Well, there's PLENTY of buzz going on all over the web about the pirated release of Starcraft 2. I haven't tried this for my-self, so I can only speak on what I've read on various web-sites, which I will Not post links to here, but I can at least talk about what I read.
Apparently the pirating group known as RELOADED has already hacked SC 2. Normally when games are pirated they loose All multiplayer functionality but this appears not to be the case with SC 2. The pirated copy doesn't connect to BattleNet but it can supposedly do "Challenge" matches, the single player campaign works with saves and loads functioning, and the editors are working.
This makes me wonder if people are going to try to sell Mods made with pirated tools? This can't be good news for Blizzard since they have so much riding on this one being a blockbuster. Then again most of us who bought it wanted it for the multiplayer anyway. I do how-ever think it's a pretty dickish move by Blizzard to sell the game 3 times with campaigns for the 3 different races. Seriously, they couldn't have given us all 3 campaigns in one game? That just seems like trying to milk the customers if you ask me. I'm seriously hoping when the next two games come out they'll be at reduced price if you bought Wings of Liberty.
With everything the government is doing to fight piracy right now, maybe this will open some eyes and show some people that the government is going after the wrong people when they need to be going after the groups putting these things out (like Reloaded).
The (my) boxed copy didn't even have a Manual in it???? wtf?
Starcraft 2 has been pirated ever since it was in the beta stage. Piracy is actually one of the reasons Starcraft was so popular to begin with, it was everywhere, people were getting hooked on it, but if they wanted online play on BattleNet they needed the original, and they got it, because they were hooked.
I doubt piracy will have a heavy negative influence on Starcraft 2. Every Blizzard game has been pirated to hell and back and still they sale a boatload of them.
And I don't think governments should go after groups like Reloaded. If they do, who will Ubisoft get hotfixes for Rainbow Six Vegas from? How will Max Payne 2 work on Steam? Who will Epic Games blame for Unreal Tournament 3 being rushed, unfinished and poorly designed... I mean for it not selling well?
Bordering dangerously the off-topic:
FX Interactive sells/publishes games at 20€*, or 10€** if they are "Gold" line. Sometimes the games aren't very "new" (King's Bounty expansion was launched here a few months ago), but for 20€ you get the original game, translated to some degree (which many times includes voices and not just the manual and the texts in game), and some even include nice manuals and maps (all what a normal PC game box allow). Sacred? 20€. Drakensang? 20€. Drakensang 2? 20 €. Disciples II Anthology? 10 €. The King Arthur RPG? 20€. Runaway 2? 10€. Etc.
Those games are still pirated (pirates aregoing to pirate anyway) but FX Interactive is still there and making money. those guys.
* actually, 19.95€
** actually, 9.95€
Since the editors and single player are meant to work offline, that isn't particularly surprising. The game doesn't have strong DRM and thus will be pirated quickly. Don't we normally consider lack of DRM a good thing?
I'm not even sure why "PC game gets pirated" is even news worthy at this point.
Starcraft 1 didn't have much in the way of DRM and was easily pirated. It did alright. I don't think Blizzard has to worry.
This is flat out wrong (and I've corrected this misinformation so many times on this forum that it's getting old). The campaign in Wings of Liberty is triple the size of any campaign in SC1, and has MUCH better production values and storytelling quality. The amount of content in total for single player is similar, only this version is better in every way.
The other two "games" are in fact expansions, and will be priced as expansions. Did people really expect no expansions for SC2, given that every Blizzard game since Warcraft 2 has had at least one? All they did differently is announce the expansions ahead of time, which seems to have set people off in a remarkably irrational tizzy.
So, you're getting similar amounts of content (at a higher quality) then SC1 for what after inflation is actually less money... and you think they're ripping you off by releasing expansions with more campaigns, which they also did in SC1? How does that make ANY sense at all?
Also wrong, but for different reasons. This thinking is the basis behind the strategy of the "war on drugs", which is an abject failure and always will be. Same with prohibition and prostitution. So long as a demand exists for something, criminals will find a way to supply it.
That's especially true with piracy, where the main actions used to reduce the supply (really restrictive DRM) also make the product less palatable to customers and thus drive up the demand for a pirate version.
i dont think blizzard has problem with pirating
if you want the game for battle net multilayer you buy it if not who cares they sell millions anyway
Raven - but these pirates are unable to play online.
