We were really curious to see which movie-watching experience you would prefer, and not surprisingly the majority chose to watch an excellent movie (RotK) even though it involved getting punched repeatedly in the stomach (either hard or light, possibly causing internal bleeding, unless they’re delivered by DrScotto at which point your head will explode!) with an obvious second place going to a pee-ridden Return of the Jedi viewing.
If you go to the Blizzard main page you will see that, unfortunately, we were wrong and their next new game isn’t going to be Cowboycraft, instead it’s the long-awaited and much-desired Starcraft II! If you haven’t gone to the site for it yet, DO SO, there’s really some excellent stuff to see there and the cinematic trailer released for the game is top-notch.
To this point they have announced that the game will feature the return of the Terrans, Protoss, and the Zerg but they have neither confirmed nor denied the addition of more races. If we look at their history, the first two Warcraft games both had two mostly identical races, then Starcraft introduced three distinct races with excellent balancing, followed by Warcraft 3 which added a fourth, and so it seems that the next progression would be for Starcraft 2 to have five races in all, but do we expect it to have at least four? Will they stick with the original three? Would it be a huge cop-out to not add any new playable races? Will this game come out before World War 3?
It’s an elaborate fake out. They’re claiming Starcraft 2 now, and sure, somebody photoshopped some snazzy looking Starcraft stuff, but that doesn’t mean that Cowboycraft isn’t coming to a PC near you. For the Alamo!
While I’d love to think they can keep it to three races (for perfect rock-paper-scissors) I would never bet against Kerrigan’s forces having something all their own.
I agree with The Game. Before you fools know it Im gonna be zerging your General Stores and Rosebuds Brothels’ with my army of unstoppable baby-carrying Saqajowia’s!
Perhaps a subtitle will be added later on in production – Starcraft II: Wild West
tagline: “This time, there’s cowboys!”
plot: The Xel’Naga, in an attempt to improve upon the Zerg, created a race of hive-mind controlled Cowboys in hopes of eradicating their other failed experiments form the universe.
Um… how about putting the Protoss/Zerg Hybrid on that list? There was a seekrit level in Brood War that hinted at that.
Consider it done! I had actually forgotten to include this, but I would also assume that if this aspect is included in the game it will be as a part of the Zerg race as a whole rather than a seperate one. There are even more hints in the SC2 stuff to this happening, so good call Jeremy! Thanks!
I think they could add another race, and if they did it right then cheers / no harm done. But the joy of old star craft was how different each race was — how unique the experience and i think that would be very hard to expand upon for an entirely new playable faction. I mean 40K has tons of races, and there is decent difference between them from a rolling dice perspective, but 40k’s level of differentiation is no where near SC’s (though to be fair, 40k is a much smaller focus game). I’ve never played the 40k RTS though
Interesting point about the Hybrids just being a new Zerg unit. That might be the case, but I would assume different, maybe the Zerg lost control of the new hybrid race and became sentient, much like the Zerg broke free of Xel ‘Naga influence.
If the Hybrids are the true vision of the Xel ‘Naga, which was a perfect race, I think the natural course of action would be the over throwing of all.
Would a Zerg/Protoss/Terran alliance be too obvious?
I voted for the option with two races, because, I would like them to add two races to the lineup. I realize that the more races you have the more balance problems there are, but it would be the best way to “upgrade” the RTS after Warcraft 3.
I had a discussion with Bartoneus yesterday, and he cleverly pointed out the Blizzard RTS progression. War 2 had two races, Starcraft had three races, War 3 had four races. So would it be so surprising if Starcraft 2 had five races?
Warcraft 3 originally had 5, but they decided to scrap the Demon Race and make them NPCs for balance and simplicity.
The three races in Starcraft were well balanced, yet unique, so Blizzard might not want to fix something that isn’t broke. But I’d still like to see either the Xel ‘Naga or a Hybrid race in some capacity, mostly just for flavor.
Would adding more races constitute “fixing” the game? I’m not so sure adding content is the equivalent to that. I suppose more races could break the game, but I’m going to trust that Blizzard will be able to add races without causing a lot of problems.