Rant on Blizzard; or, How Activision is f*****g up.

They've split the main campaign of Starcraft 2 into three parts, requiring three purchases to get the full story. They're taking LAN out of Starcraft as well, claiming it will reduce piracy. They've basically decided on making Battle.net a paid service, even though it's been free since creation.

All of these things have occurred since the merger between Blizzard and Activision. No chance in hell it's just a coincidence.

All of these things have lowered my chances of purchasing both games mentioned to about a 33% (SC2) and 50% (D3). If they end up making b.net paid, both will drop considerably.

/rant off

Seriously, I hate big business.

hehe, I'll only be playing the solo adventure of DIII and SCII so not worried about the battle.net issues! I've never been very competitive and others usually kick my arse in SCI, so I'll be avoiding that.

The only thing you can do is vote with your wallet like you are planning, if enough people do so they may change it after release...look at DDO going free to play lol.

Khalus wrote:

hehe, I'll only be playing the solo adventure of DIII and SCII so not worried about the battle.net issues! I've never been very competitive and others usually kick my arse in SCI, so I'll be avoiding that.

I only want b.net so I can play with my friends. Is that so much to ask for? Is it?!?!

Khalus wrote:

hehe, I'll only be playing the solo adventure of DIII and SCII so not worried about the battle.net issues! I've never been very competitive and others usually kick my arse in SCI, so I'll be avoiding that.

Same here... I cant play them enough to be good anyway! :P

Wow, I totally understand your anger, Rdios. Free B.net is what made SC1 such a great experience for me. LAN parties and playing with friends. Also having to buy it three times to get the full story? that is whack. It is a sad day for SC fans

Kloyd wrote:

Wow, I totally understand your anger, Rdios. Free B.net is what made SC1 such a great experience for me. LAN parties and playing with friends. Also having to buy it three times to get the full story? that is whack. It is a sad day for SC fans

On the plus side, I'm gonna pirate the hell out of that game. And then pass said pirated version to everyone I know, so not a single person I know buys it.

It's gonna make me feel so good inside~

Taking LAN out WILL reduce piracy, and that was Blizzard's idea, I asked a Blizzard employee.

As for the campaigns, yeah, it's ridiculous, but that was also Blizzard's choice. I hear the amount of content in each will be amazing.

Oh, and from what I understand, you can buy 1 campaign and use all 3 races in multiplayer, which is, ofc the real reason to get SC2.

Centrik wrote:

Taking LAN out WILL reduce piracy, and that was Blizzard's idea, I asked a Blizzard employee.

As for the campaigns, yeah, it's ridiculous, but that was also Blizzard's choice. I hear the amount of content in each will be amazing.

Oh, and from what I understand, you can buy 1 campaign and use all 3 races in multiplayer, which is, ofc the real reason to get SC2.

Yeah, problem is, b.net goes p2p, and you have to pay a monthly fee... That's just stupid, for an RTS. And, it won't reduce a damn thing, as my past post indicates.

I heard of a lot of people on my old WoW server quit when they heard the changes being made to SC2.

Ridos wrote:

Centrik wrote:

Taking LAN out WILL reduce piracy, and that was Blizzard's idea, I asked a Blizzard employee.

As for the campaigns, yeah, it's ridiculous, but that was also Blizzard's choice. I hear the amount of content in each will be amazing.

Oh, and from what I understand, you can buy 1 campaign and use all 3 races in multiplayer, which is, ofc the real reason to get SC2.

Yeah, problem is, b.net goes p2p, and you have to pay a monthly fee... That's just stupid, for an RTS. And, it won't reduce a damn thing, as my past post indicates.

And yet I see no evidence offered as to why it won't reduce piracy. With LAN gone, every time you connect to battle.net, it will check your cd-key. Every try to play SC on bettle.net with a cracked key? It's impossible. This will reduce piracy tenfold. People play SC for the multiplayer, and now you can't just pirate it for LAN parties, you need to purchase it.

As for Battle.net going Pay to Play, check your facts. Quoted from Mike Morhaime, "what I will say is that a player who goes to retail and buys the Starcraft 2 box at retail will have the full Starcraft 2 game included in the box and they will have the ability to play on battlenet with no additional fee." *Audio source here.

So it's staying free to play, at least its true and basic functions are.

Activision and Blizzard aren't stupid. They know what they're doing, and actually, I'm much happier with Activision and its products and policies than EA's, Also, Activision isn't interfering with ANYTHING Blizzard is doing. Blizzard is bringing in more cash for them than any other branch, product, etc. They are going to leave Blizzard along. Why, you ask? Simple, don't fix what's not broken.

Let's see.

