Wasn't S1 published by Sierra? That is probably why Blizzard can't sell it.

Activision-Blizzard owns Sierra, so if they can't sell Sierra properties, it's their own incompetence.

From the looks of it, Blizzard was the publisher in NA, and Ubisoft was the publisher in the EU. So, if they really wanted to, they ought to be able to at least sell it in the US without having to involve 3rd parties.

I'm guessing that they just don't want to. I'm not really sure why, as D2 is the one that's likely to damage D3 sales the most, D was great, but it hasn't aged so gracefully and it was an extremely straight forward play through with limited replayability.

Remember, kids - when someone is better than you, don't try to compete - insult them !
Question the very basis of their superiority until you feel like you're a better human being for simply NOT DOING things others consider fun.

* * *

Seriously - how many more degrading terms can you people invent for activities involving interpersonal competition ? Why is it bugging you so much, that you feel the need to belittle those who choose to engage in it ?
One of the basic types of games are the competitive ones, known to civilizations across the globe for millenia. Are you really saying that this is fundamentally a "bad" or "inferior" way of spending time ?

I've spent the last month trying to collect enough multiplayer footage for a decent YouTube video. No - I wasn't playing Starcraft, not even something remotely similar. I have, however, taken pleasure in playing the best, scoring the highest, impressing people and generally "dishing out pwnage". I take personal offence at the thought that you people consider this to be worthy of scorn, more so than if I spent the time solving puzzles in an adventure game.

That's why. I don't consider it as bad as you seem to think I do, I don't respect people less because of it. I just prefer if gaming continues with single playing in mind instead of mobile and social uprise.

If you're a competitive person then there's nothing I can tell you, I just prefer non-competitive gaming, you don't have to read more into it than that.

I'm not a "competitive person" in that sense - I've played everything from racing, adventure, casual, puzzle through role-playing games with more or less focus on plot, shooters with first- or third-person perspective to RTS campaigns but also multiplayer-based stuff like SC2, TF2 or some Realm of the Mad God...
What I meant to say is somethings trivial and obvious: we should all get along rather than use hurtful terms that segregate our communities into mutually hostile factions.

Refer to this thread to play Diablo & Hellfire on Win 7.

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/looking_for_a_diablo_hellfire_101_patch_that_works_on_64bit_systems

I understand that and agree. No disrespect to anyone who enjoys multiplayer (not that I dislike it).

+1
Thanks for bringing some sanity into this thread.

Vestin, you are protesting too much. Why?

One of the basic types of games are the competitive ones, known to civilizations across the globe for millenia. Are you really saying that this is fundamentally a "bad" or "inferior" way of spending time ?

I'm amazed you got that from those comments. Why are you so defensive?

No matter how we justify it, these are video games which are wastes of time. Entertaining wastes of time, yes, but not a replacement for something like a job or a career.

They do have a point. Starcraft didn't become popular due to competitive gamers. As Blizzard once said, 50% of people who bought Starcraft did so mostly for the single player. Very, very, very few people played competitively on the ladder.

Starcraft 2 was largely designed around E-sports competitive gaming. This has wildly altered the game and the people who play it. As an example, Starcraft 2 is much faster paced than Starcraft 1. While that may be good for the minority of competitive gamers out there, it is not good for the majority who just want something fun and relaxing to do after dinner.

This matters because Starcraft 1 didn't need to become 'free to play', and it was around for decades. If Blizzard is considering this, then this means Starcraft 2 isn't attracting enough players in its current incarnation.

My thesis was on "play", so I got to explore a bit and I can't find a more befitting set of mental images than the bleak and hopeless reality of State Agricultural Farms in People's Republic of Poland, a few decades ago. Eroded social and cultural heritage, time no longer tethered to anything other than the lifeless clocks measuring it... and people's lives filled with WORK. Menial tasks they could no longer feel personal about, countless hours spent in artificial groups, leaving them too tired for anything but sleep in the remaining time. The only respite being the weekend hours spent downing vodka at the nearby cemetery.

You've managed to wander from a smaller pet-peeve of mine in an even bigger one, congratulations.

