I'm not playing Star Craft 2 today

I may be one of the few who isn't, but I made a decision not to buy Star Craft 2 even though I had been looking forward to it.  I even got a beta invite that I never used, much to the chagrin of a friend who wanted me to give it to him.  I really did like the original and I'm sure I would enjoy the sequal equally as much, but in the end I don't really want to pay $59.99 for a hobbled game.  And by hobbled I mean a game that doesn't offer out of the box LAN support, and which doesn't feature campaign modes for all three races.  You can't even play it without logging into Battle.Net, which means no stand-alone laptop play or playing directly connected to my son over our home network.  "Conicidentally" it also means I wouldn't be able to sell the game after I've played it as it will be tied to my Battle.Net account.  In order to sell it to someone I'd have to give them my Battle.Net username and password.  I'm sure Blizzard didn't mean to do that as the law allows me to sell my software and Blizzard wouldn't do anything to infringe on my rights, now would they?  Forcing me to tether to Battle.Net is only about being able to communicate with my friends wherever they are in Blizzard's gaming network, right? 

Sorry, but playing WoW I know how often Battle.Net has issues, and didn't another company find out these sorts of plans have issues recently (more)?  Of course a lot of players had issue with the scheme before the game was released too.  Did Ubisoft listen?  Neither did Blizzard.  Blizzard used to be a model company, but in the past year they have started to through around their weight and are now in that transformative period where they are no longer an "us" and are becoming a "them".

SC2 ships with only a single campaign mode -- Terran -- though Blizzard has said they would add campaigns for the Proteoss and Zerg at a later date.  Of course that's lead to much speculation about how they'd do that exactly with most people making the assumption that Blizzard will be charging for those updates.  Bobby Kotick has made it clear he's going to wring every penny out of the market, which is understandable from a business standpoint, but from a consumer standpoint is something alltogether different.  I decided to vote with my pocketbook and not purchase now.  I'll wait for the price to drop to $20 in the future and decide then if I'll buy it or not.

38 Studios project mercury coming to fruition

I read about this in USA Today earlier this morning, so I was looking for a little more information.  Leave it to Gamasutra to deliver.  Curt Schilling made quite a stir when he let it be known a couple years ago that he was an avid WoW fan, and that he had founded a company and would be publishing games of his own.  Glad to see his hard work is finally coming to fruition and looking forward to learning more about this first game.

Blizzard's RealID and the privacy violation it represents

I don’t normally like to pile on. I’m not one to follow the crowd or entertain fads and so I found myself this week not really wanting to talk about Blizzard’s new RealID system as virtually everyone else was. But in all the articles I’ve read about it this week not one has really said the things I would say. So despite my natural inclination to not pile on, I’m going to do so. In short I am not in favor of RealID and will not be using it in its current form. I can, however, see the attraction for Blizzard as they seek to tap the social networking aspect of the technology as common feature in al their current and upcoming games. The ability to communicate with friends across games and platforms natively is indeed a strong draw, but the current implementation is deeply flawed.

First, Blizzard created the system with absolutely no way to “opt out”. If you do not wish to participate in the RealID system you must “ignore request” from every user who sends you a friend request. You’ll get a popup notification when you receive the friend request, which will reappear every time you log in until you either accept or ignore it. The notification will also periodically reappear while playing. This is the first flaw in the system as I believe there should be a global option to ignore all requests for those of us who do not plan on using it at all. I think it’s obvious that Blizzard made a decision to not add this simple feature so as to add pressure to users to adopt it over time. That’s a strategic decision and one I find to be extremely arrogant.

Secondly the RealID system will identify you by your full name as recorded in the Blizzard billing system. Blizzard includes a warning to players that the system is meant only for real life friends, but they also enable friends of friends to see that information as well. In the end people I may not even know will be able to see my full name and be able to tie that name to my characters in all the games that uses the RealID system. You aren’t afforded an opportunity to use a screen name alias. As one who values personal privacy I don’t feel Blizzard should be “outing” anyone in this manner. My feelings would be somewhat different if there were a means to use a screen name and have a more granular ability to limit just how far my information could be shared. But as it stands now Blizzard’s ham-handed implementation forces you to share your information with who eventually will be virtually everyone, or not use the system at all.

