Starcraft 2 now split into 3 games

[haard]

What, Starcraft had a single-player campaign?

Meh, no biggie, as long as first one includes multiplayer and batteries. And as long as they don't charge for Bnet. I just don't do subscriptions anymore.

[Molyneux]

Ads on Bnet are fine and dandy - but if they want to charge for it, they'd better be prepared to lose quite a bit of population.

[Andrew_Fireborn]

So... they're still raking in enough cash to feed a small continent for a year on a monthly basis... and they're going to start charging for their formerly free service "Because [they] kinda have to"?

... bah!

[chr335]

I am a bit disappointed they had better give us something awe inspiring and if it goes the way of StarCraft Ghost there will be some pissed off gamers.

[KlavoHunter]

Paying for B.Net?

Utter garbage.


Blizzard had best start unfucking itself before it releases this game and flops.

[Covenant]

Paying for B.net sounds like an absolutely unbelievably stupid thing. Want to know how to monetize B.net? Put some goddamn ads on it. I'm not going to pay for a fucking game-matching service that I could do just as well with any other system, many of which operate for free and better than B.net ever did. This is like letting me buy the game, and charging me more to play it. What the hell?

[Oskuro]

This is like letting me buy the game, and charging me more to play it. What the hell?

Also known as the Microsoft Live experience, and even they had to make the PC version free for anyone to use it.

On the other hand, I find it curious that they are pushing both Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 so quickly. I think that either they are getting ready for the WoW cow to dry up, or maybe their merge with Activision has had some consequence.

By the way, I love how they've suggested that each of the games will have some differences on the multiplayer part, or in other words, how they expect players who don't give a shit about the campaigns to still pay full price for the three titles if they expect the full MP experience.

[Vendetta]

I'm not surprised they're considering charging for battle.net on Diablo 3. If it's anything like it is for D2, it will have server side character storage and require basically constant updates and monitoring for at least the first year to eighteen months to keep dupers and other cheats off the service.

I'm more surprised that they've operated the service at a cost to themselves this long.

[Oskuro]

^I would agree with you, if it wasn't for the fact that they've tried very hard to prevent players from playing online without using Battle.net, even going so far as to sue those who have reverse-engineered software to circumvent this (it's their right to do so, of course). By making BNET a paid-for service, you're basically leaving paying customers with no alternative for online play but to pay even more, and worst of all, to pay for a service that most other games, and even stand alone software, provide for free.

I mentioned Microsoft Live for this reason. You had to fork over a wad of money for, say, Gears of War, and then pay a monthly fee to play it over the internet. Obviously, the PC players wouldn't accept this kind of crap and they had to make it free (or so I've read, cause I'll be damned if I ever install Games for Windows - Live on my system).

[Darth Yoshi]

So wait. Not only is Blizzard planning to make people pay thrice to get everything, but they're also going charge for multiplayer? That's fucking bullshit.

[Zac Naloen]

So wait. Not only is Blizzard planning to make people pay thrice to get everything, but they're also going charge for multiplayer? That's fucking bullshit.

The first part, is a misrepresentation, you are being informed of their intention to do expansion packs that finish the story in advance. Seriously, it's not the huge deal people are making it out to be.

The bit about multiplayer is annoying, but as mentioned sounds like Diablo 3 is going to be like WOW in it's maintenance costs. It's crap if they charge for Starcrafts glorified match up service though.

[Molyneux]

So wait. Not only is Blizzard planning to make people pay thrice to get everything, but they're also going charge for multiplayer? That's fucking bullshit.

The first part, is a misrepresentation, you are being informed of their intention to do expansion packs that finish the story in advance. Seriously, it's not the huge deal people are making it out to be.

The bit about multiplayer is annoying, but as mentioned sounds like Diablo 3 is going to be like WOW in it's maintenance costs. It's crap if they charge for Starcrafts glorified match up service though.

Bullshit.
An "expansion pack" is supposed to be just that, an expansion - continuing the story is fine, but when I buy a (not explicitly episodic) game I expect to get a full damn storyline! I don't need to pay thirty dollars-and-up for a "TO BE CONTINUED WHEN YOU GIVE US MORE CASH NOMNOMNOM SWEET MONEYS" at the end.

[Zac Naloen]

Bullshit.
An "expansion pack" is supposed to be just that, an expansion - continuing the story is fine, but when I buy a (not explicitly episodic) game I expect to get a full damn storyline! I don't need to pay thirty dollars-and-up for a "TO BE CONTINUED WHEN YOU GIVE US MORE CASH NOMNOMNOM SWEET MONEYS" at the end.

You are getting a full story line.

The full terran story line.

Expansion packs are whatever the fuck the developers want them to be.

Just don't buy the expansions if you don't like it.

[Vendetta]

Bullshit.
An "expansion pack" is supposed to be just that, an expansion - continuing the story is fine, but when I buy a (not explicitly episodic) game I expect to get a full damn storyline! I don't need to pay thirty dollars-and-up for a "TO BE CONTINUED WHEN YOU GIVE US MORE CASH NOMNOMNOM SWEET MONEYS" at the end.

Except they just announced that Starcraft II is explicity episodic.

[Molyneux]

Bullshit.
An "expansion pack" is supposed to be just that, an expansion - continuing the story is fine, but when I buy a (not explicitly episodic) game I expect to get a full damn storyline! I don't need to pay thirty dollars-and-up for a "TO BE CONTINUED WHEN YOU GIVE US MORE CASH NOMNOMNOM SWEET MONEYS" at the end.

