How much was Sc2 in Blizzard's overall picture?

We get requests every now and then for new content, or what it would take for Blizzard to come back here (unfortunately, “when Reapers pigs fly”), so I’m wondering if we have more data, or in-depth knowledge about the whole transition away from this great game.

We can include merchandise sales, and events if we’re so inclined. People keep saying Coop was the most popular mode at its peak (around 2017 to 2018 or so), but it still feels like a “big fish in a small pond” type situation.

There was a comment (Reddit, or somewhere else online) that said some “horse skin/cosmetic” in WoW alone, made more money than the entire Sc2 game. I’d like to see if we have citations on that. Alas, I would believe it :\

While I don’t have any specific answer for you, I can give you a general observation that strategy games are a declining niche in the video game industry overall. There will always be the current player base that enjoys playing as the disembodied cursor commanding the army, but as the industry grows this player base does not.

Probably not much. Considering most of the money is in mobile games. Seems like MS doesn’t care as much too with all the studio closures and layoffs it’s dishing out on its end. Although I hear SG will have 3 player coop this year but the heroes cost $10 and you get only 1 free. Plus SG graphics suck so not sure if I’m going to enjoy it or not.

Isn’t it on par with Sc2, or Warcraft 3 Reforged (or whatever improved version we got)? I’m guessing that was deliberate because this gets more people into the game, grows the user base rapidly, etc. Stormgate is going to be free to play.

OTOH, Zerospace might be better in the graphics department. However, this one is sci-fi theme (but will also have 3p coop). Not sure when it releases, but should be around the same time

Regarding the whole thing with the former developer’s quote: It was very lacking in context. Seemed like he was strictly referring to the boxed retail version of Wings of Liberty and only within a certain span of time. Did he mean with or without the development expenses subtracted from the sales? It’s a good point to make regarding the focus of companies like Blizzard but he didn’t provide enough information on what he meant to read too much into it.

Blizzard had a big investment in StarCraft II for a long time as well as StarCraft Remastered. They were really hoping for them to dominate the Korean market the way Brood War did back in the day. As successful as they were, you can’t duplicate the exact circumstances that made Brood War a cultural sensation just as South Korea was expanding its tech investment and PC cafes were taking off. At the same time, SC2’s success was a lot more worldwide and hit just as Justin TV was evolving into Twitch and esports were having another resurgence. Former Blizzard president Mike Morhaime was especially invested in StarCraft as he was a developer on the original game.

Long story short: StarCraft II was originally intended to be made up of three boxed releases: Wings of Liberty, Heart of the Swarm, and Legacy of the Void. By the third release, the market had changed a lot and the whole “game as a service” business model was taking off. Also, the esports scene had changed and team games were a lot more dominant. SC2 started adding paid DLC. Nova Covert Ops did well enough but was more expensive than expected. Co-op mode became a much more profitable investment as you could keep adding new commanders as paid DLC while using the same missions repeatedly and just occasionally adding more. Then you had announcer packs and eventually War Chests serving as battle passes. Finally they made it free-to-play and gave it a pretty big boost. This was all under Tim Morten, Kevin Dong, and Ryan Schutter who weren’t even involved back when WoL released.

Things got messy around 2018 when the Activision Blizzard shareholders started getting upset over the profits not growing to meet expectations. A lot of this was down to Activision’s poor transition away from accessory-heavy games like Guitar Hero and Skylanders but the lack of new(not remake or expansion) titles from Blizzard caused it to be reorganized alongside Activision. President Mike Morhaime announced he’d be stepping down as part of this. And Blizzard narrowed their focus to trying to put out multiple Diablo, Warcraft, and Overwatch titles on different platforms(including mobile) as Activision had done with Call of Duty. Both StarCraft games moved further to the background with the team being moved under Classic Games and content being reduced to two War Chests and two Co-op Commanders each year along with a couple announcers.

All this time, the developers really wanted to move on to a new RTS game. There were pitches for a StarCraft III or Warcraft IV but they were turned down as Blizzard didn’t think they could monetize them as well as the franchises they were focusing on. On top of that, they cut Warcraft III Reforged’s development down to a skeleton crew and then released it before it was anywhere close to finished at the beginning of 2020 to disastrous results.

Tim Morten arranged to get SC2 esports handed off to ESL and then left Blizzard in early 2020. Schutter and Dong got help from other teams and put out the huge Patch 5.0 for the 10th anniversary of SC2. And then they also left and joined Morten to found Frost Giant. Almost everyone from SCR and WC3R also departed so Blizzard stopped releasing new content for SCR and SC2 in late 2020 while outsourcing WC3R to an external studio to work on fixing it. There was no longer anyone in Blizzard to work on RTS games so ESL started handling updates with the help of other esports teams and community members.

These days, Classic Games is more of a little department people stop by when they’re available to implement changes designed outside Blizzard. And the plans seem to be to continue investing in non-RTS genres where they can charge for subscriptions or battle passes and sell a whole lot of cosmetics.

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Oh god no. It’s worse actually. I’d say it’s a worse version of WC3 reforged. OTOH, zero space’s graphics are better but not by much and it has the chinese mobile game aesthetics to it which I also don’t prefer but the merc and hero system is interesting. Unit design wise they started with units that are also too copied from SC2 but they were quick to make corrections to their unit design. Sadly, Frost Giant is too focused on making SG an eSport before anything else and I’m seeing it as them going the route of Dawn of War 3 (and TBF DoW3 also looked better)

What level of graphics were you hoping? Can you use another game to compare, and provide some specs (otherwise, we can look it up)?

I’m guessing they really wanted to keep the graphical level on the lower side to attract more players (SG is going to be free to play after all).

If you’re complaining there’s no option for better graphics, then that’s another thing. Only thing I can think of is high quality graphics are generally time consuming to do (hence, expensive).

Since FG are former SC2 devs and are using UE 5 for a game engine, I was expecting the graphics to blow SC2 out of the water if not at least be on par with it.

If you want some modern examples of graphics to compare to just take a look at AoE4 or tempest rising. They’re not 1 to 1 starcraft clones per se but they both look nice and feel like they are utilizing a modern game engine.

Many people say Gameplay is above all else but SG could beat SC2 out in overall gameplay but I still won’t play it if it looks like a cheap knock-off of it.

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I think SC2 was an important part of Blizzard’s identity and legacy, but not the primary engine if you will.

This guy will explain to you why SC2 is niche and why Blizz chills hard in 36 seconds:
youtube dot com/watch?v=IHZru-6M8BY

Well that also explains why Mihoyo has the income to fund nuclear energy research too.

PirateSoftware did a break down some time ago about in game store purachases. He said when he worked at Blizzard they released a Pony in the in game store for World of Warcraft. It brought more money in they all of SC2: Wings of Liberty.

Thats why they don’t make more content.

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