StarCraft II Demo Finally Deploys

John Funk

U.N. Owen Was Him?
Dec 20, 2005
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StarCraft II Demo Finally Deploys



If you've been on the fence about picking up Blizzard's shiny new RTS, you can now try it for yourself.

I like demos. In fact, I think demos are great. Every game should have one, so consumers and players can get a feel for a game that you just can't free for the taking [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_280/8311-You-Cant-Judge-a-Game-By-Its-Trailer].

Yeah, it would have been nice if the game had had a demo when it saw release almost half a year ago, but better late than never. Besides, Blizzard is known for many things, but doing things in a timely fashion is not one of them.

If you're already familiar with StarCraft II, you may be wondering what the difference is between the demo and the Guest Passes that people who bought SC2 probably never used. The Guest Passes require the user in question to already have a Battle.net account, and require said user to be gifted a trial key (duh). In comparison, the demo just requires you to fill in some information and download the thing, no B.net account required.

Unfortunately, compared to the Guest Pass the demo feels kind of gimped. With a Guest Pass, players can try out most of the full game, whether campaign or playing the addictive online multiplayer, for 7 straight hours of play (or 14 days, whichever comes first). With the demo, you'll get the first few missions of the campaign - fair enough - but you'll be limited to playing solo skirmish against the computer in Terran vs. Terran 1v1s.

For all that I enjoyed the SC2 campaign, let's not mince words here: SC2's main draw is the multiplayer. Not being able to play as the race of your choice against another human being, trying frantically to build up a fighting force before their Zerglings come rushing up your ramp, really limits the appeal.

Sure, it's cool to have a demo of the solid single-player content, but if the SC2 multiplayer is your thing then you'll probably want to find a friend who has a Guest Pass and pester them into giving it to you.

Ah well, demos are still good things, and every game should have one. I just don't think that this demo is going to promote the game as well as Blizzard would have hoped.

If you've been on the fence and don't know anyone with a Guest Pass, grab the demo here [https://us.battle.net/account/sc2-demo.html].

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Baresark

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Dec 19, 2010
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Better late than never I suppose. Go Blizzard? LoL. Really though, great game, should have had a demo a long time ago. But like Blizzard fashion, not particularly timely, now is it?
 

BabyRaptor

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Dec 17, 2010
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I've never gotten into StarCraft, which is weird for me since I play WoW and Diablo, and played the WarCrafts religiously. StarCraft just felt like a tired retread of WarCraft to me.
 

_Janny_

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Mar 6, 2008
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This is... weird. I always thought demos came out before the release of a game. Ah well. I guess Blizz must have been hella busy this year.
 

DaxStrife

Late Reviewer
Nov 29, 2007
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Ahhh, remember the days when a game demo came out before the game was released, so you would be interested in buying it on release day? Yeah, those were the days...
 

Tom Phoenix

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Mar 28, 2009
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_Janny_ said:
I always thought demos came out before the release of a game.
Unfortunately, at least on the PC, it has been the practice for many years now to release the demo after the release of the game...thus defeating a major purpose of demos in the first place.

On topic, I have to say, this is one of the most disappointing demos to ever come out from Blizzard. In the past, some of the best game demos were precisely those for Blizzard games. Not only did they have entirely new single-player missions (at least the RTS games did; not sure about Diablo), they also featured limited multiplayer and even a unique Battle.net hub. In comparison, this particular demo comes off as rather pathetic, especially when you consider that there are people playing the demos for StarCraft and WarCraft III to this day.

This doesn't really affect me, since I already bought the game. Still, Blizzard really dropped the ball on this one. A game such as StarCraft II really deserved better than this.
 

EricBC

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Feb 27, 2009
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I suppose it's kind of backwards. On the other hand, I had exactly zero interest in buying StarCraft 2 or trying to get a guest pass, but now I'm downloading it anyway.

Shame I can't play as the Covenant, err I mean Protoss though.
 

Ragsnstitches

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Dec 2, 2009
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What kind of marketing nonsense is this? I hate using torrents, but was on the verge of doing so as I was on the fence whether to get it or not... I'm not pissing 45 euro for game that may or may not run (to my preferred standards).

Yeah, I guess it's better late then never, but it will be another few months before I can actually purchase the game now
 

Ragsnstitches

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Dec 2, 2009
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EricBC said:
I suppose it's kind of backwards. On the other hand, I had exactly zero interest in buying StarCraft 2 or trying to get a guest pass, but now I'm downloading it anyway.

Shame I can't play as the Covenant, err I mean Protoss though.
Ironically, your last statement, which seems to be a jab at Starcrafts originality, uses halo as the source and not Warhammer 40k (halo coming out after starcraft which itself came from a fall out between Games Workshop and Blizzard)...

Did you do that on purpose?
 

BlindMessiah94

The 94th Blind Messiah
Nov 12, 2009
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I was wondering what those guests passes were for...Anyone want one? I think I got three when I bought the game.
 

Fr]anc[is

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May 13, 2010
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That guest pass thing sounds like way too much work for a demo. If you didn't already have one, yet another stupid account to keep track of for a demo.
 

Dark Prophet

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Jun 3, 2009
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I really can't understand where the game industry takes the right to complain about PC games not doing so well if they keep up that shit. Bioshock 2 pc version not getting any dlc, only after a lot of whineing about it they said there will be dlc for pc too, Dead Space 2 no demo for pc at all and now Starcraft II, with it's way to late demo, which I suspect is the result of the game not selling so spectaculary as Blizzard hoped. Shit like that is happening more and more and while most other games have consoles, then Starcraft II has only pc so WTF.