I don't expect to buy SC2. Here are my reasons:
1. Why would I? There are dozens, if not hundreds, of games that come out every day that I don't buy (I usually play freeware and abandonware); the fact that this one is somewhat similar to one that I already have doesn't suddenly make it a must-buy when nothing else is. And to be honest, I wasn't
that impressed with the gameplay.
2. High price. Blizzard has said that they're going to do with SC2 expansions the same thing that they did with SC1 expansions: if you don't buy the expansion, you get sectioned off into a sub-area of battle.net. Judging by how the community treated users without Broodwar on SC1, it seems likely that having a good experience will mean buying the expansions. Add onto that the cost of premium maps, and the price could easily get into the triple digits. I'm sorry, but when there are so many good freeware and abandonware games out there that I can get for free, SC2 just doesn't make financial sense. Yes, I
could buy it...I've got enough money in the bank to buy it and have enough left over for a sports car. But you don't get ahead in life by wasting money just because you
can.
3. Blizzard treated Mac users, and map-makers in particular, badly for SC1, and show no sign of doing otherwise for SC2. Not only were there long periods of time when new Mac users could not install the game (due to not being able to switch to 256 colors), but after a while, they stopped upgrading SC1 for OS9, while
not upgrading StarEdit for OSX. So if you had an old Mac, all of a sudden, a patch came out that made it impossible to play the game (that you paid for, and which was part of your life)...and if you upgraded to a newer computer, StarEdit (and any patched versions thereof, such as StarFire Edit) wouldn't work. The result of all this was that if you were a Mac map maker and didn't have the capability to emulate Windows, or a computer of just the right, intermediate age range, you were basically screwed (okay, there are OS9 emulation solutions that will let you get StarEdit up, but they tend to be fairly slow and unstable, and there's no way to get some of the StarEdit-patch-type editors working this way). Finally, Blizzard has done nothing on SC1 to keep PC users from degrading the Mac playing experience by releasing and popularizing content that will crash Mac users without warning (and I don't just mean EUDs...many protection methods, certain editors, and some completely random, unidentifiable happenings can render maps Mac-incompatible, and the maps are often released that way despite the availability of alternative methods that would keep the maps compatible with absolutely no sacrifice to the PC users). If I thought that Blizzard was going to go back to its old ways of platform equality with SC2, I'd be willing to forgive all of this, but indications from the beta were entirely to the contrary, with the Mac beta lagging behind the PC beta at every stage, including a far earlier release of the editor for PC users. Say whatever you want about profit coming from the company catering to the greatest number...to me, as a consumer, none of that matters. If I'm worried that you're going to let me spend my money and then screw me over down the road, you're not going to get me as a customer.
4. The system requirements state that the minimum system requirements may change at any time. Right now, my three-year-old laptop is just meeting the minimum in some categories, and as I don't support the dynamic of planned obsolescence that works to force computer users to buy constant upgrades when they don't have to be necessary, I have no intention of upgrading my computer anytime soon. What that means is that if I buy the game, at any moment, it might be upgraded beyond my capability to play it...as happened to some users with SC1. I'm not going to spend my money on, and invest my time building development skills for, a game that I have no guarantee of being able to run tomorrow.
5. Battle.net 2.0. Do I even need to say anything here? Map release slots, badly-sorted lists, awkward social functionality...I would have been happier with a re-use of the same Battle.net system that they've always used.
6. I want to keep SC1 alive as long as possible. I'd rather not lose a game that I've spent so long on. Besides, when SC1 dies, so do all of the maps that people have made for it...and so does your ability to get more games to play, for free, from people making new maps for it...and so does the usefulness of the skills that we've developed to make maps for it.
7. SC2 map-making is more powerful, which seems good at first...but it also means that in the long run, those of us who are not "computer people"-- who don't program, who aren't going to be engineers or graphic designers or computer scientists or (insert other form of cubicle-dweller here)-- are going to have a very hard time competing as map-makers against the people who
are coders/devs/whatever. As a member of the first category, I just don't see myself having a successful run at SC2 mapping...there's plenty that I'm sure I could easily do and learn, but what does that matter when there's so much more available to the competition?
Is that enough reasons for ya?
Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Aug 6 2010, 1:37 pm by FoxWolf1.
None.