StarCraft 2 to be released as a trilogy

On top of having to pay 3 times for what would normally constitute a complete game, us Protoss players might have to wait until at least 2011 to see Zeratul in action, and possibly what role the Xel'Naga play in the SC universe.

I HAVE MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT THIS. YELLING.

Well really, with the exception of Warcraft 1 and 2 usually the last race you play is the race that "wins." I'd rather it be Zerg than Protoss, but what're you gonna do.

and you guys were pissed about MM9 DLC lol...

At least Protoman only costs 2 bucks

First of all, who the hell buys SC for the campaign? The campaign is good (for an RTS), but everyone knows it's all about the multiplayer.

Second of all, it just says "focusing on" a seperate race, not "playable as" a seperate race. It could mean that you still play as all three in each disc, but each one focuses on a different factions story/perspective.

Third of all, c'mon, with the amount of time most people are going to be putting into SC2 they could charge $800 for it and it'd still be a good deal. Doesn't it seem weird to anyone else that the developer gets the same amount of cash from you for a game you put 2000 hours into as another developer gets from you because you picked up some lousy game on a whim that you played for 5 hours?

Wow... Speak of bandwagons and things being mentioned out of context. I love how everyone here got so indignant without actually bothering to fully check what's going on.
First of all: StarCraft II will have player choice affect the flow of the campaign and the story (much like in an adventure game). You'll be able to talk to characters, choose what planets you visit and what missions you take, what tech you buy and whom you ally yourself with.
This leads to two things: there's an adventure game style environment between each and every campaign where you can walk around and interact with the world and where in game engine cutscenes happen (which are VERY different from WarCraft III ingame cutscenes, they're basically like pre-rendered cinematics rendered in the in-game engine, still VERY detailed, think Doom 3 level of graphics) and there's a greater number of missions in each campaign (at least 36 I believe). So each campaign is bigger than each and every full roster of campaigns in the orginal StarCraft, Brood War, WarCraft III and The Frozen Throne. And the whole game complete with it's three parts will be at least TWICE as big as any of the previous mentioned games with their expansions installed.
You guys apparently have no idea how much time, effort and resources (not to mention talent and skill) goes into creating something of this magnitude.
And then you whine about paying for three installments each of which has much more content then any of the previous Blizzard games (except WoW and it's expansions perhaps), and pretty damn good content at that. And FYI, there'll be full multiplayer with all three races fully fleshed out in the very first installment, so no one's forcing you to buy the nexxt two if you just want to play the multiplayer game. Get a grip.
Rant over.

P.S. A correction: there's an adventure style environment between each and every MISSION in the campaign.

We don't have the whole story yet, but multiple disc swapping, regardless of price, is what's bothering me the most. I love Starcraft, but no way would I buy THREE copies of the game. I'd buy one though... maybe Protoss.

I can't believe this outcry. Whiners. Play some battle.net for the next 10 years and realize your investment was sound.

Or like some of you said, go buy c&c and have EA stop patching the game and then shutting down the servers, yay!

Words cannot express my utter disappointment at this ridiculous news :-(
Thats it for PC gaming for me, my graphics card can age gracefully while i enjoy the console world for a few years.

if they release each part cheap and so that the triology makes the price of a regular game it's ok by me and for most gamers. like some kind of episodic content. but if they charge full for each part i hope that it has monstrous content. cause if it doesnt it's gonna backfire on them.... gamers nowadays can make some waves.

I still don't like having to buy three separate installments, but I think the case has been made that each single player campaign will be a complete experience. One thing I still am not sure about though is something I read on Kotaku: "Each new single player campaign will come with upgrades and changes to the multiplayer." I hope that these changes are applied to everyone's online experience, so multiplayer-focused gamers won't be forced to spend money on things they won't have any use for. Kotaku also confirms some people's suspiciaons that they're doing it this way because of how long it would take them to release the total package. A decade is long enough to wait.

http://kotaku.com/5062018/starcraft-ii-lead-producer-on-the-split-single-player-campaign

mmmm...ya. im gonna try not to say anything until more details emerge.

lets stop for a moment, and look at blizzard's track record here. its pretty stunning. lets also realize that when vivendi and activision merged blizzard said they would continue development almost as if nothing had even happened.

maybe it really IS that massive and epic and enormous that they arent really screwing us. maybe each campaign is atleast 25 hours. i think we just need to wait and see about release dates, prices, gamelength, multiplayer, and packaging.

plz don't let me down blizzard.

And this is why I will stick to C&C.

Depending on how this system actually works, I might buy the Terran campaign, because they are the most fun to play. But if it is a regular length campaign in each box, forget about me picking up the others.

If we're talking 50 bucks, that's 150 for one "game." And if they each have the same core multiplayer, you're only paying for more story.

ROT IN HELL BLIZZARD.

seriously, trying to sell each race seperately? So if i want to play protoss only i now have to buy 3 games? DIE.

This is just a mean to split the game to smaller chunks so that wow players won't stop paying their montly fee. Think about the money they will loose when all the wow players will stop playing to play SC2. They have the same problem with D3.

