It really bums me out when companies that have terrible, user-hostile policies get rewarded with record-smashing sales. You know their CEOs see the sales report and are all too happy to attribute it to their own doing. See Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 for another example.
Probably the most controversial misfeature is that Starcraft 2 doesn't provide LAN support, ostensibly to combat piracy. If you want officially-supported multi-player, it's Blizzard's Battle.net service or gtfo.
Starcraft is a national sport in some countries. Not having LAN support is pretty significant because you can't get low latency like that any other way.
Really? I don't buy it. The game hosting is still peer to peer, the packets shouldn't have any need to leave the local network once the game is started.
I'd have to see actual tests of people on the same local network with high latency before I'd believe it's a problem.
Region locked - You have to have the US version of the game to play against US players and no playing against South Korea.
Removed 'spawn' install - locked down installation so you can play 1 copy on several computers - but only with each other.
The single player campaigns are going to be broken up into 3 $60 games.
There's the Real-id fiasco that they've backed off a little bit on.
User made maps aren't files that can be passed around, they MUST be hosted on bnet's servers, and there's a 25MB limit per-account.
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However you fall on the question, the real problem is we end up not talking about the various merits of the game and how much we can't wait to play it, but instead dissect the policies surrounding the game.
1.5 million is still pretty low for a game of this caliber and fan base. I know this is hearsay but I can't help but think that the previously stated points on their new user-hostile policies hurt sales fairly badly this round.
It's huge for a contemporary PC release. 150k copies would be great performance for a typical PC game in its first week on the market. Most AAA PC titles will never break a million copies.
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 38.7 ms ] threadThey are going to do that. This only has the Terran campaign.
2, They released another RTS, Warcraft III and an expansion, then an MMO.
I'd have to see actual tests of people on the same local network with high latency before I'd believe it's a problem.
I am betting a heartbeat or something to blizzard is happening at least.
Removed 'spawn' install - locked down installation so you can play 1 copy on several computers - but only with each other.
The single player campaigns are going to be broken up into 3 $60 games.
There's the Real-id fiasco that they've backed off a little bit on.
User made maps aren't files that can be passed around, they MUST be hosted on bnet's servers, and there's a 25MB limit per-account.
--
However you fall on the question, the real problem is we end up not talking about the various merits of the game and how much we can't wait to play it, but instead dissect the policies surrounding the game.
Also, what happens when battle.net is down?