Future of StatCraft after LoTV (some spoilers)

[obobski]

Honestly I've heard the "StarCraft is dead and no more will ever be made" before - back in ~2005 when WoW came out and everyone was decrying the death of Diablo and StarCraft because "all Blizzard will ever care about now is WoW and subscription money." And since then we've gotten Diablo 3 and StarCraft 2 and both of those games have been expanded since their release (and neither is an MMO or subscription-model). I think it is probably safe to say that WarCraft as an RTS is 110% DOA, black tag, never coming back ever again and any hope of WarCraft 4 or some other WarCraft RTS is just a pipe dream, but I wouldn't be surprised if we got StarCraft 3 or Diablo 4 sometime in the next ten years. With the recent updates to SC2 it also looks like they're adding more content with the Nova expansion, and that doesn't appear to be wholly "e-sport stuff."

 

As far as the "it only has 3 races" thing - I've heard good defenses of both sides of that argument over the years, and personally I think StarCraft is one of the better-balanced RTS series to be released. Genie-based games are usually horribly unbalanced due to the "counters" thing (I'd say Galactic Battlegrounds is the exception); AoM and later improved on that significantly, but it still isn't to the level of StarCraft where each faction really represents a different ideal strategy. I don't think you need 50,000 different factions to be well balanced or offer diverse strategies either - Westwood generally only offered two factions in their games, but each one represented multiple different strategic approaches for the player, or you can have the DoW model where you have whatever gazillion factions (and corresponding gazillion expansions) and play out the different strategic approaches there (and that said, I don't think DoW is as strategically diverse as StarCraft, Westwood games, etc).

 

And all of that said, I'm just glad that at least one "big name" in game development is still at least trying to keep RTS alive. As much as the "golden era" games may rock, it gets old playing the same set of games for 10-20 years...its nice to see something new with a new storyline and new units and new characters.

[Signette]

As far as I remember more people were actually crying that with WoW release Blizz gonna kill WarCraft RTS, which actually happened, and by all accounts WC3 was one of the best in terms of gameplay, story, balance and fantastic discipline for e-sport still having distinct and somewhat unique gameplay with pretty huge difference from StarCraft. At least WC evolved, SC did not. There were many rumors and leaks of Diablo 3 back then and release new SC was pretty much obvious.

 

Now about races, yes, Westwood did fine with 2 factions, same with older WarCraft, but then we've seen new C&C games, C&C Generals had 3 factions with specializations later (Zero Hour addon), we had C&C3 Tiberium Wars also with new and very interesting specializations in Kane's Wraith. C&C Red Alert 3 had 3 factions, and despite the fact all these games weren't Westwood, they still maintained core gameplay features, and all had VERY good oldschool gameplay for RTS games, I've played a lot multiplayer in Generals and Tiberium myself (not to mention how much I played old C&C games with friends before), games were well balanced and fun to play, and most importantly they evolved, added new features, factions got almost completely revamped and these strategies only prospered with it. Between StarCraft 1 and 2 I see almost no difference to be honest despite it becoming 3D. Still, I have a feeling that in Brood War we had somewhat more tactical variety and overall more content. That's sad really...

 

I'm glad too that "big name" is still afloat, but not generally happy with such minimalistic and limiting approach to SC2, I don't ask for radical changes like hero units as in WC3 (which wouldn't hurt too much really, at least as separate gamemode), but adding new faction or giving specializations to presented ones would spice things up and still would stay classic. You get funny impression like all they did was porting 2D game to 3D, which took them 12 years. Seriously...

Edited December 22, 2015 by Signette

[obobski]

As far as I remember more people were actually crying that with WoW release Blizz gonna kill WarCraft RTS, which actually happened, and by all accounts WC3 was one of the best in terms of gameplay, story, balance and fantastic discipline for e-sport still having distinct and somewhat unique gameplay with pretty huge difference from StarCraft. At least WC evolved, SC did not. There were many rumors and leaks of Diablo 3 back then and release new SC was pretty much obvious.

 

Now about races, yes, Westwood did fine with 2 factions, same with older WarCraft, but then we've seen new C&C games, C&C Generals had 3 factions with specializations later (Zero Hour addon), we had C&C3 Tiberium Wars also with new and very interesting specializations in Kane's Wraith. C&C Red Alert 3 had 3 factions, and despite the fact all these games weren't Westwood, they still maintained core gameplay features, and all had VERY good oldschool gameplay for RTS games, I've played a lot multiplayer in Generals and Tiberium myself (not to mention how much I played old C&C games with friends before), games were well balanced and fun to play, and most importantly they evolved, added new features, factions got almost completely revamped and these strategies only prospered with it. Between StarCraft 1 and 2 I see almost no difference to be honest despite it becoming 3D. Still, I have a feeling that in Brood War we had somewhat more tactical variety and overall more content. That's sad really...

