Starcraft II Going Free-To-Play

rgMekanic

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Blizzard has announced that on November 14th StarCraft II is going to free-to-play. The original campaign "Wings of Liberty" as well as every Co-op commander and the ranked multiplayer ladder will be available for free. If you already own Wings of Liberty, you’ll receive the second installment in StarCraft II’s campaign, the zerg-focused Heart of the Swarm, for free, provided you log in between November 8th and December 8th to claim it.

I can't say I'm all that surprised by the move, while having a large e-sport community, SCII didn't seem to resonate the way other e-sport games do. Blizz also says that to unlock the ranked multiplayer you must "earn 10 First Wins of the Day in Unranked or Versus A.I. play" in order to keep the quality of the ranked mode high, I think this is a great idea. While no mention of loot crates, the article does say that other "premium upgrades" will continue to be offered.

If you play through Wings of Liberty and want to see how the rest of the epic single-player saga unfolds, all the other single-player campaigns - Heart of the Swarm, Legacy of the Void, and Nova Covert Ops will be available to purchase individually for $14.99 or as a bundle for $39.99.
 
Free is always good. I guess its one way for them to try and make it more of an e-sport hit. On the upside for gamers the single player campaigns are great. Hopefully they also give away their newest expansion if you had bought the first expansion. lol For whatever reason I never bothered getting the latest expansion.

Hopefully in the future more developers will give away great games in the hopes of making them esport hits, there is good money in it... and building a gaming following is the first and most important step.
 
Blizz has put microtransactions on all their games i'm surprised they haven't made all their games free or super cheap
 
Free is always good. I guess its one way for them to try and make it more of an e-sport hit. On the upside for gamers the single player campaigns are great. Hopefully they also give away their newest expansion if you had bought the first expansion. lol For whatever reason I never bothered getting the latest expansion.

Hopefully in the future more developers will give away great games in the hopes of making them esport hits, there is good money in it... and building a gaming following is the first and most important step.

I didn't read into it in detail, but I don't believe single player is going to be free though.
 
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I didn't read into it in detail, but I don't believe single player is going to be free though.

Well if true that does suck... guess I should take the time to read. Didn't bother as I do own liberty and the zerg expansion.
 
I didn't read into it in detail, but I don't believe single player is going to be free though.
It is. If you already have WoL then you get the zerg expansion for free. Too bad I already have both. Only missing LotV
 
I didn't read into it in detail, but I don't believe single player is going to be free though.

Well if true that does suck... guess I should take the time to read. Didn't bother as I do own liberty and the zerg expansion.

From article;

"In other words, you can now play all of StarCraft II’s multiplayer, every Co-op Commander, and the entire first campaign in the single-player story, for free."
 
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It is. If you already have WoL then you get the zerg expansion for free. Too bad I already have both. Only missing LotV

I actually enjoyed the campaign and so I bought the zerg one too. I wish we would get LotV free so I could finish it, oh well.
 
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I would play the protoss expansion for free if offered. I liked the terran campaign, but I've never like playing zerg so I didn't finish the 2nd campaign.

Honestly, even the original Starcraft, for me was a "want" to like, but was never good at multiplayer RTS so diminished returns. The only MP RTS game I ever really liked was Red Alert 2.
 
I would play the protoss expansion for free if offered. I liked the terran campaign, but I've never like playing zerg so I didn't finish the 2nd campaign.

Honestly, even the original Starcraft, for me was a "want" to like, but was never good at multiplayer RTS so diminished returns. The only MP RTS game I ever really liked was Red Alert 2.

I only enjoyed the custom games in the original SC, same with SC2 although the custom games system was a clusterfuck. I might replay the campaign for SC1 soon, I remember enjoying it quite a bit back in the day.
 
It is. If you already have WoL then you get the zerg expansion for free. Too bad I already have both. Only missing LotV

So not really. You do have to pay something, it's not completely free.
 
StarCraft's original appeal (for most) was hanging out on battle.net and NOT having to play hyper competitive e-sports if you didn't want to.

Unfortunately, Blizzard aimed StarCraft II at its launch completely at e-sports and it backfired big time, turning off any casual fans of the original. I used to play StarCraft with quite a few people that would sit down, build a huge base, then play a one/two-hour long game once or twice a week. However, the balancing for StarCraft II being aimed at the 10-15min e-sports match cycle, combined with NO real chatting functions at launch (something that appears to have finally have been corrected… too little too late) and a forced match making system and forced leagues… players used to be able to control how they played and then Blizzard took that away by tying down the e-sports end of things under their control to make more money!?

Blizzard also failed to deliver the single player expansions in a timely enough fashion for fans of the original game. The long waits between expansions for the part that old school fans wanted (the story) was just too damn long and not delivered in the original time frame set my Blizzard. Sure, they are hella packed with quality for the wait, but it took so damn long! Now all those classic fans that may have wanted to experience the continuation of the story have grown older, grown up, gotten jobs, gotten a life, created families… Blizzard, you missed the boat!

If you want to build up these wonderful worlds filled with lore, you need to be willing to try and attract your older fans, but instead Blizzard focused on the South Korean anomaly of e-sports in StarCraft I, and then built the entire foundation of StarCraft II’s multiplayer to be aimed squarely and only at e-sports! Yeah, casual players don’t want to have to worry about shit like clicks-per-second when they might only get a chance to play a long hunkered down game once or twice a week. Hell, casual players started dropping for StarCraft I not because of its age, but because post v1.10, all of the balance chances were focused on ONE STYLE OF PLAY: e-sports! My God, if Blizzard was developing a physical sport it’d be like setting up a good core set of rules that anyone can enjoy but then having them tell EVERYONE they have to meet min physical standards and you may only play in leagues setup on specific fields!? Yeah, people went to play something else!

So yeah, I don’t really care if StarCraft II is F2P since I wanted to pay for the story additions… but this likely spells the end of StarCraft as a media franchise with any sort of story/lore focus unless Blizzard pulls their heads out of their collective asses and make a Live-Action/CG StarCraft movie series… another boat I think has long since sailed. At this point, the only wise thing Blizzard could do for StarCraft II is make it avaliable on Steam so people at least KNOW it exist.
 
It is. If you already have WoL then you get the zerg expansion for free. Too bad I already have both. Only missing LotV

Yep, I'm in the same boat, would have been nice to get LotV for free. I hadn't bought it because I was a bit underwhelmed with the Zerg expansion. Would have been a good rainy day option though to play the last expansion.
 
I would play the protoss expansion for free if offered. I liked the terran campaign, but I've never like playing zerg so I didn't finish the 2nd campaign.

Honestly, even the original Starcraft, for me was a "want" to like, but was never good at multiplayer RTS so diminished returns. The only MP RTS game I ever really liked was Red Alert 2.
I was in the same boat with the first Star Craft. We used to play C&C, Red Alert, Total Annihilation, etc a lot (back in the days before my friends and I were married with children...) . Star Craft just didn't catch on with us for some reason.
I still haven't played Star Craft 2. I'll get it since its free and try it for the single-player experience. I doubt I'll play multiplayer as I don't seem to have time and my friends don't play games anymore.
 
I still haven't played Star Craft 2. I'll get it since its free and try it for the single-player experience. I doubt I'll play multiplayer as I don't seem to have time and my friends don't play games anymore.

Or you can just watch all the cinematics on youtube like I did, LOL
 
Worked well for valve and TF2. It gets a lot of players that possibly otherwise wouldn't of played the game to download your appstore.
 
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