Third, there have already been reports on the forum that various guilds are making RealID mandatory. Obviously this is a user problem and a guild has no right to mandate use of a system such as this. But we all know that peer pressure will often cause people to do things they wouldn’t normally do otherwise and so the pressure to comply with the mandate in order to remain in the guild will be strong to a lot of people in this circumstance. It’s an abuse of the intention of the system and will become an invasion of privacy. Mandates such as these will make playing on unguilded characters impossible to hide and as someone who has many alt, most of which who are unguilded, I can sympathize. Some times you want to play on a character where no one knows you and just play. Some times you don’t want to be bothered by friends or have to deal with guild business. Guilds who will mandate RealID use should be kicked to the curb, but will they be by all those being forced to use it?

As I said, I can see the allure of the system for Blizzard. And I do not begrudge them the opportunity to capitalize but I would like to see several modifications. Foremost is the global setting I mentioned earlier. I’d like to be able to “opt out” and not be bothered with requests at all. I’d also like the ability to set a screen name or Alias and limit the extent to which my information can be shared. As my information is shared with friends of friends I can see that over the course of a year or more my information being shared with many people I don’t know, who would also then know my specific characters in Blizzard’s various games. That sort of information should be limited to specific people I choose to allow it be displayed to, and certainly not hundreds or thousands of people I don’t even know.

Until those sorts of changes are put into place I will no be using RealID.

PC Games I'm looking forward to this year

I don't play a lot of PC games these days.  But just occasionally there are some that I can't wait to pick up.  Including Starcraft 2, which is one of the most anticipated releases that I can ever remember.  The original Starcraft has attained something close to  legendary status.  It's still, a decade later, still a staple in the gaming industry and is all but a national past time in South Korea.  A lot is riding on this release.

A lot of people are impatiently waiting it and I'm one of them.  The release of Star Craft II which was finally announced yesterday would be released on Jul 27th.


Another game I'm anxiously awaiting is Star Wars: the Force Unleashed 2 which was announced today as being released on Oct 26th!  Force Unleashed 1 was a terrific game with stunning visuals and hours of fun game play.  Looking forward to playing its sequal.

That Infinity Ward mess is overblown!

Wedbush's Michael Pachter believes that the Infinity Ward drama has been overblown in the press, creating a media climate that sees the company as "the Evil Empire, with contentious dealings between the company and employees the norm."

Nah, Activision couldn't possibly have done wrong in this case.  Of course not.  After all, they're the agrieved party here and lost one of the largest money making teams in their empire.  Oh, and the'll probably make a cool $500-600 million in the first three months from Star Craft 2.

Activision finally does evil

Things sure have been getting interesting at Activision lately. Weeks ago we saw word that Activision fired their shining stars at Infinity Ward – developers of the wildly popular Modern Warfare series. And in recent days we’ve seen a flurry of accusations regarding intrusive and abrasive interrogation sessions where Activision sequestered the leaders and threatened to fire them for insubordination if they didn’t answer the questions or left. They also reportedly threatened to fire them if they attempted to answer the questions naturally put to them from their other staff members about the happenings. Activision, reading reports by Infinity Ward staff, created an atmosphere of uncertainty, fear, and worry throughout this period and wielded that atmosphere like a club. In fact Activision must have known their actions would result in the resignations of many of the staff because they changed their bonus policy during this time so that any who left would forfeit their earnings from the Modern Warfare 2 release.

Although details are sketchy it does sound as if Activision had at least a modicum of justification to go after as they were reportedly shopping their talents around to other publishers. Apparently wanting to work on new IP when your current publisher only wants you to milk the existing IP. Activision isn’t interested in a project unless it’s something they can release annually and will generate at least $100 million dollars. There is something to be said for the boss calling the shots, so to speak. But individuals have the right to decide for themselves where they will work and in this case Activision apparently found out their shining stars were casting glances abroad and created an incident in order to justify keeping millions of dollars that they would otherwise have had to pay to the Infinity Ward staff. Of course the plan seems to have backfired as all but 12 of the Infinity Ward staff have left Activision, and at least some of the remaining 12 may have already, or are in the process of leaving too. Of course the end result is Activision sueing Infinity Ward and Infinity Ward sueing Activision.

What is Activision to do when one of their big profit meal tickets jump ship? Find a new meal ticket apparently. News comes today that Activision has inked a 10-year deal with Bungie to develop new projects. Bungie will remain independent, with Activision serving as publisher/distributor. While the court battles between Infinity Ward and Activision will roll along for years, Activision is showing that to them Infinity Ward was so “yesterday”.

