To all the people hoping for a new Diablo, fuck you. You guys got Diablo II in 2000, I'm still waiting for Starcraft 2 after nearly 10 motherfucking years. That's a decade. A tenth of a goddamn century. So I think it's time for a sequel.

I didn't say they'd never make a Starcraft MMO, just that they'd be stupid to do so right now. Companies do, on occasion, make dumb decisions.

Also, the game would indeed be 2-3 years away from the announcement. It doesn't matter. People are stupid and hasty. They won't buy the expansion because they'll then be in wait mode for the Starcraft game, percieving that it's not worth investing that much in a game they'll be dropping in favor of the new shiny.

Facts don't matter, the perception does. 2-3 years may be a long time, but they're just numbers to most people. To further clarify:

WoW indeed greatly expanded the MMO audience, but only because of Battle.net. The people they pulled into the genre were pre-existing Blizzard fans, who are legion. What happened was that Blizzard built up such a reputation that people were willing to try any game with the Blizzard logo on it regardless of genre, and thus non-MMO players got sucked in. I think you'll find that relatively few of the people introduced to MMOs by World of Warcraft weren't already playing Starcraft or Diablo on Battle.net.

This is why it's not such a good idea to announce a Starcraft MMO now, while WoW is still a hot property. It only makes sense when people in large numbers start to truly get tired of the game, and aren't willing to pay Blizzard their monthly fee anymore. Giving them something new, shiny, and novel to attract their attention brings them back into the fold and spending money on a Blizzard MMO again.

If anything, Starcraft 2 makes even more sense in light of the previous points.

How many people play online games and never gave Starcraft or Diablo a shot? The only people I can think of are FPS gamers and they might get their chance with the Hellgate: London character where you play it like a FPS.

(Also, for the record, I played SC, BW, and D2 forever and I never tried WoW. My old online hangout before Gamingforce was the Open Tech Support channel on b.net. A bunch of us in the channel actually got invites to E3 as guests from Blizzard but I was only around 13 or 14 so my parents wouldn't let me go. :( :( :( )

Honestly, how many people here would be stunned if it were another Warcraft RTS? :D

Warcraft 3 and WoW (are) pissed/ing me off. I found Warcraft 3 to be almost unplayable, and i played a while on my friend's WoW account, and it was just battlenet all over again. Those losers, depicted in Deni's post who spend their entire lives on the game and turn into the kinds of people i don't want to be with on or off the net.

Right now, the only way Blizzard can win me back is with a single player Starcraft experience.

1UP has a Starcraft 2 page up with a release date of 11/20/07.

http://www.1up.com/do/gameOverview?cId=3159435

Still no official word from Blizzard though, so I wonder what prompted this.

Well, that would be a twist...guess we'll find out in...uhh, how many hours from now until 4AM EST?

Haha, MMORTS.

Everyone just runs around with their little armies doing quests.

OR you actually conquer an entire planet in the name of the swarm, which would be pretty damn fun if done correctly...

In any case, if it's Starcraft and it's a RTS, I should be happy.

QFT. I'd really just like to see a true sequel to the original Starcraft. New units, a new story, maybe something like Warcraft III's hero system, all combined with the near-perfect gameplay of the original game. That'd be sweet.

Speaking of Blizzard's RTSs though, all this talk makes me wonder "if/when/how" about Warcraft IV.

MonkeyKing... I think you're a bit off-base when you say that WoW is only successful because of battle.net. I know dozens of people who never even played a single computer game before they played WoW, and that's just my little social-sphere in the huge population of people that play. WoW is a game that transcends the conventional norm for gamers. It attracts casual players who haven't played a game in their life, hardcore gamers and everyone in between. That's where Blizzard found their success, and they're making millions of dollars from it.

I do agree, though, that it would be somewhat foolish for them to make a Starcraft MMO in exactly the same vein as WoW. If the game followed exactly the same leveling system, exactly the same play system, and offerend nothing new aside from a new story and a new environment, it would be means for many players to quit WoW and opt only for the Starcraft MMO.

But that's where I think Blizzard is going to try and change things up. I don't think they're going to make the Starcraft MMO an exact clone of WoW. I think they're going to shoot to make it different enough that they can potentially attract people to subscribe to both of their hugely successful online games (because you know no matter how the Starcraft game turns out, people are going to flock to it in droves). I can guarantee you that that is one of their primary goals, especially when you consider the board room meetings the lead developers from Blizzard are having with the Vivendi executives.

Starcraft 2 officially announced! It's an RTS.

ARE YOU F'ING KIDDING ME? SOURCE, NOW.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/788/788627p1.html

Here ya go.

3:00 - FMV sequence in a spaceship - looks Terran - zooming in on a metal door - door opening - reveals a guy with a cigar in chains - prisoner - door shuts behind him - there's so much bass the room is shaking - guy steps into some kind of metallic devicce - legs are strapped in - guy rising toward ceiling - Korean text on screen got people very excited - another part of the machine is dropping metal arms on him - machine whirring - applying armor to his torso - extremly detailed visuals here - now guy is strapping on gloves - armor is molding together - seems like a Terran marine - rockets turn on - zerg now onscreen - Marine delivers a line - StarCraft 2 officially announced.


http://tvpot.daum.net/clip/ClipView....al&lu=l_head_1

Opening FMV. It's being hit HARD

I just want to see how the gameplay looks.

Essentially, have they gone high-end 3D or what?
(I would have loved high-res 2D sprites, but I'll take what I can get...)

Was anyone really expecting anything different? ;)
Now I gotta see screenshots...

I just came. This announcement is 8 years overdue.

http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/6...6530yj4.th.jpghttp://img522.imageshack.us/img522/3...6530jt7.th.jpg

Looks like 3D, but hard to make out too much else, really.

Starcraft II? Oh my God. I just came in my pants a little. I might have to build a new PC just for this.

Ok if the game looks ANYTHING like those blurry screenshots, we've got something to seriously look forward to.

I'm just glad its now finally in stone that Starcraft 2 is under development. Then again for the most part a lot of people had already seen it coming.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUXoekeDIW8

YouTube link for the CG intro.