Longtime SC/SC2 player here. Built a gaming computer in 2010 for SC2 and played through 2012, then took a long break for medical training (watched casters and streamers in mean time). Just started playing again recently and it’s hard not to notice the lack of updates, new maps, cool new content, balance patches, etc.
I would like to petition Blizzard to resume support for SC2 at previous levels given the incredible history, loyal fanbase, and gaming experience unlike anything other. SC2 is truly special and deserves to continue to be supported.
Also game is pretty abandoned, unfortunately. Activision doesn’t see future for SC2. Some of support was restored recently (technical support, new maps), however, the game is facing too many issues (smurfing, griefing, cheating and more), and the player base is decreasing, so changes are low.
Also 0% chance for any “cool” content. Nova Covert Ops were back in 2017 and now it’s too late for anything (too low player base), whole Coop team left company, and no more skins - they even aren’t selling those, some skins are simply locked.
PUBG - 1 bln players
CrossFire - 1 bln players
Fortnite - 350 mln players
World of Tanks - 160 mln players
World of WarCraft - 100 mln players
StarCraft 2 - 290 thousands players ←
Source: wikipedia, RankedFtw
Who are you kidding ? What company on earth would possibly invest money into a corpse of a video game. That corpse cannot even be reanimated because it has been rotting couple of years.
Its a question of scale really. I think 290 000 , while clearly absymmal compared to FPS like games you quoted, is still alot of poeple. Also games like Fortnite or PUBG will be here for a few years at best until a new FPS king of the hill emerges, SC2 has die hard fans.
What im saying is I would imagine a very small dev team could make some money out of SC2, while doing small balance changes and releasing warchests, skins and such (stuff that doesnt involve that much work), but i think companies like Activision/Blizzard just focus on big numbers.
I come from the nowadays niche 4x strategy world, where often creating a whole game is viewed as ok if it selled 100.000 copies. Its just tiny bussiness in comparison.
Also another interesting thing I noticed: I often go toesl archives channel on youtube to watch pro games, as I dont have time to follow it live. And compared to other games out there, which i suppose have higher player base, SC2 videos seem to have higher number of views. I would again atrtribute it to the die hard SC2 community and the fact SC2 players (not pros) are prolly on avg. adults, whith commitements, but will follow their game in free time. Again a fact that might be quite attractive for advertising.
And yet microsoft is releasing AOE4. I mean revitalizing Starcraft can be done, there just doesn’t seem to be any more vision or will to do so at Blizzard at the moment and perhaps never. After their last showing with WAR3:R and the current crap show that is D2R the leadership at the company seems to have left the building.
The only thing Activision/Blizzard did in recent years are remasters:
Broodwar Remastered,
Warcraft 3 Reforged
Diablo 2 Resurected
The last new franchise was Overwatch in 2016, from this point on, only remasters. These ppl have no clue how to make a video game, that’s why they are relying on remaking their old titles which already reached huge popularity in the past, because they know most addicted loyal fans will buy it anyway.
I am curious where did you get data from.
Current WoW active players is 26 million, and if you consider all players ever, then I’d to remind you that WoL achieved over 1 million of sold copies on it’s release day…
Your data is more than flawed, I am curious about the source, though.
Also saying “Source: Youtube” isn’t a proper referencing. Please provide links. I am genuinly curious now.
You cant possibly demand them to come back after you have been inactive for 8-9 years. Are you kidding us? You think the world is catered for you or what?
If you last time played wol then there is tons of new content for you with 2 expansion packs and nova missions + some new co-op heroes…
First where did you see: “Source: Youtube”, because i never even mentioned it.
Yes, these numbers come from wikipedia page:
h ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-played_video_games_by_player_count
I mean data i provided is indeed flawed because i compared StarCraft 2 ACTIVE playerbase with other video games’ TOTAL player count. So yes this is my mistake, but objectively no matter what numbers you will put in the chart - StarCraft 2 looks like a grain of sand compared to the entire desert.
SC2 is THE ONLY high-end AAA RTS on the market. There is literally NOTHING else. You solve the problem of popularity by focusing on monetizing “whales”. Whales are players who are dedicated and willing to spend much more than average players. I spent around 200 bucks on this game. I’ve been around when Blizzard was named “Silicon Synapse” during The Lost Viking era.
I started playing a crappy mobile game… strategy rpg that might be actually a casino masked as such. I … spent 1000 bucks over 2 years. I just calculated all google payments… no game should cost that much… ever. Anything spent like even 200 for SC2 is worth because this is a game in your heart, crappy games that give random loot and waste your money because you dont even get what you want… are not OK
The problem is that sc2’s good will was spent on a lot of very bad decisions in the early days of sc2.
WoL was an imbalanced mess and it became worse near the release of HotS since what I figure happened was that the devs weren’t addressing any issues simply because they wanted you to buy HotS.
Then HotS introduced a lot of really awful things in it’s own rite. Widow Mines, Oracles. Basically ‘terrible, terrible damage’ was the mantra and it was pretty insipid.
Then when LotV hit; we had stuff like Liberators, Adepts that 2 shot Marines, unerfed/changed Tempests and a faster economy. So we had in essence; 3 major player exoduses.
At the end of WoL when Blizzard refused to do their jobs.
At the end of HotS due to crap like Raven/Swarm Host turtlefests.
At the start of LotV because ‘bio or die trying’ Terran players couldn’t be bothered to l2p after being spoon fed for years.
In addition to not even thinking their buisness model through completely. People were begging Blizzard for skins. For years. And yet it took them until late into LotV’s life cycle to get that train moving…that was a huge, huge amount of money left on the table for no excusable reason.
Blizzard’s bad decision making skills resulted in the franchise being where it is today; all but abandoned and I don’t think we’ll ever see another Blizzard game garner the attention that SC2 WoL did on release now that their reputation is in complete shambles.
Blizzard is basically dead at this point. That’s mostly because they disbanded their “Team 1” which was their main RTS team. They lost almost all key people and abandoned the RTS genre. What’s left of the old Blizzard now? Only the name and nostalgia associated with it. Boby Kotick is running the show and you all know what that means.
