"hell, it's about time."
As most of you are (hopefully) aware, Blizzard announced Starcraft II this weekend in Korea. I won't bother reciting the details of the announcement or video, which you can read and see here.
What I'm wondering is how Blizzard plans to overcome what could be a serious challenge in their development; resources. I don't mean crystals and gas like in the game; I'm talking video and RAM resources on systems. Most of you are probably vexed as to why I'm bringing it up. But, if you stick your dusty Starcraft 1 CD in your drive and start playing, you'll notice that the game is unit intensive (anybody remember building fleets of 15 carriers on Battle.NET just to have the game lag out? or your machine go insane?). Well, imagine that scale of units, with the obvious new attention to detail that Blizzard can afford to pay to units with the advances in processor and video technology since their last event?
While the company was pretty okay when Warcraft III came out, there is some serious competition in the RTS market now; C&C 3 showed a huge amount of promise, Supreme Commander is a fantastic (albeit large game). And, I'm sure that Blizzard is planning on enlarging the map sizes far beyond the original Starcrafts size and scope, and obviously upping previous unit caps, all the while having to ensure the company doesn't alienate gamers who don't embrace the top-of-the-line machines.
But, I could be wrong, Blizzard has shown great skill at fitting the best quality game into the smallest possible packages before, and hopefully Starcraft II won't fall back on those previous promises.
As for me, I'm looking for to this game. I'm even debating digging my original Starcraft CD and Brood Wars CD out for a jaunt through old memories.
What I'm wondering is how Blizzard plans to overcome what could be a serious challenge in their development; resources. I don't mean crystals and gas like in the game; I'm talking video and RAM resources on systems. Most of you are probably vexed as to why I'm bringing it up. But, if you stick your dusty Starcraft 1 CD in your drive and start playing, you'll notice that the game is unit intensive (anybody remember building fleets of 15 carriers on Battle.NET just to have the game lag out? or your machine go insane?). Well, imagine that scale of units, with the obvious new attention to detail that Blizzard can afford to pay to units with the advances in processor and video technology since their last event?
While the company was pretty okay when Warcraft III came out, there is some serious competition in the RTS market now; C&C 3 showed a huge amount of promise, Supreme Commander is a fantastic (albeit large game). And, I'm sure that Blizzard is planning on enlarging the map sizes far beyond the original Starcrafts size and scope, and obviously upping previous unit caps, all the while having to ensure the company doesn't alienate gamers who don't embrace the top-of-the-line machines.
But, I could be wrong, Blizzard has shown great skill at fitting the best quality game into the smallest possible packages before, and hopefully Starcraft II won't fall back on those previous promises.
As for me, I'm looking for to this game. I'm even debating digging my original Starcraft CD and Brood Wars CD out for a jaunt through old memories.
