Is Starcraft2 losing hype?

You don't have to sum up what I said if that's all that's going into your post ronin, that's more fit for Space Junk. But feel free to actually respond to my post in a mature way. Your last two posts have put you in a bad light.

 

its also because Modern warfare 2 is coming out this November and so a lot of attention has been focused on that game since it will most likely be game of the year. but yea i'm not a huge believer in not setting a specific time or date of release. without a timeline or goal date all you end up doing is loafting. a goal without a timeline or date is just a dream

 

light? well.. I prefer darkness

You placed Blizzard Leading employees to enthusiasts and you want me to answer you in a mature way?
yeah.. whatever..

 

Explain how that is immature of me. You think it was meant as an insult? I am a big fan of Dustin Browder and nothing makes me as happy as hearing him spaz out about SC2 in an interview. He's a true computer game enthusiast, and if he wasn't he wouldn't be fit working on SC2.

 

I still have faith in blizzard....i think SC 2 will set the new standard for RTS games as what SC did. i still believe it will be a worthy successor, its just that not getting anything new is just demoralizing. here we are just sitting here waiting..... i need my fix!!!!

 

What do we think this delay is really all about? Are they really so slow at development? Is it because 30 levels in the SP campaign do actually take a first class team of programmers and designers two years to write? Is it more about wanting to market the game at the best possible time? Or is it because the game has an imbalance issue that they're really struggling to flatten out. That they're finding some unit combos are just too powerful, but crippling those units makes them pretty useless individually... something like that.

 

They have said in interviews (I am sorry for not actually linking something here... Maybe someone else can back me up on this?) that balance isn't much of an issue right now and that they basically are happy with all units and spells. Not because they think they all should make the final cut but because they feel that they now need feedback, as in beta, before making huge changes such as changing units.

Unit stats aren't really delaying them atm. I think it was Dustin who said that one of the other guys, like Metzen or Morhaime (I don't really remember who), told him that they should actually leave certain imbalances because unit usage and such can change so much when beta comes, turning what seemed to be an imbalance into something that actually works.

I think the delay mostly is due to bnet 2.0, but I can't imagine the Singe Player workers being anything but happy about the delays...

 

to me, it's lost hype.
i guess i came here for the feel of community and friends, but i really don't feel or have that anymore. lots of shiz and drama related here, and i still talk to the most important person i met here. I know I came here first w/o the game, but I was stoked when I got the first game and I was so hyped, and so was everyone else. It's like the more we wait, the more we feel let down and the more we just seem to not care because we can't spend every waking moment waiting for the promise of a good game

 

That's all very well. Blizzard simply shouldn't share any of their goals, then; it's bloody frustrating to see them miss their goals all of the time. And frankly, I (like so many other disenthused fans) cannot find it in me to really care for this game like I once did. And GasMaskGuy, I understand what you're saying, and you are right, from a certain point of view: your defence of Blizzard comes across like something their PR department might come up with.

Like many of you, I have been waiting for over a decade for this game. I, like the rest of you, will buy it when it is released (whenever that may be). However, I don't think I'll ever forgive Blizzard for their shoddy SC2 PR. They revealed this game to us far too early, and, consequently, have run out of things with which to feed our Anticipation. It is not Anticipation that Blizzard is building up in me now, but impotent Rage.

 

Even though Blizzard is taking forever and ever to release this game I feel two different ways. I'm very glad that they are taking this long to release it because that means they are fixing every little known thing that is wrong with it, and when it finally comes out its going to be amazing. I hate it when a company puts out a game so fast just because the people want it then and now. I can't think of any computer games but games that come to mind are (Gears of War2, Halo ODST, ). On the other hand it does suck just waiting and waiting for years and years to come for a game that seems its just going to never come out.
But guys when it finally does come out its going to be amazing

 

If they are holding out because they think its imbalance they should try to release it sooner or beta...the 1st version is not going to be balance. they need the game to be out and fan input. the faster they release it the faster they can balance it, after a few patches and then it would be gravy

 

i think blizzard would not do that

 

What if balance requires something as drastic as moving a unit's place in the tech tree, or replacing a spell with something completely different? How would a patch like that be received with players? Fudging hitpoints is one thing, but changing the structure of a race during beta would cause upset and a backlash. I don't think they would risk that in the betas, they'd get the tech-tree finalised in alpha, leaving beta only for fine tuning the stats.

Whether they say they're happy with the tech-tree or not, that's just the PR talking. What developer is going to admit "We're having problems because the dynamics of this game are just different from sc1. Zergling rushes are far too successful against the protoss, and we're not sure what to do about it."

