Behold the Giant Battle.net 2.0 Preview

[dududf]

No LAN no Star Craft 2.

My internet sucks, and there's no way in hell I'm going to play through a B. Net server to play with my dad in the next room.

As far as I'm concerned I hate B.Net. I never play multiplayer, so I won't need this, and my eyes are skewed to hate the service because it's being forced onto Star Craft 2 LAN.

So when I look at Battle net all I see is a...

Spoiler: Giant middle finger at LAN gamers.

*Edit

that was bitter. Something wrong?

StarCraft 2. No LAN.

I'd be pretty freaking pissed as well.

 

[John Funk]

No LAN no Star Craft 2.

My internet sucks, and there's no way in hell I'm going to play through a B. Net server to play with my dad in the next room.

As far as I'm concerned I hate B.Net. I never play multiplayer, so I won't need this, and my eyes are skewed to hate the service because it's being forced onto Star Craft 2 LAN.

So when I look at Battle net all I see is a...

Spoiler: Giant middle finger at LAN gamers.

*Edit

that was bitter. Something wrong?

StarCraft 2. No LAN.

I'd be pretty freaking pissed as well.

I think Dustin Browder (it may have been someone else, but it was definitely someone with rights to speak for SC2) said they were working on implementing LAN functionality - as long as one of you is logged into B.net, you can still enable local multiplayer. So your internet sucking won't be as much of a problem.

Whatever. I still have not forgiven them for marketing each campaign as a separate "expansion", and I'm not buying into the whole "it will allow us to deliver higher quality campaigns" defence.

When did it become okay for developers to start charging for every little feature? Between monthly fees, DLCs, expansion packs and "premium content" - not to mention the game itself - gaming has suddenly become a very expensive hobby. Now they're apparently going to be charging for additional maps! They might as well just recode the game so that instead of harvesting minerals you just swipe your damn credit card every time you want to build a unit.

I don't get this, at all. StarCraft had an expansion pack. Warcraft 2/3 had expansion packs. Diablo 2 had an expansion pack.

What's wrong with StarCraft 2 having two planned expansions?

 

[matt87_50]

"You had me at achievements."

*sigh*

I DON'T CARE FOR ALL THESE WEB2.0 BS!!

am I so lacking in self esteem that I can't recognize MYSELF when I've achieved something!?

or is it just to show off to other people, basically formalizing who's dick is biggest.

I just want to play THE GAME! we do remember that in between all this BS there is actually meant to be a new GAME right? I'm beginning to wonder if Starcraft 2 will actually add anything important to starcraft at all. (and it IS my favourite game, so I'll know).

you know what I honestly care about WAY more than new Battle net? the new level editor!

haven't heard shit about that.

I'm not a modder, and I have only really used the blizzard editors, but the WCIII expansion's world editor was awesome! you could easily make any type of game that works in that general top down layout.

 

[John Funk]

"You had me at achievements."

*sigh*

I DON'T CARE FOR ALL THESE WEB2.0 BS!!

am I so lacking in self esteem that I can't recognize MYSELF when I've achieved something!?

or is it just to show off to other people, basically formalizing who's dick is biggest.

I just want to play THE GAME! we do remember that in between all this BS there is actually meant to be a new GAME right? I'm beginning to wonder if Starcraft 2 will actually add anything important to starcraft at all. (and it IS my favourite game, so I'll know).

you know what I honestly care about WAY more than new Battle net? the new level editor!

haven't heard shit about that.

I'm not a modder, and I have only really used the blizzard editors, but the WCIII expansion's world editor was awesome! you could easily make any type of game that works in that general top down layout.

Did you miss the panel at Blizzcon, man? They showed off some *crazy* stuff you could do in SC2. Like, they actually made a rudimentary third-person action game starring Nova from SC: Ghost.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

Whatever. I still have not forgiven them for marketing each campaign as a separate "expansion", and I'm not buying into the whole "it will allow us to deliver higher quality campaigns" defence.

When did it become okay for developers to start charging for every little feature? Between monthly fees, DLCs, expansion packs and "premium content" - not to mention the game itself - gaming has suddenly become a very expensive hobby. Now they're apparently going to be charging for additional maps! They might as well just recode the game so that instead of harvesting minerals you just swipe your damn credit card every time you want to build a unit.