Blizzcast #13 is up

Check it out. All the latest news on Starcraft II, WoW, and Diablo

Star Trek is not the only Iconic IP on the block

I don't remember exactly when, but at some point in late 2007 (or was it early 2008?) I gave Star Wars Galaxies another try. I swore when I quit playing in March 2005 that I would never play another SOE hosted game; such was my deep seated feeling about Sony after watching them completely screw up, then screw over the MMO. For whatever reason I decided to give it another look and I can still remember, first how different it was from my first experience, and secondly how buggy it still was after all that time. I played it for an evening and uninstalled the game. I love Star Wars and would love another real MMO based on the IP, but there simply isn't one. Bioware's the Old Republic is slated for release sometime in the Spring of 2011, if you believe the rumor mill. So what's a poor, old, gamer like me to do in the mean time?

I've been giving serious consideration to replaying Knights of the Old Republic I/II, yet I know those combined will only last me a few days each. I still might, but believe it or not I'm actually considering installing Star Wars Galaxies again and playing a free trial. My old account is still there (I just checked), but I don't want to pay to check it out again, so I'll most likely start another account to do some testing on. If I do somehow like what I see I can always go back and reactivate my original account.

If I do play again it'll be the play Jedi and Bounty Hunter again. I had two accounts back when I was playing, as you could only have one character per account, with the exception being for those who unlocked the Jedi slot. Those accounts had two characters -- the main, and then the Jedi. And I had much the same criticisms then about that as I do with how Blizzard went about creating their first "Hero class" in WoW. Character development is a big thing with me, and I didn't like having to establish a completely new character then, nor did I like it in WoW with the Death Knight. Still, I understand now that you can have multiple characters on the same account in SWG, so at least I have the ability to create a Jedi and a Bounty hunter without having to pay for multiple accounts.

Time to start doing some reading and see if I want to check it out again or not.

Less is more - especially in a down economy

I touched on this back in October, and EA apparently agrees, announcing recently that they expect to trim their annual game development to 40 or fewer games. The same principles that apply to the MMO market, apply to the PC game and console market as well. In fact, they’re both part of the larger entertainment market to begin with, and I think EA is simply dealing with the reality of their deteriorating condition at this point. Unfortunately EA is being disingenuous to the press in describing why they’re making the strategic change.

But Riccitiello stressed that the planned cuts were not the result of previous strategic misteps, but rather a move that better position the company for the future. That "means fewer titles, and needing less personnel against that side of the business," he said. "We thought of it as an offensive, positive step toward the evolution of our business."

The market is flooded with competition and quality has not been a hallmark over quantity at EA. So to say they’re simply making strategic decisions is silly to say the least. If EA had been profitable, does anyone seriously believe they’d be making the cuts, along with the personnel cuts that will go along with it? Of course they wouldn’t. The first step in reform is honesty, and I would hope EA would, at this point, simply be honest and regain confidence of their investors by introducing a strong plan to centralize their development, and which also includes their MMO properties. And quite honestly, I don’t see the free social gaming aspect of this plan paying off much in the long run. I’m still very much of the opinion that less options are better, which enables the developers to concentrate resources to make what they do develop better. See, that’s the crux of the issue entirely. Players want quality, yet what they’re seeing is quantity. Developers are rushing out properties that are poorly planned, poorly developed, and poorly supported, and then bewildered why the gaming public turns away en masse.

Are they serious?

Universal Pictures has won a four-studio bidding war to pick up the film rights to the classic Atari video game "Asteroids." So.... not just one, but four studios thought it would be an awesome idea to, you know, make a film based on Asteroids?

Which part of quality over quantity don't they seem to understand??

Empire: Total War

A friend of mine had been talking up Empire: Total War to me over the past couple days. I had originally gotten him into the series back when Rome: Total War hit the streets and he and I played it for quite some time. So I figured I should check out the new installment to see what was new.

The overall feel of the game is largely the same as previous games, though there are what I see as cosmetic changes here and there to make some aspects just different enough to warrant a new name. So sadly after only a day of playing I'm already kinda bored with it, though I must say the aspect I think I enjoyed the most is the new sea combat.

Sadly there wasn't an "American" option in the grand campaign. At least not to start with, though perhaps its something you "unlock" through playing other countries in the grand campaign. I know that was an option in Rome: Total War.

All in all I think I'd give the game a high C grade.