"World of StarCraft" confounds!

source?

I think this is his source.

WoW skinned would probably be the last thing I would want to see right next to a Planetside attempt. I much rather them attempt to reinvent the RTS as an MMORTS whatever that might be. Starcraft as a MMORPG just makes no sense to me even with the money arguments that they could re-skin it so fast and have it on shelves ready to go way quicker then starting from scratch. In the long run I see more potential in creating a new genre with subscription profits attached. Getting back into the RTS market with a bang then when WoW is cooling off after expansion # hitting us with the Diablo MMORPG would be my dream scenario which would also be more $$$$ then they can count. Hopefully they don't go the faster money route of just putting out a Sci-Fi RPG.

Next, like I and others have stated, pretty much anything that comes out with Blizzard's name on it from here on out isn't being driven by Blizzard; it's being driven by Vivendi, and karmajay put it far more eloquently and precisely than I could. Expanding the market means taking a concept that works, and applying it to another genre or sub-genre. In this case, it's taking a proven fantasy MMO and applying those concepts to a Sci-Fi MMO.

Nahh.. thats not how the Vivendi Blizzard relationship works in any way shape or form. There is no one group at Viv forcing Blizzard to do anything they dont want to do.

ALL design decisions and what development happens next is still very much from Blizzard.. there are other approvals after that but not the way your suggesting.

TheGameguru wrote:
Next, like I and others have stated, pretty much anything that comes out with Blizzard's name on it from here on out isn't being driven by Blizzard; it's being driven by Vivendi, and karmajay put it far more eloquently and precisely than I could. Expanding the market means taking a concept that works, and applying it to another genre or sub-genre. In this case, it's taking a proven fantasy MMO and applying those concepts to a Sci-Fi MMO.

Nahh.. thats not how the Vivendi Blizzard relationship works in any way shape or form. There is no one group at Viv forcing Blizzard to do anything they dont want to do.

ALL design decisions and what development happens next is still very much from Blizzard.. there are other approvals after that but not the way your suggesting.

That's the complete opposite of the impression I've gotten reading press releases regarding WoW and even stuff that was put out at Blizzcon 05.

I agree with Guru. If Vivendi held that strong of reigns over Blizzard, they would have orderded Blizz to package and ship SC:Ghost.

Agreed. Blizzard wouldn't take Vivendi's crap. After the massive meltdown that came along with the release of HL2/Steam, I doubt Vivdendi is interested in losing another top company in a juggernaut industry. Blizzard is one of those few companies that will get as much time and freedom as necessary to finish their games exactly how they want without any real interference from their producers.

That's the complete opposite of the impression I've gotten reading press releases regarding WoW and even stuff that was put out at Blizzcon 05.

how so? I wasnt at Blizzcon so I cant really speak of that.. but with regards to PR pieces.. its just that.. PR.. you cant ever really read to much into PR pieces.

I agree with GameGuru. Everything I am hearing says that Blizzard has control of their own IPs with little to no interference from Vivendi. This extends as far as deadlines and ship dates, although the pressure from within is still pretty strong.

Why is everyone hating on a WoS skinned WoW? I dont understand i guess, i must be in the minority on this. Let me ask you this? Is a WoS better than no Starcraft at all? Up until now no one was even for sure if the Starcraft legacy would continue, with the burying of Ghost i think most of us thought " well thats it, no more Starcraft anything". The powers that be that make lots and lots of moola realize where the money is, and right now the money is in MMOs.

Its makes perfectly good sense to me for Blizzard to announce a WoS reskinned WoW. Why wouldnt they? Think about it, 8 to 9 million people could not be wrong. They could literally own the market on two fronts. Fantasy MMO and Sci-Fi MMO. Im sure they realize WoWs subscriber base may drop, but they also know WoS will eat alot of that loss up as well as new subscribers. Then on top of that they will prolly offer a discount on monthly rates if you subscribe to both.

If something isnt broke theres no need to fix it, Blizzard feels this way about WoW. They want to make money and they know what works. WoS will work and will most likely be just as successful. Even if they dont come close to WoWs subsciber list, it will still be a hell of alot more than any other Sci-Fi MMO out there. And EVE Online will be crushed in the process.

I'm sorry anyone who thinks Starcraft or even Diablo franchises were dead are nuts. The only reason these franchises haven't been touched recently is probably because after the success of WoW they have been legitamately too busy and too smart to outsource such potential cash cows and have Ghost failures.

