The time is upon us.
Caps Lock does not manage to properly capture the excitement that we feel at the release of Blizzard’s newest franchise baby, nor can the giant letters show the sarcastic flair which came along with our typing of the phrase.
Oh computers, how we loathe thee.
Except, of course, under the right circumstances. The ones where your Internet connection isn’t acting up, your graphics card has hit a peak of entertaining effectiveness, and you pwn every n00b you find.
Then, computers are great.
It is with this love/hate relationship with the technology we so desperately crave that we eke out the last few hours before the official release of the game. Over the first six months of this year, we’ve been fortunate to take part in an engaging, infuriating and all-over interesting Beta test experience, and learned a great deal about just why this game has the following it does.
We started out as mildly interested, but we’re now official Starcraft II junkies, waiting for our next fix of deadly outer space combat. Sure, Blizzard has make some stumbles along the way – RealID leaps to mind, and the lack of proper ATI Crossfire support, but they’ve also done some things right.
Take for example the recent announcement that players on Southeast Asian, Australian and New Zealand server will be able to play on the North American servers within a month after launch. Blizzard has been taking flack for their lack of cross-region play, citing technology limitations the cause, but apparently they figured this crap out, much to the joy of many Veggitmite-chowing Foster’s-swilling, Barbie-cooking Aussies.
For reference, we refer to their preponderance for cooking on Barbeques, not roasting a staple of the girly toy world.
We were hard on SCII and with good reason. Getting the balance for the races “just ok” instead of “perfect” or making the game look “good” instead of “sah-weet!” wasn’t what Blizzard was looking for, nor was it going to get the job done.
We’ve been tracking the hype of the game as it ramps up in preparation for the launch event on midnight of the 27th, and there’s no question that fans are frothing, willing to climb over each other in line, kicking pimpled faces and breaking rounded glasses to be the first to get a collector’s edition of the game, along with a sweet free hat.
And while hype is all well and good, and certainly makes a difference in the sale of a game, the truth of the matter is that Blizzard didn’t really need all that much. Sure, the newest TV spot was cool, the Dominion secret bonuses were great and the constant flow of SCII information has taken pitches from “fevered” to “frenzied”, but none of that really gets to the heart of the matter.
Twelve years ago, when Blizzard hinted that a sequel to the first Starcraft game might be in the works, whispering quietly in the corners that another iteration was coming, gamers everywhere made their choice.
They needed only two things.
The word “Starcraft”, and this number à “2”.
Done and done.
Welcome to launch day, people.