I don't get this, at all. StarCraft had an expansion pack. Warcraft 2/3 had expansion packs. Diablo 2 had an expansion pack.

What's wrong with StarCraft 2 having two planned expansions?

Because they're not expansions, they're more like episodes. It's just breaking up the content of a complete game to sell individually. The big problem is that the second and third campaigns will feel anticlimactic because the traditional blizzard structuring of campaigns, ie having new units incrementally made available to you so you get the chance to slowly come to understand how each race plays, will be undercut by the fact that everyone will have already played Protoss and Zerg online. It would be like if in each episode of Half Life 2 Valve only let you use one third of the overall weapons.

 

[John Funk]

Whatever. I still have not forgiven them for marketing each campaign as a separate "expansion", and I'm not buying into the whole "it will allow us to deliver higher quality campaigns" defence.

When did it become okay for developers to start charging for every little feature? Between monthly fees, DLCs, expansion packs and "premium content" - not to mention the game itself - gaming has suddenly become a very expensive hobby. Now they're apparently going to be charging for additional maps! They might as well just recode the game so that instead of harvesting minerals you just swipe your damn credit card every time you want to build a unit.

I don't get this, at all. StarCraft had an expansion pack. Warcraft 2/3 had expansion packs. Diablo 2 had an expansion pack.

What's wrong with StarCraft 2 having two planned expansions?

Because they're not expansions, they're more like episodes. It's just breaking up the content of a complete game to sell individually. The big problem is that the second and third campaigns will feel anticlimactic because the traditional blizzard structuring of campaigns, ie having new units incrementally made available to you so you get the chance to slowly come to understand how each race plays, will be undercut by the fact that everyone will have already played Protoss and Zerg online. It would be like if in each episode of Half Life 2 Valve only let you use one third of the overall weapons.

How do you know? From what we know, each game is going to have as much content as the first StarCraft (30 missions - which is more than in Brood War, btw), and from what I played at BlizzCon, you do get new units incrementally made available to you. Just because people play the multiplayer first has no bearing on this, because you could jump in and play the multiplayer in the original game without ever having given the campaign a try.

But the beauty of divorcing the single player from the multiplayer is that they can give you that feel in the singleplayer campaign without influencing the balance of the multiplayer. Like, I had the option of doing a mission that let me unlock Firebats for further use in the campaign, even though they're not available in the multi.

I don't get how people can say it's "breaking up the content of a complete game" when every chapter will have as much content as the first StarCraft.

 

[ASnogarD]

When SC 1 came out, the players played it until they were sick of it... and then a expansion came out and it was lapped up greatfully.
SC 2, the players already know they aint getting the full SC game... there expansions already pre-planned and integeral to the SC game.

Hard to describe, prehaps it is being naive..or even picky.
Best I can come up with is this:

Imagine going to a shop and having a nice big piece of cake, it fills you up and your really enjoyed it, and the waiter offers you a second but smaller piece for a reduced price... ahh why not

Go back to the same shop and order the same cake, but the waiter gives you 1 third of the cake (albeit a tad bit more decorated and slightly larger), and says you can buy the remaining 2 thirds later.
The new cake may be bigger and better than the previous one was, but you aint getting the whole cake unless you fork out for the other 2 helpings.

No matter how nice, or big , or enticing that 1 3rd tastes or looks ... the average player will still yearn for the other 2 thirds before even starting on the 1st.

 

[cieply]

That's just silly. Why would people care about the system created for a like 3 games? Battlenet is not steam, I won't be on it all the time playing many diffrent games. I believe they put a lot of work in something not as usefull as they believe it will be.

 

[John Funk]

I've long since given up on this game for those, and many other reasons. The game itself may be awesome, but it's wrapped with such crap and annoyance I can't fathom paying money for it.

Yeah I'm pretty sure I won't buy it by now either even though I'd really like to and have bought almost every Blizzard game up to WarCraft 3 (even The Lost Vikings 1+2 and Blackthorne were awesome back in the day xD)

How do you know? From what we know, each game is going to have as much content as the first StarCraft (30 missions - which is more than in Brood War, btw), and from what I played at BlizzCon, you do get new units incrementally made available to you. Just because people play the multiplayer first has no bearing on this, because you could jump in and play the multiplayer in the original game without ever having given the campaign a try.

