So it's me...the guy that didn’t buy Starcraft 2 yet, Hiya.Just wondered if any of the chumps, er I mean nice people, who bought Starcraft already could enlighten me on DRM and such. I was just wondering...1 - Do you have to be online even to play the single player?2 - Do you have a limited number of activations?3 - Do you have to have the cd in the drive?4 - ANY (officialish) idea when the next expansion(s) are going to come out? I know this one is a "when it's done" but I am just looking for a general time (this year, one every six months, etc)
1) It has an offline mode, which won't record your achievements, etc. I'm not exactly sure how it works since I was online when I played, but it's there.
2) No such thing, they don't care. Like SD, the registration is tied to your battle.net account, there's no "activation" on install.
3) It's a 12gb install, which I assume copies everything including cinematics.. but I haven't tried without the disk.
4) I don't think there's been anything too official, but I wouldn't expect them sooner than a year apart.
thanks annatar as always you are a gentleman and a scholar.
i am going to buy it but wanted to wait for all the expansions to come out so i could get them bundled and at a cheaper price but a year apart would be a long time to wait.
Works perfectly fine without the disc in the drive.
I can confirm that you don't need the disc in to play it.
No. If it can't find battle.net, you can just play in offline mode. It won't track achievements or such, but the entire campaign and single player modes are playable. (All the achievements really do is unlock things like decals and portraits for your online profile.)
Not as far as I know. It certainly won't care if you log in to battle.net, since at that point it knows you're authorized anyway.
No. In fact you don't need the DVD at all. Once you register the game, you can download the whole thing from your battle.net profile page. Blizzard sells digital versions directly from their store as well.
Soon.®
Ahh good point, I completely forgot about that. Thought it was cool when I saw the "Download client" link on my account page after registering, but was too in a hurry to play to remember.
Thanks everyone for confirming no CD needed
Yeah it's nice. It was particularly galling to have a person at EB try to sell my wife $3 "scratch protection". That's one chain I won't miss in the slightest when digital distrubtion finally hits consoles and renders their entire business obsolete.
1. I don't believe so. I haven't tested it myself since my net connection is always on, but I've heard it SP is not required to be online.
2. Nope, and, in fact, I think you can dl it straight from bnet if you need to. The only "activation" would be associating the game's key to your bnet account, which allows you to download directly.
3. Nope. I don't think it has anything to do with the size or what it installs, but more that any copy protection is done by being connected to bnet (verifying your key) I remember WC3 used to have it where you needed the CD in before they patched it out and other games do and they put their entire contents on the HD.
4. Not that I know of.
If I liked warcraft 3 is this worth getting?
Well.. it's a bit different from Warcraft 3. I'm guessing you haven't played the original Starcraft from your post. The two biggest changes in gameplay are economy and heroes. In WC3, you have your gold mine, send x peasants in, and you're done. In SC2, you have mineral patches which behave more like forests in WC3 in that there are a bunch of them and you build workers to harvest them - and you need many more workers. The second resource in SC2, Vespene Gas, works kind of like the gold mine in WC3 (build structure, send workers in to extract). Then heroes. In SC2, there aren't any heroes with inventories that level up and gear up with items and stuff like that. It's possible to do with the editor, but the hero units in the campaign are buffed up versions of regular units. So whereas the focus of WC3 gameplay was really around your heroes, in SC2 the focus is mainly on normal units (most missions don't get a hero unit even).
That aside, the campaign is incredibly well done. The missions I've seen so far are very varied, much more so than "build base, kill other base". There are cutscenes and interactions between the major characters after every mission, as well as interactive "screens" not unlike point-and-click adventure games (for example, there's a bar with interactable objects you can click on - Jukebox to change music, TV to watch news about your previous mission, pictures to reminiss about the past, other characters for chit-chat, etc). All of this is voiced and animated. You can also upgrade your units and research new designs between missions.
Basically, the campaign presentation is extremely top notch and better than anything Blizzard has ever done. There are 29 missions in all, 26 needed to "win", and an achievement system that encourages you to replay some missions, as the rewards are pretty neat portraits (this extends to Multiplayer as well, with of course better portraits awarded for MP achievements).
I would personally guess the first expac will come out in a year, maaybe 2 years since it's the first. That's just personal experience from how they changed WoW and are trying to get them out on a yearly basis for new content.
Very important point sir! You need to do a one-time online-activation on install! This is unlikely to be an issue but I figure best to warn you incase it is .
This. Is. AMAZING.
I think its now on my purchase list.
http://pc.ign.com/articles/110/1109117p1.html first impressions from IGN.
