Blizzard is successful because it delivers a polished product that runs well on a wide range of computer systems. The games are highly accessible from both a single-player and multiplayer perspective. Hard core guys like the multiplayer, and pretty much everyone else likes to tune in for the fantastic CGI, and the funny voice work. Blizzard is probably one of the few companies that gets distinctive audio right.

They aren't very original. But don't fool yourselves, they're not an industrial juggernaught because of luck. I see alot of people simply trashing A+ games like Oblivion and Starcraft because of what? They didn't meet somekind of ultimate standard of awesome? Seriously, where would you have us look? If Starcraft, Supreme Commander, Total Annihilation and Sins of A Solar Empire are all completely flawed beyond redeeming and only boosted by hype, what should we be playing? Sudden Strike? God no. Honestly, there are only a handful of dominant games out during any 10 year period. Usually anything beyond that few (Maybe 20-30) are pretty much awful, or extremely taste specific. Real games triumph through universal appeal, not by satisfying hardcore urges or some other sort of mucky muck nerd ideal.

Popular appeal and units sold is the real test of a quality game. A gem that gets great reviews and doesn't get picked up by the masses is nothing but a shame. Seriously, who wants to spend all the money, make a great game, and go out of business because your 'art' was too good for anyone else? That might be okay for one guy, but not 30+ people in a company with families to support.

Yeah we all know that blizzard is ripping of stuff massively. But its not the the quality of the parts that count, its the final product, the feel you get playing the game etc.
Everyone is ripping of somewhere. Most things have been done and are not new.
Dawn of War Raptor marines are not innovative, they are taken from the Warhammer 40k universe ( on which the game is based on anyway ) and i can tell you, these guys rip off ALOT of stuff.
Most things in this world are not unique.

Mmm, please, Uranium, I gave you the decency to read your entire post and made myself comprehend every sentence. Warcraft = RPS. No 'g'. Please, I really am not making this up: Warcraft 3's genre is clearly labeled as an "RPS" - Role playing strategy game. Not role playing game, not real time strategy - role. Playing. Strategy.

World of Warcraft is the game that has 10 million subscribers, the game you so heatedly bashed on for being a pathetic excuse for anything resembling a good game - well, mate, 10 million people disagree. 10 million people spending 50 bucks a year, effectively re-buying the game every year, because, well, compared to you, and a few others, they think it is a "good game."

Please, I will give you this opportunity: list us every example of campaign games from REAL TIME STRATEGY games (since you seem to have so much trouble with genres) that does NOT follow that formula of "Kill the enemy base in such a way" or "Bring X unit to Y location in Z time" or any combination/variance of the sort.

Initial sales were average, I'll grant you that - however, seeing as to how Starcraft wasn't originally supposed to be a Blizzard game, Blizzard itself was only known to the few who played Diablo and or Warcraft's 1 and 2 (which were real time strategy games), and seeing as to how media attention - what little there was back then - was divided among other more "hyped up" games, the fact that Starcraft did come out on top in a steady incline of both sales and subscribers can not be ignored simply because you don't want it to be a "good game."

Sibilantae, I love Sins - I have said this before. I was merely pointing out to Uranium that Sins of a Solar Empire does not live up to his stated definition of a good game, so I am wondering why he is here.

My beef with SCII is simple, why am I supposed to get excited for a $50 game that basically features ten year old gameplay conventions with new graphics, when I can get the same gameplay from the original for $20? The economy of fun says this is stupid. Sure the graphics look better, but guess what, I can run Starcraft on my laptop, and Company of Heroes already looks like it has better graphics than SCII. The fact that it's a sequal to a game that sold buckets isn't a reason to buy it, nor is the bit where it has gameplay virtually identical to a ten year old game. If anything that's reason to treat it with suspicion, since as said if I want a game that plays like that I can get it elsewhere for cheaper, and being a sequal to a best seller it's unlikely to change much.

Why won't Starcraft II live up to the best RTS of the past decade? Because the best RTS of the last decade was Total Annihilation. Okay, okay, yeah, TA came out in '97, but you know what I mean.

Starcraft II looks like it will be a carbon copy of Starcraft, except with better graphics. If you want to improve on a game with a sequel, do what Chris Taylor did with TA and Supreme Commander, even though SC isn't an official sequel.

Frankly, the second best RTS (or at least the most original and innovative) of the last 10 years was Supreme Commander.

