Tangential Articulation: 2010

Alright, in the period surrounding Starcraft 2's release, I have noticed something that has caught my eye. Wow, how wonderfully descriptive!

The sheer amount of stupidity surrounding this game is absolutely off-the-wall retarded. Now, it's pretty bad on both sides of the fence here - rabid Starcraft fanboys facing off against equally, if not moreso, rabid Starcraft 2 haters. For the purposes of this post, however, I'm only going to address the haters, who seem to have taken on a distinct method of attacking Blizzard and their newest game with incredibly moronic reasoning behind their arguments... that is, if you could call it an argument. As it stands, it's more along the lines of gnashing their teeth at a brick wall for whatever pathetic reason they can think of.

I want to make it clear here, that if you genuinely hate Starcraft 2 for actual, real reasons, then that's fine. I personally love the game and find it very enjoyable but I'm willing to acknowledge its faults. But there is a highly vocal group of haters out there who loathe the game for objectively stupid reasons. And when called out on their bullshit, they retaliate with the all-too common cry, "you're a fanboy! DERP!".

Here are some worthwhile arguments you might make against Starcraft 2.

No LAN functionality.

While this has nothing to do with the game itself, I can sympathize with your concerns about LAN functionality. I would love to play this game over a LAN connection, and I'm not so sure about how SC2 will fare at LAN parties such as xLAN. I can only hope they are up to the task. I myself signed an internet petition (as futile as I figured it was) to bring LAN mode back to SC2 but it didn't help, although to Blizzard's credit they did at least acknowledge that they had noticed our concerns.
That being said, a lack of LAN functionality is not a good reason to hate this game. It more than makes up for it.

Terrans are over-powered.

I don't know if this is really the case in multiplayer, as I've only just started delving into the Practice League, but this is a decent point. At times it can certainly seem that way but Blizzard balanced the original Starcraft extremely well over the last decade or so, and as such you can expect them to do the same with this latest installment. Nevertheless, it's all up to each individual player to bring out the strengths of their chosen race.

The voice acting needs improvement.

I agree here in some places. The Protoss don't sound nearly as "alien" as they did in the original SC2, especially the Executor (advisor, the guy who tells you when your base is under attack and whatnot), the Zealot (hello, generic stoic yet honourable alien warrior!), and the Carrier (which doesn't sound as threatening as it used to). A few of the Terran units could use a voice-lift as well, most notably the Goliath. That being said, I'm happy to report that Blizzard managed to compensate for the bad by bringing in the good - SC veterans will gladly notice that a lot of the Terran units sound exactly the same as they did in the old game. And as for the Zerg... well, after playing as them in the Practice League, I've already become quite irritated by the Zerg Queen who doubles as your Advisor. For once I found myself nostalgic for the days when the Overmind was telling us we needed to spawn more Overlords, and now I have what sounds like a creepy elderly lady telling me in a seething voice that my allies are under attack every second - and I mean literally every second. It got to the point where I went to the Options menu mid-game to find a way to shut her the hell up. I'm considering finding a way to change the sound files in-game so I can bring back the Overmind as my Zerg advisor instead. At least he's bearable for me to listen to. And on the subject of Overlords, as one person put it, they sound like "retarded donkeys". He's right. The Zerglings also leave a bit to be desired with their voice-work. Other than that, the voice work is pretty satisfactory. Hell, they even brought back the old voice actors to voice Arcturus, Raynor, etc. Pretty sweet. Zeratul sounds like the Lich King, unfortunately, but I don't see what else they could've done seeing as his original voice actor died a while back. Rest in peace, bro.

The story didn't feel complete.

Personally I disagree, although obviously the story had to be a bit open-ended so that Heart of the Swarm would pick up right where Wings of Liberty would end. I felt the story was pretty good but if you don't, that's okay.

I didn't find it fun to play.

That's fine. Everyone has different tastes. Maybe you enjoyed Warcraft III more. If that's the case, you'll probably enjoy the upcoming SC2 expansion, Heart of the Swarm, given that its single-player campaign will be similar in style to an RPG.

No Cross-Region Play

This is also understandable. It's not game-breaking, but it is understandable. If I had friends in another region, I wouldn't be happy about paying for another client so I could play with them. That being said, it's not the end of the world.

Now, as for the ridiculously shitty reasons you people have for gnashing your teeth against this game so bloody loudly... let's just say I'm normally not one of those people who says something and presents it as unbreakable fact. However, that will not be the case this time. Everything I'm about to say is 100% right and you are 100% wrong if you use the following arguments against SC2:

Starcraft 2 is too expensive!

Oh please. I'm on the unemployment benefit and I still managed to buy this game. Typical decadent Americans, bitching about paying $60 for a game. This is just like you, complaining about price. Hell, you idiots go on about paying $15 a month for WoW. Well, guess what! here in NZ, we pay $25 a month for WoW, and SC2 cost us $90-110 ($200 for the Collector's Edition). Do you see me complaining about price? No. And you certainly have no right to until stores start pricing their stock at $200 for each standard edition game.
And another thing: every time I walked into a game store, I'd always notice how console games cost more than PC games. Funny, that. And yet you're complaining that a PC game is too expensive. If I, being on the unemployment benefit, could afford this game, and if teenagers with part-time jobs can afford this game, then so can you. Yes, I know it's probably not just Americans who are complaining. I don't care. Stop bitching, all of you.