On Youtube, JosefVStalin is doing a full playthrough of the campaign, in English. Josef is a very talented commentator who is also a devout StarCraft fan. Spoilers out the kazoonie of course, but if you want to see what the campaign is like ...
HDStarCraft and HuskyStarCraft are two extremely excellent commentators with huge subscriber bases on YouTube. Keep an eye on them. They will be posting commented pro gameplay for the release version as it becomes available. You can learn a huge amount about openings and strategies for each race by watching their videos and listening to them. There are also tutorials they have posted.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXUHJwDD-Ds&playnext=1&videos=mbhPm85tgNA is Mission #1 from HuskyStarCraft.
I believe Annatar has summed it all up perfectly. The gameplay is fast and addictive, and very fun. The level of polish in Starcraft II is also something that really needs to be seen to be understood. I recommend taking a trip to YouTube, it's filling up with hours upon hours of Starcraft II gameplay footage.One thing to be noted is that the game's online component is segmented into geographical regions. These regions are restrictive of all online components. A player from Australia, for example, cannot play against European Players, cannot post on the European Forums and cannot download maps made by European players. There are no plans to change this, apart from allowing South East Asian players the ability to play on US Servers. If you play with friends from around the world, you might want to read up on how best to purchase a version all from the same region to ensure you can play together.
Also, if you don't play online, you have to use 1 of 3 Guest accounts. You cannot name this account yourself as the game is no about you, it is about Mr. Rainer and his band of Outlaws (according to the News anyways).
Despite all the NEW stuff in the NEW SC2, the tutorial takes about 3 minutes to complete. The first half dozen missions must be for the incoming SC2 noob community as they pass quickly and pose no real challenge (Normal mode selected)
And being a action based game, if sitting around a BAR or Space Ship clicking on the same things/objects/characters over and over is your thang, then you should obviously rush out and but it.
The term replayablity, in SP is a moot point obviously and going online without some extensive practice is a quest of futility currently. If you didn't Beta, good luck Online...
And I didn't even get a NEW Manual for the NEW game in the Box I got????
Just so the other side of coin is seen so, Relax...
You do know the user map settings maps is where the real replayability is right? I played the original for two years and never played one competitive multiplayer match. And SC2 has a far more powerful map creator then SC1 did.
Try it on Brutal. It's seriously a lot more fun. I replayed some missions in Normal for the achievements which are seriously impossible on Brutal. This morning before work I had about an hour to play, and I wrestled with the Terrazine mission (trying to keep spoiler-free) on Brutal and gave up, going to have to restart and do it differently. I suppose some people would find it annoying, but I like the challenge.
And of the 2000 million maps that will be generated, if .00001% are actually any good, then that is great. Never met a Map that just wasn't the surface on which you played. So your an eye candy type then? and not a substance type?
Quoting Annatar11, reply 18Normal mode selectedTry it on Brutal. It's seriously a lot more fun. I replayed some missions in Normal for the achievements which are seriously impossible on Brutal. This morning before work I had about an hour to play, and I wrestled with the Terrazine mission (trying to keep spoiler-free) on Brutal and gave up, going to have to restart and do it differently. I suppose some people would find it annoying, but I like the challenge.
I didn't bust my ass to get the achievements on "Normal" as they add nothing to the game play. If more and or inflated enemy toughness is what makes it more fun, then I think they may have missed to mark as to what real Fun entails.
Seriously, after playing Company of Hero's, SC2 just doesn't equate.Sending endless streams of fodder out, as long as Rainer lives, seems kinda shallow. When it was about US, with THEM helping (SC) then it was better.
But of course. Each to their own.
There's nothing "inflated". Most of the difficulty comes from unit mixes, though the size of attacks does increase a bit. For example, in the last Mar Sara mission, on Normal you mainly get Zerglings. On Hard, Roaches and Hydralisks appear quite a bit more. On Brutal, Banelings are added into the mix too.
Actually, they haven't. The system doesn't physically exist and hasn't really been talked about since whichever BlizzCon introduced the concept.
Yes, normal mode was made specifically for people who are new to starcraft. Casual is for people who are new and bad at video games. Hard is for people experienced w/ .... why am I laying these out it literally says it in the description next to each difficulty section.
You seem like the type of person that would complain no matter what. "If just doing missions with no story line or extras is your thing, rush out and buy it" would have flown from the mouths of people like you if they didn't include the cool inbetween mission stuff.
Also, of course you're not going to be able to compete with the best of the best online right away. So? This isn't some fps shooter game.. you have to learn it. Everyone starts out as a noob at some point, and there are a LARGE quantity of noobs playing SC2 now. Sounds like you're hating on every game that requires any strategy to it just because you don't get to start out wtf amazing.
here comes the bile from the demigod forum
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
