Blizzard will not 'gouge' users with Starcraft II

[Cyrus]

DRM is not that bad, neither is having no LAN. You will still be able to play on LAN, you just need a internet connection to join battle.net, but from there on you can host the game and everyone on LAN can see the game via your LAN IP. Remember, Blizzard does not look at SA when they make their decisions. Most of Europe, Asia and America have internet connections at all their major LANs. And if you thinking of those small lans at someone's home, well think about it: When is the last time you went to someone's home to LAN where he did not have adsl? People dont go to a 2-10 man lan and play locally. They all join battle.net and play dota on there.

As for the expansion packs. This was how it was going to be first, then they changed it to 3 stand-alone games and now they changed it back. They probably just wanted to get news out there and hear the response before making final decisions. Unfortunately for multiplayer you will still need all 3 games. Those who are thinking of just buying the original, think about the last time you saw a competition with War3 Reing of Chaos or normal Starcraft. Doesnt work like that. They will make sure to put enough multiplayer balances in to make you buy the expansions.

[RoosTa]

OH noes!! The people on the forums are spouting their opinions! Heresy!!

Ye, but you're basing your opinions on sensationalistic articles.
"No LAN" = no offline play (read what Cyrus said)
"DRM" = Online Authentication not limited installs. There are already 100's of games that do this, so what makes SC2 so special?

These articles are written to get people up in arms over nothing. Just go look at the SC2 DRM article, which had a very nice interview about SC2 and all they did was focus on 1 paragraph which mentioned "DRM". Sad.

heh, why play sc in the first place

this implementation is just another wonderful way of expressing that bastardization called episodic gaming

I'd like to add something here: I just do not know why adding expansions is such a bad thing? Warcraft2, Starcraft, Diablo2, Warcraft 3 and WoW all had at least 1, why is this now such a problem?

[Keldarza]

I'd like to add something here: I just do not know why adding expansions is such a bad thing?

Well, the bad thing is that the first game includes all the races, but doesnt provide for single player for them. I think you are missing the big point that people WANT to play protoss in SC and not have to wait (and pay) for another expansion before getting the chance to.

Playing terran in single player only makes you feel the game is incomplete because you know protoss and zerg are there.

No-one has objections expansions provided the "BASE" game provides "BASE" content.

As for the LAN, people are upset because bandwidth costs money and is more lag prone than LAN connections. Not everyone is UK, Japan or USA and I think the no-lan is justifiable complaint. If it had a steam like approach, where you just validate internationally and then can play locally less people would complain.

Remember, the WoW community and the RTS community are 2 different beasts.

[RoosTa]

Well, the bad thing is that the first game includes all the races, but doesnt provide for single player for them. I think you are missing the big point that people WANT to play protoss in SC and not have to wait (and pay) for another expansion before getting the chance to.

Playing terran in single player only makes you feel the game is incomplete because you know protoss and zerg are there.

No-one has objections expansions provided the "BASE" game provides "BASE" content.

You can play them, but only in skirmishes or multi-player

Warcraft 3 was pretty damn awesome on how the campaigns flowed from one into the other. The single player game in the expansion, was better than the first, so for R100 less than the original, I got more value. If you didn't buy the expansion, you missed a great deal of the storyline.

Some of my friends jumped right into multi-player and didn't bother with the single player. With the expansion, they added more units which also forced people to buy it, not to mention all the other improvements. None regret buying the expansion.

So while they won't be able to play the whole game immediately, you'll certainly get your money's worth. More game, for less money - bonus!

[Keldarza]

None regret buying the expansion.

Yip, got ROC and TFT.

[conspiracy] ROC and TFT were originally one game *cough* [/conspiracy]


...

Some random history here, but this isn't the first time blizzard have split a game up in to many. (According to my conspiracy theory)

Random Fact: Warcraft 3 was meant to have 6 factions, that was cut down to 4. If you look at the ROC and TFT you can see that story elements from the game have been moved between factions.

It was confirmed that the Demons were meant to be a playable race. And the other is unknown. Looking at the story campaigns throughout, it goes like this:

ROC:
Human
Undead
Orc
NightElves

TFT:
Night elves
Human (blood elves)
Undead

Now if you remember the 2 races that were dropped, namely the demons and "some other race", you can actually fit them into the story as one game and one story pretty well:

Human
Demons (instead of the undead, demons ravage the eastern kingdoms)
Orc
NightElves (merged into 1 campaign)
<unnammed race, Blood elves, or the Draenei - but I say the Naga>
Undead - where Arthus wins

Of course, because they dropped the 2 races, they just recycled some old ones to replace them in the story. Although I don't think it was profit making, as I tend to agree that the demons should be powerful (and hence hard to balance in multiplayer) I think the reasons for this split and change was to set the scene for WoW. But it worked well, so perhaps the idea to split SC2 into 3 has anterior motives than to make money (seeing as blizzard print money as it is...). Maybe it's to keep the excitement of SC2 until "world of starcraft" is ready in 2 years time?

[Cyrus]

Well, the bad thing is that the first game includes all the races, but doesnt provide for single player for them. I think you are missing the big point that people WANT to play protoss in SC and not have to wait (and pay) for another expansion before getting the chance to.

Playing terran in single player only makes you feel the game is incomplete because you know protoss and zerg are there.

No-one has objections expansions provided the "BASE" game provides "BASE" content.

As for the LAN, people are upset because bandwidth costs money and is more lag prone than LAN connections. Not everyone is UK, Japan or USA and I think the no-lan is justifiable complaint. If it had a steam like approach, where you just validate internationally and then can play locally less people would complain.

Remember, the WoW community and the RTS community are 2 different beasts.

Thats the thing, IT ONLY VALIDATES. You still connect peer-to-peer with the host and with any decent router it will trace back the IP on LAN and you will be connecting to the host via LAN.

Someone said earlier on page 2 or something, that they are either trying to change gaming or they are following someone else. They are following valve who forced HL2 to be installed online and then you need to login to steam in order to play, even if you playing on LAN (obviously people cracked it and got lan versions but thats besides the point)