Pay three times for the full game, or;

Pay for one scenario, then pirate the other two for the storyline. Yup, reduced piracy alright.

And as for the monetization: source

"Kind of have to" is business-speak for "plans in motion". And even if it's a cash shop, or whatever, it's still gonna breed a community where you can buy ueber-leet gear, and every 12 year old with access to mommy and daddy's credit card will have it.

Anyway, thread over. The longer this goes on, the more we'll hate each other.

People are still going to buy the game I think.
It doesn't bother me at all because Ive never played Diablo and only touched starcraft a few times.

I understand your anger though, a lot of people I know are really mad about these changes.

Ridos wrote:

Let's see.

Pay three times for the full game, or;

Pay for one scenario, then pirate the other two for the storyline. Yup, reduced piracy alright.

And as for the monetization: source

"Kind of have to" is business-speak for "plans in motion". And even if it's a cash shop, or whatever, it's still gonna breed a community where you can buy ueber-leet gear, and every 12 year old with access to mommy and daddy's credit card will have it.

Anyway, thread over. The longer this goes on, the more we'll hate each other.

That article is pretty old. I'll trust what Mr. Morhaime said from 5/31/2009, especially given his role with Blizzard. They will probably have an optional per month fee for little extras. No idea what that would entail, but we will see. It doesn't really say P2P battle.net. No RTS will ever be P2P anytime soon.

As for the pirating the other storylines, yes that may happen. But to play ONLINE with friends, you will NEED to purchase at least campaign for $50. The same $50 that ideally pay for all the campaigns. So Blizzard is only gaining money by releasing 3 campaigns if anything.

And once again, piracy will be reduced because you can't pirate a copy and use a cracked key to play in LANs. Since everything is through battle.net, you will need a LEGIT Cd-key, thus sharing a key/using a cracked public one won't work.

I'm not happy about 3 $50 campaigns. Unless they are at least 1 year apart from each other, and are full campaigns (about 50-60 hours of gameplay) then that will be fine. In fact, that would be great, but I doubt that's the case.

However, I, like the vast majority of people waiting for SC2, are interested for the multiplayer and battle.net. As the multiplayer will allow the use of all 3 races/content, even if you own only one campaign, it's not a big deal.

I think this is an example of making a mountain out of a mole hill, and giving rumors too much credit.

As for a cash shop, that's impossible. It's an RTS. I guess they could theoretically have purchasable units or something, but that wouldn't go over well. Now, why is SC famous? Is it because it's the most balanced and competitive RTS out? YES! Blizzard knows their audience, and a cash shop wouldn't go over well. My guess? Premium/user developed maps/mods that will function similar to the iPhone app store.

And I don't hate you, I hope you don't hate me. This isn't personal at all, I just believe you have been misinformed by the shit storm of rumors on the internet.

No, no, cash shop for D3.

:O if that's the case i'm not buying sc2 and definitely not paying for bnet to play diablo3. I do belief taking LAN off will reduce piracy but it kind of sucks because you don't get the same latency, why would you play against someone online if they are in the same room. People will find their way through...

Blizzard/Activision have servers across the US. I'm sure they'll have local enough hubs so that people won't suffer major latency issues. Plus, while playing most RTS or even FPS games on a DSL connection I've never really noticed that great of a difference vs. LAN. I know back in the days of Dial-Up however, the difference was dramatic. 2/5 games I'd be dropped back then. Now, I'm not the one being dropped. That's just my take on the loss of LAN issue, it really doesn't bother me since its really tedious lugging my computers around to different places.

As far as the P2P... I think that its a quote pulled out of context that no one really properly followed up on and the rumor just blew out of control. Its unrealistic to charge for any game. Regardless of the fact that they'd lose WoW players. Yes, they'd lose WoW players, but it wouldn't be that many. There's around 5-6 million WoW players in China.

Realistically, only about 2-3 million of the players are actually in the US/EU. Most of them are casual gamers, in fact most of my friends who play WoW don't even have a slight interest in SC2. SC2 is a niche audience game, even though it is an RTS so unless Blizzard does something really amazing to make new players feel welcome to SC2, I highly doubt they'll lose that many players... at least not in the US.

Even if Blizzard lost all 6 million WoW players in China and however many are in Korea, they would still maintain the a good chunk of their profits that kept them operating all this time. Yes, that's a bold statement, but here's why:

LAN centers have to buy licenses to use retail games on a regular basis. Usually, they buy a site license in bulk based on the number. I'm not sure how much they are making from this, but even if you have a LAN center with 50 PCs Blizzard is raking in a good deal of money. They're still running PCs with WC3, SC1, and D2 since they're still popular games.

The likelihood of actually losing that many players is nil though considering how popular WoW is.