"World of StarCraft" confounds!

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CVG wrote:

The long-rumoured new instalment of Blizzard's massive StarCraft series is set to be unveiled later this month - and it's another massively-multiplayer online game in the style of World of Warcraft, CVG can reveal.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...

I may finally take the MMO plunge!

Wonder if Blizzard would give a discounted monthly fee price for those with WoW accounts as well.

It's worth noting that this is still an unconfirmed rumor.

The Article wrote:

We will of course let you know as soon as soon as Blizzard officially confirms the game on May 19.

Hypothetically speaking, the article mentions that the game will have to be different to get people to subscribe to it. I really dont think that is the case. They should probably clarify what they mean by that.

Case#1 - It is WoW with the Starcraft lore. This is the extreme amount of laziness case where even the classes of WoW are ripped. The ghost class is a reskinned hunter. The firebat is a reskinned shaman, etc. This game would still be a smash hit but would probably steal the most WoW subscribers.

Case#2 - It is a Starcraft MMO with WoW mechanics. This is much more than a reskinned WoW with unique approaches to the classes. Yet its still in the "select your target and autoattack inbetween special skill cooldowns" vein. This will be a smash success and most WoW subscribers will probably retain their subscriptions and still play regularly.

Case#3,4&5 - Are what would amount to everyone's wet dream. This is either the "MMO small squad RTS" or an "MMO with Guild Wars style henchman" or Starcraft+Planetside. I think any of these will probably break all of WoW's records.

Seeing as Guild Wars is an MMO, and does have henchmen, I don't think that alone will shatter any sales records. Same goes for a Planetside-style Starcraft. People don't want to pay $15 a month for Team Fortress and Assault when they can fire up real TF or UT.

As to what a Starcraft MMO could be? I don't know. I can't see it being a reskin of WoW. I think a lot of the mechanics will carry over, but it'll definitely be its own game. If I were to guess at something they'd borrow from elsewhere, I'd definitely say Monster Play a la LoTRO would be one of them; Zerg just don't lend themseleves to normal advancement.

Pardon me for being the odd man out, but you gotta be frickin' kidding me. I've held my mouth shut about what a cash-in, cretively bankrupt job this would seem to me on the surface, because 1) It's Blizzard and 2) I didn't believe it, but come on.

I'll wait to pass judgment until we get more information. Hopefully they're doing something genuinely creative with this game - if it's actually being made - and not just creating a WoW total conversion. But if so, I will mock it ruthlessly.

Elysium wrote:

Pardon me for being the odd man out, but you gotta be frickin' kidding me. I've held my mouth shut about what a cash-in, cretively bankrupt job this would seem to me on the surface, because 1) It's Blizzard and 2) I didn't believe it, but come on.

I'll wait to pass judgment until we get more information. Hopefully they're doing something genuinely creative with this game - if it's actually being made - and not just creating a WoW total conversion. But if so, I will mock it ruthlessly.

You won't be the only one. Starcraft is a gigantic franchise, bigger than Warcraft ever wasy(Hi Korea!).

If this rumor becomes substantiated, and it is Universe of Starcraft, and not Starcraft 2, then it'll be interesting to see how it gets handled.

On a side note, I highly doubt that Blizzard will want, nor will Vivendi allow them to take a chance on this, so while I'm going to be hopeful, I'm not holding my breath at all.

In any case we're looking at years and years of development.. no way this game see light of day before 2010.

What?! Chuff!

It'll use the same engine as WoW and be out within a year. Failing that, I'll eat your turban.

Reskinned WoW may piss a lot of us off. However, Starcraft is still played in tournaments today whereas warcraft has all but fallen off the map save for WoW. Starcraft >= Warcraft so even a reskin will be a smash. If we were going to just play WoW anyway, why wouldnt we play the stronger franchise?

Guild Wars is a non traditional MMO. An MMO with the depth and combat mechanics of WoW, with a henchman system borrowed from GW, in the Starcraft universe would be a smash success.

Starcraft+Planetside doesnt mean Planetside reskinned with Starcraft. I mean a full fledged PvP/PvE Starcraft MMO with the combat styled like Planetside. Hopefully the Starcraft universe and Blizzard development team would lend themselves to something much more content rich than Planetside.

