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Dammit.
My rant on Halo 3: Recon is still fresh on my fingertips and already I find my fingers typing venom at Blizzard’s announcement that StarCraft II is going to be three games instead of one. Obligatory personal color / backstory paragraphs (only two, I swear) before we get to the meat:
StarCraft is the shit. Easily ranks in my (hell, most people’s) top five games. I’ve replayed it within 
the past year, because I love it so. WarCraft and its first sequel were good games, but they never hit me with “great”. StarCraft did. The characters were more formed, the universe more inventive, and the play more epic. And for the past decade I’ve waited for the day that Jim Raynor could slit the Queen of Blades’ throat– so the announcement of StarCraft II was seen by me as a good thing… save my increasing distrust of Blizzard.
Let all you fanboys with your Pay-Per-View BlizzCon masturbation session just unleash it on me already; I don’t trust Blizzard anymore. Why? Because I’ve played World of WarCraft to a degree beyond most sane people. Yes, there are millions of people who have played it more than me, but I know way more people who have played it far less and allow me to describe the demon for you who are unaware– World of WarCraft is a con. It’s a game designed to feel like you can win, that 98% of players simply cannot. I’ve played hard games, that took time and effort to complete. But WoW isn’t a hard game. It’s a damned near impossible game. Spend your days and nights practicing, training, collecting to achieve a task, and then watch it all get swept away by the next big patch. The game is dreadfully imbalanced, to the point that Blizzard doesn’t even appear to try balancing it anymore, instead choosing to imbalance it in cycles. Had a rough six months as a hunter? Well, fear not, next patch you’ll be dreadfully overpowered and unstoppable for the next three months, after which you’ll be moved into the middle of the pack so that warlocks can have their turn! And I’m not complaining as some newb that got ganked out in Stranglethorn. I’m complaining as a player who in the “60’s” days was part of a Marshall grinding group and in the “70’s” was on a 2300 5v5 team. The game is an evil device, aimed at ruining lives, and sucking up huge profits.
It was with this mindset that I wondered if Blizzard had changed (and this is irrelevantto Activision or what not… we all know who wears the pants in that relationship). As a dedicated StarCraft player, I believe that other than right after the Brood War expansion, the game was more balanced than not. While there have been patches, the result of them has always been less devastating to the gameplay than the feeling of WoW in which you could be playing and literally have to ask, “What the fuck did you just do?” to a class you’ve played previously because patch changes were that durastic. The decision to make a trilogy is almost certainly a sucker punch to fans of StarCraft. This isn’t Blue Shift or Half Life 2: Episode 2. It is neither offering a unexpected perspective (we expect all of our races, dammit) nor is it downloadable content. Argue all you want with me about how it’s not, but I’m willing to wager that 2/3rds of the people who have 100% confidence in the impending product are bigger Blizzard fans than they are StarCraft fans. Why do I say this?
I played StarCraft– the prologue demos, the single player, the additional missions, the expansion pack, the unofficial expansions, created my own levels, and the multiplayer. I did damn near everything under the sun that could be done with the game. Having as much info as possible on what this trilogy announcement, what I see is a picture of incomplete games.
StarCraft II: Terran: Wings of Liberty. 
If you need to, read this MTV list of questions with a developer, if you need verification of the things I’m about to say. 26 to 30 missions, focused on the Terrans. Blizz admits they have not gotten this portion done. They didn’t want to cut so instead they are going to bloat. If we’re to be realistic, a repetitive and long game is just as bad (if not worse) than a game that’s too short. So they’re stretching a concept that was originally for one game. And, one would assume, they are removing the diversity– we’re not going to get ten missions with each class in Terran. We’re going to play… Terran (with apparently a side story of Zeratul and the Protoss). Further, we know that our main character in the section will be unsuccessful. Part two is about Kerrigan, so, unless they do the games non-chronologically, Jim Raynor is not getting his retribution/payback/whatever. Makes the stakes really high… or not. And how the hell does this first game have an ending that is BIG enough? Remember the semi-tragic ending of the first Terran campaign? That propaganda being pumped to the Confederates? That’s not the end to a a fully formed thought. That giant Overmind fight… THAT is the end of a game. The fallout from that event changed the landscape. Just as the ending deaths, betrayals, and revelation of Zerg-Protoss in the finale of Brood War (even if it was somewhat of a cliffhanger) gave us a strong enough note to hold on. I refuse to believe that Blizzard will offer us three “game-changing” endings. And, further within this, I believe it means the status quo WITHIN the individual titles will be without big enough twists. Part of the success of StarCraft is the variety that we are offered in the gameplay and the plot, both of which will be removed for a YEAR. Play PART of the game for a YEAR and then there will be another. It’s bullshit. No other company could get away with this. When the price comes out, I guarantee this will be the equivalent of highway robbery.