But they have an other big problem, I've been following Bliz since warcrat2 but if they split SC2 in 3 parts, they loose me.

This is the most disapointing gaming news in many years.....

We may play games, but don't play with us.

wow some of you guys are incredible. i really don't understand the complaints behind this. i went to blizzcon and i can tell you that this is totally a good move. if you thought the campaign in sc1 was a good deal, then this should be just as good. in sc1 each of the 3 campaigns was 10 missions long for a total of 30 missions. with sc2 they said that each of the 3 campaigns would be about 26-30 missions long. oh, so you're paying for a game and 2 expansions and getting about 3 times as much singleplayer content (not to mention the in between mission adventure/meta-game and the extra mini-campaigns they announced as well. yea, that's right, even though the first campaign is terran theres still going to be a mini-campaign for protoss (and maybe zerg, I don't remember if they said, I know they confirmed a protoss one with zeratul in the first one) as well.

so that should be more than enough to satisfy any single-player complaints. if you're just sad because you're only interested in playing say the protoss campaign and now you have to wait a long time for that, hey guess what, if they did it as one big game you'd have to be waiting just as long, you just wouldn't have anything to play in the interim either... unless they cut it down and made each one shorter, in which case you're getting less content overall.

and there really shouldn't be any multiplayer complaints, since you get access to all 3 races for multiplayer/skirmish from the start. maybe they'll even end up adding extra units like with brood war in the other ones to add to the game, who knows.

so yea, you guys should calm down and have a little more faith in them before crying bloody murder.

People people people, as in the case of EA with their ridiculous copy protection, there is one thing we can do that will surely work.

INTERNET RAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111!!one!!

This is only a temporary thing. Im pretty sure of that.

Ok. On the surface this is a money grab and it sucks huge donkey testicals. Just MAYBE tho they want to put 3 games out 2 solidify the lore and make a bunch of characters with a decent backstory like warcraft. Remember warcraft is about 5 games including expansions. Starcraft is currently 2.
Considering they have an unannounced MMORPG in the works being worked on there's not really enough there at the moment lore and background wise to fuel a full MMORPG based on the game. 3 seperate, well made expansions may just do that.

Is everyone on here a whiny little bitch?

now i admit, i personally think its incredibly bullshitty what they're trying to do here, 3 games ( which i can almost guarantee they'll be charging full price for ) which may or may not be as good as the first games because and i quote this from somewhere else " They don't want to keep their loyal fans waiting " , im calling bullshit and a gaming jihad against blizzard, as for the people who complain that multiplayer is 'entire rushing' while yes that may be the case for melee games, theres also Use Map Settings games on SC Which i must say were probably far more interesting in many cases than melee as the game became putty in one's hands, WC3 was also a good example of this as the game could go from being a racing game to a zombie survival meets civilizations in the blink of an eye simply because gamers have designed custom maps such as these, granted the wave upon waves of idiots that crowd b.net aren't too pleasing to the eye, theres alot of good people all the same, so let me say this, while i HATE what they're trying to do here, give them one chance, a single chance to make things right, if they fuck up, boycott blizzard, if you DO buy it and it does turn out to be a decent game, well then shit they've done better than what i've expected and apparently alot of the commenters here expected as well it appears

why are people so retarded, instead of getting just one game you get 3. if you think that much campaign soudns boring buy only one of them and just play online! If you googled for 2 seconds you realize that each one IS going to be as long as the original 3 combined, they aren't money grubbing, they're getting multiplayer and 1 campaign to you quicker, and allowing them more time to work on the other campaigns which will be like full games.Blizzard isn't stupid, they aren't going to create 3 games and give them to you for the price of 1. If your getting 3 games you can pay 3 times.

My Thoughts: The product may be released as such, Multiplayer Package $30, each races campaign $20. The price for the campaigns is assuming each one will be about 5-8 hours of gameplay, i am basing the gameplay hours on what Valve did to Half-Life with the Episodic format.
The only huge thing i see people freaking out to much about is multiplayer. From what I have read buying all the campagins wouldn't addon to your multiplayer experience such as Lord of Destruction or The Frozen Throne. The campaigns only add to the story, not to multiplayer. I am very certain that it wont matter which product you buy if you are going for the multiplayer experience. If they did this it would become a must to buy all 3 products which would be very dumb. i dont beleive blizzard will do this. If they do then of course i will be upset. All i want is the online experience, i dont care about the storyline.

Eligor
Oct 11th 2008
2:00AM

''And FYI, there'll be full multiplayer with all three races fully fleshed out in the very first installment, so no one's forcing you to buy the nexxt two if you just want to play the multiplayer game. Get a grip''

no one forcing us huh? they can always add new units, like they did with broodwar. so yeah you can play multiplayer with all 3 race with the first game. but i wouldn't be suprised if they add few units/map etc...
otherwise what is the point of making a game with only another scenario?

like if they did Diablo2 expension without the new class and only act 5...would suck huh?

i am going to pirate this game as well....they stink.