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[Keiseth]

In contrast to that, there are many unusual games(indie games) that will completely rely on Microsoft and use shit like the Windows API, DirectX, .NET, etc. Maybe they just don't have the resources or experience to work with more reliable and compatible tools, but it really annoys me that someone who calls himself "independent" relies on Microsoft.

Every time I see a program written in .NET, a little bit of me dies inside. I can't see the virtue in learning a language that guarantees you'll be the loyal slave of the creator more or less forever, especially when that creator has all of the honor of... Microsoft.

You might be independent in the usual sense, but if the popularity of your game draws people to the single operating system your game relies on... it loses some of its meaning. It's like being sponsored by Microsoft but you're paying them.

But I ramble. Starcraft.

Really, the premium maps aren't evil at all. It's a modder's choice to make them premium. What I'm worried about is that a "portion" of the revenue goes to the modder. Does a $5 map give them $2.50? $1.50? $.50? We're talking about Blizzard here. They could cancel all of their projects save WoW and still come out disgustingly rich off it, I presume. If premium maps are to encourage creative thinking and a monetary reward for being clever, then excellent. If it's way for blizzard to exploit a popular aspect of a game to fill up bags with dollar signs on them, then what the hell? Even a 50/50 cut would raise my eyebrows, and yet I see it as being even less.

[Zironic]

I'd pay like 50 cents for a high quality RTS map.

[Virex]

On tghe toppic of Blizzard's nature, the way Blizzard seems to work is that they take an established concept and then keep pollishing it. Even at the time of their release, the concepts behind Starcraft, Diablo 1 and 2, Warcraft 3, The lost Vikings and many of their other games were already outdated (for example, Total Anihilation came before Starcraft and introduced several new concepts). They never provide any real innovation (even Warcraft 3's heroes were predated by hero-like units in Empire Earth and Kohan, and arguably also by earlier TBS games like the Heroes of Might and Magic series and Age of Wonders). What they do provide is near perfect excecution of the game's core idea.

This is also why their games seem weaker then they are. They don't offer any innovation, they use age old concepts. Yet, I think that I speak for many of us if I say that we secretly like a lot of their games, not by virtue of being new or innovative, but by offering a recognisable principle and making it just feel right. This of course isn't true for all of us or every game (Starcraft only appeals to a small portion of gamers). We shouldn't like them, and yet we still do.

[Ampersand]

I never liked Blizzard. -GASP- But really. I don't like Starcraft, or Warcraft, or WoW, or any of that. I prefer Relic, for the Company of Heroes games, and even thought Dawn of War 2 was pretty decent.

Starcraft and CnC never appealed much to me, as they're not really strategy games if you look close, they're tactics games. Unit X will always defeat unit Y, Y will defeat Z, and Z will defeat X. There's no fun in that to me.

When a squad of riflemen throws a lucky grenade into the treads of a King Tiger tank that makes it go around in circles while my tanks blow holes in it's armor, that makes me happy.

[DJ]

You can't really make statements on any one specific unit type in Starcraft. They need to be viewed as a part of a combined force. I think that the combined force of each race provides interesting strategical choices.

[Chutney]

Wait. That's terrible. "Starcraft isn't fun because I only play online" and "Company of Heroes is fun because I only play with friends". Think about that for a second.
Playing with friends who understand the experience you all want to get (nice, cinematic battles) is entirely different than playing essentially tournament level matches where the way to win is rapidclicking and build order.

I never said I play Starcraft online either. I play both with friends or in a cybercafe. And yes, Starcraft is still much more micro heavy even when playing casually.

In that case, you are....ABSOLVED!!!  You were just a bit unclear with your original statement...

but Blizzard games are incredibly polished. They may not innovate, but they can take a concept and make it as absolutely perfect as possible. That's the charm in them.

[Kanil]

So I can pour hours of effort into making a good map...

Then charge for it, ensuring a grand total of 20 people will ever play it...

so I can make $3?

Huh.

[qwertyuiopas]

As for starcraft, I find it a bit boring too....

Until you get into LAN games of some of the more interesting Use Map Settings games.


Anyone who has played it, imagine playing Mount Impossible in the same room with 3-4 other people. Or really any decent UMS on any small LAN, with people you know.


THAT is the starcraft I know and love, not the micromanaging nightmare of rock, paper, scisors that I hear competitive play is. STARCRAFT, to me, is casual LAN UMS. And I also kind of like the editors.

[zchris13]

The explosions look really pretty.

[Chutney]

So I can pour hours of effort into making a good map...

Then charge for it, ensuring a grand total of 20 people will ever play it...

so I can make $3?

Huh.

Be the first one to make Starcraft 2 DOTA.

[smokingwreckage]

Blizzard's strength in Lore is that they identify the exciting parts of the story and put the player right in them. In Supcomm the opposite was true, at least for the expansion!

[Muz]

So I can pour hours of effort into making a good map...

Then charge for it, ensuring a grand total of 20 people will ever play it...

so I can make $3?

Huh.

Be the first one to make Starcraft 2 DOTA.

The irony is that if anyone ever made a mod/map of the same level as DOTA or Counter-Strike, if they charged for it, not enough people would test it out and make it popular.

[Tlaon]

I will always respect Blizzard.  It's not because their games are polished, have a fine-tuned balance, and look presentable (although they are), but for the simple reason that Warcraft III introduced me to modding.  My experience in RTSes is far from complete, but WCIII is the only RTS I have ever played that allows such sweeping changes in gameplay through its map editor.  This is not to say that the editor isn't buggy and, in some ways, annoying incomplete.  Those things don't matter too much.  The editor is there, and it works well enough to foster a community of mods that turns Warcraft III into a library of games, many of them far better than vanilla Warcraft.  DotA is, of course, the most well known and one of the most polished, but it's really on the shallow end of what can be done with the editor.

With Starcraft II, Blizzard has promised to make the editor even more powerful, and thus earned themselves my money.  The premium maps feature is not something I expect to work in terms of growing the modding scene, but it's a noble effort.  Currently, Blizzard gets 100% of the profits that result from custom maps (It doesn't seem too unlikely to me that people would buy the game in order to play DotA).  Their offer to share some of these profits is quite prudent on their part, and if it results in even one map worth the price, it will have succeeded.

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

(It doesn't seem too unlikely to me that people would buy the game in order to play DotA).

2 word: Gaming cafes.

(Oh, and the fact that 'copies' of TFT propagates through schools is... well...)