The most interesting thing in Terran story was how Mengsk appeared the only one who cared about general population and was ready to help Reynor to fight off the zerg, but in the end turned on him for the sake of the personal power. This was probably the most prominent part of "Terran culture" that defined for me StarCraft lore in many ways.

Sadly, all of that was forgotten in SC2 that became a simple sappy story how do-goodious protagonists prevail over evil.

Happy birthday Starcraft and thank you for making me feel older.. :(

Great game, Pity SC2 ruined the SC universe for me with its stupid story (also didn't like many of the missions that much, not enough long missions with base building, you're always under some time constraint, and maps felt strangely smallish).
I actually liked Hearts of the Swarm best of all the SC2 campaigns, at least to some extent the missions did the concept of the Zerg being a force of nature just overrunning everything by sheer numbers quite well imo.
From what I remember, I also didn't find its story that bad, it had some interesting elements (though it wasn't as well done as SC1).
Legacy of the void's story really sucked though, permanently killed off all my interest in the SC universe.

Here in the U.S., kids born on 9/11 will be of voting age next year.

Not only in the US. Kids born on 9/11 will be of voting age next year almost everywhere.

Blizzard delivered on their promise of not changing the gameplay. They said they would make it look nicer and they did that. People don't want a new game, they want the same game, just prettier.

I also know they added observer mode and hot key bindings, but that doesn't change the way the game is played.

How exactly is fixing bugs in the pathfinding changing the gameplay? All it does is reduce frustration and make battles more fluid. Pathfinding improvement also improves game balance as you wouldn't have units like the Dragoon which have particularly bad pathfinding and bias the game against the Protoss. In what bizarro universe is fixing bugs a controversial thing? If any other developer did a remaster of an old game but left bugs in the game with the excuse of "not changing the gameplay", they would be crusified, but Blizz gets away with it because of their retarded fanboy fans.

The "remaster" is only meant to appeal to esports players, not average players.

The thing is: The Koreans mastered the micro managing around those pathfinding issues, that's why they are so dominant in the esport scene. Everything is secondary to the esport scene. You can't upset pro-players and force them to adapt to changes in the balancing, those poor things. I think that is going to kill AAA gaming in the future, everythings needs to be an esport.

SPOILERS FOR STARCRAFT 2

I agree, that was rather lame, but for me the Zerg were already ruined somewhat by that stupid retcon in Wings of liberty ("Hey, the Overmind was actually a good guy!"...copied from Warcraft 3's Orcs), so that didn't bother me that much. At least those anthropomorphic Zerg weren't paragons of goodness.
Legacy of the void pissed me off with how they killed Zeratul, one of the biggest heroes of Starcraft and the only survivor from the original Protoss campaign just killed like it didn't matter much. And the story after that was utterly boring and nonsensical, by the end I had lost all interest.

So here is a question: did Starcraft pioneer the method of having single player campaigns for different races follow a story sequentially, rather than having the campaign for each race run separately "in parallel"? (somthing that is very common, if not the norm, now). All of the games I played before had a separate campaign for each race/faction (Warcraft 1 and 2, Red Alert and C&C, HoMM2...) I remember wondering which race to choose when starting Strarcraft and noticing the message that said you'd better finish Terran before staring Zerg and Protoss. The next game I played that had one campiagn story common to all factions was HoMM3.

Were there any games before Starcraft that followed this idea?

Hmmm...

Well having each race separately let you get to memorize and get comfortable with a specific race... Which i think is the main reason the campaigns are set that way.

As for sequentially... for SC you had the ghost get captured in the first campaign, she was hatched in the second campaign, and the Protoss are recovering after the temple was taken over in the third, so it is sequential, just not in parallel...

(oh right, spoilers...)

Really comes down to making the campaigns. The editor as i recall wasn't bad, the hardest part is the voice actors... and videos.


Thinking back to Command and Conquer, you chose a faction (GDI, Nod) and you stuck with it... even if 90% of the technology was identical and switching back and forth would not be difficult. So i don't think it was pioneered... Just makes more sense to stick to one thing at a time.

Actually, in Red Alert Allies campaign is a prequel to original C&C and Soviet campaign takes place after Tiberian Incursion and Kane going back in time. At least that's what Westwood planned. But later they chancelled Tiberian Incursion, ditched the idea of Kane time travel and made Tiberian and RA separate universes. (Yes, I know - April, 1st - but you can google if you don't believe me.)

Did you understand what I was trying to say?

Each race/faction/side in a given game has a campaign. Prior to Starcraft, in all games that I played, the campaigns had storylines that were separate and generally mutually exclusive (or unrelated). You either played Humans or Orcs: 2 separate stories; either humans won or orcs won; both couldn't happen together. Similarly you played either Allies, or Russians. Either Ronald or Archiebald.
Starcraft however had one single story for all campaigns. You played Terran first, then Zerg then Protoss. All three did happen one after the other; it was one storyline not 3 separate ones. This format persisted in many games later (Warcraft 3; HoMM3, HoMM5... etc).

So my question is: did any games before Starcraft have this format too?
Maybe so. But from a single game perspective, i.e. looking at that game's lore only, it's 2 separate storylines for each faction. Einstein kills Hitler, Allies go against Soviets and you play either one or the other.

Apparently i didn't follow what you were saying. But the attached image does explain well enough what you were meaning.

Single storyline vs 'race you play wins the game' that it sorta goes... Mostly determined what flavor you felt like playing.

I really can't think of any other games that did it like starcraft. so... *shrugs*

Although, i do recall Sacrifice having it's own little interpretation. (While i haven't beat the game) You would side with a god (5 of them i think) and they would grant you a particular unit/path, and then you'd progress i that stint of the storyline, but it all was going towards the same end story.