Ready to Buy Starcraft II Three Times?

I don't know what to say...Blizzard....what have you become? The IGN article even went on to say that the "expansions" could be spread as far apart as a year! One year! I have to wait that long to play Zerg campaign? BAH! Blizz aint touching my money.

Wow, at first I thought this was a trilogy built in to a single boxed game, but each campaign is a separate boxed and priced product?  Wow, that's entirely unimpressive!

I see complaining... but I know a lot of people will buy at least two, if not all three. Dick move, Blizz. Dick move.

i don't play these games..but my cousin loves them...its abit much for a 16 year old to be expected to buy 3 games..no matter how cheap they are...

The amount of ignorance building up in these comments is absolutely terrible.

First and foremost; multiplayer is not effected by this three-box plan, all three classes will be playable with the first box in multiplayer.

Secondly, each box like Brad has said, will contain 30 missions. A full gameplay experience, each of the other boxes will contain 30 missions as well. Spanning across three boxes, that is 90 missions+ and that's not including a theoritical expansion pack. Listen to you all throwing up arms like a bunch of children, calm down. You're getting your money's worth, pirate all you want and you just won't be playing Multiplayer though. Blizzard isn't giving you 1/3rd of the content for full price, it is giving you full content, with each box. Don't expect to finish playing the Wings of Liberty in a couple hours and proclaiming you got ripped off, what a ridiculous notion, especially from a company with such reputation and calibur.

Thirdly, this isn't even the full coverage of details from Blizzcon, perhaps you should go look up information from other sources that are streaming/blogging live from Blizzcon.

I will just say this once more, very clearly. You're not getting a portion of one pie, you're getting three pieces of pie, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I think you should all shut your gobs and stop embarassing yourselves.

I hope blizzard isnt making the critical mistake of thinking they are big enough to rip off the people. It hasnt worked well for sony so far.

I don't know what to think about this.  I'm torn straight down the middle.  I mean, it's really cool that the new mechanics won't be tacted on, and will be fleshed out over a good sized campaign of about 30 missions.  But I don't even like the Terran.  And we all know how long Blizzard takes to release game.  Sure Zerg and Protoss are going to be in the Multiplayer.  But I want my Zerg campaign.  And I'm very concerned about the pricing for these products since they're all stand-alone.  Blizzard said that if they wanted to include all three campaigns it would delay the game by years.  YEARS.  So that means Protoss players aren't going to get that campaign until what... 2011?  I don't know... something isn't sitting right with me... It's an RTS.  You're supposed to be able to play through your favorite factions or races missions somewhere during the single player campaign...  Not 2-3 years after release.

Uhh... Doesn't WoW may enough Money so that they DON'T need to do this?!

Should I worry if Diablo 3 will have a seperate expansion for every class?

wonder if activision had anything to do with this.....

@breton: This is what most of these idiots commenting fail to realize. We're getting threewhole games. I don't know where this idea that they're ripping us off or excluding content came from, like we're getting one watered-down campaign to start with, and two more watered-down campaigns later at retail price. I'm starting to think it's not Blizzard that's greedy, it's the customers, the gamers. These are going to be three beefy campaigns. They're giving us more content than we ever could have gotten with a one retail, one expansion strategy. It's a win/win for everyone involved. Damn right I want to pay more money. I'd keep paying them if they keep giving me more story, more content, and more gameplay.  A Starcraft game comes out once a decade, and people complain about getting too much content? Unbelievable.

Has Blizzard ever been in the practice of getting stingy with content? I don't think getting "ripped off" is something we need to worry about with them. Traditionally they've packaged an extreme large amount of content with every release and I don't think this is some ploy to rip people off. 

This is awesome. Lots of single-player action!

Not a fan of having to pay three times for the amount of content I payed once for just in the last game. I think it's a really crappy precedent that Blizzard will set for companies in the future and since Blizzard is the one that is doing it they will still succeed in doing it showing the rest of the companies that it is ok to do this.

I apologize for this in advance, but:
HOW THE FUCK IS THIS DIFFERENT THAN WHAT THEY HAVE DONE BEFORE?!?!?

jesus christ people. What is up with getting up in arms every time blizzard says that they are doing something different? Besides, I really don't see anything other than good things coming from this.

1. We get the game earlier than previously expected.
2. Each product is stand alone
3. In the end we get close to 100 single player missions.

Ok, while i'm not a fan of paying for 3 games which are essentially booster packs for each other, what I do like is three big campaigns. And so long as I can still zergling rush on day one, thats fine. But If I can only play Terran for however many years / months.... heads will roll

Blizzard just has an awesome way of producing games. Can't wait for this, it will be more then worth it.