And all of this says nothing of the multiplayer. They’ve said each part comes with exclusive units– say it all together now: IMBALANCED. Blizzard has gone on and on about how many problems they are having balancing this game, so they’re going to ship it in three different boxes with different units? I’m sure that’ll make it easier to keep things fair. Or maybe it will create a culture where people think that the next game, the next patch, the next time their class will be fixed to the point that maybe it’ll be right… strung along like a poor addict by an evil corporation.
Let’s hope that this move to split the game up is met with exactly what it should be met with: mass piracy.
Update/Edits 15:20 CDT: Two things– on a personal note, sorry about the wonky spacing and linking. There’s something going wrong with our WordPress, and we’re looking into it. Second, I thought that this news seemed to indicate a growing “bleh” with Blizzard. As this debate rages across the internet, I want it to be clear that my position isn’t a bad company, but instead a declining one that is more concerned with screwing me out of dollars than they are with giving me something amazing. I think their moves on all fronts indicate some form of growing disregard towards the consumer. With as much money as this game will make, I wonder how much they will truly put into it. As always, I’m interested in hearing your opinions below.
En Taro Tassadar!
“Let’s hope that this move to split the game up is met with exactly what it should be met with: mass piracy.”
Hear hear!
I stopped reading at the point where you had just boasted about how much information you have collected on the game and then went on to assume that the three SC2 campaigns would be chronologically sequential. This assumption makes any related commentary, however clever on the surface, useless. Blizzard have made it clear that the three campaigns have _one_ ending. I don’t see how this could mean anything else than all of them ending with the same event, at the same point in time. Any character could be killed at that point. While I don’t think they’re going to kill of one of their most popular characters forever, your argument for why it can’t happen is bogus.
Not that I want to nag/rant or kiss Blizzard’s ass, I just wanted to point this out and HTH.
nex– That information varies a LOT from site to site. For example, here’s one site claiming it is chronological:
http://www.warcry.com/news/view/86754-Blizzcon-08-StarCraft-2-Trilogy-Confirmed
Obviously it’s not fair to launch fully into one opinion or another until the actual Blizzard FAQ is updated to reflect this change.
And as a storyteller, one hopese that “popularity” never overrules good storytelling. Quite frankly, for this game to be nearly as memorable as its predecessor, there will HAVE to be major deaths.
Is it fair for me to be angry at this point? No. I’m just greatly concerned. And I’m obviously not alone in these concerns, and looking at all the conflicting information swirling around right now (like to what degree these games are or aren’t exapansion-like, are or aren’t finished, etc), I think it’s clear that even Blizzard doesn’t fully know what’s happening at this point.
This game is going to get a lot of coverage and a lot of hype, but I think it’s important in any process like this to question what’s coming ahead. I think “Spore” is a GREAT example of this. I was fully ready to jump onto the bandwagon for the game, only to find it utterly ‘okay’. I know that StarCraft 2 has amazing potential, and I only want the best for the game; making it episodic I think will greatly diminish elements of that potential. I could be wrong, but regardless, I want to start the discussion now. Not that there aren’t more important things in the world, I just enjoy the talk.
Whoops, I was too judgemental. Now that you mention it, I realize I could very well have misinterpreted some of the statements that were made. Surely someone at Blizzard already knows the entire plot, but they probably won’t want to tell too much in advance, hence the confusion.
I’m not sure if the story will be particularly interesting. SC is known for being one of the best RTS games; for many people it’s _the_ best. If all goes well, this is what Blizzard will deliver once more with SC2. On the story front, I didn’t find SC very compelling. The plot expositions felt to me like a string of excuses for why, as each race, you first have to fight another race, then the third race, then another faction of your own race, and sometimes there’s all three races on the battlefield and you have two opponents or an ally. I don’t remember what it was like when I played it for the first time, but the last time I played SC, I thought it’s very obvious that the plot mainly serves setting up all the situations they needed to make an excellent RTS game, but would suck as a movie or novel.
Having said that, I’m sure they’re practizing the art of story telling on a level above “making it up as you go”
> They’ve said each part comes with exclusive units
I haven’t heard this about the multiplayer, only about the sinle player. Where did you read that?
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