The reason people are hating on a WoW skinned game is because WoW remixed Sci-Fi isn't very fulfilling. Personally it actually makes less sense to me for Bliz to double up in the mmorpg market. Unless this game was only on the WoW engine and was a very different game maybe more PvP oriented and much more FPS styled to set it apart from WoW I doubt it would have the impact people are thinking it would have. Honestly how many potential customers out there are left willing to play a subscription based mmorpg but only if it was Sci-Fi? nowhere near the current WoW juggernaut.

What makes more sense to me is taking the RTS genre to the next level by innovating a MMO element where you pretty much justify charging people 5-10 for bnet which was free before. Offer a bundled subscription package and you now have WoW players crossing over to your RTS.

I just don't think a reskinned WoW would work. WoW works because of the fantasy setting. The gameplay would not lend it self well to a scifi setting.

Mord wrote:

I just don't think a reskinned WoW would work. WoW works because of the fantasy setting. The gameplay would not lend it self well to a scifi setting.

I know it seems that way but did Warcraft lend itself to an MMO other than the fact that it had elves, gnomes and dwarves?

Besides the mechanics already in WoW are adaptable. Let take a look at a few of the "classes" in a Starcraft MMO. The Ghost could take the rogue stealth ability, and autoshoot from a hunter. Scattershot would be useful if made a skill instead of talent but obviously it would have to be on a ~15 second cooldown. You could even give them volley from a hunter change the graphical effect and name the skill "call airstrike".

A Flamebat could have a few attacks based on mage skills. His flamethrower could have both a channelled DD (like starshards that does increasing damage) and a cone of cold like ability and perhaps a DD + dot like moonfire. I would also give him a glove spike or some such for melee damage.

A marine could also have a channelled DD as his main machine gun fire. It would be cool if the channelled DD had a debuff with it that weakened the target toward other marines gun fire to encourage marines to fight in packs ala the RTS game.

I guess what Im getting at is that WoW has practically every spell type under the sun (DD, DoT, ramped DoT, DD+DoT, DD+debuff, DD+buff, Dot+debuff/buff)in practically every delivery method (channelled, instacast, 1-3 sec cast) and ever type of area of effect (cone, radius centered on caster, radius centered on target). All of these mechanics can be repurposed to simulate just about anything you can dream of.

Rat Boy wrote:

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 have to strongly disagree with this opinion. Starcraft: Ghost was first announced in Sept 2002 and the last thing we saw about it was around Jan 2006. It was then scraped in Mar 2006. World of Warcraft was annouced in September 2001 and the game was released in November 2004. So what we see is that both games were under development at the same times through different companies. We know that Ghost was to be developed by Nihilistic then by Swingin' Ape. Each version, from screenshots, is different from the other. They use different engines and they have a different style to each. The non-release of Ghost is a clear decision of Blizzard to simply scrap the idea because it doesn't hold up to the hype generated for it and it does not hold up to other FPS games being released on consoles. To believe they don't have some insight on what other companies are working on is myopic at best. I simply believe they knew that their product would not meet the expectations of the Starcraft fan base. Starcraft is a brand name and demands excellence without chance of failure.

Also remember that WoW has over 8.5 Million subscribers. The New York Times estimated that World of Warcraft would reach the $1 Billion in Revenues mark this fiscal year. They just released their WoW Credit Card which will generate even more revenues in exchange for free subscription times on WoW. Put all of this together and any theory that Blizzard is hurting for cash is laughable and ridiculous. Blizzard, of any computer gaming company, can afford to completely scrap a project, even one 4-5 years in the making, if they feel it will cause more public harm than good for their franchise. They have the money, the capital and the talent to do this. I have no idea personally if Starcraft MMO is going to be the next game in the franchise or if Starcraft 2 RTS will be it instead. Regardless of what is next it will make a killing but only if it's perfect in the eyes of Blizzard. Humorously I believe that South Korea would put government funding behind a Starcraft project if allowed to do so due to it's fantasy like adoration in their country.

So next time you think that not releasing a game is a bad thing, think about all the games out there that should have never been released or were released a rehashed version of a previous game just to make money and what effect they had on their developer's or distributor's names. EA comes to mind immediately.

Edit Add: Oh and let me point you to an article over here about the possibilities of a Starcraft MMO. It was a good read.
http://www.wanderinggoblin.com/liter...

Not a bad article but there's 2 issues I take with it.

