The Shrine

http://kotaku.com/gaming/luke%7C-i-just ... 255518.php

It took a good day of calls and emails, but Blizzard just got back to us about the rumor floating around that Starcraft 2 will be announced next month during their World Wide Invitation in Seoul, South Korea.

According to a Korean website, StarCraft 2 is being developed in 3D with a new race and lots of changes for existing units. The site went on to say that additional details would be revealed during Blizzard's WWI on May 19th in Seoul.

When reached for comment today this was Blizzard's official response:

" We do intend to announce a new product at the Worldwide Invitational next month in Korea, and we appreciate the enthusiasm and interest in getting an advance look at what that will be, but players will have to wait until May 19th to find out more. Also, we have a very strong connection with the characters and settings of StarCraft, and we do plan to revisit that universe at some point in the future, but we don't have anything new to announce in that regard at present. "

So that's a yes on a StarCraft 2, eventually, and a yes to a product announcement next month. The only question now is are they one in the same. Brian Crecente

That would be awesome! The announcement is probably another shitty WoW expansion pack.

I've gotten to hate StarCraft a bit.

I've never played so much as one "real" game of StarCraft - one of my less socially skilled roommates decided to beat me in a really obnoxious way with a drone rush during my first game ever, and that has pretty much epitomized the nature of serious StarCraft players to me. I'm not going to feel bad about the loss, because he played about five times a week and I didn't know *anything* about the game, not even how any of the units work...and I am pretty okay with having him humiliate me in SC, in retrospect, because he was not terribly socially adept in the rest of his life and I feel a bit bad for him.

It's funny, because I really enjoyed Warcraft III. Somehow, though, WCIII never developed the "cyberathlete" mentality Starcraft has. And while I should love this kind of thing as a game designer - games getting at least some kind of respect - somehow I don't, and am absolutely unable to overcome my prejudice that the SC scene is largely made up of people who can't cut it in the rest of their lives and need to find something they're good at in order to make themselves feel better. (Eric, you may feel free to yell at me over this if you like, since you are probably an exception to this rule.)

I'm sure there are many, many people who play it who have also chosen to learn how to talk to other people without extreme, horrendous social awkwardness, and I'm sure my prejudices look rather ugly when exposed to the light. But somehow on an emotional basis I still find the scene mostly obnoxious, full up of people who have developed a skill that's nearly useless outside of its own context, and yet still seem to think that they should be respected for their "mad drone rush skillz".

Guess I'm just a bad person when it comes to SC. You all can feel free to yell at me now over my intolerance, and I probably deserve it too!

Nev wrote:I've gotten to hate StarCraft a bit.

I've never played so much as one "real" game of StarCraft - one of my less socially skilled roommates decided to beat me in a really obnoxious way with a drone rush during my first game ever, and that has pretty much epitomized the nature of serious StarCraft players to me. I'm not going to feel bad about the loss, because he played about five times a week and I didn't know *anything* about the game, not even how any of the units work...and I am pretty okay with having him humiliate me in SC, in retrospect, because he was not terribly socially adept in the rest of his life and I feel a bit bad for him.

It's funny, because I really enjoyed Warcraft III. Somehow, though, WCIII never developed the "cyberathlete" mentality Starcraft has. And while I should love this kind of thing as a game designer - games getting at least some kind of respect - somehow I don't, and am absolutely unable to overcome my prejudice that the SC scene is largely made up of people who can't cut it in the rest of their lives and need to find something they're good at in order to make themselves feel better. (Eric, you may feel free to yell at me over this if you like, since you are probably an exception to this rule.)

I'm sure there are many, many people who play it who have also chosen to learn how to talk to other people without extreme, horrendous social awkwardness, and I'm sure my prejudices look rather ugly when exposed to the light. But somehow on an emotional basis I still find the scene mostly obnoxious, full up of people who have developed a skill that's nearly useless outside of its own context, and yet still seem to think that they should be respected for their "mad drone rush skillz".

Guess I'm just a bad person when it comes to SC. You all can feel free to yell at me now over my intolerance, and I probably deserve it too!

Dude, you're reading entirely too much into this. I haven't played SC in years, and yes, I actually enjoyed WC3 better(Heresy to the SC faithful!)

However, it is one of my favorite games of all time, and I do have a fond memory of peon rushing somebody and having them emo out and never play the game again as a result....err obviously it wasn't you, but know that you are not alone as a victim of the dreaded SCV rush =o

Either way I'm excited about the prospect of a sequel, just thought I'd share that with the rest of you cats.

Its a great game and was well balanced. I used to do well on the ladder, so you're opinion, nev, is full of shit.

I dont know where this judgemental mentality has come from lately nev, but it is pretty annoying. Seekers glass house stone throwing analogy works here, too. Who are you to judge? Who is anyone, really?

I liked SC better than WC3 because i hated creeping and the hero angle. SC seems more fair where scouting and unit selection and terrain exploiting was what worked. In WC3 you only needed to level your hero, kill the other persons hero, done. The item shop, random item creep drops, and all the neutral buildings and stuff made it more of a crap shoot. One lucky found item could easily change the game.