 

I'm glad too that "big name" is still afloat, but not generally happy with such minimalistic and limiting approach to SC2, I don't ask for radical changes like hero units as in WC3 (which wouldn't hurt too much really, at least as separate gamemode), but adding new faction or giving specializations to presented ones would spice things up and still would stay classic. You get funny impression like all they did was porting 2D game to 3D, which took them 12 years. Seriously...

 

1) I agree with it being a travesty that WC is dead as an RTS. I don't have an issue with WoW or MMOs, but it'd be nice if the original game were still available too - it's not like it didn't sell, and I can imagine there's plenty of RTS players that simply moved on to another developer's game vs following along with WoW (I always saw that "bet" along the lines of "we think our storyline is soooo good that you'll swap genres for us!").

 

2) I don't even consider the EA games branded as Westwood - they're a completely separate nightmare. As far as "StarCraft not evolving" - ignoring SC2 you're ultimately stuck comparing a game that came out in the late 1990s to stuff that came out afterwords. I'd honestly hold Red Alert 2 up as being "more modern" or "more advanced" than StarCraft, and it isn't *that* much newer. StarCraft as a series fits into that weird ether with Total Annihilation - they were both top of their field when new, enjoyed significant popularity well beyond many of their peers (who were either superseded by later entries (e.g. C&C) or fell short for some significant reason or another (e.g. Outpost)), but when they were "re-imagined" a few years ago (Supreme Commander came out first, but SC2 was announced around the same time) they're looking somewhat dated compared to things that'd already been done for strategy games (again I'll use Red Alert 2 is an example). I agree with the "tactical simplification" argument to a large extent - they removed the number of different units and narrowed the "field" so to speak, while other series were trying to be bigger and badder (I suspect, largely, in response to the domination of SC1 and TA back in the day). I don't think Supreme Commander or SC2 are bad games, and I think they both improved significantly over their predecessors in terms of the campaign gameplay (its much less rinse-and-repeat and far more character driven), but ultimately I'd have to agree with you that held up against something like WarCraft 3 or Emperor they come up wanting in many respects. Still, it beats no options at all...

[Signette]

1. Story may be good, but honestly it's not THAT good to switch genres, it was decent for RTS but I mainly appreciated WC for gameplay mechanics, balance and some real evolution, especially jump they made from 2 > 3 (as many players who used to play MP, I'm sure), less for story, and I simply can't stand MMO as a genre. Bliz brutally killed one of my fav games, and I just hope they won't bury StarCraft like that, but it doesn't look too promising really...

 

2. I agree that there was time, when Total Annihilation was very popular among RTS but today it became something more of a niche, hence Supreme Commander or Planetary Annihilation (as spiritual successors) played by more or less specific public, so I don't really see analogies... C&C3 TW, C&C RA3 and StarCraft2 stays true and viewed mostly as classic RTS today, it accepted by much bigger audience than TA-esque games. Well, there isn't much to argue, since my point is clear and we have kinda of agreement in views on "tactical simplifications", that and very foggy future of SC series are my only concernes to be honest, I just don't want to see another decent RTS being dead.

[obobski]

1. Story may be good, but honestly it's not THAT good to switch genres, it was decent for RTS but I mainly appreciated WC for gameplay mechanics, balance and some real evolution, especially jump they made from 2 > 3 (as many players who used to play MP, I'm sure), less for story, and I simply can't stand MMO as a genre. Bliz brutally killed one of my fav games, and I just hope they won't bury StarCraft like that, but it doesn't look too promising really...

 

2. I agree that there was time, when Total Annihilation was very popular among RTS but today it became something more of a niche, hence Supreme Commander or Planetary Annihilation (as spiritual successors) played by more or less specific public, so I don't really see analogies... C&C3 TW, C&C RA3 and StarCraft2 stays true and viewed mostly as classic RTS today, it accepted by much bigger audience than TA-esque games. Well, there isn't much to argue, since my point is clear and we have kinda of agreement in views on "tactical simplifications", that and very foggy future of SC series are my only concernes to be honest, I just don't want to see another decent RTS being dead.

 

I agree entirely with both points. I guess I'm more jaded, since I've always been more of a C&C and TA fan, and already lived through their deaths years ago - SC2 all by itself was a nice extension to a genre that I've long-since accepted is rooted squarely in the past (and I'm just happy that I can still play all of the old gems (some of them are even on GOG now)).