties and these days, with the internet connection I have, in a lot of cases using battle.net is actually faster than wired play.

[Orbert]

Yeah, but most people aren't in that situation.  I've played on Battle.net maybe three times.  We play over the LAN all the time.

[est]

That means every computer needs an internet connection though.

Or to be on a LAN with an internet connection?  Most people I know at the moment will have some sort of internet gateway device that allows multiple people to use the same internet connection.

[scarred]

That means every computer needs an internet connection though.

Or to be on a LAN with an internet connection?  Most people I know at the moment will have some sort of internet gateway device that allows multiple people to use the same internet connection.

Wouldn't that game lag really bad?

[Alex C]

Not if it's only being used mostly for authorization and such.

[est]

Yeah, what Alex said.  Once a battlenet game is set up one of the players becomes the host, so if they are all on the same subnet then the traffic would become local.

[est]

Obviously I am only speculating, so I could be completely wrong, but I would find it really odd if they cut out LAN play entirely.

[satsugaikaze]

I have friends who Hamachi their Starmans.

Which, technically, means they only use LAN.

[All_Ľour_Bass]

I'm a huge Starcraft fan, so without getting into what why who when how and for how many oreos-
I will be buying all three disks, as well as custom building a computer, not only so I can run it, but I seriously need to upgrade/update what I use for a desktop in general.

[satsugaikaze]

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/08/22/blizzcon-2009-starcraft-ghost-lives-on-in-spirit/ (quite a few other sites with similar news just look around)

Map Editor features look quite in depth, although it's obviously moved from a simple mapping tool to something resembling a developer's kit.



And I really, really wish they stopped fucking around and just finished Starcraft: Ghost already (just for the story really because the third-person shooter craze is really old news by now). It was a great idea to put something new into the Starcraft franchise and I'll be really disappointed if they release nothing but novels, comics and Starcraft 2 side missions, which would be a total cop-out on the concept.

[Orbert]

I thought Starcraft: Ghost was officially dead.  Not just postponed over and over, but scrapped.  But I don't remember where I heard that.

[ackblom12]

I'm pretty certain they announced that a couple of years ago. They were working on it and just unceremoniously dropped it because it was apparently not turning out how they thought it should?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCraft:_Ghost

Yeah, last paragraph. Basically it's been a clusterfuck. They said they cancelled it 2 years ago, then said it wasn't "technically" cancelled and it's probably never getting made.

[satsugaikaze]

Probably just to prevent the people who actually cared about the project from running riot. They put it into development hell because it wasn't finished in time or something.

The issue of Starcraft Ghost irritates me on various levels. Firstly, it's the fact that Blizzard dropped a really good and fresh concept. Secondly, it's the fact that they denied that it was completely dropped, when it clearly seemed that they had no intention of finishing it in the future, and thirdly, it's the fact that they've dropped it and then tried to "apologise" in some sort of way by putting the characters into little side missions and relatively unimportant modding tools in favour of the Big 3 (RTS, RPG, and MMO) they've adopted.

And whatever side-missions with Nova they *have* put into Starcraft 2 I have absolutely zero enthusiasm for because unless it plays like Starcraft Ghost it's just another RTS level. I was enthusiastic for Ghost because it wasn't just another RTS level, it was a third-person shooter title with stealth, elements which weren't completely chartered back in 2001. The developers had a chance to explore something new and more immersive for players, but pulled out when it would have worked. And that I suppose is the biggest tragedy about all this shit-in-a-franchise-box.

And I am VERY unenthusiastic about the novels and comics that they've released.

[Alex C]

I'll never understand why people are so hung up on Ghost. For one thing, we don't know if the game would have turned out well. Most indicators are that it wouldn't have or else they probably would have stuck with it. The fact that other companies have successfully followed the 3rd person stealth blue print to success doesn't mean that Blizzard would have. It's not an area they had real experience with and Nihilistic Software apparently wasn't doing any better. Keep in mind that Nihilistic's big release up until that point was an ambitious but ultimately shitty game set in the Vampire: The Masquerade universe. There were some experienced developers involved in it, to be sure, but they were still a relatively new operation and isn't exactly unheard of for people to fail to keep their shit together after transitioning to a different work environment or taking on new responsibilities. Really, all we can know for sure is that Blizzard has some egg on their face thanks to picking the wrong pony to bet on. It happens.