I could see adding henches into WoW and skinning for Starcraft doing pretty well, but I couldn't see blizzard doing anything that could damage the social aspect of WoW. Granted, there's a point where henches can't make up your party in GW and you need real people, but I still don't see that happening.

My personal want though? I want to see Blizzard reskin SWG as Starcraft. Toss balance out the window, and just let it roll. The career pathing system was great, although I can't see it meshing so well without limiting players to a tree 'type'. I suppose that's one that'd work far better in theory than in practice.

What happened to SWG? And I dont mean the later combat and jedi revisions.

I mean I was totally not looking forward to the game after hearing about some of the design decisions. But the space ship flying expansion should have been a slam dunk. I never heard anything about that after release other than "blah". Did they screw it up because it should have been awesome but it was just ok? Or did they really screw it up?

Look, it's Blizzard. They scuttled Starcraft: Ghost because the game did not meet their standards, not because there wasn't an audience for it. People would have bought it anyway.

Since it's all rumor and conjecture here, I'm guessing we see a game that is remarkably similar to what makes WoW good, with Starcraft specific lore, skill trees, etc. No sense fixing what isn't broken.

My question is: what does this do to World of Warcraft Expansions in the meantime if it is more than a rumor? Rumor also has it that Blizzard has trademarked/copyrighted Diablo 3 related words....does Blizzard actually have the resources to pull off continued support of WoW and develop Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3?

mateo wrote:

does Blizzard actually have the resources to pull off continued support of WoW and develop Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3?

My guess would be yes, they do.

This actually makes a good deal of sense for Blizzard to do this. They broke records with sales of The Burning Crusade... and probably made way more than they bring in on a monthly basis. But what's better than one hit game where people buy copies hand over fist? That's right! Two hit games where people reserve tons of copies to be scalped on eBay. In addition, that's a second franchise to rake in the cash with every expansion.

I'm not sure if it'll be good, but I'm not surprised they're looking into making it. Even if it flops they'll probably bring in a profit.

If true, then *yawn*. Blizzard's consistently fumbled StarCraft in the years since Brood War, now they're taking the easy way out. Has Blizzard forgotten how to make an RTS, or do they just want to cash in after throwing money away on Ghost?

I'm very curious as to what's up their sleeves on this. They have to realize that simply doing a total conversion of WoW to UoS wouldn't be their best approach, and would really not make Starcraft fans happy. I like the way that WoW feels like a natural fit to the Warcraft mythos. I don't think that a simple conversion to make Starcraft the same gameplay as WoW would fit in with that mythos.

I hope that they're going with either an mmorts or an mmofps or some combination of the two.

mateo wrote:

My question is: what does this do to World of Warcraft Expansions in the meantime if it is more than a rumor? Rumor also has it that Blizzard has trademarked/copyrighted Diablo 3 related words....does Blizzard actually have the resources to pull off continued support of WoW and develop Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3?

Realistic version is that they'll hire a separate team for Starcraft. Reality will likely be different, but time will tell.

fangblackbone wrote:

What happened to SWG? And I dont mean the later combat and jedi revisions.

I mean I was totally not looking forward to the game after hearing about some of the design decisions. But the space ship flying expansion should have been a slam dunk. I never heard anything about that after release other than "blah". Did they screw it up because it should have been awesome but it was just ok? Or did they really screw it up?

I played SWG from shortly after launch up till the Speeder Bike patch went to test, and that's where I cancelled. So, I played for roughly 6 months and loved it. In its original incarnation, they threw class balance to the winds. If you took the time to max out any given class, rock on. Some stuff was really uber, but that was fine for pretty much everyone save a very vocal minority who wanted balanced PvP. The purists(myself included) didn't care, because I wasn't in it for PvP; I was in it for fun.

The original design, prior to the NGE crapfest, was based entirely on the D20 pen and paper game. Creature Handlers, Rifleman, Commandos, Scouts, everything. Skill Trees were fantastic, since it allowed for pretty much unlimted variations in multiclassing. I personally was a Master Weaponsmith/Rifleman, a Master Rifleman/Creature Handler at separate points in my time. Player Housing was a big success, and there was enough movie lore to satisfy my geekgo.

