Huh? Oh. Meh. The whole SC2 thing is starting to become ridiculous.

I don't actually give a shit about starcraft 2, but I consistently act shocked and offended whenever anything negative is published about the game or it's development, largely because I feel obliged to as an otherwise dedicated gamer.

Well I fucking do.




STARCRAFT!!!!1

I played it at PAX tbh its an expansion pack with new graphics. which is fine, but tbh blizzard killed it with
-making 3 games with a campaign for each race
-taking out LAN
-constant delays
-making toss the last one to come out (although I guess that makes it more epic)


Blizzard got really fuckin lame when they made WoW, tbh.

I think you and James are both wrong. Blizzard's development strategy, I have read, is to develope a concept to almost its fullest potential before making a decision on whether or not to keep it. That said, they will spend weeks developing, polishing, and put on all the bells and whistles only to step back from it and say: Naw it just doesnt work.
Think of it like a sculpter who has a statue and he wants to have the right arm held high above the head...well he carves and carves and polishes it. He gives each muscle in the arm its definition, every subtle detail given character...then, it's completely done...and then he decides no, i think i want that arm held down to the side now. So he smashes the fucking thing and starts on a new arm.

To me its ass backwards, and a waste of development money and time; its the real reason it has taken so long since the game was even announced. (the 3 years off for wow affected it as well, but god they had the basic mechanics of the game running in 2007)

It's a semi-common development strategy with titles with open ended development windows. Valve did the same with TF2 as we all know, and admittedly, I do the same with my own game VHEL. It's stupid from a conceptional standpoint because you have to look at what you want and what you actually made, and ultimately decide if you've just made pure shit or not. Limiting that window of development is what's really important, in my honest opinion, otherwise you get carried away. In the case of Duke Nukem Forever, that game was trying to be "the next best thing" with the it's team constantly changing engines and game mechanics because it wasn't "up to snuff". That's technically what you're not suppose to do when making a game for obvious reasons (Hey everyone! I have a game being made for the Playstation 7!)

In regards to Starcraft, I played a lot of it, even now, but I'm only marginally excited about it's release right now. The idea of tying the game to the internet with no alternative LAN component just seems long winded to me. Sure, Value has it's Steam, but at least you can play via LAN without Steam authorizing the action. =P