Smashboards

I'm so glad StarCraft II is finally out of beta.

Uh... what?

Because that's what LotV is like. It feels like an actual definitive sequel to Brood War and moved the RTS genre forward in some way.

I'm not too interested in how it compares to Brood War. But in what way has it advanced the series?

The most noteworthy thing is they found the threshold of where fun events occur in an RTS and changed the game to expedite the process. By that I mean they drastically kickstart the player's initial economy and they can begin a more active game much sooner.

They also reduced the number of resources to be found in a given location. The end result between the two changes is, first, shorter games on average while still allowing long "epic" games. The other is a greater range of skirmishes over a given battlefield, making it more like an actual war.

I was considering LotV a few months ago, but I don't know who to believe about the impact of their changes. Some people love it, some people hate it, but all in all it doesn't appear to have the momentum it had when it was first released. SC2 vids in the millions of views have dropped to tens of thousands. :/

SC2 was a new game and a lot of people were like "It's the new StarCraft! I can't wait to play it!", but even though it wasn't bad IMO at the point it stopped being new is the point it went back to being... StarCraft. Relative to the activity of what an RTS game should have, being specifically one of the most punishing and skill-indexed games out there, I think 300k~ users sounds about right.

How often do you play?

Never. \o/ If I play RTS again, it will be WarCraft. I've always liked it more of the two Blizzard-owned RTS. WarCraft has always been more about micro, and StarCraft more about macro... both have their advantages but I like the increased emphasis on unit value in WarCraft.

Hey, pissing contest: You have an APM counter, I assume?

Nope?

Shame. I was looking forward to seeing how we stacked up in SCII, much less RTS in general.

I'm more Korean than you so the answer should be obvious.