[Orbert]

That's the thing.  We don't know exactly why Blizzard dropped/shelfed the Starcraft: Ghost project, but I would bet that it was not because they spent a bunch of time and money to develop it, and then suddenly said "Oh that's right, we don't like this kind of game.  We only like these other kinds."  They're a business, and if you're in a business, you only have a few good reasons for abandoning a project.  One is that it is clearly turning out badly, and no amount of reworking of things is going to save it and make it worth putting more resources into, so you cut your losses.  Another is that the market has changed and you now find yourself sinking money into something that won't make your money back, so you cut your losses.

Blizzard had a huge reorganization/buyout/whatever some years back.  Wasn't Ghost basically one of the casualties of that?

[ackblom12]

Mainly I was excited to see Blizzard try something a bit different out. It getting dropped was kind of my last bit of hope of continuing to enjoy Blizzard in general. Diablo III still looks good, but I lost interest in Starcraft and Warcraft years ago. It's a little sad when I quite honestly keep seeing Starcraft II info and don't even have the tiniest bit of interest in it when I loved Starcraft.

[Dimmukane]

Yeah, I feel the same way.  Diablo 3 looks like I might actually enjoy it, but I could give two shits about the Starcraft/Warcraft franchises.

[ArcAirbender]

...and no amount of reworking of things is going to save it and make it worth putting more resources into, so you cut your losses.

So you never played Team Fortress 2 with commentaries, did you?

No one is beyond redemption, it just that it takes time and hard work, y'know?

... I lost interest in Starcraft and Warcraft years ago.

Here here!

[Alex C]

I really liked Starcraft's multiplayer, so I'll be buying this regardless. I'm not a huge fan of throwing myself to the wolves that lurk on battlenet, granted, but that just means I'll have to stick with playing against my brother and former roommate. I'm fine with that. Perhaps I just don't have the same relationship with developers that a lot of people on the net seem to feel. I guess I just figure that I'm pretty likely to get my $50-$60 worth of entertainment from a Starcraft sequel, which makes whether or not I should buy it a pretty easy decision.

[satsugaikaze]

Yeah apparently the cancellation was something about being overshadowed by the Diablo, Starcraft and Warcraft franchises

We don't know that it could have turned out well, but back in '01/'02 there was still quite a bit to explore and any flak that the game would have copped then would probably have undertones of "well at least it's experimentation". And from the gameplay vids that have come out (there are quite a few) aren't half bad for an 02 game. I'll be honest, in today's day and age it would probably be pretty shoddy but if they'd completed it at the time, it would have been a fairly solid-looking game. I'm inclined to compare it to Modern Warfare: a comparatively standard shooter but adding a greater level of immersion into the franchise.

Also, the guy playing in those videos sucks. =P

I understand that Blizzard is running a business here, and I could probably understand them if they released it to lackluster reviews and then decided to forget about it afterwards. But experimentation is the key to improvement, and as we all know the stealth franchises and the third person shooters still had plenty of selling power.

Orbert, Blizzard requisitioned the company that was developing the game, so the decision to scrap the project was probably initiated by a higher-up's change of heart. I think that it was a matter of "Oh, wait, I don't think this would sell". It coulda/woulda sold, and IMO they made the wrong decision. Unfortunately, it so happens that a whole bunch of other titles sprung up later that took advantage of the selling power, and the developers have now missed the bandwagon of cash.

[Orbert]

I agree that it could have been cool, and in general I'm all for companies, especially game designers, trying out new things.  But business is business, and businesses make bad decisions all the time.  And yeah, this was probably one of them.  There's only one thing you can do:

* SPAWN MORE OVERLORDS *