Pirated software is always a threat. but in this case I don't think it will impact much sales for SC2.
some information to note that can be found on various sites:
Projected first fiscal year of sales Activision Blizzard could be on track to sell 7 million copies of StarCraft II in the first fiscal year when it finally is released next week, according to industry sources. If this proves to be true, the company could bag an estimated $171 million in profit for the current fiscal year on an estimated $350 million in sales.Activision Blizzard is backing away from claims that StarCraft II cost almost $100 million to create by stating that the game did not cost $100 million. The game comes ten years after the release of the first StarCraft title and the game has always enjoyed a large following.The original StarCraft has sold over 9.5 million copies since release, with an estimated 4.5 million of those copies being sold in South Korea where the game is a national sport. It is expected that sales will again be strongest in South Korea when the game is released.It is estimated that Activision Blizzard will be able to move almost 6 million copies before the end of the year, according to analyst estimates, with a strong possibility that the sales numbers could go even higher than that. Link
Projected first fiscal year of sales
It's not like nobody thought that SC2 would get cracked. Oh noes! Anyway, Tridus said everything I would have.
I don't agree there my friend, and it being of better "Quality" is definitely an opinion. I honestly don't see SC 2 as THAT much of an improvement over SC 1. Also, how do you know the campaign is larger? Because Blizzard "says so" ? I'll believe it when I finish the campaign for my-self, with after jamming a good 6 hours on last night, I imagine I don't have that much farther to go. If the Zerg and Protos campaigns are going to be "Expansions" then how can anyone expect them to have the length or depth of the Teran campaign at "expansion" prices? SC 1 gave me ALL 3 Campaigns for a nice low price. I still consider what Blizzard did with this selling campaigns as expansions idea a rip off. There's no way the other two campaigns will be as good (or as long and length has yet to be seen) if they're going to cost $15-$20 less the game costs to begin with.
Your explanation as to why that's "Wrong" doesn't make any sense as to why my statement is wrong. Yes, it is parallel to the failed "War on Drugs", but that doesn't mean my previous statement is wrong in any way. They're going after sites that list sites that have the pirated material instead of going after the sites HOSTING the pirated material. Just like in the war on drugs they waste time and money busting low level piss-ant dealers instead of going after the sources of the drugs. I haven't seen the DEA do a drug raid into one of the countries the drugs were coming from since the REAGAN YEARS!!! By going after private citizens and fining them for file-sharing it's the same thing as them throwing crack heads in jail and costing the system more money instead of going after the sources of the cocaine to begin with.
My original statement of:
"With everything the government is doing to fight piracy right now, maybe this will open some eyes and show some people that the government is going after the wrong people when they need to be going after the groups putting these things out (like Reloaded)."
...Isn't Wrong. It might be your opinion that it's wrong, but obviously the steps they're taking in closing down sites like watch-movies isn't doing anything when watch-movies isn't hosting the movies, Novamov and Megavideo and DivxDen are, and yet all of them are still up and running just fine.....because they're outside of US jurisdiction. The government closing down watch-movies is tantamount to them coming here and closing down Stardock because a thread on their forums is talking about a pirated version of SC 2.
Because they don't have to build the game before making the next two campaigns? Seriously Raven, that argument is just absurd. Are you next going to tell me that Elemental's expansion will have a smaller campaign that Elemental itself because it's cheaper? Expansions are cheaper to make (and cheaper to sell) because the whole game development phase is already done. It's just content. It's got nothing to do with campaign length. Brood War's campaign was comparable in length to SC1 (especially if you look at the very very simple levels early in SC1's campaigns) but it was cheaper. Every expansion is like that.
"All 3 campaigns" in the case of SC1 was 12 missions a campaign, with the first five in each one being really simple introductions to each race's units. This campaign was listed at 29 missons.
And really, does Brood War not count as a "campaign" or something here? They only gave you half the storyline last time. Somehow people keep forgetting that.
Where did I say they didn't have to build the game before making the campaign, of course they need to build the game first. That never entered my argument. So supposedly the next two "Expansions" are going to cost $50 a pop. That's not what I'd call Expansion price. What pisses me off about the whole thing is they split up the 3 campaigns into different games. Plain and simple. They're charging 3 times for the same game. If you want the "Full Story" from all 3 campaigns you have to buy 3 games. The prices don't vary enough for me to call them expansions. Expansions don't cost $50. It's a marketing ploy by Blizzard, nothing more. They're milking the games audience. If you can't see that and want to spend $150 for what you should have got for 60, be my guest brother.
That would be like Stardock charging us $50 for Elemental's Kingdoms and then charging us another $50 for the Empires.