What really kept me going, however, was the community. It was pretty much entirely community driven, like Second Life or ATITD. When SoE started bowing and kowtowing to the vocal minority, making 8 tons of changes in the name of balance, the game started hemorrhaging subs. The ultimate, and wrong solution was NGE, which pretty much sunk the game.

I don't know a whole lot about the 'Jump to Lightspeed' Expansion, or either of the ones after that(I think there were two). I heard a lot of good about JtL though, which gives me a warm fuzzy.

At this point, there's a private server program out there that will support the game(If you can find an original box) with any of the expansions, and will run pretty much flawlessly with the game at a certain state. I'd thought about pursuing that when I first heard about it(I always wanted a Jedi in their unnerfed state), but didn't really put any effort into it. I'm not sure if it went anywhere though, this was 2 years ago or so.

That prety much sums up the travesty that was SWG. It was easily the most promising MMO I've ever seen; I think a lot of us here would have loved it; I see it as the pinnacle of the amalagam that we all want in a dynamic, player driven MMO.

Hey Wrestle - seems like this is the second time this week that you have posted a rumor as if it was an established fact. Just thought you'd like to know.

1) If Blizzard says nothing by May 19th I am going to spray Computer And Videogames headquarters from the air with massive quantities of flaming poop.

2) I would play World of Starcraft if it was reskinned WoW. Reskinned into a gritty, futuristic look, with everything looking and sounding completely different.

AnimeJ wrote:
fangblackbone wrote:

What happened to SWG? And I dont mean the later combat and jedi revisions.

I mean I was totally not looking forward to the game after hearing about some of the design decisions. But the space ship flying expansion should have been a slam dunk. I never heard anything about that after release other than "blah". Did they screw it up because it should have been awesome but it was just ok? Or did they really screw it up?

I played SWG from shortly after launch up till the Speeder Bike patch went to test, and that's where I cancelled. So, I played for roughly 6 months and loved it. In its original incarnation, they threw class balance to the winds. If you took the time to max out any given class, rock on. Some stuff was really uber, but that was fine for pretty much everyone save a very vocal minority who wanted balanced PvP. The purists(myself included) didn't care, because I wasn't in it for PvP; I was in it for fun.

The original design, prior to the NGE crapfest, was based entirely on the D20 pen and paper game. Creature Handlers, Rifleman, Commandos, Scouts, everything. Skill Trees were fantastic, since it allowed for pretty much unlimted variations in multiclassing. I personally was a Master Weaponsmith/Rifleman, a Master Rifleman/Creature Handler at separate points in my time. Player Housing was a big success, and there was enough movie lore to satisfy my geekgo.

What really kept me going, however, was the community. It was pretty much entirely community driven, like Second Life or ATITD. When SoE started bowing and kowtowing to the vocal minority, making 8 tons of changes in the name of balance, the game started hemorrhaging subs. The ultimate, and wrong solution was NGE, which pretty much sunk the game.

I don't know a whole lot about the 'Jump to Lightspeed' Expansion, or either of the ones after that(I think there were two). I heard a lot of good about JtL though, which gives me a warm fuzzy.

At this point, there's a private server program out there that will support the game(If you can find an original box) with any of the expansions, and will run pretty much flawlessly with the game at a certain state. I'd thought about pursuing that when I first heard about it(I always wanted a Jedi in their unnerfed state), but didn't really put any effort into it. I'm not sure if it went anywhere though, this was 2 years ago or so.

That prety much sums up the travesty that was SWG. It was easily the most promising MMO I've ever seen; I think a lot of us here would have loved it; I see it as the pinnacle of the amalagam that we all want in a dynamic, player driven MMO.

