Gonna try wrap this up. Short and sweet. It's 23:11 here and I need to get an early night.

@UnholyUrine - you mention all the bad things about SC2 and to some extent I agree. But based purely on competitive melee and league gameplay - I can easily see why SC2 is a contender for Game of the Year. I won't labor you with facts etc, but I do agree that some things about SC2 are poorly done. In short Blizzard had to release the game before they had another Operation: CWAL on their hands. And if it came to that scenario I'm sure we'd still be waiting for the game to be released.

Staying with UnholyUrine for this next bit. What you see as a 'Trilogy Gimmick', I view as brilliant marketing and forward thinking on their part. They know that it will take time to perfect things in their entirely brand new Starcraft 2 engine, all the new units will need constant tweaking - as is evident in the 4 or 5 patches we've seen to date. Think about the massive jump in Editor capability from Reign of Chaos into The Frozen Throne. This was primarily because Blizzard didn't expect custom mapping to take off as it did. The current Galaxy Editor, is flawed, yes. But so was WorldEdit 1.0 and so was StarEdit 1.0. I honestly think Blizzard are testing the waters, as it were, in terms of custom map making for SC2. When they realize that not only can we handle their powerful/convoluted Galaxy Editor, but that we can create out-of-the-box thinking and take their engine in new directions - they will give us more to play with.

Sure. I am upset about the Campaign, the voice-acting, the plot-line and the return of Kerrigan. Starcraft 1 was (more than) a decade ago. There are a hell of a lot more teenagers on our planet now than there were in 1998. In simple terms: would you rather create a one-shot make happy potion for the marginally fewer people who dabbled in Starcraft 1? Or would you take a step in a new direction, and create a hugely re-playable online experience for hundreds of thousands of aspiring competitive gamers?

Which, in my humble opinion, is exactly what Blizzard have done. And they've left the door open for future possibilities, especially in the map-making department. The Market system will possibly be implemented with, during or just before the release of Heart of the Swarm, I forget where my source for that knowledge is - but Metzen and others (Browder, I think) are actively pushing for this feature. I believe (from memory) that they are facing legal boundaries in what constitutes as 'intellectual property' and have to seriously bump-up their map protection facilities and accept their active role in the protection of your product which you will be selling through them as an intermediary.

As time goes on the restrictions in the Galaxy Editor will be lifted. Blizzard will realize changes which their fan-base (SC2) want - as opposed to preempting the changes which their old and possibly remaining fan-base (SC1) want. It is no wonder that 3 million copies were sold in it's first month of release (and this excludes pre-orders and digital downloads). It has a score of 93% on Metacritic.

So sure - things havn't been done the way a lot of people would've liked them to be. But I grew out of my Blizzard hating shoes along time ago...

Ps. Said I'd keep this short. Sorry David, I'll reply regarding why I hate consoles so much in the near future.

@DavidJCobb: I remember a time when a 'high-end' computer rig was something attainable, that didn't cost 100s of dollars/pounds, when computer games were reaching newer and newer heights within the technical constraints of current hardware. The fact is now that with quad-core, GPU's, and ever more advancing technology creeping on to the market, the roles have shifted. Instead of the developers working within the constraints of the hardware, the hardware is pushing the developers to aim even further. The trade off here is one between cutting edge graphics, and making the game playable to the masses.

In my original post I pointed out World of Warcraft as a massive turning point in gaming history. Which it rightfully is. It is not the most beautiful game ever, it does not have the most ingenious features, and it certainly cuts corners left right and center. Yet still, it is (in the words of Yahtzee) that "electronic smack addiction". It combined really low level graphics (for it's time), with insane amounts of content and massive multilayer appeal. Gone were the days of Quake 3 Lan Parties, Counter-Strike Tournaments and endless hours of staying up late at a friends house with your computer, his computer and a variety of games. A whole generation of kids were sucked into this gigantic fuck-vortex of 'grinding' and 'leveling'... content to kill the same monsters over and over again for a 0.025% chance of acquiring a Purple Hat.

So in a convoluted and strange jump - I'll return to consoles. With WoW so dominating the computer/desktop realm, Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft had to scramble like mad to bring out the next Generation as it were. Now, my knowledge/chronology of these events are not 100%, but I'll go as far as to say that the time between PS-2, X-box and PS-3 and X-box 360 was very little. The Wii is a bit of an exception. The console appeals to the 'new-agers' who are all like 'lets drink a brewski and play Cod-4 lol'. The console also appeals to the kiddies with parents with fat fucking wallets. If the over-arching influence on the once pure and noble computer gaming industry is to be lead by 'bros' and toddlers, then I'll shoot myself right here, right now.

Okay, so it's late, and I'm probably not making sense. C'est la vie.

I am not denying that PC gaming affects console gaming. And I am not saying at what level it does. To me, they are two completely different elements of the industry. I was trying to make the allusion between quality of computer graphics being the competitive feature for games being developed after World of Warcraft. Of course, Consoles are high end, relatively cheap, respectable and most importantly stable rigs. This is why there is such a divide between console kiddies and others.

Steam has a multi-player system across games. Battle.net 1 had this also. Consoles have a lot of catching up to do with computers in terms of interface and fluidity. Another point I was trying to make (but failed to) is that Consoles are the hard-cap on the current level of graphical expectation which new releases should be achieving. On the whole, the graphics industry is slowing down in terms of noticeable, visual effect. Since the latest generation of consoles (X-Box and PS-3), the computer game industry has been tamed by the fact that since consoles are their primary market adversary, they do not have to go overly beyond the graphical aspects (and indeed the gameplay/userface/features/etc) of what is being released on console. I am talking here about companies which release titles solely for console, or entirely for desktop. SquareEnix for example, Blizzard (to a large extent) being another. ZeniMax/Bethesda, being the complete exception the the rule.

Anyways, I should go sleep. The over-arching point I am trying to get across is that no matter how much we bitch and moan about the fallacies which Starcraft 2 presents us, how awful the campaign is, and how many things they should have done differently... nothing will change. Ahli summed it up best.