SC2 only has one campaign; you're paying full price for a third of a game!

Someone actually told me, "But it has always been Blizzard's modus operandi to include a campaign for every faction in their games."
Yes, I'm well aware that the original SC had a 10-mission campaign for each of its three factions, which added up to 30 missions. And yes, I'm aware that its expansion, Brood War, had another three 10-mission campaigns, one for each faction, again adding up to 30.
Oh, I take it that as a gamer you're aware of the concept of expansion packs, right?
Now, let's do some simple math:

Starcraft: 30 missions, split between three races.
Starcraft 2: 29 missions, one race.

"Aha! See? One race! Blizzard is ripping us off!", you cry. Wrong. If you say that Blizzard split SC2 into three parts because they want to get more money from us, you're making the mistake of assuming that the second and third parts of SC2 won't cost them any money to make. That's not how it works, sunshine. Blizzard decided to split the game into three installments this time in order to provide us with really good single-player campaigns. Yes, you might not give a stuff about single-player but strong single-player has always been a core part of Blizzard's games. In Wings of Liberty, we got a 29-mission mercenary style campaign. This simply would not have worked within the confines of 10 missions. Blizzard tried something different for once. And they did it well. Both upcoming expansions will have campaigns that are each of the same length. Hardly a rip-off. They're releasing it in three parts because each campaign is going to be done in a different style: Terrans = mercenaries, Zerg = RPG, Protoss = diplomacy. None of this would work with relatively short 10 mission campaigns. This is fact.

As for the pricing, read this:

8) Will they be priced as expansions?
They'll be priced appropriately to the content. Right now, the plans are to do something along the lines of a full single player campaign and some additional features to the multi-player side. It'll obviously use the same engine; so that, to me, is an expansion price point. If we decided to put in 3 new races and a bunch of new technology and features, maybe that would be a stand-alone product. But right now, we're looking at much more of an expansion-like feature set.
Source

In other words, it looks like the expansions will be - *gasp!* - priced as expansions!

And you want to know the real icing on the cake? Right now, you're all bitching about how Blizzard has released what you perceive to be an "incomplete" version of the game. But if Blizzard had decided to wait until they had finished all three campaigns (a grand total of 90 missions) before they released the game, you people would all be bitching about how they're taking far too long.

There's no originality - this is basically a rip-off of Warhammer 40k!

The game is fun. That's what matters. I'm well aware of how similar the Terrans, Zerg and Protoss are to the Imperium, Tyranids and Eldar. I don't care. When making a game, what's more important: game-play or originality?
Hint: The correct answer is game-play. If you disagree, you are wrong.

I can't play online with my friends in another region unless I buy another client!

As I said above, this is an understandable concern, however if you are using this as an argument against buying the game, then you're an idiot. Plain and simple. The only ones who have a right to complain about this are those of us here in the ANZ region, i.e. Australia and New Zealand. We SC fans in these two countries were a bit miffed to discover that we were being grouped with a whole bunch of Asian countries, which presents a whole bunch of problems such as the obvious language barrier which is a big hurdle on the step to a viable SC2 community. As gamers, we have a lot more in common with North America, and as such we wanted to play online with them instead. Thankfully, Blizzard actually understood this and have rectified the situation by stating that they plan on allowing us ANZ players to choose between the South-East Asian and North American regions. Had Blizzard been as "evil" as you continue to assert, they wouldn't have done this.

No chatrooms in Battle.net!

Blizzard will be implementing chatrooms at a later date. Besides, this is more an issue with Battle.net than with SC2. And anyway, the main purpose of Battle.net is to allow you to play games with other people. Talking to them in chatrooms isn't exactly a priority there. If you want chatrooms now, there's other ways of getting them. IRC and Ventrilo are two suggestions.

FUCK this game…….All they care about is making money they don’t know not every fuckin body has high speed internet to fuckin update game or the time to wait fuck Blizzard !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Source

Blizzard has proven time and time again that this is not the case. They have yet to even consider selling in-game items in WoW that would give an inexperienced (or plain terrible) yet rich player an advantage over those who have yet to genuinely earn their arsenal. All they're selling are decals and cosmetic effects, a flying mount (that is incapable of flying unless you've actually earned the ability to fly in-game) and things like cross-realm and cross-faction transfers, name changes, etc. They've even allowed South Korean players the benefit of getting joint SC2-WoW game time - you pay for one, you get the other as well. Not to mention the fact that, despite certain assertions, Blizzard is not going to charge you for downloading new maps. The fact is, they are going to let you download 99% of user-made maps for free, and charge a miniscule amount for only the best, most high-quality custom maps while giving some of the money they make to the map-makers. This doesn't smell like greed to me. Nowhere near it.

Bottom line: if you think Blizzard is ripping you off, don't buy the game. And if you already have, don't buy the expansions.

I personally found the game to be well worth the $100 I spent on it. Did I like the fact that I had to fix it to my Battle.net account? No. Did the game more than make up for it? Hell yes.

If you're going to act like a spoiled child (and a lot have), you clearly don't deserve what you're so readily demanding.

Take your false sense of entitlement and piss off.

Tangential Articulation

Friday, August 20, 2010

Why You Are Complaining About Nothing

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

I just dinged 80 for the first time.

Blog Archive

About Me