South Koreans Aren't Playing StarCraft II

[JaredXE]

HA HA!


I knew something like this would happen. LAN MADE Starcraft. The ability to play it on any computer, spawn a copy to any friend, and get a group of people to play without Battle-Net Bullshit smoothed the path to popularity.

Also, it's not the full game/story.

 

[djmulder]

Blizzard not knowing what their fans want? That's fresh!

Nah seriously... ever since Activision had some say they were slowly but surely killing off their game-content, forcing their mis-interpretation of what their fans want.

Just look at the franchises of WoW, Starcraft and Diablo. All they smell is money money money and 0 vision.

They keep thinking they can't be touched but... well they WILL sink if this vision doesn't change and will be pushed in the ground by the first visionary with balls.

 

[Exort]

They have no lan support so south koreans can't play pirated copys in multiplayer, pretty much no Sc 1 player in SK actually owns a copy.

Wrong!!

Out of 11 million copy of Starcraft sold worldwide, 4.5 million was sold in South Korea.

"StarCraft was released internationally on 31 March 1998 and became the best-selling PC game for that year, selling over 1.5 million copies worldwide.[72] In the next decade, StarCraft sold over 9.5 million copies across the globe, with 4.5 million of these being sold in South Korea"

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

I know people think asia pirate a lot because even some part of the goverments use pirate copy of Windows (about 10 years ago), the problem is Mircosoft charge the same price there as in US, and they can't afford that kind of money. If you charge reasonable amount compare the local income they will be more willing to buy things.

 

[Exterminas]

Actually I think most people in korea don't have a computer that can take starcraft 2 : / Or maybe I am missjuding the countries wealth.

 

[Scabadus]

$30 million on an ad campaign and $0 million on researching their playerbase. Yup, it's big company politics at work!

 

[Woodsey]

What a way to shoot yourself in the foot; everyone knows why it's popular there, so why restrict it?

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

The players in that country has invested 10 years in to Starcraft 1, why did Blizzard think they would all jump to Starcraft 2?

Forcing Battlenet and no LAN were two ideas that wern't thought out either.

 

[_Janny_]

Ah, so it's because of the Battlenet problems. When I first read the title I thought that they didn't like the game because of the gameplay or story or something.

 

[Loonerinoes]

If I remember correctly, the whole reason for battle.net requirements rather than personal LAN support was so that pirates couldn't get the code and thus allow unauthorized private servers to exist. Aight, maybe most of the games weren't pirated in SKorea...but if LAN support is provided the code can be studied, ergo pirates could potentially get multiplayer going down the road.

Funnily enough though without LAN...it seems as if South Korea has made a big FU sign for this one. Even more funny that none of the new graphics, shiny things or story budged them one itty bit from the original Starcraft. So it boils down to not alienating something like a third of your fanbase (at least if you take the sales numbers of the first Starcraft as representative of such)...or appeasing them, but also allowing pirates the potential of multiplayer.

Heh...this is going to be one big moral quandary for the anti-piracy zealots and even moreso a financial one.

 

[Popido]

I wouldnt be suprised if this gets blamed on piracy soon.

But, wow! Alienating whole country with $30 million? That takes some skill.

 

[Shameless]

Blizz needs to rethink their strategy, Battle net should be only optional and they should allow LAN for the next expansion pack or they are fucked.

 

[loc978]

Hopefully Blizzard will take this as a lesson and move forward with some better ideas about how to not alienate an entire country. Still, knowing that you wasted $30 million has got to smart.

gotta disagree with you there. I fervently hope they don't learn soon enough to lose most of their market share to companies who stifle creative talent a bit less. 'Course, they pretty well alienated me, too (though I still LAN Starcraft on occasion... do I taste blood? It's a little irony).
That said, I don't mind if they learn after they lose the near-monopoly, though.

 

[Exort]

If I remember correctly, the whole reason for battle.net requirements rather than personal LAN support was so that pirates couldn't get the code and thus allow unauthorized private servers to exist. Aight, maybe most of the games weren't pirated in SKorea...but if LAN support is provided the code can be studied, ergo pirates could potentially get multiplayer going down the road.

Funnily enough though without LAN...it seems as if South Korea has made a big FU sign for this one. Even more funny that none of the new graphics, shiny things or story budged them one itty bit from the original Starcraft. So it boils down to not alienating something like a third of your fanbase (at least if you take the sales numbers of the first Starcraft as representative of such)...or appeasing them, but also allowing pirates the potential of multiplayer.

Heh...this is going to be one big moral quandary for the anti-piracy zealots and even moreso a financial one.

Yes what you said is true all pirated server uses LAN (no matter Warcraft 3 or Starcraft), actually what they do is fool the client that they are using Local connect when they are actually connected over the internet.

I have quite a few Korean freind and they all like Starcraft 2, but they feel Starcraft is more familar. It isn't Battle.net or anything, but if you play both you should realize Stacraft 2 plays nothing like Starcraft 1 in terms of tactics, and strategy. They just feel Starcraft is more like home to them, they already played it for over 10 years. It is just like moving, it isn't the new home is bad or anything, but you just feel connected to the old one.

I guess we won't see South Korea changing to Starcraft 2 until Starcraft 2 pros become popular, as I mention before the reason Starcraft is so big is because there are Pro gamers like Boxer promoting it.

 

[The Hairminator]

I get mad every time I see my SC2 casing. It's a good game, but I thought Blizzard would have enough love for their community not to take away something as fundamental to the franchise.

Oh, and I have a Starcraft LAN planned in this weekend. All of us have a legal copy of the original SC (I have 2 for some reason), most of my friends bought it after having pirated it for LAN purposes, but only 3 of us own SC2.

 

[sagacious]

but starcraft didn't get frighteningly popular until a few years after release (and after brood war)!
Starcraft 2 has only been out a few months. After Heart of the swarm and ESPECIALLY after legacy of the void, you'll see starcraft 2 outstrip scarcraft 1.

imo, anyway

 

[Traun]

GSL has 1.9 million viewers, I think they are doing fine.

 

[Jursa]

I think the reason South Koreans are skeptical of SC2 is very well displayed in the recent MLG Dallas tournament when B.net just went down... There's no excuse for things like this, blizzard wants their game to be competitive on a global scale, but when a game is shut down... in the middle of a grand final no less... That's bullshit. Lan implementation is mandatory for tournaments

 

[Atmos Duality]

After Starcraft 2 crashed irreparably from a patch, and they wanted to force me to do the whole registration thing again, I stopped playing.

I could just say that the "No LAN = killjoy" but there's more to it than that; Bnet 2.0 has this pervasive feeling to it; they want to know what I'm doing at all times.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if in the future, they just start throwing targeted ads in my face while playing.

 

[Muhkoo]

Oh no the statue money.

I think as maybe everyone does that its the lack of LAN play that kept them South Koreans from taking it to them, but maybe also that its not the grahpics and the new features they care for within the game, so they might as well stick to what they know. If its treated like a sport imagine how it would be if they added a bunch of new things to Baseball or Football, fairly sure it would be hard to change if there were suddenly more balls flying around and more bases and 3 new roles to fill (although that might be completely wrong, gotta ask them if thats the case )

 

[Lemon Of Life]

It'll take longer than Blizzard expected, but Starcraft 2 looks set to take over. It's only a matter of time before the issues about LAN, chat channels and tournaments get sorted out.