People like Sean "Day" Plott were able to build careers around teaching and analyzing the game.īut over time, the contradiction between the game "as it's meant to be played" and the level of play that most casual players can attain has nibbled away at StarCraft's audience. Hundreds of thousands of people were tuning into tournament livestreams. By late 2011 and early 2012, StarCraft was a phenomenon within strategy and competitive gaming. So I put on my shoes and started walking.įor a time, it seemed like StarCraft 2 could satisfy every audience and build from where Brood War left off. But as the clock crawled towards midnight, there was no more denying that I loved StarCraft in a way that I have loved only a few other games. Money maps and streams of Marines leaning wading through groves of Lurkers' spikes. LAN parties that went until dawn, and self-important clans that were long on trash-talk and short on achievement. An aria playing inside an admiral's stateroom while the Zerg overran a world down below. Raynor's lazy, staticky drawl through my speakers. It was defiantly old-fashioned and demanding, and that's no longer what I wanted in an RTS.īut on that warm summer evening five years ago, the memories grew too strong. Supreme Commander had taken the Total Annihilation formula and expanded it beyond my wildest imagination.Īnd here was StarCraft 2, with its restricted camera, fussy worker-management, and blindingly-fast pace of play. Relic had picked up where Warcraft 3 had left off, and made strategy games that were as much about tactics and terrain as they were about resource management. My RTS skills had atrophied, and the game was too much of a self-conscious throwback to the first game. I surprised myself when I went walking across town through a deserted business district and into an overlit Best Buy where I knew half the people in line. StarCraft 2 was the last game to lure me into attending a midnight launch. Maybe with Legacy of the Void, StarCraft 2 can finally become what I want it to be. It is a game I admire, but will never master. It is the eSport I fell in love with, the competitive game I still get the most excited about during long, lazy weekends at home. It is a game I can barely play at the best of times, where my greatest exertions will raise me to the barest level of competence.
I am, and always will be, ambivalent about StarCraft 2.
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