Sins is close behind.

I'm not sure I agree with you on that point - I own TA, and my friends and I played it, well, sparingly. TA was fun for a short while, and it was a good game, but I would hardly claim it's the best game of the decade.



Once again, I don't agree with this. Perhaps to you they are the best two games of the past decade +1, but I would like to see some evidence.

The best games are games that innovate, but still manage to provide a solid gaming experience. I agree with the poster who stated that innovation doesn't count for much if the game isn't fun. Games with little 'new' features can still be fun if they are polished and play well. However, they can get a little dull after some time.

Really, new features in games make them fresh and exciting, and are absolutely neccessary to keep a genre alive. However, developers must find the fine balance between innovation and good gameplay. A game may be totally original, but if it's completely foreign, people usually won't enjoy it. Then again, if a game uses the same old conventions, but pulls them off seamlessly, then it usually will have some longevity because it will be fun. Unfortunately, then it seems to come down to which developer has the most funds to make it look better and can take time to 'polish' it. I played Starcraft for years with my friends, and we also played a bit of Warcraft 2 and 3. I enjoyed all these games, but Warcraft became a little tiring after a while.

Why?

The problem was that when playing against my friends, I could effectively use similar strategies over and over again to win. I was the fastest with a mouse, and knew the shortcuts better than everyone else. Therefore, I always won. Now, I realize that Warcraft has far more depth than this, and that playing online would present other new ways of playing, but the pattern would be the same. You learn a few more strategies, then you execute them. If you can micromanage better, you usually win. Besides, the real 'magic' of a game came out when my friends and I would get together and play. The internet always felt like an advanced AI player to me, and winning usually gave me very little satisfaction. I know that isn't true for everyone though.

As great as Sins is, it doesn't do anything terribly new, but the way it presents it's features is innovative. I would like to see a little more depth, and more methods to win other than total conquest, but as a whole, Sins is greater than the sum of its parts. Sins provides solid gameplay, while presenting RTS conventions in a new manner. Also, the focus has been shifted from micromanagement to macromanagment for the most part, and this is refreshing for those who don't click as fast as others. I can't wait for the expansion, as I hope to see greater depth in Sins, and that Ironclad continues to innovate in its developments.

I am with those who are taking the wait and see look but in my personal I dont see BLIZZARD making any big changes in SC2 game play. It will be the same old thing gather completed mission move the story ahead. Which I don't mind a little but I am hoping for some real design changes in the game like "World in Conflict"." That will make you ADD people happy.
You can change the name or type of a game but WarCraft and StarCraft 1 thru 3 were all the same with a continued story.
I dont need simple I dont have ADD as I wrote before I was looking for something with a lot of depth and Sins works for me "I have battles, politics, "pay-for-hire hit men", Insurgencies, management Oh yes this is a very deep game.
If it keeps crashing "UPGRADE THAT CHEEP PC"
I would like to see a Single player campaign up to the stopping of the Varsari and Advent.

The next gen RTS will be Dawn of War 2. It's about the only upcoming RTS that appears to shift the genre in a different direction.

However true future will be some form of no base building on combat maps, focus on smaller amounts of units with better independent AI, persistent campaigns where your army and your success has an impact on future battles and territory you fight over, that's where the future is.

The whole resource gathering is a legacy component from the days of the early RTS and it needs to go. Instead a requisition / territory control system would do better.

Ok ive tried to keep my mouth shut and watch this debate happen. Admittedly some of you have very good points to make but, i am siding with Wyvern because he has looked at this from a non sins fanatic perspective. but honestly what is there left for you to do in an RTS game that has not been done before. I played total annihilation and i must say the gameplay was awesome and the fact that there were the different unit types such as air water and land was unique for its time. starcraft also had its own innovation in that it had three distinct unique races to choose from, and to those who say the campaign was crap, name one RTS made between 1990 and 2000 that did not have the same types of missions I know TA did and age of empires and warcraft one and two, and command and conquer shall i go on.

now even since the start of the millennium i have yet to see a game that did not require you to start from your base build an army/fleet and take over and destroy the enemy's army/fleet and base even in sins you must still do that. oh and the 3d combat found in sins means shit when it comes to the actual tactics and strategy used to play the game since you cannot command the ships on the vertical axis. basically the 3d is in this game to make it look pretty when you look in on the battle.

and once again i must stress the point that warcraft 3 was not developed by the same team that has been working on starcraft 2, should we not have bought the call of duty four game because call of duty 3 sucked due to it being made by a different team. no we should not. infact the very fact that starcraft takes place on a map with terrain and obtacles changes the gameplay required from map to map where as in sins we only have to worry about how many planets away he is since you have to destroy all of the opposing forces planets in order to obtain victory.