SC still has a special place in my heart-- I started a clan for it, Lords of Hell, which lasted about a year. good times

I also thoroughly enjoyed WC3 too, but still a very different game. WC3 was about micro-managing your army where as SC...not so much

Can't wait to see/hear about SC2...it's been far too fucking long. This could be the biggest game ever worldwide if done correctly (just by judging how huge of a game SC was and still is in some countries and how long it's been)

SC wasn't really balanced but it is really a strategy game on the macro level. There are definitely hard counters to most strats and although the game goes too much into resource management, that's what strategy game is supposed to be about. The only problem is that due to the game's lack of complexity you end up with 2 or 3 real strats for every possible matchups because everything else has a hard counter that will absolutely crush you so in the end it turns into just memorizing certain builds more so than actually knowing how to play the game.

Warcraft 3 is more like a RPG and a party game, especailly for team games where you basically just send everything together and hope you can hit your special abilities faster than the other side during the lag (having better computers help). In SC you don't necessarily need mega fast clicking skills if you have a good grasp of how the game works on a macro level. In Warcraft 3 nothing happens without clicking fast. It might as well be a FPS really with how much action dominates the overall outcome.

SC has the better use map settings I think too due to the game actually being more focused on strategy. Warcraft 3 scenarios are just more of the same click fast and win deal. But ironically the good UMS maps that focus on strategy are the ones no one plays because you could get 100 to 3 humiliations against someone who knows what they're doing on a map like Starcraft Fortress.

Eric wrote:Dude, you're reading entirely too much into this. I haven't played SC in years, and yes, I actually enjoyed WC3 better(Heresy to the SC faithful!)

However, it is one of my favorite games of all time, and I do have a fond memory of peon rushing somebody and having them emo out and never play the game again as a result....err obviously it wasn't you, but know that you are not alone as a victim of the dreaded SCV rush =o

Either way I'm excited about the prospect of a sequel, just thought I'd share that with the rest of you cats.

It wasn't a comment on you at all. I just needed to vent about obnoxious cyberathletes in general...

Perhaps I "emo'ed out" a bit as a result of the drone rush, but SC's space-military setting just never really appealed to me anyway, much. I only really played it out of some sort of feeling that I should, since it was so popular.

Sorry about the venting! Carry on.

Tessian wrote:SC still has a special place in my heart-- I started a clan for it, Lords of Hell, which lasted about a year. good times

I also thoroughly enjoyed WC3 too, but still a very different game. WC3 was about micro-managing your army where as SC...not so much

Can't wait to see/hear about SC2...it's been far too fucking long. This could be the biggest game ever worldwide if done correctly (just by judging how huge of a game SC was and still is in some countries and how long it's been)

I dunno, I've watched alot of the Korean games, and on a pro level, SC is a macro-management game, where micromanagement can turn the tide of battle(Ever seen a marine, dance back and forth and kill a lurker 1vs1?) While WC3 has an empasis on micro-management, but it completely turns into a macro-management game when you get around 70-80 food, and only really need to watch your heroes and their abilities/items..

I remember the Starcraft Days, there were a bunch of us who had a lot of fun with that game. Don was always King on the well balanced levels, I do recall that.

The Seeker wrote:I remember the Starcraft Days, there were a bunch of us who had a lot of fun with that game. Don was always King on the well balanced levels, I do recall that.

Don made the rest of us look ridiculously bad by taking us on 2vs1 and in some cases still finding ways to win =o

Eric wrote:

The Seeker wrote:I remember the Starcraft Days, there were a bunch of us who had a lot of fun with that game. Don was always King on the well balanced levels, I do recall that.

Don made the rest of us look ridiculously bad by taking us on 2vs1 and in some cases still finding ways to win =o

Hehehe:

Play for a second, we send our full forces towards Don's base, and then...
"What the %&#$!? How did Don get a bigger army than both of us combined!?" Then as the battle begins. While the battle goes on, and the two invading armies are getting wiped out by the larger defensive force of Don, we notice something approaching one of the bases.... "Oh shite! He's attacking your base dude!" after a few brief stunned moments, "WTF!!! My base too! He's attacking both our bases at the same time! How did he even get back here?!"

Me thinks we should have a retro night and play some Starcraft

Haha, i wouldnt even know where to begin anymore with my build order! Plus, i'd have to reinstall everything!

heheh, it's starcraft, it is like a 35 MB installation =P

I think SC as a casual game went downhill when the replays came out. I find myself unable to beat someone I could have beaten easily before if they just watch random-uber-player's replay and just copy what's done. Sure they may not have the skills of the uber player but generally speaking the units used represent a very strong counter to most strats out there and you win by the virtue of that. You also have a lot more one map wonders stuff, most notably Lost Temple, where you have taliored strategy that only works on that map.

I always thought it's much funner to play on a map where you don't even know where the closest expansion is.

Hmmmm, perhaps if they had random map generators that balanced things out nicely enough while still maintaining diversity.

Just generate a perfectly flat, symmetric map and it'll be pretty balanced. Hunters for example is quite balanced despite the fact that all the starting positions are actually quite different, because there's no weird trick you can do that allows super easy expanding. On the opposite side you've the perfectlly symmetrical Lost Temples which is all about gimmicks because of the elevation and the layout.

Hunters and its variants.... Probably 50% of the online games I played. My favourite game was when a bunch of us played on Expedition, 5 of us and 3 computer players. We all allied up after a short time when the computers started winning, and we ended up playing an epic 3-4 hour long game where we actually failed to win in the end. There were a few of us (maybe all of us) that survived, I do remember having to chart a course all the way across that map while avoiding the enemy Zerg in order to build a new base down where everyone else was. The game ended when resources ran out, the computer controlled the map and we were all hudled up in one of the corners of the map. That was with original Starcraft Rules (Pre-Brood War)