The second Golden Age of Video Games in the late nineties wasn’t limited to legendary titles; it was an era where companies won fans by empowering them.  In Starcraft’s case, Blizzard dangled a free-to-play gaming service alongside a “spawn” function where potential buyers could beat the crap out of each other with a friend’s copy of the game.  The corporatization of game development has caused this empowerment to regress.  Hey, why would Sony want a backwards-compatible Playstation 3 when they can charge for digitally-downloaded Playstation 2 software?

In addition to the removal of true local area play and the increase of digital restrictions management, Blizzard Entertainment’s current platform for Starcraft II online play is “one game, one account, one name”.  Why?  Yeah, this approach is about making money.  But it’s coming from more angles than you’d think.

At BlizzCon, Blizzard employees affirmed this decision was to prevent smurfing (talented players “resetting” their record by creating a new account).  Smurfing has two purposes: To experiment with new strategies without tainting their “real record”, or to ego trip through the ranks of mediocrity.  Neither situation addresses the Warcraft III matchmaking system that forces good players to make accounts in order to find games, and it doesn’t address that bad players will complain anyway because that’s what bad players do.

It’s really a public relations ploy.  Blizzard has plugged three strategy games into Battle.net since smurfing entered the culture, and only decided to hard-line the approach when “millions of World of Warcraft players” came into play.  And since the MMORPG is predicated on making time and effort the most important assets for overcoming challenges, Blizzard is going to make every concession in making sure these players don’t become frustrated.

So, you’ve stripped functionality by convincing new gamers that experts won’t ruin your party.  And thus, Blizzard can to grant that functionality back for a price.

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I hold dual allegiance to Warcraft III and Starcraft.  My beef with Starcraft has always been its community’s disdain for the role-playing strategy model.  Ironically, their hatred is always cut from the same mold: “I played Reign of Chaos in 2002.  Since bashing newbs was never as competitive as that Starcraft tournament I won money at, the game sucked.”

Yes, the impact of random items and the power of hero units were legitimate gripes.  Warcraft III was not a perfect game and it had some particularly glaring issues.  But since the dirt sheets claim Starcraft II is not a hoax, we need to clear something up: All of the gameplay issues that plagued Warcraft III’s early days will return to haunt Starcraft II.  The question is whether Starcraft players will put aside their hatred for the Warcraft series and come to terms with that.

All the same arguments can be compared to Starcraft’s leap forward from Warcraft II:  Dynamic balance between three factions?  Didn’t know “Terrans can’t stop a six-food Spawning Pool build” and “Zealots can’t compete with Zergling mobility” were racial specialties.  And way to bridge the gap between the elite and scrubs with your pointless interface upgrades.  You may have a centralized gaming server to work with, but good luck being the competitive standard Warcraft II was.

Didn’t turn out that way.  But just as it took several years for Boxer to demonstrate Vultures and Dropships weren’t useless pieces of metal, Moon and Grubby had to beat the crap out of each other to flesh out Warcraft’s fantastic metagame.

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Unfamiliar with the original Starcraft megastar?  SlayerS_Boxer is the ultimate argument for why you hate Terran players.  So when he speaks, you’re apparently supposed to listen.  Spoiler alert: The wizard of nuclear warfare and dropship play has a beef with replays:

Replay is a big problem too. The retirement of old progamers was influenced by replay. Even when Nal_rA and others pulled off an interesting strategy, copying it a day or two after is possible because of replay. As the old progamers went down, fans left. More effort was needed to hold them, but such effort is insufficient nowadays.

Isn’t it funny that the final opinion of a professional gamer always caters to their skill set?  And that every Starcraft-related opinion is a matter of preserving the game’s skill gap?  And that I consider this news-worthy because his “replays” are a legendary cross between “entertaining” and “jaw-drop”?

Let’s assume Boxer isn’t full of crap.  Replays have a detrimental impact on the game of Starcraft because replays expose too many holes in gimmick strategies.  If you believe this, congratulations!  Your hero just conceded that Starcraft lacks the depth to continue being the ultimate competitive video game!

He is echoing the same argument that people make when they choose college basketball over the pro game.  National Basketball Association rosters feature so much talent that the game devolves into a war of one-on-one basketball, where superstars use the benefit of a referee’s whistle to take over the game.  Likewise, Boxer is upset that his micro-heavy, risk-first style has been “deemed inferior” by a set of boring playstyles where the final resource tallies would look natural on an Obama budget.

In other words, Boxer is arguing that competitive Starcraft would be far more fun to watch if it looked like your last LAN party instead of trained machines going all binary on each other.  Well, South Korea is the only country on the planet with a refined taste for professional gaming, and they did it by convincing the world they’re a hell of a lot better than us at video games, so I’m going to have to disagree with that.