I really enjoyed SWG at launch, easily the most promising MMO franchise ever. But the development team... ooh the development team. What a farce. I won't go into what went wrong with the direction of the game. I stuck around until after Jump to Lightspeed, but the dropped at one of the combat 'revamps' (they did many many revamps..). Jump to Lightspeed was friggin impressive. Remember X-wing vs. Tie Fighter? Imagine that with modern 3d graphics (better than WoW level graphics). It rocked as far as the engine went. But what do you do in space? Not much more than X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter, perhaps less because the old game had a nice arcing story line. JtL felt like it was released before the storyline was implemented. And it basically was a stand-alone game... you launched your space craft from the ground space stations in SWG, but that was by clicking on a terminal. You couldn't see your ship on the ground in a hangar. And due to understandable technical limitations, you couldn't fly your craft in the atmosphere (even just to land). JtL would be a great game if you didn't have to pay a monthly fee for it, or if they put a team of developers like Blizzard on it.

My haterade for Sony started way before this whole PS3 thing. It started for me with SWG.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that even though it will be an MMO, it will differ from WoW's mechanics, and offer a different approach to combat and PvP. I don't think Blizzard is so creatively devoid to re-skin wow with lazer guns and aliens, I think there will be a few megabombs dropped on us in regards to gameplay. Well, I can hope at least

TheWalt wrote:

I really enjoyed SWG at launch, easily the most promising MMO franchise ever. But the development team... ooh the development team. What a farce. I won't go into what went wrong with the direction of the game. I stuck around until after Jump to Lightspeed, but the dropped at one of the combat 'revamps' (they did many many revamps..). Jump to Lightspeed was friggin impressive. Remember X-wing vs. Tie Fighter? Imagine that with modern 3d graphics (better than WoW level graphics). It rocked as far as the engine went. But what do you do in space? Not much more than X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter, perhaps less because the old game had a nice arcing story line. JtL felt like it was released before the storyline was implemented. And it basically was a stand-alone game... you launched your space craft from the ground space stations in SWG, but that was by clicking on a terminal. You couldn't see your ship on the ground in a hangar. And due to understandable technical limitations, you couldn't fly your craft in the atmosphere (even just to land). JtL would be a great game if you didn't have to pay a monthly fee for it, or if they put a team of developers like Blizzard on it.

My haterade for Sony started way before this whole PS3 thing. It started for me with SWG. :evil:

I kinda feel split on this. The dev team for SWG was outstanding. They managed to put out a product that at the time I quit, was relatively bug free. The major issue, and I feel that it's been exemplefied in Vanguard, was Sony. On top of that, I'd say the shining beacon of crap there was very likely Raph Koster, who headed up the design team.

As to JtL, that's prety much every complaint summed up, but you're very right in that it could have been so much more. Ah well, them's the breaks. I definitely got on the haterade train with you there though, although it looks like you hopped on a stop later.

Swat wrote:

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that even though it will be an MMO, it will differ from WoW's mechanics, and offer a different approach to combat and PvP. I don't think Blizzard is so creatively devoid to re-skin wow with lazer guns and aliens, I think there will be a few megabombs dropped on us in regards to gameplay. Well, I can hope at least ;)

If it was Blizzard completely in charge, I'd be with ya on this, and even so, I'm still going to keep hoping for something revolutionary and awesome. But Vivendi is ultimately large and in charge, and they want another WoW, only with Starcraft IP.

Rat Boy wrote:

If true, then *yawn*. Blizzard's consistently fumbled StarCraft in the years since Brood War, now they're taking the easy way out. Has Blizzard forgotten how to make an RTS, or do they just want to cash in after throwing money away on Ghost?

How so? I didnt really follow the patch history after I finished Brood War and was never much of an online player (not l33t enough I guess). But as far as I know from glancing at the internet forums it seems that other than a failed development of a spin off game (Ghost) and honestly I'm not sure NOT releasing what arguably would have been a "bad" game is somehow a knock against Blizzard?

If their recent history tells us anything, Blizzard refines existing genres, they do not invent entirely new experiences. Given that, the only Starcraft MMO possible is "WoW in Space," which probably won't happen until WoW dies. CVG is likely just wrong

TheGameguru wrote:

How so? I didnt really follow the patch history after I finished Brood War and was never much of an online player (not l33t enough I guess). But as far as I know from glancing at the internet forums it seems that other than a failed development of a spin off game (Ghost) and honestly I'm not sure NOT releasing what arguably would have been a "bad" game is somehow a knock against Blizzard?

