mozidesign.com Unorganized Thoughts of a Game Designer

Starcraft 2!!!!

Was browsing the web and usual forums and came across this, http://pc.ign.com/articles/788/788627p1.html. For second I could not believe that it was true but it is! Starcraft 2 has been officially announced!!! Some gameplay footage that is posted over on Kotaku.

For the last month or so, ever since it was reported that Blizzard would make a massive product annoucement in South Korea many rumors were around to what the new product would be. Quite a few, such as myself speculated and hoped that it would be Starcraft 2, and it is. Other ideas that were tossed around included another WoW expansion, Diablo 3, Warcraft 4, a Diablo MMO or possibly a Starcraft MMO.

I am so glad that Blizzard did not decided to ruin another RTS franchise into an MMO. Yes, I am one of the many people out there that don’t like WoW. I have my reasons, if which I explained would make for one long ass post. But honestly do we need another game that would have an objective like, “Collect 10 pieces of Hydralisk shit so I can study it and learn more about Hydralisks.” Lame…. give me a mission a real mission that requires dozens of units to accomplish, no bullshit leveling up crap, soemthing that is fun and exciting and something that actually has clear cut rules for success and failure of missions.

If you think collect x number of items and leveling up is cool, then good for you. Play whatever floats your boat. As for me I need something more entertaining than that.

If Blizzard annouced a Diablo MMO or another WoW expansion I really would have not cared that much. I have played Diablo and have enjoyed it but I am not as partial to it as I am with Starcraft and Warcraft RTS games. If another Warcraft RTS was annouced instead of Starcraft 2 I would have been equally as excited to give Blizzard my hard earned cash.

What I have read thus far and from the screen shots I have seen over at IGN it seems as if Blizzard is not messing around too much with the core foundations of the game. That’s good thing, if it is not broken no need to rebuild it from the ground up. I am sure there are a ton of new units and a boat load of improvements from the last game, they have had close to 10 years to work on it. One thing I hope that is fixed is early AI rushes. If anything got to me in Starcraft it was that, in skrimish matches if I got off to a bad start in the first few minutes I knew I would get owned soon and fast by rush of low level units such as Zerglings or Marines. Hopefully this time around the skrimish AI are more fine tuned. Aside from that Starcraft was a really solid game and I look forward to playing this game whenever it comes out. Just as with the orginial game and Brood Wars expansion I am anticipating a good backstory to the overall conflict within the game.

If you have not seen it yet there is short CGI video from the game, showing a Space Marine under construction.

Now I know what goes on inside the barracks!