Multiplayer is the big question here.  My first thought if the first box ships with complete multiplayer then only about 1/4 of all players are going to buy box 2 and 3.  But since Blizzard is already going the money grubbing route here, they'll probably patch/update multiplayer with each box and make it to where you have to have those updates, only found in the retail boxes to continue playing online.

Whatever the case me be, expansion packs or no. To me it feels like they cut some of the game out of the original and shoved it into a two new games so Blizzard can make a quick buck from Starcraft Fanboys.
If they do this with Diablo 3, I will be upset.

RIP !!
Single player doesn't need to be 100 missions .. just 30 (10 each will do)
For EVERYTHING else ... there is skirmish and scripted MODS

Greedy WoW / Blizzard :(

Sucks.

What a shame...

Not getting it. I'm not willingly letting a game company ass fuck me. Not even Blizzard.

interesting to hear this. Weird move on there part though. Ill buy them all in the end most likely, though im not too hot on the idea of having the play the terrian for so long or let alone any single class for a large adventure. Well it should be interesting when it comes out, thats for sure

Is it really such a bad decision when you think about it, compare it to the first Dawn of War which only came with a very short Space Marines campaign and the others races only playable online or in squirmish modes, with other races and campaigns added in seperate stand alone expansion packs, now look at starcraft 2 were going to get 3 games with substantial single player campaigns for each of the 3 races, but with each one still playable online and i presume squirmish modes, your still going to get the full multiplayer experiance but this at least means your getting a much more involved singler player for each of the races.

Having seen the whole panel it doesn't bother me. As stated, Blizzard essentially had three options:

1. Cut the design short.
2. Spread out the releases to get products out sooner.
3. Extend the release date into infinity.

Given those three, I completely understand, as did the crowd. At least this way people will get to play sooner without having the scope of the game get cut short. Also, given the scale of what they were describing, I fully believe that Blizzard can make the full game scope into one campaign at a time.

CRITICAL MASS
PROVING GROUND
CHAIN REACTION

Lets put some of this stupid bickering to rest:

1. You WILL be able to play with all 3 races in the multiplayer. They finished the multiplayer before starting the single player, so of course it will be there.
2. Each campaign will be the SAME LENGTH as ALL 3 of the Starcraft 1 campaigns COMBINED! And just focusing on each campaign individually will give them more focus, giving us a better experience each time.
3. Stop bitching, you're going to sill buy the game.
4. If you have any other questions, check out IGN's article. It answers all of these questions there.

Seriously. Everytime someone tries something different the internet goes, "OMG, CHANGE HURTZ! FU!" Blizzard has canceled games before because they aren't good enough (See Starcraft: Ghost") and have never shown anything but dedication to making the very best game possible. So they are trying something new? Lets see how it pans out.

you have no idea about how much actual content there will be.

what if indeed that every single game, will be jam packed and worth its weight in gold? its been in development for so long, so why aint it possible that what they are doing is actually justified from all sides?

"1. You WILL be able to play with all 3 races in the multilayer. They finished the multilayer before starting the single player, so of course it will be there."

This is what gets me if this is the case what is going to stop everyone from buying the 1st one then pirating the rest ill bet the 2nd and 3rd will have some new multilayer component that will splinter the online players :/

I think everyone needs to rem starcraft was played by so many the same reason Diablo 2 and CS are/where it ran on everything the same people who run on 5 year old PCs are the same ones who dont have $150 for a game, you can say its 3 games... but no its not its 1 game with 2 full price Expation packs

Id like to know how much activision had to do with this idea.

While I am not a fan of this business model, I don't feel it has served anyone well in the past. My only real concern with this is given how long it takes Blizz to produce anything, will SC2 still even be relevant by the time the final campaign releases?

Buying one, torrenting the other two.

I always have tremendous respect for Blizzard due to their quality of their games and how they value their customers. But this model - content base/trilogy  - crap is not something I am fancying and it is a bullshit way to cash in on us. I rather wait a couple years for a full and complete package than pay for a game 3 times...I will be getting this game but I won't be getting it until all three campaign becomes compiled. FUCK YOU BLIZZARD I GUESS YOUR MOVE GOING TO PROMOTE GETTING THE GAME BY OTHER MEANS..

Good God. By the time EA and Activision are done with the PC game industry, Dell is just going to ship its new computers with uTorrent installed and desktop links to warez sites.

Isn't 9 million*13$ per month enough money for Blizzard?

A lot of people seem to be assuming here we're talking about three full-price games.  I suspect Blizzard is smart enough to know better.  Wasn't Half-Life 2: Episode 1 only $30?  I could definitely see a $20-30 price point being perfectly fine for these games, with each one acting like the Half-Life 2 episodes: theoretically stand-alone, though best enjoyed in conjunction with the larger whole.

