Starcraft II campaign split into 3 separate SKU's!

[Punisher]

Gotchaye said:

Twestern, I think you're overstating your case.

I agree with DKII that playing 30 missions with one race is, all else being equal, less worthwhile than 10 missions with each of three races, but it's hardly the end of the world. With what we know now, it's very possible that, when all is said and done, we'll have a main game and two expansion packs' worth of single- and multiplayer content for the price of one main game and two expansion packs. It's entirely possible that what we're getting is the same amount of value that we always get from Blizzard RTSs, just distributed differently across SKUs. While I prefer WC3 the way it is, if the original game had included all of the Human and Undead single player content found in both releases while the expansion pack included all of the Orc and Night Elf single player content found in both releases, it wouldn't be the end of the world.

While this is a curious and, on face, suboptimal design decision, there are a few possible reasons for them to do this. The most obvious is that they've learned a lesson from Warcraft 3 and The Frozen Throne. If you'll recall, the Orc Frozen Throne 'campaign' was largely tacked on. The Orcs couldn't easily be incorporated into the larger story and so they got a glorified custom map. Perhaps, in working out the plot of SC2, Blizzard encountered a similar problem - perhaps the Terrans are bit players in the arc planned for the second or third expansion. What if the Orc campaign in WC3 had been twice as long at the expense of another race's campaign (which then had a double-length campaign in Frozen Throne)? That presents problems with the WC3 story as it was presented, but, if that had been the design goal from the beginning, perhaps the Orc Frozen Throne dilemma could have been avoided.

Also, you really reach in places. Are you seriously concerned that Terran players will be at a significant advantage because they've played through a campaign while Zerg players haven't? I can't be alone in thinking that the campaigns in typical RTSs (and Blizzard's games are no exception) are relatively poor preparation for multiplayer battles. Skirmishes against the computer aren't even great practice, but they're much, much better than playing the story mode (and they'll be available from the get-go). On the first page, you denounce them for saying that each expansion will make changes to the multiplayer. But isn't that what expansions are for? Beyond the Dark Portal, Brood War, and The Frozen Throne all added new units and abilities to each race. You seem to be attacking the very idea of expansion packs here.

It occurs to me that the rage from various people could just be the weird hatred of 'incompleteness' that you see in the gaming world. Is that what's going on here? Expansion packs are only okay as long as the developer pretends like it's not planning them until after the main game releases? People are way too inclined to think of games as art and game makers as artists, and to feel betrayed when the developer has an idea for making a game better (at a nonnegligible cost in development time) while not implementing it straight away. Gamers need to realize that, given a game and its eventual expansion, it's often impossible to determine which of the expansion's modifications were conceived before the release of the main game - the actual content that you're getting is identical.

 

You know, like vlad321 said: people want to have 10+10+10 mission packs most likely. Not everyone is a "hardcore" Bnet player there, you know. Those people asked in that poll are most likely those people who play on Bnet everyday.