1. Is lumping all MMO games into the same genre as rpg. To me the term MMO is any genre game where you justify charging a subscription to guarantee huge long term revenues. ie Planetside was an attempt to charge FPS players a subscription, a MMOFPS game. Will whatever game Bliz announces be a MMO? they would be crazy not to. It could be a MMORTS where they make the leap where they convince the consumers that their game is so damn good a subscription is justified.

2. Is their funny math.

Make another MMO, sell 10 million copies at $39.99 each, then an expansion at $39.99 each, while raking in $15 a month from each of those same 10 million people. That's $80 for the game + expansion software itself, and another $180 a year in subscription fees. In two years time, that's 4.4 billion dollars. Billion. With a "B".

They use this compared to an RTS sales but they pretty much ignore any logical ways of comparing them. You don't get 180 as the first month is free and there's multiple subscription plans. You don't sell an expansion in the first year of release and if your going to add that you need to add it to the RTS math also so its a wash. The production costs of producing each game is much different and the time it would take to release each is different.

Die '97. Other than that, welcome, kilroy! How did you find GWJ?

I'm surprised that all this talk about Blizz killing Ghost means something bad, when people forget that it's not the first publicly killed game for Blizzard. Warcraft Adventures was in the works for quite a while when Blizzard scrapped it and switched over to Warcraft III instead.

Farscry wrote:

I'm surprised that all this talk about Blizz killing Ghost means something bad, when people forget that it's not the first publicly killed game for Blizzard. Warcraft Adventures was in the works for quite a while when Blizzard scrapped it and switched over to Warcraft III instead.

You're just proving my point. Blizzard tried something new and innovative, but partway through realized they could pull it off so they went back to the "tried and true" afterwards. Ghost is essentially the same story and WoS (if the story's true) is even more "tried and true" answer. How is making two bad games, period, something good?

I wish one of the Starcraft:Ghost development versions was leaked, just to get a feel for what might have been.

Rat Boy wrote:
Farscry wrote:

I'm surprised that all this talk about Blizz killing Ghost means something bad, when people forget that it's not the first publicly killed game for Blizzard. Warcraft Adventures was in the works for quite a while when Blizzard scrapped it and switched over to Warcraft III instead.

You're just proving my point. Blizzard tried something new and innovative, but partway through realized they could pull it off so they went back to the "tried and true" afterwards. Ghost is essentially the same story and WoS (if the story's true) is even more "tried and true" answer. How is making two bad games, period, something good?

This makes no sense.. how is Warcraft Adventures a "bad game" if its never released and fails to live up to Blizzards internal QA? You'd rather them release the game that doesn't even meet their own Quality Standards? Hell for all we know the Press and Gaming public could have loved Starcraft Ghost and Warcraft Adventures.. but THEY didnt live up to Blizzards standards so they got scrapped.

So your dinging them for attempting something but X the way through realizing "Ok this isnt working" lets scrap this for now and focus on something else that we CAN get done.

The mind truly boggles at this logic and attempt to knock Blizzard (who without a doubt in this sometimes sordid world of Videogames) who consistently time and time again has released about as polished a product as can be expected in this otherwise abysmal state of VideoGaming.

People will never be satisfied with anything Guru. Its a plague in the human genome some people have that keeps them forever unhappy, never satisfied, and always Female Doggoing. I dont get it either. What it boils down to is a few here are mad because something was in the works by Blizzard that looked interesting to them, they wanted to play Ghost and Warcraft Adventures. So when Blizzard pulled the plug on them they got pissed, the only course of action from there is to slam the company as a whole, then go back to their computer and log into WoW and play for hours on end.

Realize this, Blizzard is not designing and releasing games for YOU as an individual. Their market is in the masses, if you dont like Blizzards ways of doing things then dont play their games, they dont care because with one lost customer comes 10 more new happily SATISFIED consumers.

Blizzard has the best track record of any other developer. If other gaming companies tried to mirror Blizzard in developing and releasing GREAT games we wouldnt have to see the crap that the other companies put out just to make a buck.

TheGameguru wrote:

So your dinging them for attempting something but X the way through realizing "Ok this isnt working" lets scrap this for now and focus on something else that we CAN get done.

I was partially wrong; Warcraft Adventures wasn't scrapped because of quality issues, it was scrapped because Blizzard felt it had taken too long and the adventure game market was starting to pass them by. Bill Roper's own comments hint at this:

I think that one of the big problems with WarCraft Adventures was that we were actually creating a traditional adventure game, and what people expected from an adventure game, and very honestly what we expected from an adventure game, changed over the course of the project. And when we got to the point where we cancelled it, it was just because we looked at where we were and said, you know, this would have been great three years ago.