I don't get how people can say it's "breaking up the content of a complete game" when every chapter will have as much content as the first StarCraft.

They did the "several Campaign" thing back from WarCraft I (where you could play as Humans and Orcs), continued it in WarCraft II and they nearly perfected it in StarCraft (Terrans, Zerg + Protoss) and WarCraft III (Humans, Undeads, Orcs + Night Elves) by having 3 and then 4 factions each that you could play sequentially.

It worked, it introduced a whole new gameplay every few dozen hours (besides of introducing the new units), it introduced new characters and a whole different "style" of campaign in and of itself and was one of the few Strategy games that could captivate throughout (the Rendered movies helped too).

Now they're going to break with that working concept and the ONLY reason I can see for it is more money (like about every other change that has been announced by them since they've been bought off, and no I don't believe the "marketing talk" telling everyone how awesome it'll be).
I can't see how the whole campaign is supposed to be varied and thrilling by droning on for 30+ missions and including parts like "collect xxx amount of crystals, make sure to get away when the lava comes" etc. to pad the content and get to that number "30" instead of what they did before...

Honestly Blizzard can go to hell altogether for all I care, the only developer I still have some credence in is Bioware and they already started doing EAs bidding with that whole DLC content stuff, EA Account and "Unlockable content" too...

So, you'd prefer either a game that didn't have everything in it that they wanted to do, or a game that came out in 2014? Good to know.

Honestly - and I do mean this honestly, not being snarky - it's your loss. Everything I've played from SC2 has been nothing short of stellar thus far.

 

[101194]

From what I could gather from the preview it seems like we'll get server hosted maps, a Battle.net 2.0 client and a database for where to upload and store maps.

Not sure if the server side hosted maps will be ladder only or not but if this is the case then Battle.net 2.0 is pretty much hack proof.

Don't say that, Tell everyone you know that it's easy to hack just takes time and Ext Ext Ext... A challenge makes it that much sweeter to hack, Trust me. Nothing is hack proof. If it was, The government would be all over that.

 

[John Funk]

So, you'd prefer either a game that didn't have everything in it that they wanted to do, or a game that came out in 2014? Good to know.

Yeah see, that is one of the points I don't believe cause it reeks of marketing bullcrap through and through because you usually get a time or contentframe to fit something in and go from there not the other way around. Someone in the marketing department had the great idea of selling one game (with the same basic concept, graphics/engine and units) as 3 (probably full-price, they're still dodging actually answering this one) titles, knew fans would probably still go with it and asked em to rationalize...

Why are you splitting the game on campaign grounds, and how will this structure see the first StarCraft II and subsequent campaigns interlink and, from a narrative perspective, 'flow'? Generally, how customisable an experience will be offered in StarCraft II, and how 'open' are you really going?

It's not a split so much as it ended up being an overflow of more plot twists, interesting new characters and settings and sub plots than we could cram into a single game. When we sat down to outline the story we wanted to wrap around StarCraft II, we started to realise that what we wanted to present to the players could easily end up being a behemoth - an 80 or 90 mission campaign. Attempting to cram that much content into one package could easily have taken us several more years to finish. Our players have waited long enough. So we decided it would make more sense to build out the first 26 or so missions of this epic sci-fi opera and then release that as our core game, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty.

They're referring to them as expansions now, so I doubt they'd do that and still full-price them.

Having talked to numerous members of the SC2 team who aren't PR people, they're all either extremely good liars or they all genuinely believe this is the way to go. And I'm not sold that every single person working on SC2 is a great liar.

The explanation that they've given there - that I've heard in person - makes perfect sense to me. Every game that Blizzard has ever put out since WC2 has had an expansion pack. SC2 will have two. Where is the problem?

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

So, you'd prefer either a game that didn't have everything in it that they wanted to do, or a game that came out in 2014? Good to know.

Yeah see, that is one of the points I don't believe cause it reeks of marketing bullcrap through and through because you usually get a time or contentframe to fit something in and go from there not the other way around. Someone in the marketing department had the great idea of selling one game (with the same basic concept, graphics/engine and units) as 3 (probably full-price, they're still dodging actually answering this one) titles, knew fans would probably still go with it and asked em to rationalize...