Everybody but me seems to know perfectly and to the last detail the exact contents of the still not developed expansion packs for Starcraft 2.
Wow.
You mean you don't? You disapoint me.
Separating the game into 3 full priced packages has nothing to do with trying to make the campaigns lengthier, or better. That's just PR propaganda. The real reason they did it like that is because Bobby Kotick is the CEO of Activision(Blizzard). Their business strategy is to make money every year from iterations of the same game at full price. This is why you see a new music game from them every year that's basically the same, this is why you see 1-2 CoD games every year, and this is why we now have Star Craft split into 3 games. It's purely a business strategy to make 3 times as much money. It is a business strategy Activision uses with all of their franchises.
Even if they wanted to create a longer story, and that's not a red herring, then why not just make 1/3 of every campaign and split them into $30 expansion? Oh because then you don't make an extra $20 per expansion per year. The entirety of SC2 plus the over priced expansions could be the greatest thing ever created in gaming, and I still wouldn't support the underlying attitude that created it.
You said this:
Seems pretty clear to me. You expect less content because it's got "expansion prices", despite the fact that there's no cost to build the game for an expansion.
As for this "spiltting" stuff, would you be more satisfied if you got 1/3 of the full Terran campaign, 1/3 of the Zerg campaign, and 1/3 of the Protoss campaign in Wings of Liberty? Because that's really what you're saying. SC1 only gave you half of each campaign, you needed Brood War to get the other half. For some reason nobody was bothered by that.
Shuffling the order around changes very little. The amount of content is basically the same. All that's changed is that by spending all their time on one group of people, they can devote more attention to telling a story with that group.
As for the price, I'm looking for something quasi-official about that. All I've seen is Internet speculation.
It's three games because people will spend $150+ for the same game. The concept is brilliant, albeit low brow in my opinion. When Half Life Starcraft 2: Episode 2 comes out, people will flock and buy the Collector's Edition because they have the cash on hand. It's how the gaming Industry works now, and it makes me a sad bear. No one sat in a business meeting and said, "Look, we need to split this up into 3 games for quality." Blizzard is going to take Starcraft to the bank and hit poor people with solid gold bats along the way, even if everyone went around and personally gave everyone they knew a pirated copy.
I'm just happy that Diablo 3 isn't going to be pay-per-act. yet.
I never bought any of the expansions for the first SC. When I finished it's storyline I called it "game over". I had no idea Kerrigan lived through the first one, much less the brood war.
When I said:
"If the Zerg and Protos campaigns are going to be "Expansions" then how can anyone expect them to have the length or depth of the Teran campaign at "expansion" prices?"
...I was actually going by You calling them "expansions". I was originally under the impression they were 3 full games and that each "game" told the tail of one of the campaigns. Seems fucked up to me to split 3 capaigns into 3 seperate games. I got 3 full campaigns when I paid for the first one. Just because they extended the campaigns with expansions didn't make the first SC (minus expansions) any less of 3 full stories for one price.
If they do that I'll personally kill that fuck-tard Bobby nodick...er I mean Kotick...with my own bare hands.
Actually quality does factor into it. With this they can see what people liked and didn't like about their ideas for missions in the first campaign and they can build on that. They used what they learned in WoW: Burning Crusade to make Cataclysm leveling fantastic. That's not the entirety of it. All I'm saying is that it's not just one issue of money, quality does factor in.
Quality is completely subjective. What one person calls quality another might call crap. Most of the units looks the same only in higher polygon models with brighter colors. The game-play is almost identical. The storyline....would be Awesome....if I got the whole thing in One Game. It doesn't reek of "quality" to me. I'm not saying it isn't a good game, it's just not as Earth shattering as people seem to be thinking it is. It's the same as any number of other RTS games on the market. The only difference is bobby nodick is trying to milk the cash cow until it's utters bleed.
Lord of the rings should have been One Book!
So you didn't get the whole story then. You got part of the story. In SC2, you'll get the whole Terran campaign in one shot. That's their story.
The idea that you're somehow getting less for your money here is just plain wrong.
I'm sure we'd all love an 87 mission 50+ hour campaign. Name me any RTS that offers that level of campaign in a single release.
Go ahead. I'll wait.
Yeah. The movies too. I mean making you come back to the theatre three times, WTF is that? Clearly we should have gotten a 10 hour movie for the same price as a 2 hour movie because having a story go on is just gouging the customer!
Rise of Legends.
DoW Soulstorm
DoW II
Technically they were meant to be one book. But because it took Tolkein a couple years to write each one, they ended up be published seperately.
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