New Pearce Interview from GC 2008

The latest in the series of outdated and, well, weird intervies given by Frank Pearce has surfaced. Starcraftzine.com published a summary of an interview by AusGamers which contains an interview with Blizzard senior vice president Frank Pearce, touching on Starcraft 2 as well as some of the features of Battle.net 2.0. Below are the extracted pieces of information from the video, which, due to the low sound quality of the footage, offer a quicker and clearer insight into the content.
Expect long continued support after the release, as history has shown with the original StarCraft. Unsure, but hopefully StarCraft 2 will replace the original StarCraft in Korean eSport. However, as history has shown, the original StarCraft has trumped the newest released RTS - WarCraft III. Lessons learned from dealing with WOW cheating will be applied to the new Battle.net 2.0 and StarCrart 2 platforms. For example, a security token will be implemented that adds an extra layer of protection from account fraud. Their main focus in combating piracy of their games is through offering a unique online platform which requires a valid and unique CD key. An expansion for StarCraft 2 is not off the table, and “it is definitely something that is in discussion.” A StarCraft MMO is nowhere in sight. Lowering latency during gameplay is of concern and they are working on reducing overall gameplay lag.
Source: StarCraftZine.com, AusGamers.com

 

Good, I am glad to hear they are putting a lot of thought and effort into keeping people from cheating, and making sure everything works. For such an anticipated game it would be horrible for it to be ruined in a few quick months by jerks taking advantage of the system. One of the things that draws most people to StarCraft i would think, is the fair gameplay and endless strategy. Im looking forward to getting to know that without any mAp haCk!!1

 

Can someone explain this token thing?

 

Maybe by security token he means something like this:

http://www.blizzard.com/store/details.xml?id=1100000182

But for SC 2 and not WOW as in the link.

 

I'm just hoping that Blizzard can fix a few problems I had with Warcraft III RoC. Whenever there were too many units, it got really choppy and then the units freeze and unfreeze, they would jump from one place to another because there were too many units. That's my only concern, except for one more. Cd Keys... I hate it when WCIII come to the Battle.net forums and spam junk because they used a Cd-Key Generator for SC. In SCII, the Cd-Keys need to be more complex so this can't happen anymore.

 

...The choppy animations might be a sign your computer had trouble running it?

 

I hope this Sc2 is over a gb. It will take longer for the idoits, to make hacks for it. Instead of like a few months. A few years, or even a few decades. Because of all the code all of over the place, and its really long. But it is a good thing that Blizzard is taking precautions for hacking. Finally to play without hacks. Which takes the fun out of everything.

 

Size is not directly related to how difficult it is to get into the code of a game. Most of what will occupy space on your drive will be unit models, textures, and cinematics (assuming you go for best performace full install). Unlike in those days, it is relatively easy to rule out the possibility of cheating nowadays, so I have full confidence in SC2 being 100% cheat-free online.

I have no idea what the safety token is but that WoW thing looks crooked. I hope I don't have to put one of those on my keychain.

 

And I still don't understand how that thing works. It generates a password, but how is it linked to the account? how do you set it up or whatever the hell you need to do with it?

 

Here's an FAQ about that WOW thing I linked to previously.

http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=24660&rhtml=true

From the above url:

So it seems this token is the same as the keyring thing.

 

- Hey what's that cool thing on your keychain?
- That's my Starcraft 2 security token.
*company backs away slowly*

I do think this generated code is unnecessary. Password protecting your computer is so much easier and cheaper.

 

It just gives you PHYSICAL evidence that you own the account and let's Blizzard independently verify your claim if your account DOES get hacked.

 

to me the interview was much of what we already now with some extra tid bits about how Battle net is going to be so awesome that our heads will axplode if we even begun to start thinking about it.

-Zerks