Warcraft III and Starcraft are popular on the competitive gaming scene, the rare combination of popularity and skill-based gaming, blah blah.  Apparently, Starcraft fans see it differently.  They disregard Warcraft III’s Chinese popularity and point fingers at Korea’s Starcraft fetish.  They explain the “disparity” by claiming Starcraft is the ultimate test of athletic ability.

I personally believe that Starcraft requires the most diverse skill set of any competitive game going.  But that’s not the reason for Warcraft III’s underachievement.  Let’s ignore the matchmaking aspect, where KeSPA can create exciting tournaments on a weekly basis; Warcraft III’s failings are all about accessibility and presentation.

Know how Europeans can’t understand America’s infatuation with the American brand of football?  Know how Warcraft III players want to choke Defense of the Ancients players?  Warcraft III has the same issue: It’s too complicated for a live audience.  Knowledge of the game’s nuances may not be a headache for veterans, but imagine selling “Warcraft: The Sport” to somebody who has never played a real-time strategy game.

“Tuck Rule”?  What the hell is the Tuck Rule?

With an exception for spellcasting units (Defilers, Dark Archons), you can watch competitive Starcraft without knowing a single thing about the game.  Psionic lightning looks like lightning, Marines look like dudes with guns, Zerglings have claws, and shit blows up.  The ebb and flow of combat and map control are all you need to decide who is winning a contest.

Compare that with Warcraft III, a game that relies heavily on role-playing elements (spells, abilities, effects) to distinguish units and heroes. These numbers and gameplay mechanics must be memorized in order to recognize their impact on the playing field.  You cannot look at the graphics for spells like Soul Burn, Howl of Terror, and Inner Fire and determine what they do on face value.  And good luck explaining why the Human player is about to win the game because he’s been pinned in his base but is about to get his Mountain King to level six.

Consider the hero experience system.  Know that the amount of experience granted by a unit corresponds to its “level”, a number typically equal to the unit’s food cost?  Know that rule doesn’t apply to Gryphon Riders, Demolishers, Meat Wagons, Frost Wyrms, and Mountain Giants?  How about diminishing returns on experience points gained via neutral unit kills?  The amount of bonus experience a lone hero gains as the player advances up the tech tree?

Congratulations, you’ve developed a system where the strategy of levelling a hero falls on creeping patterns and complex calculus.  It may provide for one hell of a role-playing strategy hybrid, but good luck selling it to the red states.

In the Starcraft universe, my world of ass-kicking resides on the International Cyber Cup, a.k.a. ICCUP.  In return for creating a playing field with more functionality than Battle.net, Blizzard Entertainment has recently condemned it as a “pirate server”.  Sorry to hear your Battlecruiser Rush wasn’t cutting it there, Dustin.

The talent level is good.  Damn good.  How good?  I’ve drawn up a synopsis of the letter grade ranking system on the internet’s most Korean gaming server.

Empowered by numerous victories on Big Game Hunters, you’ve chosen to play on ICCUP.  In the grand scale of things, you’re a solid player.  You have little trouble defeating your friends (though they insist they’ll get the better of you after playing the campaign one more time).  However, you’re unprepared for a world where man and Starcraft can wed in matrimony.  Your friends play Halo all the time, but that’s only because of that drinking game where you chug every time someone says the Battle Rifle is bullshit.  By your eleventh straight loss, it should be quite apparent that ICCUP is not for you.

Through dumb luck or hard work, you’ve maintained your default ranking of D or beaten enough D- players to achieve the D+ rank.  For every three games you play against even competition, Bisu will join your game to remind you that you are dog shit.  This will fuel your insecurities, leaving you to compensate by logging onto the Battle.net forums to brag about beating me.

As a C-level player, it’s possible you are very good.  It’s also possible you cherrypicked your only good matchup to make it this far.  It’s also possible you’re a Korean who mocks your opponents for “me kor u noob baka rofl ^_^”.  If you earned this rank on merit, you have mastered Starcraft.  Your skill level is now defined by how many games of Starcraft you can play simultaneously.

In your daily war against Korean pre-teens and the Western World’s sixty remaining Starcraft players, you have earned the respect of the internet.  As a B-Class Starcraft player, there is little doubt to whether or not you are the coolest kid in the school anime club.  You possess all the skill of your paid-to-play peers, but your parents keep disconnecting the router because you won’t take out the garbage.  Too bad you mom can’t see such an endeavor is beneath you.

You are an A-Class Starcraft player.  Your life consists of the horrifying reality that you will play a video game seventy hours a week.  You do this on the hope that Tossgirl will walk into the love letter you wrote in Vulture Mines.  Some of your opponents will be chess computers.  They have already calculated that you will lose the game and will hack your hard drive to make sure you can never play again.  Your lone reprieve will be the occasional game against IdrA.  Just mass Carriers and you should be fine.