 

if this is like the duke nukem incident then id lol till i die

 

You haven't been reading enough interviews then. Dustin Browder says things like he's not satisfied with Proton Charge, believes siege tanks to be overpowered and thinks 100% Salvage is broken (but won't know until beta).

Blizzard makes good games because their strike teams keep them honest.

 

It was Rob Pardo who said that.

 

I think "hype" means something like "the rate of increasing popularity" as in, the change in the popularity over time. As defined like that, it can't really "stay" anywhere (except possibly at zero). If poltted out, even the best games would get a popularity curve that is logarithmic at first, then settles down to zero (by some function) as time passes.
When a game is announced, there is usually a decent-sized spike, and then most of the world forgets about it, and then it's released, and then the world slowly forgets about it. Popular games are forgotten slower.

What I think happened was that, everyone that wanted to learn about it has learned about it, talked about it, bought the t-shirt (check , check, and check, over here). There isn't a lot of new stuff being unveiled, not a lot to speculate about. Every subject has been talked to death. Blizzard could release a video every week (imagine!) but eventually, we'd get used to that, too. We'd be saying, "this video is like this other video, and a bit like this one too). Hype only seems to happen when you can say, "wow, I've never seen anytihng like this before!"

Think of it this way: if SC2 had been released a month after it was announced, would you still expect the hype to be insane today? Of course not. Hype isn't an end in and of itself, and, while nice, isn't even a real indicator of how popular something is or how good it will be. When you play SC1, do you think, "oh wow, this is the most amazing thing ever!" at the start of every match? Do you feel a rush of anticipation as the timer counts down? Most people don't. A year after the launch of SC2, most people won't. Don't sweat it.

@the already occurring conversation:
I am going to have to side with Kimera on that point- This dev team does not appear to have any problem with telling us when they think something is broken, if we ask about it. Karune has even spoken to the Zerg-Protoss early-game awkwardness- that it isn't really a problem if you play it right. It could be bad for newer players, which may eventually be regarded as a problem, but there are things that could throw off skilled matches that they admit knowledge of, and are intentionally not touching so long as they're not seeing the imbalance come out in gameplay. It's good practice to be merciless to things that are broken beyond fixing (like the Soul Hunter) and generous to things that aren't actually breaking anything (100% salvage).

Also, I don't know why I am having to say this basically every time I post, these days, but the delay is, and Blizzard has stated this explicitly, because of Battle.net 2.0. They were actually very ready to hit beta in July, but the network wasn't. Just to be hyper-explicit here: battle.net has nothing to do with gameplay mechanics and balance, and I am pretty sure this is the case, is actually mostly being done by a different team entirely.

 

"When you play SC1, do you think, "oh wow, this is the most amazing thing ever!" at the start of every match? Do you feel a rush of anticipation as the timer counts down? Most people don't."

I do honestly, I love sc1 so much, sure I get pissed off, or bored of playing it all the time, and just leave and come back, bu that's the thing I ALWAYS come back. Timer ticks down, and I get excited, just waiting to own the person I am playing, or if I lose to hopefully depart the game with great wisdom and gaming xp. Ofc when I get mega pwned I get pissed and don't feel this way. I have to feel that I actually put up a fight.

I thought everyone knew that B.net 2.0 is what is delaying beta? That certainly isn't news to me, I wish it wasn't the case, as I am sure every person here does. I have good and bad feelings about the new b.net, I'm going to love the matchmaking, actually pit against ppl in my skill range for once, instead of getting own again and again till I get better, which has happened, and anyone that has played me back when I first got on b.net can tell I have had MAJOR improvements. Bad thing is idk how different it is really gonna be, how used to the b.net now is. Are we going to be able to play older games on it just the exact same way we can now?

 

I'm glad someone said it.
On the bright side, WoW players must turn their WoW accounts into battle.net accounts by Nov 11th to continue playing.
Also the next WoW patch is introducing cross server dungeons (aka play with people on different servers) which to me sounds like a big part of that being able to communicate between anyone on bnet no matter what game they are playing feature.
That patch should be out sometime in December...So hopefully Bnet 2.0 and thus SC2 beta will be around early next year.

 

That really burned me. I don't understand why they felt the need to remove LAN play from the game, but I pretty much lost all anticipation because of that. Also, it's true, we can't keep up our excitement if Blizzard just decides to show us one new map every so often while we STILL wait for the beta to be released.