I can't stress enough how narrow-minded calling games "wastes of time" is. I've lived among philosophers far too long to hear people exclaim such strong yet naive statements. I can't even decide whether I should point out to you how pointless your entire existence is and how the moments of happiness playing a game or chatting with a friend can bring are the few damn things actually valuable and precious in life... or if I should, instead, focus on the positive and explain how challenging leisure is the sort of activity "most befitting a free man".
Do you live to eat or do you eat to live ? Do you work to keep yourself alive or are you kept alive so you can work ?

Let's leave this Marxist bullshit behind us. Homo ludens > homo faber. I know you likely speak more from a position of ignorance than malice but, pretty please, do not insult the wellsprings of fun (among other things: games).

When ? Where ? Day[9] was way past a hundred dailies at this point, legends were established in Korea and among foreigners alike...
I would've MAYBE let this one slide if you had limited yourself to "few"... but "Very, very, very few" ? Please...
Blizzard simply made a game that was awesome and unique, e-sports happened for multiple reasons of their own... SC2 was merely meant to embrace what had already been a reality.

What I assume you mean is that the "fastest" setting of the former is... faster than "fastest" in SC1 ?
Well - you no longer have unit selection limits and you can select multiple buildings, which arguably makes up for it... but there's an even more obvious solution - move the slider as far down as you can stomach (and your mind can process).

You can be derping around in public ladder games in any given title and the results should remain... depressingly consistent. At least in SC2 you have excellent matchmaking which should pit you against reasonably similarly-skilled opponents.
Taking it any further would be like claiming that the deck is stacked against the fat kid who wants to play soccer in his spare time. Either get acquainted with a threadmill or give up on running after the ball.

Oh, there are always custom games where casuals with friends can merrily be derping together at their own pace... There are "custom games" aka "mods" where you can play something like Bejeweled-with-benefits... There's, lastly, the campaign which I'm almost willing to bet that my mom could beat on NORMAL ("Casual" is insultingly easy and slowed than molasses).

Finally - strategy games are not for everyone. If one is not of the more... celebral kind, he could always find something he'd rather play.

Oh, BTW - I don't have it installed ATM but I'm sure you could ask someone from the forum to check the current number of SC2 games being played right now. Any time, any server. All of them hardcore games, pro-players and such, huh ? The world is pretty hardcore, apparently.

It doesn't mean shit. SC2 is not going to become Free2Play. The Blizzard guys are "considering" pretty much anything.

BTW - how's that console version of Diablo 3 ? Exactly. They've not only been considering it - they've hired people to code it. So far - nothing. They'll either ditch the idea, take years to modify the interface accordingly, assign people to a different project entirely... It's a world full of possibilities out there for Blizzard. Just because someone said "Yeah, we've considered X but... it doesn't really make sense, does it ?", it doesn't mean they're gonna follow this up with anything substantial.

Also - StarCraft 2 IS attracting enough people. Not only players but viewers as well... Have I mentioned that it's the #1 most popular e-sport in the world ? Not DotA2, not CS - SC2. Look up the streams (and the numbers of viewers !), the tournaments, the...
Why on earth are you even questioning this ? Water is wet, SC2 is popular, life is a path leading inevitably to death. It's obvious.

Thank you for answering a question I haven't even posted yet ^^.

I suspect that free-to-play games such as LoL, DOTA 2, and others are threatening to poach new talent (and maybe even existing talent) away from Starcraft 2 E-Sports especially in certain regions of the world. This might be the incentive behind considering a move for 'free-to-play' SC 2.

Keep in mind I never said that 'no one plays SC 2'. I said that Starcraft 1 didn't have that problem. Starcraft 1 sold twice that as Starcraft 2. But we are still early in Starcraft 2's lifecycle and before its expansions.

The markets that Starcraft 2 are selling to is much, much larger than Starcraft 1 had when you factor in population growth and how much more widespread computers are. Keep in mind that when Starcraft 1 was released, it had a gazillion RTS competitors. Today, Starcraft 2 has the RTS market practically to itself.

While its still early in its lifecycle, I think Starcraft 2 is underperforming. However, Blizzard's expansions greatly fix and 'even out' their games. The verdict is still open on Starcraft 2's success.

I'm not sure how drinking vodka after a day's work is more absurd than getting offended at a few comments someone made of a video game on an internet message forum. If you wish to treat your video game play as a metaphor for your life in this new millennium, go right ahead. Just be aware that most people don't share that view. And if you want a game to be successful, you have to be as inclusive as possible. Day[9] was in junior high when Starcraft 1 was released. His approach to the game then was to get a bunch of marines, give them names, and tell a story. He might have started to try out tournaments not that much later. Kids grow up fast.