The original poster has made my point clear: STARCRAFT (I and II) IS OVER RATED.

As for Blizzard making no new changes to Starcraft: Can you blame them? Based on what I've read (and know), these games are unimaginiative. Three factions? Been there, done that. (No harm to Sins.)

Starcraft II being a major disappoint? DUH! They're terrified of making changes that will disrupt "Starcraft" feel. That "feel" being just about every single RTS out there.

Blizzard could have been imaginative, and added another faction. But no! We have to make the same game over again, and delay it! Blizzard is too worried about the $4 a day Koreans that worship their games to be "disappointed". People I know have been to South Korea. Yeah, Starcraft is big there. Other games are getting popular there, too.

A few more things. Blizzard is popular for no good reason these days. They continue to dwell on the fact that they made one good game a long time ago. Now they rely on South Korea, which is obsessed, and the fan-boy gushing of PC Gamer and the other game mags. If it weren't for them, Blizzard would not be a prominient developer.

I'm also betting money that when another really good game comes to South Korea, the people there will toss StarCraft out the window, and play the new game.

Etrius

i dont call a comp that runs crisis on full cheap so if it isnt me who is it?

A lot of very bitter people here. I sense a lot of people actually resent SC because it completely overshadowed their personal favourite RTS games.

Seriously, if SC isn't your cup of tea, that's fine. However, to say it has little strategy is like saying sins is pure micro. SC wasn't originally designed with hard core micro (to the level of the Koreans) in mind. However, at some point, there will be a limit to the amount of strategies you can use. What separates great players from good players at that point is their ability to micro.

If you've seen the trailers and read the features of the game, it's blatantly obvious that it will be a step forward for SC. They're not radically changing the gameplay as they did with WC2 -> WC3 with the introduction of heroes and low unit counts. They're keeping the same core gameplay that made SC so popular and "levelling it up". SC will sell well not just from hype, but because it will be a good game.

Lastly, WOW didn't become the biggest MMO in history because it's Blizz that's making it. It's because it's honestly the best mainstream catering MMORPG out there right now. It destroyed its competition by being *better* than them and not because it's warcraft IP and it came from Blizzard. Take off your jaded glasses and see it for what it is.

We already did, my friend, and if you lift the veil from your face, you'll see that WOW isn't very good. Once again, Blizzard depended on extreme hype, inflated reviews, and the "I'm better than you for no reason" attitude. Thanks to that, many people have fairly bad lives playing something that is very unentertaining. Same for Starcraft. I'd rather people check out other strategy games that have scored high reviews, or even look into whole new genres.

One more thing. If any game series were to be deserving of a Uwe Boll movie adaptation, it would be StarCraft or WarCraft.

Etrius

No it isn't!



You're wrong, that "feel" IS Starcraft, I've tried a lot of RTS and Starcraft is Starcraft. In Starcraft every low tech unit counts; you produce zealots/marines/zerglings even when you have the tech to produce tanks, goliaths, dragoons, ultralisks and whatever you want to use AND they serve for more than a cannon fodder. Unlike Supreme Commander where you get the higher tech and forget for the lower tech army. In Starcraft, not only there are 3 unique races, every race have more than 10 unique units; and when i say unique, I mean that this:

In tier 1 you have:
Zealot: 100 minerals, 160hp, 16dmg.
in tier 2 you don't get another unit like
XXX: 150 minerals, 250hp, 25dmg.
and in tier 3 you don't get another unit like
YYY: 200 minerals, 350hp, 35dmg.

when I look at the above, many, many games come to my mind. And they are not good games...



What new game?
Maybe you're right, but for the last 10 years, they're not playing so much Red Alert 2, Dawn of War, C&C3, Supreme Commander, Company of Heroes or whatever is on your mind...

Greatest RTS of the past decade? You're right, I doubt that SC2 will be any competition for Rise of Nations. Still, it's worth at least playing the demo to see what they've done with it. Starcraft was fun enough for its era.