What do you know; I finally came up with something original to post here today. I'll keep it short and sweet though, I'm not in the mood for anything comprehensive right now.

I'll start out with the titular question, which now appears to be dragging along a fairly easy answer:

What will gamers do with StarCraft II?

Simple question right? Well sit back and think about it for a second. I originally intended to ask if the game could have the same impact that its predecessor did.

The answer to that of course is a resounding "no" for many reasons. Blizzard is not necessarily new to holding their titles back, but now that they're releasing the sequel to one of the most influential RTS games (or even games period) of all time, there's an inherent danger. The stocking of hype and expectation for this game is monumental. This is for good reason too, since the fact still remains that StarCraft is over a decade old now and is still played by a large population of gamers on a daily basis.

It's kind of a predictable wildcard...

Over the past week, I’ve played a couple of games with Kat Bailey (a freelancer who also writes for The Grind at 1UP). It’s been the first time that I’ve dragged the discs out for over a year and during our games, I noticed that not only does StarCraft age insanely slow, but it’s still the exemplary RTS title that game out in 1998 (i.e. I’ve met very few people who hopped off the StarCraft train, came back and decided that they didn’t like it anymore).

This has left me to question just how much and how far StarCraft II will be able to carry itself after its release. Now, I honestly don’t care when it comes out so the dreaded delay doesn’t sway me any particular way right now.

However, I am scared of how it will be received and just exactly how far Blizzard can climb out of the grave it has dug for itself. First and foremost, what I don’t think the title will have any problems with is money (at least not at first). The title has a double namebrand; not only is it StarCraft, but it’s developed by Blizzard, so certain standards are implied by just those two facts alone.

Over the past ten years however, the gaming landscape has changed quite a bit. Not only have new cliques of gamers risen all over the place, but we’ve created new perceptive shifts for ourselves as well (e.g. memes such as the dreaded ‘games as art’ argument have evolved out of control, just as ludology, and the general P.C. market have).

What will SCII have to face in terms of competition now? The RTS (as a genre) has penetrated the population to a greater extent, especially considering that more and more gamers are sitting down in front of a P.C. now (while many are leaving for consoles). We now have RTS titles such as Company of Heroes and even below those are at least five or six fairly competent titles of the same genre that do a fantastic job on their own right (not to mention that RTS games are still trying to smash their way into console space as well).

With all this raised standard of competition, StarCraft is going to have to prove its pedigree once again. This kind of counter-productive in itself since the game shouldn’t have to.

Yes, we should retain a certain standard for it, but does that mean we strip it of its “crown” if it doesn’t shake the heavens as a sequel?Is it even a leap of logic to conceive of the game only seeing a sort of “fifteen minutes of fame”?

With the way people have begun to defend and demand shorter titles, StarCraft has actually lost ground in that sense, because just a decent RTS absolutely demands a certain threshold of investment to learn its fundamentals (let alone the intricacies).

The tech is also an issue to consider, given that StarCraft was a game that ran on just about everything with very little kickback. Blizzard will no doubt answer the call here as well since they’re good with making titles that don’t require the player to run out and upgrade upon new title releases.

We can’t pretend however, that the game will have that same sort of saturation (not at first, it’s impossible) that StarCraft snatched up for itself. The circumstances just aren’t the same for it to slowly and methodically snowball like the original did, no matter how tech-friendly Blizzard manages to release SCII as.

Some of the hidden benefits I’ve not heard enough about are its release structure. I’ve heard more people complain about the trilogy-release than praise it. I guess the abundance of that is due to the price though, which is fair enough.

However, considering what the player will end up with in the end (at least over 75 missions in the single-player campaign), it’s not like they haven’t squandered their money in more ridiculous ways before. The "triple-release" can be seen s a sort of makeshift contingency plan which will prevent the title from falling completely out of the limelight over the coming years.

I’m not gonna pretend like it has the strength of World of Warcraft though, but there’s definitely some points of issue to be concerned with, even at this stage.

Check out Steve Wang's gallery if you're a fan of Kerrigan.

Hopefully a lot of this is just paranoia on my part, but with the way things have changed and how big of chained ball is around StarCraft’s leg, there’s no harm in speculation. The easy stuff is already here to laugh at though.

We will no doubt get our purist-nutjobs who refuse to play the game because it isn’t exactly like the first, just as we'll meet those who will complain it’s too much like the first. What I find most interesting however, is everything in between that.

~sLs~