I'm staying with "cautiously optimistic" until more details come out.

lol at the one guy damage controlling! Man, Blizzard sure does love money!

Well, they're a business. Moron. 

Well, my want level went from 60 to 0 in 3 seconds. Thanks Blizzard, now all you need to do is some bullshit to make me not want Diablo 3.
I'm sure you'll think of something.

You know what, I don't have that big of a problem with this. Wings of Liberty is an awesome name, and Terran is by far my favorite side, so it doesn't seem like I have anything to bitch about. Plus, it would seem like I'll get to play earlier than if they were releasing all of the campaigns together. :D I'll still probably buy the other two, but I'm really looking forward to the Terran one the most.

Looks like Blizzard is already learning from Activision on how to whore out a franchise and milk as much money as they can from their customers.

Terrible.

I told this to the two biggest Starcraft fans I know and both of their reactions were, "What the fuck? That's the stupidest shit I've ever heard of."

You people obviously aren't really Starcraft, Warcraft, or Diablo fans. If I remember correctly... they've been doing this for years and no one has complained yet. Though now that people are lazy, can pirate anything and want to act like little anarchists, it's a problem for a company to expand on a game rather than put everything in one release.

Absolutely dumb, Warcraft's always had two expansions per game and nobody used to complain...

Sure is fucking players in the ass in here.

Jesus, the reaction to this seems a bit over board.  Blizzard hasn't let me down yet, so i'll wait and see how this works once I play the game.

Alot of these game company's are turning into cash whores... FUCK EM!

Stagger out the release dates and not even I would mind, since star craft is that good.

Screw this, this is really cheap from Blizzard. It really is them saying "We know you'll buy all 3, so do it!"

"Absolutely dumb, Warcraft's always had two expansions per game and nobody used to complain..."

They didn't used to separate Day-1 content into 3 separate boxes and charge 50-60 for all three.

And the little anarchists can pirate three titles as easily as they can pirate one. If you're implying that it's piracy making Blizzard "have" to charge legal buyers $150-180 to make up the difference, then damn, obviously I need to pirate more games because apparently if you buy the products as intended you're sponsoring two pirates.

I've come to the conclusion that the only things to come from this announcement are:
1. The game's campaign won't include introductions/demonstrations/tutorials for the Zerg or Protoss units and tech. You'll have to just figure out how things work with them on your own.
2. Because they want them to feel like stand-alone products, the expansion packs everyone already assumed were coming will not require the original game to play, but will cost full price instead of the $30 standard for expansion packs.

Not good news. The worst part is that last one; expansion sets, even stand-alone ones, shouldn't be full price. Unless they contain the entire first game, too, but then I'd demand a way to avoid re-buying a game I already bought. Yeah, that actually did happen once: The Orange Box. It's sort of like that now, only imagine Episode 2 costing $50. What's that you say? That's a bad analogy, because unlike the Half Life episodes compared to vanilla Half Life 2, Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void will each have as much -- and even more content than vanilla Starcraft 2? No, a bunch of new missions and some new units and upgrades per side is welcome, but that's expanding the existing Starcraft 2 experience, not a new experience, if you get what I mean. What we're paying the extra $20 each for seems to be the stand-alone ability these expansion sets will have. It's affordable, especially considering we know they will come out in intervals of at least a year, but unecessary, and therefore a bummer.

Trying to get away with charging more for their expansion sets is one thing, but it's their other comment about how they "have to" monetize Battle.net that is scarier and more upsetting. It's already ad-supported, and it doesn't host any games, it just pairs up users for matches and provides rudimentary chat rooms and friends lists. For crying out loud. I'm still on board, but what they really "have to" do is hold on to their fanbase; with all the crap that has been hitting the fan lately, they have a lot of fans jumping ship.

The only way this debacle could be considered acceptable in any way is if people who buy the first game can still receive the additional multiplayer features that will come with the second and third installment in a free patch or update so the multiplayer community can grow instead of being divided in three. Fat chance of that happening though. Its buy all three parts of Starcraft II or don't buy any of them. Either or. I know which way I am leaning right now. Hopefully Diablo 3 doesn't get this same treatment because I can just as easily write that game off as well considering the high quality of games coming out in the near and long term future.

Blizzard had me at: "We're making Starcraft 2"

I don't mind this at all. I really liked the single player campaigns in SC and Brood Wars. Sure this announcement was a bit of a let down at first, but if it's as good as they say (which it will be), then they got my money.

i will go with the epic fail and pass