Analyst Thinks Next Starcraft II Won't Come This Year

[Vivi22]

And yet ubi has done nothing to change

I wasn't aware that removing the always online requirement for games like AC: Brotherhood, and going back and patching it out of games like AC2 qualified as doing nothing to change. You'll have to forgive me, I seem to have gotten doing something about a problem confused with twiddling their thumbs.

and there is no proper D3 offline mode as of yet

And there may never be. But you seem to have missed the point I was making that the lame excuses they used to justify always online in Diablo 3 aren't applicable to Starcraft. So I'm not going to jump the gun and assume they'll require you to be online for single player when there's no justification for it in the case of Heart of the Swarm, and they didn't do it in the last SC game.

Until they show functional change they have not changed any at all.

Well since you seem to turn a blind eye to companies actually doing something to fix a problem they created I'm not sure how you'd know if any company actually changed.

 

[Viper114]

I am betting online only for it.

Well, considering you need to log into Battle.net to play SP and MP in Starcraft 2 already, exactly the same as Diablo 3 (and yet didn't generate nearly as much buzz as D3, no idea why), it's pretty much 99% certain HotS is going to need to login to play, too.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

And yet ubi has done nothing to change

I wasn't aware that removing the always online requirement for games like AC: Brotherhood, and going back and patching it out of games like AC2 qualified as doing nothing to change. You'll have to forgive me, I seem to have gotten doing something about a problem confused with twiddling their thumbs.

and there is no proper D3 offline mode as of yet

And there may never be. But you seem to have missed the point I was making that the lame excuses they used to justify always online in Diablo 3 aren't applicable to Starcraft. So I'm not going to jump the gun and assume they'll require you to be online for single player when there's no justification for it in the case of Heart of the Swarm, and they didn't do it in the last SC game.

Until they show functional change they have not changed any at all.

Well since you seem to turn a blind eye to companies actually doing something to fix a problem they created I'm not sure how you'd know if any company actually changed.

Oh really? They removed the flaw not the DRM itself, Uplay is still in all their games.....

I am betting online only for it.

Well, considering you need to log into Battle.net to play SP and MP in Starcraft 2 already, exactly the same as Diablo 3 (and yet didn't generate nearly as much buzz as D3, no idea why), it's pretty much 99% certain HotS is going to need to login to play, too.

Not really as once you got it up and running and authenticated you could play it offline for 30 days at a time.

 

[Vivi22]

Oh really? They removed the flaw not the DRM itself, Uplay is still in all their games.....

If your issue is with it having DRM of any kind then say so from the start next time. Otherwise it just looks like you're moving the goal posts in the debate because your original point was refuted.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Oh really? They removed the flaw not the DRM itself, Uplay is still in all their games.....

If your issue is with it having DRM of any kind then say so from the start next time. Otherwise it just looks like you're moving the goal posts in the debate because your original point was refuted.

So I was ranting about them using a constant online connection in the games as a DRM scheme, he said they have removed it. Yet from all the googling I have done they have done no such thing. Uplay still requires a constant connection even after the patch.

My point kinda stands.

 

[Viper114]

Not really as once you got it up and running and authenticated you could play it offline for 30 days at a time.

Ah, right, I suppose there is that, though I never bothered as I'm always connected to the Internet anyway, which probably explains why I don't mind D3's online requirement.

 

[Vivi22]

So I was ranting about them using a constant online connection in the games as a DRM scheme, he said they have removed it. Yet from all the googling I have done they have done no such thing. Uplay still requires a constant connection even after the patch.

My point kinda stands.

You must not have looked very hard. They did change their DRM so games like AC2 and Brotherhood don't require a constant internet connection. You do have to be logged in when you start up the game, but that's it. If your connection is lost part way through you don't get booted out of the game.

I normally wouldn't do this because I loathe people who can't do even the most basic online research, but here you go anyway:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin%27s_Creed_II#DRM-related_criticism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin%27s_Creed:_Brotherhood#Reception - see the last paragraph in this section specifically.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Not really as once you got it up and running and authenticated you could play it offline for 30 days at a time.

Ah, right, I suppose there is that, though I never bothered as I'm always connected to the Internet anyway, which probably explains why I don't mind D3's online requirement.

So I was ranting about them using a constant online connection in the games as a DRM scheme, he said they have removed it. Yet from all the googling I have done they have done no such thing. Uplay still requires a constant connection even after the patch.

My point kinda stands.

You must not have looked very hard. They did change their DRM so games like AC2 and Brotherhood don't require a constant internet connection. You do have to be logged in when you start up the game, but that's it. If your connection is lost part way through you don't get booted out of the game.

I normally wouldn't do this because I loathe people who can't do even the most basic online research, but here you go anyway:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin%27s_Creed_II#DRM-related_criticism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin%27s_Creed:_Brotherhood#Reception - see the last paragraph in this section specifically.

Ok....but needing to be online every time you start the game pretty much means you need to be online to play thus not to far from constant connection.

 

[MercurySteam]

To be honest, thinking that Diablo III, the new WoW expansion and HotS would all come out in the same year was a bit too optimistic considering Blizzard's past track record. At least it will be amazing though.

 

[Baresark]

Of course they aren't, Blizzard doesn't respect deadlines at all. Everything is late from them. It's for the best though, look at how D3 turned out. Years and years of development, extensive testing, all the annoyance, but when it came out it was the best game ever made and was completely perfec...... wait.... wait, that was a dream I had. I remember how it went, years of development time, broken on release, no more fun than the last game, dated graphics....

I return to my original thought, is anyone surprise by this... I didn't think so.

 

[walrusaurus]

Wow these analysts are really good at stating the obvious. Blizzard already announced a wow expansion for later this year so they will not also be releasing the next starcraft around that time. If I had to guess I would say they will release this around six months later so as not to interfere with wow.

They are two astronomically different types of games. The release of one has no bearing on the sales of the other beyond blizzards resources to support the launch. WHile I agree that they would never release both games in the same quarter that has a lot more to do with keeping their shareholders happy than any concerns about the games cannibalizing one another.

You would have to be nuts to think there was no overlap between the games. If you release them to close together people will be to busy with one to buy the other.

that'd be true if the games were both similar genres. Or even both casual focused games of different genres. But a game like Heart of the Swarm has a very narrow audience, there are precious few players that are just going to hear about starcraft 2 for the first time and go out and buy both Sons of liberty and HotS. The people who are going to be getting HotS on day one already know about it, they play starcraft 2, and they aren't going to skip it because mists of pandaria just came out.