Warcraft Adventures didn't fail to meet their quality standards; they thought they were just too slow, which is sad since Blizzard getting into the adventure game market might have kept it alive a bit longer. As for Ghost, who knows? Blizzard has been surprisingly quiet about it, silently removing every trace of it from their website without any explanation while also releasing a novelization of it (like they did with WA) last year with equally absent fanfare. Now comes this rumor (nothing's "confirmed!" at the moment) about a Starcraft MMORPG. Forgive me if I'm just a little skeptical about this. No game developer company gets a free pass when something's a little fishy.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Die '97. Other than that, welcome, kilroy! How did you find GWJ?

If you attended Texas A&M University you will understand this phrase/order, "Redass! Now Push!"

I actually found the forum from a search which took me to a post a long while back called Vanguard - Anti Review and I have been lurking ever since reading and enjoying the banter and podcasts. I thought the article was great and spot on and yet here I am still playing that evil game. In their defense it did get better slightly but yea... I'm just biding my time until this game is released.

Pirates of the Burning Seas

Which looks amazing! Otherwise it's Age of Conan that's coming out later this year.

So yea, just been reading and thought I would finally put my foot in the water of this community and start posting. I hope my wordiness doesn't scare people away from reading some of my long posts.

Cheers!

Edit add: BTW obviously the url="address" Words /url function doesn't work to make links for words on this forum. It keeps adding http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/ to the front of the link address which obviously makes it not work. Is there a function used here besides url address /url ? Example of what I mean. Look at the link address when you hover over the link:
Vanguard - Anti Review Article

Err... nevermind. I figured it out. Derrr I'm smert.

So yea, just been reading and thought I would finally put my foot in the water of this community and start posting. I hope my wordiness doesn't scare people away from reading some of my long posts.

Cheers!

Meh, we got us some wordy people here anywho.

Elysium, one of the founders, is a cornucopia of big'uns.

kilroy0097 wrote:
Fedaykin98 wrote:

Die '97. Other than that, welcome, kilroy! How did you find GWJ?

If you attended Texas A&M University you will understand this phrase/order, "Redass! Now Push!" ;)

Can there be any doubt? You've seen my avatar, right?

There are a couple people who have sometimes played online with the GWJ crew who live in College Station, btw - ordord00 and my brother, Joshua SQ3 03.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Can there be any doubt? You've seen my avatar, right?

There are a couple people who have sometimes played online with the GWJ crew who live in College Station, btw - ordord00 and my brother, Joshua SQ3 03.

Very cool. I was also in the Corps of Cadets, 1st Regiment, Company C-2. Nice to meet you. Though that was ages ago. No doubt Class '97 obviously. Should have looked at the Avatar. Observant aren't I? Come to think about it.. haven't I seen that avatar somewhere else before? hmmm...

cartoonin99 wrote:

Meh, we got us some wordy people here anywho. :D

Did somebody call me?

If you've seen it elsewhere, it wasn't me. I only added the Aggie logo during the NCAA, but I'm sticking with it for now.

That sucks about the, you know, groding of the band dorm event.

[quote=kilroy0097]I'm just biding my time until this game is released.

Pirates of the Burning Seas

Which looks amazing![quote]

Oh yeah, that's what I'm talking about!

From a business point of view WoS would make sense, if they start the development now, and plan to release it a couple of years down the line, as a "Next-Gen" MMORPG project.

WoW may be the most successful MMORPG ever, but it will eventually age. New contenders are emerging, and personally I believe WoW has peaked. Although most of the current newcomers on the scene have yet to come close, someone will eventually get it right and release a polished game in a finished state with up-to-date technology, engaging content game mechanics, and decent customer support, and start taking a solid chunk out of the WoW subscription base.

Yes, they can keep tweaking content and mechanics, and release more expansions to keep their customer base from exploring greener pastures. But the underlying technology is the one thing they will not be able to replace. This will make milking the cash cow with more expansions increasingly difficult.

So I strongly doubt WoS will be just a reskinned version of WoW. Building and supporting a new game on technology which is already 2 years old makes no business sense in the gaming industry.

Blizzard has shown they are anything but not business-savvy, and I doubt they haven't reached this conclusion themselves.