Compared to Starcraft, SC2 is a masterpiece. But that's like saying that Michael Jordan is a better basketball player than some junior high football player.
I don't understand Starcrafts continued popularity. It's absolutely puzzling to me. It was a good game, especially for its time. I played it almost every day for a long, long time. My friends scratched "Big gay game" on the back of the disk because of how much it got played (I had to buy another copy, thanks assholes).
But, that sort of went away when WC3 came out... but WC3 is unrelated to why SC became crap quickly. It more has to do with how the game devolved from a "Oh, lets experiment and try lots of different strategies and compete with said strategies and have a lot of fun" to "WHO HAS THE BEST MICRO BECAUSE ALL STRATEGIES AND BUILD ORDERS ARE ALMOST IDENTICAL".
See, WC3 gave me the ability to actually use units that had interesting abilities. SC has like... three units with interesting abilities and most of them are high-tech flying units that you'll never get to play with because teching up to them is a waste as the enemy has either Muta-clumped, Tank rushed, or... sort of existed as the Protoss.
And this is sort of where I don't get why SC has continued to be popular. It's design is flawed primarily because the game puts extreme emphasis on micro instead of strategy and tactics. Anybody can make an RTS that requires intense micro. Just put the max number of units you can control at once to something small and introduce some 'mechanics' that each faction has that requires intense micro and you've got a 'great game'.
Luckily SC2 doesn't follow that formula and is more like WC3 but with more WC2 unit elements and then you put it in space and you have a game that's fun, but nothing to play for 12 years.
I don't understand Starcrafts continued popularity. It's absolutely puzzling to me. It was a good game, especially for its time. I played it almost every day for a long, long time. My friends scratched "Big gay game" on the back of the disk because of how much it got played (I had to buy another copy, thanks assholes).
But, that sort of went away when WC3 came out... but WC3 is unrelated to why SC became crap quickly. It more has to do with how the game devolved from a "Oh, lets experiment and try lots of different strategies and compete with said strategies and have a lot of fun" to "WHO HAS THE BEST MICRO BECAUSE ALL STRATEGIES AND BUILD ORDERS ARE ALMOST IDENTICAL".
See, WC3 gave me the ability to actually use units that had interesting abilities. SC has like... three units with interesting abilities and most of them are high-tech flying units that you'll never get to play with because teching up to them is a waste as the enemy has either Muta-clumped, Tank rushed, or... sort of existed as the Protoss.
And this is sort of where I don't get why SC has continued to be popular. It's design is flawed primarily because the game puts extreme emphasis on micro instead of strategy and tactics. Anybody can make an RTS that requires intense micro. Just put the max number of units you can control at once to something small and introduce some 'mechanics' that each faction has that requires intense micro and you've got a 'great game'.
Luckily SC2 doesn't follow that formula and is more like WC3 but with more WC2 unit elements and then you put it in space and you have a game that's fun, but nothing to play for 12 years.
