Tag Archives: warcraft

Starcraft II and what it means

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So the celebrations are ringing out and the predictions are being divined. Starcraft II has been announced and the world is rejoicing at the return to the Koprulu Sector. However, the news brings with it some less overt revelations.

Starcraft: Ghost

Is dead. Announced years earlier, Starcraft: Ghost was meant to whet our appetite for a true sequel to our beloved Starcraft with some tactical espionage action. It was being developed by another studio and was to be released on Xbox, PS2, and Gamecube. Throughout development, Blizzard switched developers and dropped the Gamecube version while pushing the release date back. Ultimately, just last year, Ghost was put on hold and now, the site featuring the game redirects to Blizzard’s homepage, where no mention of it is found.

Of course, this is not the first time Blizzard has done this. If you look on your Starcraft CD, you’ll notice a preview for a game called Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans. Much like SC:G, this game took the world found in its parent game and went off to another genre. Evidently, it failed, but the story that Lord of the Clans was supposed to tell is still a part of the Warcraft universe. Thrall, the main character of Lord of the Clans, is one of the main characters in War3 and WoW.

The theory goes, you’ll find a little bit of SC:G in your SC2.

MMORPGs

Are not Blizzard’s obsession. WoW is insanely successful. The only RPG experience Blizzard has had was with the Diablo series. Many were skeptical about how well Blizzard would do with an MMORPG considering the explosions and melting of D2 realms on patch days. In the end, WoW became the most popular MMORPG in the world, beating EQ’s paltry record.

With this success, comes the moneys that Blizzard gets from monthly subscriptions. And with this came the fear that Blizzard would love our moneys too much and forget about the RTSes that brought Blizzard close to our hearts. Certainly, the biggest worry that everyone had was that the rumoured May 19 announcement would be for a Starcraft MMORPG.

Now that we’ve discovered it isn’t, Blizzard has quashed one of the rumours that has been flying around ever since WoW became cool, that all Blizzard cares about is WoW. And for many, Starcraft II has restored Blizzard’s credibility and faith in the company.

Love-hate

When Diablo II was announced, there were those few crazy zealots who demanded that Starcraft II be announced. The rest of us were either waiting for Warcraft III or were excited for D2. When Warcraft III was announced, many were excited, since it would mark the return to Azeroth for over six years. When WoW was announced, a lot of us went, ‘wait a second, didn’t they just release Warcraft III?’

Since Lord of Destruction was released in 2001, all Blizzard has given us has been Warcraft. We’ve had Warcraft III, its expansion, WoW, and its expansion. Up until now, it’s been almost nine years since Starcraft was released and during the past five years of Warcraft mania, many had given up hope, believing that Blizzard hated Starcraft. To put it into perspective, From the moment Warcraft III was announced and Blizzard worked the Warcraft machine to the moment Starcraft II was announced, I’d graduated from elementary school and high school.

Now, with Starcraft II, Blizzard has quashed yet another popular belief: that they are in love with Warcraft and will produce WoW expansions until the end of time and will never produce another Starcraft game again.

Zerg

Warcraft III, as some guy that we all hate has mentioned, is basically Blizzard admitting that all of its games are about micro. Warcraft III brought the unit cap down from 200 to 80, which was later bumped up to 100 in the expansion. It also brought upkeep and heroes, to focus the game on a smaller number of units. While it was unique, many were worried that Blizzard would continue to focus downward in its RTSes.

With Starcraft II, that is no longer the case. No, in fact, looking at the screenshots, it seems Zerg swarms will actually be that: swarms. Tons and tons of units fill the screens of Zergling rushes on Terran bases. In fact, one of the features of Starcraft II is fighting with large amounts of units.

The new race

Is none. There is no new race. Blizzard has said this explicitly. There will be no fourth race. There will be no fifth race. The only playable races will be Terran, Zerg, and Protoss. This is good.

Warcraft III was originally planned for five races: the Alliance, the Horde, the Night Elves, the Scource, and the Burning Legion. Eventually, Blizzard found the task of balancing five races to be too difficult, so they turned the Burning Legion into a special non-playable race. Of course, that is an overstatement: in the actual game, the Burning Legion feels more like a few creeps that look alike than an actual race. The Naga in the Frozen Throne feel more like the half race that Blizzard intended the Legion to be.

Even with four races, the races were not completely unique as in Starcraft. They all had tiers, they all had three heroes, they all had the same basic unit roles covered. In Starcraft, we had three completely different races with completely different playstyles. With Starcraft II, Blizzard has stated that it intends to continue in this direction and make each race even more unique while being one of the most balanced games released.

Conclusion

The announcement of Starcraft II was a surprise in many ways and we all look forward to playing it. Of course, given Blizzard’s releases, this means that might not happen until after we die.

The Lore of Azeroth

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One of my biggest criticisms of WoW is that it makes a lot of what happened in Warcraft III irrelevant. The lore in WoW does have some cool things, like the appearance of some of the heroes from Beyond the Dark Portal and such, but other than that, a lot of the way WoW is set up doesn’t make sense.

