Stammer said:
In response to your third paragraph:
Not if you buy your character or are taken through large areas. And honestly, it's not really skill that helps otherwise either. You have gear "A", which is good enough to get gear "B", which then makes you good enough to get gear "C", all the way up to "?", which is the best gear in the game for that specific class.
In response to most of it in general:
Has Blizzard ever actually created a video game? I mean, yeah they have. They produced games, they put their name on games. But have they actually completely created a game from scratch? Even one?
Blizzard was the company put in charge to make the Warhammer RTS game. They used their story, they used their characters, they made a good game. The Warhammer guys decided at the last minute to cancel it. Did Blizzard scrap the idea? No. They made Warcraft! And what spawned off of that? Certainly not Warhammer40k. It's StarCraft! Okay, I know that StarCraft and WH40k have like nothing in common, but it seems a little funny that they made a game that was similar, only in space.
Diablo 1 was going to be made by another company. Blizzard bought them out. They claimed the game as their own.
So that's all three of their game series...
Not one of them begun on their own.
Warcraft II and III are sequels.
Diablo II and III are sequels.
World of Warcrap is a sequel.
StarCraft II will be a sequel. Actually, no it won't. It's going to be like StarCraft 1, but you will have to buy it three more times. Woo!
StarCraft: Ghost isn't even good enough to call a similarity, it's just a blatant rip-off to Command and Conquer: Renegade. A futuristic-based RTS game turned into a FPS game where the main character is a commando who gets to ride in the different tanks, etc, in the RTS game.
On buying characters and the nature of gear: Yes, a lot of people do that, it is however frowned upon, both within the general community, as a sign of stupid or lazy person (i.e. in the way you'd think of someone who cheats) and by Blizzard themselves, who don't actually allow it, and do their best to find, and ban such players. But, as it's been stated by them many times, a lot of that comes from people actually reporting activity against the ToS, otherwise it takes them all that much longer to do anything about it.
As for the gear, if that's what you want out of the game, then go for it, you don't -need- to do anything, yes, if you want to get into the higher content, you've got to have reasonable gear, but, what do you expect? This isn't an FPS, you can't just pick up a gun and rely on your amazing mouse clicking abilities to rush through everything. There are some things they could do a little differently, but this in an -RPG- firstly, what, would you play Fallout, or Oblivion, or Torment, and expect to beat the final boss after an hour of play? No, you'd play the game, get leveled, get gear, -then- go fight the final boss right?
On Blizzard's games: Oh I don't know...Lost Vikings? Blackthorne? Rock N' Roll Racing?
On their other properties: I don't doubt that they are a -business- first and foremost, and that many of their works are somewhat derivative. But so what? What isn't these days? Very little that's what. As for the supposed Warhammer 'ripoff', tell me this, where exactly is this amazing Warhammer RTS you keep...oh, you mean the one that didn't get picked up? The one that Blizzard ran with anyway and made successful. [sarcasm] As opposed to the amazing and critically acclaimed 'Mark of Chaos' or the older 'Shadow of the Horned Rat' or 'Dark Omen', remember those? [/sarcasm]
As for Diablo being 'bought', I'll admit, I'd never heard about that, however, if it's true, there's a word for that: business. This happens everywhere. A company sees a good idea, likes it, buys it. They own it. What's the problem?
On sequels: Now you're just grasping, when something is wildly popular, you want to do your best to extend it, and while some companies do this badly, and go to unreasonable lengths to extend the life of their product, I don't believe Blizzard have fallen into this trap...yet. I don't get it, are you saying sequels are bad? So, no Fallout 3 for you yes? And certainly no Dead Space, given how derivative that is, oh, and no Bio Shock either, or Far Cry 2, or Crysis, cause y'know, that's just Farcry with superpowers.
On Starcraft Ghost: I wasn't aware that was released, nor that any in depth info or pictures has been released since those first screens and trailers, could be wrong, but either way...I'd love to know where you got your copy.