Ghost was supposed to be the future of the franchise, but instead it turned into vaporware. NOT releasing a "bad" game is indeed a knock against them because they could never make it "good." If this MMO stuff is all true, then as I said, they're taking the easy way out by essentially repackaging WoW and waiting for the money to start rolling in to pay off what they sunk into Ghost.

I would play if it was just WoW in space. A lot of people are itching to play a sci fi MMO, and WoW mechanics are well known. It would probably work.

OFF TOPIC - I say a new movie of Tabula Rosa and that's the kind of style sci fi I'm hoping for from this.

The one major problem I see in a Starcraft skinned WoW is how would they handle vehicles? I mean can you imagine saving up for a mount or epic mount (vulture, siege tank or goliath) and having it just be summonable transportation? Now I know that it wont be a clickable gem in you inventory but they are going to have to introduce vehicle combat mechanics and balance them in with the classes.

I could see seige tanks, dragoons and goliaths as some kind of battleground specific/only constructable siege weapons ala DAoC. Another idea along this vein is calling in wraith airstrikes with control of certain nodes on the battlefield.

As a matter of fact, if you take WoW as it stands and strip out the PvE, you arent far off from a small, WoW skinned, gear intensive Planetside without vehicles. Oh and thats how they'd balance it is to take a page from Planetside...

Vehicles are the top of the food chain in Planetside. So while the best raid gear might make a difference in infantry v infantry battles, it wont make you any less of fodder when battling a siege tank if you are out on open terrain. The infantry's advantage is that they are more versatile (siege tanks are useless against air targets) and they have more freedom of movement.

Nerf Hydralisks!

Rat Boy wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

How so? I didnt really follow the patch history after I finished Brood War and was never much of an online player (not l33t enough I guess). But as far as I know from glancing at the internet forums it seems that other than a failed development of a spin off game (Ghost) and honestly I'm not sure NOT releasing what arguably would have been a "bad" game is somehow a knock against Blizzard?

Ghost was supposed to be the future of the franchise, but instead it turned into vaporware. NOT releasing a "bad" game is indeed a knock against them because they could never make it "good." If this MMO stuff is all true, then as I said, they're taking the easy way out by essentially repackaging WoW and waiting for the money to start rolling in to pay off what they sunk into Ghost.

Hmm.. well I disagree.. licensing out the franchise to two separate developers in an effort to extend the franchise to consoles is hardly a negative against Blizzard... certainly its a reach to me to extend that to "mishandling the franchise". If anything Blizzard realized that simply cashing in on Starcraft and releasing another RTS sequel would not be doing justice to the Blizzard name... so they attempt to create a FPS/Stealth game on the current console platforms and neither developer was able to do what in Blizzards mind was justice to the concept.

To me that deserves praise.. as to many companies would poop over their license by realizing that ANYTHING Starcraft related would sell and slap some gloss on it and ship.

I would also disagree that Ghost was supposed to be the future of the Franchise.. I've never read anywhere were Blizzard made those kinda claims.. and also I'd really wait and see exactly what Blizzard announces before assuming that Blizzard will "repackage WoW"

WoS could be alright, as long as Guru is right about the release date. Having a World of Starcraft be a quasi-sequel to World of Warcraft would be fine, I would even embrace it. But if it comes out much sooner than that, or if they try to keep two separate MMORPG lines actively going simultaneously, then that sucks. In other words, I was World of Starcraft to be WoW2. I would have no problem with that.

Still, I wouldn't call this "confirmed." We'll see.

I don't have a problem with a Starcraft MMO existing simultaneously with a Warcraft MMO - I'm sure that they will, one way or another. For one thing, even if Starcraft MMO came in as the "sequel" to WoW, they're not gonna just shut down the cash-cow WoW servers. I do think it would be optimal for them to be on different cycles, such that they introduce the Starcraft MMO maybe halfway into WoW's life-cycle (so sometime next year, perhaps) and then WoW 2 when we've had 2 or 3 years of Starcraft MMO. Just a guess.

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