Despite rampant speculation otherwise, Critical Hits has obtained a screenshot of tomorrow’s update of Blizzard’s homepage which confirms that the big announcement will be a new property: Cowboycraft.
Cowboycraft will be a real-time strategy game intended to emulate the tumultuous time in American history. Players will have their choice of three different races: Cowboys, Indians, and Chinese Railroad Workers. Each race will have to mine gold and harvest whiskey in order to produce units and more upgradable buildings. Each race will have several distinct units, finely balanced to Blizzard’s usual standards. Whether you choose to perform an Indian Rush with Braves units, or focus your efforts on building Karate Locomotives, there will be plenty of strategic options to delight all RTS fans.
The game will come with several modes. The first is the single-player story mode where you will play each race and see the conflict from their perspective. Expect to see a wide variety of special characters including: Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday, Walker Texas Ranger, Chon Wang, Geronimo, and Abraham Lincoln. (Click on Lincoln enough times, and be treated to him delivering the Gettysburg Address in full.) You will follow the tragic fate of General Custer, who dies in the service of his cause, only to be reanimated as a zombie to serve as Chief of the Indians.
A Blizzard RTS would be nothing without its multiplayer, and you’ll find plenty of options to play against others in Cowboycraft. There will be many maps, based on numerous tile sets such as ghost town, desert, snowy desert, dry desert, parched desert, desert without water, and Caribbean isles.
The final mode, one that Blizzard is most excited to pioneer, is the MMORTSRPG mode. Working in elements of the Warcraft 3 Hero system and World of Warcraft, players will have the chance to level up thousands of units along side thousands of other people with thouasands of their own leveling units. Subscription to this mode costs $15 per month.
As you can see, the Starcraft 2 rumors were way off base, and I for one am glad: who would really want to have a follow up to a successful science fiction franchise when they could have a game filled with Grizzled Prospectors and Saloon Girls?
Ok, this is the only thing I wanted more then SC2.
The Chuck Norris thing is so overdone. The announcement is not going to be Starcraft 2, ok well i’m not 100% of that, but I seriously hope it isn’t.
Sigh, it was SC2.
But being a dick is forever.