The Sentinels

One of the things that I really didn’t like about WoW was the fact that they split the world up into Horde vs. Alliance again. The reason for this is that it simplifies the complex relationships between different factions too much. We’ll start with the nelfs.

The Night Elves are not part of the original Alliance. The original Alliance began at the beginning of Warcraft II, when the seven Human nations, the Dwarves, the Gnomes, and the High Elves decided to fight against the Horde. By the time Warcraft III started, one of the Human kingdoms had been destroyed, two others had left, and the Elves also left. And after Warcraft III, the Elves and three nations were destroyed. Not including the Night Elves, the Alliance was left with Azeroth, Kul Tiras, and Ironforge.

When we first meet the Night Elves, they are hostile towards both the Alliance and the Horde. Yes, the Alliance and the Horde band together to fight against the Night Elves for a bit. So, in fact, the Night Elves and the Alliance are not best friends forever. Even when the Night Elves warm up to the Alliance, it’s not the actual Alliance, but Jaina’s little force that she brought to Kalimdor, acting on its own, separate from the Alliance.

So if the Night Elves’ only contact with the Alliance was Jaina, how did they end up as a part of the Alliance?

Jaina and Theramore Isle

Other than the Night Elves, the only other way to get to Kalimdor is by going to Theramore Isle, where Jaina Proudmoore’s force has made its home. The question here is, why is Theramore a part of the Alliance?

In the bonus campaign in The Frozen Throne, we see that relations between Theramore and Orgrimmar are friendly. By the end of it, we discover that Kul Tiras has sent its fleet over to chase down the Orcs. The battle ends with Thrall and Jaina’s forces beating down on Kul Tiras’ military and killing Admiral Daelin Proudmoore, Jaina’s father and ruler of Kul Tiras.

Jaina’s forces had killed the one of the founders of the Alliance and was an ally of the Horde. Why is she still a part of the Alliance?

The New Horde

The best part of Warcraft III is easily the journey that the Orcs make in cleansing their demonic taint. Thrall does this and returns the Horde to its shamanistic traditions. If there’s anything that we can take away from Warcraft III, it’s that the Orcs are not the villains in this story.

One major problem of Horde vs. Alliance is that it polarizes the world into what people may confuse as good and evil. Anyone who’s played through any of the previous games would know that the Horde are now anything but evil and that the Alliance is not the epitome of good. And yet, we have people now who think that Alliance = good and Horde = evil.

A different problem with the new Horde are the inclusion of the Forsaken and the Blood Elves.

Like the Night Elves, the Forsaken have had no contact whatsoever with the new Horde. All the events that led to the creation of the Forsaken happened in Lordaeron, away from the founding of Durotar in Kalimdor. And even then, the Forsaken are made up of the Undead people of Lordaeron and Quel’Thalas. These people have only known the Horde as the engine of destruction that swept through their lands.

The new Horde is supposed to be free of demonic influence. The Orcs were once a people who were addicted to Mannoroth’s blood, and Grom Hellscream was able to end that curse. So what are the Blood Elves, a people addicted to demonic magic, doing in the Horde? They certainly aren’t trying to stop their addiction; they’re looking for a way to find Kael’thas and Illidan, who promised to feed them all the demonic magic they could get.

The Draenei

In the Warcraft II manual, we learn that the reason that the Orcs came to Azeroth was that they ran out of things to kill. They’d conquered the world of Draenor and killed every single one of the Draenei. The Draenei were weak and got owned quite easily.

Now, in The Burning Crusade, we learn that the Draenei are actually Eredar who escaped from Sargeras. We also learn that the Draenei are totally awesome and are architects of flying fortresses and glowing cities. Oh yeah, and not all the Draenei died.

Just how did the Draenei get destroyed by the Orcs if they were actually Eredar? You do know who else is an Eredar, yes? Archimonde the Defiler and Kil’jaeden the Deceiver are two of the more well known Eredar. Archimonde was the one who almost destroyed the World Tree, Nordrassil, and Kil’jaeden is the one that scares the crap out of Illidan. You’re telling me that the Orcs were able to destroy most of the Eredar on Draenor?

Orcs in Space

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I was bored and decided to give Warcraft III a shot on my Macbook. Amazingly, even in Rosetta, it runs awesomely. I really have to give it to the folks at Blizzard. Somehow, they manage to push the system requirements of their games really, really low, so everyone can enjoy them. I was running it at 1280×800!

Anyway, that means I should look into finally getting The Frozen Throne. Damn, there’s a lot of stuff I need to get, including D2 and NWN. I imagine that once I get an income, I’ll get sucked into World of Warcrack, never to return, like so many.

Burning Crap

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I just watched the World of Warcraft Burning Crusade trailer and it was the worst trailer that Blizzard has ever put out. Watch any of their other trailers: D2, War3, even WoW, and you’ll notice the quality of the trailer, as if it were for a motion picture. Their trailers were more for the story than gameplay, since everyone pretty much knew how the ganes would be played before the game even came out. The Burning Crusade one, though, was crap. Just a list of features and flashing pictures. Not very Blizzard at all. I’m worried that this is the company that’s supposed to develop Starcraft II.