Except they just announced that Starcraft II is explicity episodic.

In which case they'd better drop the price per installment, or they'll be confirmed as just another bunch of money-grubbing bastards. I generally take "expansion pack" to refer to an addition to another complete product, not to refer to episodes in a serial game.

[Zac Naloen]

Price has already been addressed, they've stated that it depends on how complete a game each chapter feels.

I.e they haven't decided yet.

[Covenant]

Expansion packs are also usually not as expensive as the original game, unless it's also a standalone product with a bunch of other additions.

But no, it's totally unreasonable to charge for Battle.net, since all it is would be a matching service, even Diablo 3. There's no reason to run all those games off an internal server when they can be run off of the player's machines just as easily, if not more easily. Since it's not hosting the game, nor would I want it to, the only fees they're paying are for maintaining the matching service. Well poor baby, if it costs a lot to do that, let someone else handle it. You've got a lot of game-matching services out there that would happily grab the ad revenue for being host to so many Starcraft and Diablo players. I don't want anything besides a matching service, since a hosting service will degrade my performance--especially since I've never had a good experience with random matching services and cooperative games in the past--and any sorts of achievements or awards you could gain ala team fortress 2 can be done without restrictive battle.net payment plans.

If they want to make battle.net a pay-for-play thing for Consoles, which require more overhead than my PC, fine. But make mine free.

[Vendetta]

But no, it's totally unreasonable to charge for Battle.net, since all it is would be a matching service, even Diablo 3. There's no reason to run all those games off an internal server when they can be run off of the player's machines just as easily, if not more easily. Since it's not hosting the game, nor would I want it to, the only fees they're paying are for maintaining the matching service.

At the very least, D3 will have character storage on a blizzard server for anything but the mess-around games, like D2 did. Local character storage means people can just hack the character files to give themselves arbitrary equipment and abilities, which fucks the game over completely.

I wouldn't be surprised if SC2 has all sorts of blizzard hosted content as well, online replay uploads like Halo 3, for example (replay sharing is quite common in the Dawn of War community even without an infrastructure to do so, and I'm sure Blizzard are paying attention to that).

[Covenant]

None of that requires much more server overhead though, certainly not enough to justify an additional fee. How much do big-name first-run games cost these days? 60 American, 75 Euro, 400 or so Aus? You would think in there would be enough money to justify giving me the freedom to not use their server stuff.

Honestly, if I don't want to download replays from randomly hosted games, or upload my stuff to the Korean Gameshow network live, or have anything else beamed into my computer, that decreases the amount of load they have to pay for. If they want to provide B.net as a method of getting superior matching and such, hey, go for it. But I reject paying for something that I have no choice in, especially when I already bought the game and there's no reason I should have to use their specific matching service.

Now, let's say there's B.net bronze and then B.net plutonium edition--and the sexier named one gives you all that shit while the bronze one is just a free user account without live updates, game demos, or other "great offers," then I'll be okay with it. So long as I can play the game as the game is intended to be played, without needing to fork over extra cash to use their matching service, then I'll be happy. Where would it end if we allow a game company to charge several times for the same product--or let them turn every product into a service?

What might be better for them is to simply give away starcraft for free and charge 15 bucks a month for Starcraft.net access. You'd make more money that way in the longterm, and then at least the avarice would be on open display.

[Oskuro]

Where would it end if we allow a game company to charge several times for the same product--or let them turn every product into a service?

Ever tried playing offline, or making a simple LAN game of Battlefield 2142 without an internet connection? Both for DRM and Content Control, making the matchmaking service mandatory is great for them (Probably the reason why B.NET came to be originally). Charging for the service is just the next logical step.

[mauldooku]

Not doing the online gaming thing anymore, but this is still unbelievably lame. Doubly so for the adding of new units for multiplayer (I didn't know about that one).

[Anarchist Bunny]

Blizzard VP tries to quash the quick anger to build over the charging for Battle.net statement

Wow, that's an evil way of putting it. Julian's turning into a business guy on me. Here's the way I would put it. We're definitely not looking at turning Diablo into a subscription based game. It's clearly not an MMO, so it's not appropriate to do a business model like that. The way we approach all of our games now, is we come up with what we think is a great game, and then we wrap the appropriate business model around it. If that's just a box price, then that's that.

With Battle.Net we're definitely looking at possible different features that we might be able to do for additional money. We're not talking about Hellgate or anything like that. We're not going to tack things on. I think World of Warcraft is a great example to look at. We charge people if they want to switch servers or if they want name changes, things that aren't core to the game experience, they're really just optional things that some people want. It takes us some development work to do it, so it makes sense to charge for it. We would never do something like say to get the full game experience, you'll have to pay extra.

So we can all put out our torches and put away the tar and feathers.

[Oskuro]

So we can all put out our torches and put away the tar and feathers.

Awwww, we had such a nice mindless mob thing going on

[Uraniun235]

Looks like someone finally clued into Valve's episodic money train.

[Covenant]

Thank goodness. And no, I've never played Battlefield 2142 or whatnot. Any game that gives me trouble for wanting to play it over a lan is a game I'm much less interested in. I'll accept non-lan play for things like Starcraft, since I generally don't have as many friends on-hand to play that with, and it's not cooperative, but even team-based shooters are better done on LAN settings or as part of a clan (and I'm not into clans).