Congratulations.  You have achieved what mortals wouldn’t dare.  You have reached the world-class “Olympic” ranking.  If you achieve this ranking, start tearing out the drywall in your room.  You are a secret government project and it is important that you know where the cameras are.  At this level of play, the metagame is for pussies.  Rather than guessing your next move and micromanaging their army, your opponents will telepathically restrain you from pressing keys on your keyboard.  Just don’t bother complaining about it on the internet.  Some D- player will tell you it’s part of the game and that you need to stop sucking so bad.

In 2004, Warcraft III’s chic strategy was to pair the Beastmaster with early-game Night Elf units.  Blizzard “fixed” the problem, reducing the Beastmaster’s strength by one point.  That is, twenty-five hit points and one point of damage.  Whether the patch stymied his effectiveness or players simply got better, the Beastmaster’s reign of terror was resigned to history.

Now consider the Orc Blademaster.  He can mix and match early-game item drops to increase his damage by as many as twenty to thirty points.  And unlike the Beastmaster, the Blademaster’s effectiveness is dictated by his attack damage.  Can you see where there may be a problem with this? Give credit to eSportsFrance for charting the conclusions I came to.

That’s right: In the last nineteen major international tournaments, Orcs have won fifteen.  In seven of those tournaments, Orcs fought each other to determine the winner.  What a way for Warcraft III’s competitive legacy to end.  It’s long dealt with accusations that the game is geared towards luck, items, and heroes.  And what did we end up with?  Players stacking the Blademaster with items and raining hell with Critical Strike, an ability that gives the Blademaster a fifteen percent chance for his attack to deal double, triple, or quadruple the damage.

So when’s Starcraft II coming out?

Credit to H4x for the link.  Anyone interested in the Warcraft III competitive scene owes it to themselves to read the article.

I hate being late for parties.

Teamliquid.net is the de-facto Starcraft journalism hub in the Western World.  Its members protect their passion for Starcraft like a first-born.  Need proof?  Teamliquid’s Hot_Bid drew up an article detailing the state of early-game Zerg in Starcraft II.  That is, thirty-six-hundred words detailing a problem that will be irrelevant in three months.

I’m not here to slam one for writing a dissertation on a non-issue.  The obvious hypocrasy would be obvious.  I’m more embarrassed over the ensuing discussion.

To summarize: Joneagle_X of SC2Forums wrote an article addressing Hot_Bid’s entry a review of each Zerg unit.  This conflicted with Hot_Bid’s point of view.  Eventually, Jon was goaded into defending himself on Teamliquid decided to interject himself into Teamliquid discussion for no reason at all. He began his defense with this:

I’m the guy whom HotBid “made look like he knows nothing.” Sometimes the ridiculousness you guys post makes it into my inbox and then I just have to respond. Feel free to read (and inevitably downplay) my review here. And in contrast to HotBid’s two days (maximum 20 hours) of playtime I’ve logged almost 60 hours on StarCraft 2.

A shitstorm predictably ensues, with Jon’s critics claiming his opinion is irrelevant because 1) he’s not good at Starcraft and 2) the entirety of Teamliquid has more Starcraft II experience than Jon does.

This is a fair time to note that I wake up every morning and wonder why people are content with being so stupid.

Early in my campaign against the Japanese Role-Playing Game, I was derided for playing one-hundred hours on a single Final Fantasy VII save file?  Why?  It wasn’t because I needed a life.  According to my detractor, I hadn’t played enough Final Fantasy VII to criticize the game.

In modern gamer culture, “years of experience” isn’t enough to validate your opinions.  Now, I’m supposed to get on my knees for the idiot who has played fifty games of Starcraft II?  And I’m supposed to respect the opinion of his critics because they’re totally awesome at the sequel’s predecessor?

You are terrible at this game.

I don’t care who you are: If you are reading this entry and Starcraft II has not been released, you are fucking garbage at Starcraft II and your opinion has no more merit than anyone else’s.  Being totally awesome at the predecessor does not change that.  1998’s best Starcraft players would be laughed out of a modern tournament.  Ten years from now, we will be talking about “Starcraft II in 2009″ the same way.

So if you’d like to get a head-start on being a complete dick, go ahead.  Just letting you know I’m calling you out on it.

Edit: Amending the record to show Joneagle was not directly responding to Hot_Bid’s entry.  Thanks, Dreadwave!

Edit Edit: Let’s try this again.

Blizzard wants Starcraft II to turn American e-sport into something more than a middle-aged compulsive popping quarters into a Pac-Man machine.  Starcraft already won over South Korea, and there’s little debate in whether the franchise boasts compelling high-level play.  Like countless before it, Starcraft II will be America’s professional gaming savior.