Why are you splitting the game on campaign grounds, and how will this structure see the first StarCraft II and subsequent campaigns interlink and, from a narrative perspective, 'flow'? Generally, how customisable an experience will be offered in StarCraft II, and how 'open' are you really going?

It's not a split so much as it ended up being an overflow of more plot twists, interesting new characters and settings and sub plots than we could cram into a single game. When we sat down to outline the story we wanted to wrap around StarCraft II, we started to realise that what we wanted to present to the players could easily end up being a behemoth - an 80 or 90 mission campaign. Attempting to cram that much content into one package could easily have taken us several more years to finish. Our players have waited long enough. So we decided it would make more sense to build out the first 26 or so missions of this epic sci-fi opera and then release that as our core game, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty.

They're referring to them as expansions now, so I doubt they'd do that and still full-price them.

Having talked to numerous members of the SC2 team who aren't PR people, they're all either extremely good liars or they all genuinely believe this is the way to go. And I'm not sold that every single person working on SC2 is a great liar.

The explanation that they've given there - that I've heard in person - makes perfect sense to me. Every game that Blizzard has ever put out since WC2 has had an expansion pack. SC2 will have two. Where is the problem?

I refuse to buy into the claim that the story is "too big" to fit into a single game, or that it is an "epic sci-fi opera". That reeks of pretentiousness. A really good story does not need to be long to be engaging; as George Orwell said: "Never write a long sentence where a short one will do." If they really cared about releasing the game soon enough for their fans, a decent editor could easily prune down the story to its essentials and ship a much tighter game with all three races playable in the campaign mode.

If it actually does turn out to be Homer meets Wagner in space, I'll happily write all this out on paper, drizzle it in BBQ sauce and eat my own words; but cynicism has been rather heavily drilled into me by an industry that finds the slightest excuse to release everything in trilogies for optimum profit.

 

[John Funk]

So, you'd prefer either a game that didn't have everything in it that they wanted to do, or a game that came out in 2014? Good to know.

Yeah see, that is one of the points I don't believe cause it reeks of marketing bullcrap through and through because you usually get a time or contentframe to fit something in and go from there not the other way around. Someone in the marketing department had the great idea of selling one game (with the same basic concept, graphics/engine and units) as 3 (probably full-price, they're still dodging actually answering this one) titles, knew fans would probably still go with it and asked em to rationalize...

Why are you splitting the game on campaign grounds, and how will this structure see the first StarCraft II and subsequent campaigns interlink and, from a narrative perspective, 'flow'? Generally, how customisable an experience will be offered in StarCraft II, and how 'open' are you really going?

It's not a split so much as it ended up being an overflow of more plot twists, interesting new characters and settings and sub plots than we could cram into a single game. When we sat down to outline the story we wanted to wrap around StarCraft II, we started to realise that what we wanted to present to the players could easily end up being a behemoth - an 80 or 90 mission campaign. Attempting to cram that much content into one package could easily have taken us several more years to finish. Our players have waited long enough. So we decided it would make more sense to build out the first 26 or so missions of this epic sci-fi opera and then release that as our core game, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty.

They're referring to them as expansions now, so I doubt they'd do that and still full-price them.

Having talked to numerous members of the SC2 team who aren't PR people, they're all either extremely good liars or they all genuinely believe this is the way to go. And I'm not sold that every single person working on SC2 is a great liar.

The explanation that they've given there - that I've heard in person - makes perfect sense to me. Every game that Blizzard has ever put out since WC2 has had an expansion pack. SC2 will have two. Where is the problem?

I refuse to buy into the claim that the story is "too big" to fit into a single game, or that it is an "epic sci-fi opera". That reeks of pretentiousness. A really good story does not need to be long to be engaging; as George Orwell said: "Never write a long sentence where a short one will do." If they really cared about releasing the game soon enough for their fans, a decent editor could easily prune down the story to its essentials and ship a much tighter game with all three races playable in the campaign mode.

If it actually does turn out to be Homer meets Wagner in space, I'll happily write all this out on paper, drizzle it in BBQ sauce and eat my own words; but cynicism has been rather heavily drilled into me by an industry that finds the slightest excuse to release everything in trilogies for optimum profit.

The claim isn't that the story is too big to put into a single game.

