StarCraft 2 Is A Trilogy

NO WE DON'T.   protest with your wallet.

Like you all weren't going to pirate it anyway.

Can't play online with a pirated copy.

Such a game is built for multiplayer, it would be like pirating wow and only playing on your own server by yourself.

Well you can have FULL access to the multiplayer by only paying for the first game..

The 2nd and 3rd games complete the campaign and in no way is the price point fixed yet.   We get the game earlier, Starcraft buffs get a massively epic campaign mode split across 3 games.   I don't see the big deal at all.

Well to top this off there is murmurs in the wings that blizzard is going to make battle net pay to play.

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/11/blizz ... monetized/

It will be interesting to see what they finally announce.

I'm not suprised particularly that they will make bnet pay to play but it is a little upsetting to see that free service disappear, especially considering you know they are still making epic amounts of money even without doing so.

You'd imagine simply spamming ads on BNet would easily pay for the service. Though what happens when years later in situation like we have now bnet is still up for starcraft, yet the income has to of been reduced from sales, I understand it's big in Korea but still it's gotta be a hit to the back pocket.

I'd love to know the costs of supporting bnet. and what happens to all those other games when their master server gets turned off. I assume the master servers requirements reduce over time and it's merely a small slice of server time.

Yeah I reckon the costs of running bnet would easily be covered by the advertising on it and then some.

You assume this trilogy would be staggered?   i.e. not all of the games are gonna drop at once

Yeah sounds like Terran campaign arrives and other two are almost like expansions afterwards. Maybe they'll even be priced that way.

 

Locky:

Like you all weren't going to pirate it anyway.

Removed Comments relating to piracy. -MC

Btw Lots of new gameplay from BlizzCon over the weekend and also new D3 stuff. New Class called The Wizard and some game play systems in D3 check it out.

 

 

Actually you won't have to pay $150+ for the same game no one's forcing you to buy it. Just buy the original release play multiplay all 3 races will be available for multi. They also said each campaign will have more gameplay/as long as all 3 campaigns combined from the original Starcraft. Sounds kind of interesting depending on how they price it and how far staggered the releases are. The alternatives are releasing an expansion pack a year later after the game ships. Least this way the storyline of the campaign will be longer more epic and suspenseful then before.

Also can't wait for Diablo III that Wizard class looks awesome.

I'm suspecting that there will be small changes in each release of th trilogy, like maybe an extra unit for each side or something like that that will be used as a way to hook people in to make them buy the extra bits.

It's a good move, as it will inject interest in the game.  These expansion packs will be released most likely be years after Starcraft 2 is released.  

Keeping the game alive and fresh over a longer period of time makes me a happy chappy.

It will be interesting to see what Blizzard's move is with B.Net if they continue with the free model now or opt for a subscription based one.  They'd have to have damn good content/updates/features available if you subscribed to B.Net to justify the extra cost though.  

From the latest reports it looks like they're gearing up to get some extra cash off gamers:  http://www.cinemablend.com/games/BlizzC ... 12751.html

I'm unsure that B.Net could self-sustain itself with advertising alone though; at least the advertising that is on it these days.  It costs serious bucks to maintain the staff to handle all the requests.  Who knows what the real numbers are, but drawing conclusions from the MMOGlider case it would be hundreds of thousands a year.

Its bullshit becuase of the success of WoW every jack ass is trying to make you pay for features which should be free. Its just like Xbox Live making you pay for a service which should be free.  

Plastic Killer:

Its bullshit becuase of the success of WoW every jack ass is trying to make you pay for features which should be free. Its just like Xbox Live making you pay for a service which should be free.

Yeah. other stuff we want should be free too.   Like houses and cars and ornithopters.   Everyone should work for free and companies should supply raw materials free of charge as well in order to facilitiate this.   Paying for stuff is dumb!

<3 Communism

Technically we've had a good run, I mean a company puts out a product, they then provide and maintain servers... well... forever to allow gamers to play their game. I can't remember a title I've purchased where I, going back years later for some nostaligia, wasn't able to connect to the master server and find server. Abeit most/all of them empty but still online none the less. I can't imagine too many copies of Doom get sold now days yet those servers are still active.

That said, innovation and marketing once again have combined and brought us game lobbies, full of advertising to support some of the more recent games lobby services,   bnet, gpgnet and the like. Hence the services were provided free to the masses.

I favour the ad supported approach but fear myself as do many gamers, we become immune to these ads, I know they are they in Bnet but have cannot recall the content of even one save some blizzard propaganda. So the returns of those advertisers may become poorer over time despite their inital reach.

I guess they could initiate some kinda of in your face advetising approach to encourage you to pay to be left alone, but that doesn't seem to be very Blizzard. Activision I wouldn't put it past though. and initiating any game enhancing content for those that are paying is also a bit off putting.

The key here is a great product if you have a great product you can kinda do what you please, we may not wish to buy the game, and to Blizzard we are effectivly nothing. I think though that our asian nieghbours might be all too happy to pay to play, and as thats where the cash is, our opinion doesn't rate a mention.

Come on Plastic. You can still play the original Diablo on BNet. Blizz have been pretty fucking generous. Starcraft, WC3 and Diablo 2 all still get played like nothing else and I'm pretty sure I'm going to want to play lots of MP Starcraft 2, especially if Icefrog decides to have a crack at it, so I don't mind paying a bit.

Will there be a subscription fee for Guild Wars 2?

Nope. Like the original Guild Wars, there will be no subscription fee for Guild Wars 2. You just buy the game and play it online without paying a monthly fee.

Will Guild Wars 2 be an MMO?

Yes. Guild Wars 2 provides a massive, online persistent world.

If they can do a MMO without a monthly fee, then why does battle net need to charge when all they do is provide server listings.   The games are hosted by individuals, battlenet is just a match making service.

If Guild Wars 2 is anything like the original than they're using the term MMO very loosely. The whole game was instanced basically.

Well the thing with the blizzard servers is that even if you have to pay for it you can always get a service like Hamachii and run it through that instead.

For the uninformed, Hamachii is a virtual network program, so that you can play lan games across the internet, so if you find an old game which has had the multiplayer server shut down you can still play with other people online.

I don't mind paying a small fee but i fear that all games will require a P2P system to access parts of the game. Therefore having to pay a fee for several games would lead to a priated online system. If a small fee is needed to be added (Which it doesn't) i would like to see a system like Steam e.g. where only one fee is needed not several for all your games.

See Steam is different with a vast catalogue of games, the income generate by steam is significant, and the matchmaking service is simply a part of the steam server side service.

Bnet once the original purchase is made thats it, there's not another title that person will buy until their next A1 title releases, cause thats all they release, and that could be 18 months.

Though I agree I don't wanna be some corporate suckup, as the matchmaking service is merely a feature of the game, without which online play would become virtually impossible thus sinking the game. It would be ludicrous to believe you would be forced to pay for such a service.

MULTIPLAY DOESN"T WORK WITHOUT IT, then again maybe thats what they are pinnign their hopes on.

I was using Steam as a example, just the idea of a number of different devs using one system for online games.