The game’s chances are too perfect.  As a game that simulates war, it can easily be compared to American football.  The original Starcraft sold four million units in the States.  As “the makers of World of Warcraft”, Blizzard will outdo those numbers.  The company has shown every indication they’ll back the game’s competitive aspect, and have limitless resources to get it done.  Previous ventures like the Championship Gaming Series lacked the balls to make the financial investment.  Well, what stronger backing than the game’s creators?

Sadly, there’s a reason Major League Gaming boasts Halo 3 as the crown jewel.  The organization accounted for the most compelling argument against Starcraft II’s viability as an American e-sport: Americans are some of the dumbest creatures going, and they’re proud of it.

Nothing wrong with being stupid.  No matter what part of the planet you throw a dart at, you’ll find stupid people.  However, there’s something special to be said about a country that ostracizes intelligence and disowns any competitive game they fall behind in.

Remember Bobby Fischer?  The one-man army who stood up to the Soviet chess machine?  We gave him God status for reasons beyond “commie basher”: He’s the only legendary chess player this country has built in fifty years.  His legacy of making American children want to learn the game of chess?  The world superpower with a population of 304 million boasts four of FIDE’s top 100 players, putting us on par with juggernauts like Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Hungary.

And if there’s one thing Americans won’t accept, it’s watching a game where the world kicks their ass.  We only care about soccer when we’re up on Brazil in the second half, and gave up on tennis when Sampras and Agassi ceded the torch to Nadal and Federer.  That means we won’t tolerate a Starcraft where the most prominent American is better known for his bad attitude than his macro-heavy Terran.  We won’t settle for a Warcraft III where GosuGamers’ highest-ranked American stands 75th. And if Americans quickly find a losing battle against the Korean e-sport war machine, it’ll do more damage to the product’s chances than a crappy matchmaking system or a broken balance patch.

Two years back, I huddled some friends for fun with the X-Box 360 port of Doom, a game I consider the cream of the medium.  Their experience with shooters was mostly Halo, currently fighting a tight battle with Call of Duty for “face of the genre”.  The words most consistent in coming out of their mouths: “This game is so fast.”  Having first played the Doom series when I was eight, I could only think “No, this game is not fast.  Halo is slow.”

Sunday’s entry was the story of a franchise (Team Fortress) earning accessibility by not only sacrificing gameplay, but the element of speed.  As other genres satiate the best players by becoming faster, adding more notes, and throwing more bullets at the player, what the hell happened to the first-person shooter?

No wonder pro gaming can’t get off its ass in the United States.  This country has a gun fetish.  It loves war.  Today, the most popular shooters simulate war.  War requires teamwork.  And guess what?  Teamwork doesn’t sell tickets.  Superheroes do.  And the pace of games like Halo have become Kryptonite for world-class gamers.

I am a carry-over from an era where Doom said “cover is for pussies”.  That evolved into Quake and Unreal Tournament, half-shooter, half-gymnastics simulation.  Those evasive maneuvers have been replaced by “get behind the wall, you noob!”

If you want to blame any one game for this, the answer is beautifully ironic.  It was Doom 3.

Yeah, Halo was the coming-out party for the console shooter, but ID Software is the undisputed father of the genre.  Set in code, they declared the first-person shooter a genre where reloading weapons was for bitches, that dozens of beasts would simultaneously fail to cut you down.  And then Doom 3, thanks to the Duct Tape Reduction Act of 2184, was pure darkness chugging at eight frames a second.

So much for “cover is for pussies”.  Maybe I should go order Painkiller.  I’ll be back later.

It’s ironic that distinct styles of any game (ala baseball and cricket) can emerge in the age of globalization, but the blood feud between Blizzard and the Korean E-Sport Association is primed for such an event.  It would be an understatement to say the next twenty-four months are critical in shaping professional gaming’s history.

Recap: At South Korea’s eStars 2009 gaming event, the top Warcraft III player (Jang Jae Ho, a.k.a. Spirit_Moon) and the most accomplished Starcraft player (Lee Yun-Yeol, a.k.a. NaDa) battled in Starcraft II; “The Fifth Race” versus a three-time Starleague champion, competing disciplines colliding in the game of the future.  Initially, KESPA merely prohibited under-contract talent (sans NaDa) from competing in the night’s exhibition matches.  Now, it turns out KESPA used their clout to keep the games off television.

Will the future of professional Starcraft include the founding father?

The prevailing sentiment is that KESPA needs to go fuck themselves, and that they need to keep their grubby hands out of the game.  It’s not that simple.

I originally believed Blizzard’s omission of LAN functionality was a shot at Garena and others, the heavy players in the piracy of Blizzard games.  After discussing the matter with e-friends, I’ve concluded Blizzard is thinking ahead: The removal of LAN is also designed to consolidate control of the professional Starcraft II scene.  We’re potentially looking at an era in competitive gaming where the inventor of the sport becomes the marketing machine for its own product.

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