It's that making 90 missions and doing everything they wanted - branching trees, offering choices, etc - would take too long. You know how slow Blizzard works already to get just the first game out. Now consider that they're pretty much redoing the story/between-missions mechanic between games (I mean, Kerrigan isn't going to go to her chief engineer in the vehicle bay to order upgrades), and it just makes sense.

Again, I'm going to reiterate: Every Blizzard game ever made has had at least one expansion since WC2. SC2 will have two.

SC1 had 30 missions. SC2 Terran will have 30 missions. You are not getting less content.

Where is the problem with this? The only thing I can think of is that it was a mistake for Blizzard to announce it like a trilogy instead of "one game, two expansions."

 

[chozo_hybrid]

Wotever, I don't care, I am buying a computer specifically for SCII (never played I, tho), WoW's next X-Pac and Star Wars: ToR. My 5-year old comp isn't BAD, but I'd rather just completely start over for the next crop of my attention-soakers.

You haven't played the first? You really should, it's awesome and you'll get story a lot better.

 

[kylejj91]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/starcraft-ii-to-allow-paid-for-mods
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/cloud-play-and-more-for-battle-net
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/12/ads-come-to-battle-net-as-activision-monetizes-free-service.ars
http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/104/1044979p1.html
https://us.battle.net/account/creation/tos.xml

1st link- There giving a larger incentive for people to make content for their game which gives you more content enjoy. Now that will make people try to make the new DotA to ruin my social life even more then SC2 its self. If you don't want to pay for it then ummm how about don't buy it and stop crying about it. I'm sure there will be like 600 free rip offs of that map so you and all the other people that arn't going to buy it can play something similar together.



2nd link- There giving you more of an identity on battle net which makes it much easier to get friends/clans and you know play with people. I'm also going to quote something from that page that's very interesting

Players will log in to StarCraft II as if it were an MMO - although it will be possible to play offline, you'll have to do so as a guest.

I don't think that it's that far of a stretch to say that is some form of lan support. That you will be able to play, but wont be able to use your BNet account. If not you can always do a comp stomp by your self.



3rd link- Your going to have to put your big boy pants on and realize that this the real world. Blizzard is a company, and for a company to keep employing its work force they need to make money. Also do you think servers run for free, you think in game admins do their work for free, how about the staff working on patches. If you want a company to keep maintenance on a game they need to be making some kind of income after release. So what if you have to look at a Pizza Hut billboard when you log in; adds are annoying but at least they don't cost you money. If you don't want to pay for things then go back to living with your parents, the foods free there.


4th link- Blizzards a big company now and are handling many different franchises. They don't even mention SC2 in this article. This is falling under the "blizzard's franchise World of Warcraft has a subscription fee, which means every game they make now is going to have one" argument.



5th link- I'm guessing you wanted me to read the terms of use, unless making a BNet account is so bad it steals your soul. It's a very standard ToU page and the only thing that I could think you would have a problem with is the no modding the data so you can play SC2 off of BNet servers. Try this, google ICCup and see what it is. You may be surprised that it's exactly what ToU says is a breach of contract, hell you can download just the multiplayer client part of the game directly off their websight for free; and be playing on there servers in 5min for no cost. Guess where the SC2 development team is getting most of their feed back for the multiplayer, from them. Also google and see how many WoW private servers are up and running, and have been running for many years. Blizzard seems to be very light on this subject. So even if I was wrong on my quote from your 2nd link and there no form of LAN play, give it a month and you'll have it from a third party.



Also for people complaining that the campaign is going to be released in three parts. Each of these parts are going to consist of 30+ missions (which is around the same as SC1) and is going to flesh out the storyline each race much more. Also each missions is going to have equal to, if not much higher, quality to SC1 and if your still not happy with that because you think blizzard is just some evil corporation just trying to steal your hard earned money. Please, do stick it to Blizzard (which to you is Satin him self) and don't buy their product.

If you are just like me and your buying SC2 for the mulitplayer, then only buy one of the three. If there are micro transactions in this game and you don't like that, don't buy them. If you can't handle seeing an add for something, then I have to ask you a question. How can you stand living in this age?

 

[kylejj91]

I would also like to note that we're all so very crazy for putting this much speculation into a game that isn't in beta yet.