Sure, Starcraft had tournaments. But so did most multiplayer games back in the late 90s. Descent even had tournaments. But sales of these games did not generally come from competitive multiplayer. I don't know the stats off hand, but I don't think even half of Starcraft 1's customers even logged on to Battle.net. (Of course, in Starcraft 2 you HAVE to go on Battle Net which might skew the numbers upward some.)

Why is it so hard to believe that Starcraft 1 didn't become popular because of competitive multiplayer considering that only a fraction of Starcraft 1 consumers ever went on Battle Net? The majority of LAN multiplayer was used for LAN parties after all. E-sports did become popular in Korea, yes. But Korean entertainment then didn't have much competition. South Korea was a much poorer country. The reason why E-sports hasn't exactly taken off the same way in Western markets is likely because there is much more competition for entertainment. This is what I was told from someone at Blizzard: The current setting for Starcraft 2 speed was passed around as a joke. But then it became the main setting which surprised many people there. Those 'derps' probably have full time jobs and families to feed. It is difficult to climb the Starcraft 2 ladder when you have to make a living. The way how Starcraft 2 is currently designed, it is not easy to play when you're sleepy or exhausted from a day's work.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a WoW raider. He called people who were not as progressed in the raid tier as he as 'baddies'. I suggested that maybe they couldn't devote fifteen hours a week to be in a raid instance when they had a full time job or had to take care of a family. The WoW raider was shocked because that thought never crossed his mind. Why is Blizzard asking people to write tutorials on their SC 2 editor? It is still early in the game's lifecycle, but it appears the modding scene isn't nearly as active with SC 2 as it was with Warcraft 3 or Starcraft 1. This is a big issue if Blizzard wishes to have a custom map marketplace. Considering that I was a closed beta tester for the original Starcraft (and a couple other famous RTS games), I think I'll trust my experience. I do remember playing with Maynard and Tillerman. Some of those I played with then ended up working at Blizzard.

Starcraft had a really fun universe unlike other RTS games at the time. The Zerg were so cool as was the Protoss. It was the first time the 'sides' in a RTS were so differentiated in both gameplay and in aesthetics.

Around half of Starcraft 1's sales were in South Korea. Maybe that was due to E-sports then. I'm not Korean so I cannot answer that. But I'm absolutely certain Starcraft's popularity in other markets such as the United States wasn't due to high competitive gaming. Starcraft was just a really fun game and a very well polished game. Most people didn't buy Starcraft 1 to 'climb the ladder'. You might be interested to know that Blizzard as a company has decided that they are eliminating the 'one way to play' mantra with their games. WoW is already doing this. You can see Diablo 3 doing this with their 'monster powers' coming up with the upcoming patch. I expect Starcraft to be doing something similar. Playing unranked multiplayer in HOTS is probably the start.

Blizzard responds to the market. They have to make games that appeal to as wide of audience as possible. Blizzard has never been a niche game company that makes games for only a certain type of gamer. Diablo 3's Endgame Crisis has changed many things on the Diablo 3 development side.

How's that console version of Diablo that was on the PlayStation? Or how about Starcraft 1 on the Nintendo 64? You may be too young to remember them. Considering that DOTA 2 is still in beta, I'm not sure that is the right comparison you'd want to make.

The question is not whether E-sports is more popular with Starcraft 2 than other games. The question is whether Starcraft 2's E-sports growing as a whole? From what I understand, there is some frustration that Starcraft 2 E-Sports hasn't made the same impact in the Western Markets as it did in South Korea. And it looks like Starcraft 2 won't reach the heights of popularity in South Korea as Starcraft 1 did.

It already did, and passed it. The last official tournament in Brood War ended a few weeks ago (or will end in a few weeks, can't think of the date now). All other organizations have already switched to SC2.

I honestly have no idea why you expected this statement to elicit any sympathy (respect ?) from me.

I'm glad you have some background knowledge when it comes to Starcraft and Blizzard games in general, though there's no point in dragging this discussion on, for the simple reason that we're not really... speaking the same language.
You fail to understand the meaning and intention of my arguments and respond with statements that neither move me emotionally (the way, I assume, you expected them to work on a "normal human being") nor convince me intellectually.