Be warned: acquiring a copy of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty may cause your friends to giggle with excitement, bombard you with questions, and find reasons to come over before letting slip a diffident, “Oh, is that the Starcraft II?”
This could be because it has been over ten years since the release of the award-winning Starcraft, it could be because they have heard so much about the recent release from hyped fans, or it could even be because they have played every game ever released by Blizzard Entertainment. One thing is definitely true: Starcraft II will be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, release of the year–a fact that will keep old pros and younger generations in acute anticipation.
But to understand the underlying reasons behind the franchise’s success and how it became so heralded, you have to trace back to the game’s origins and that of its brother series Warcraft – two friendly adversaries as well-matched as the units within them…
Not-so-Humble Beginnings: Early Real-time Strategy and its Ongoing Legacy
Blizzard’s Game of the Year 1994, Warcraft: Orcs vs. Humans, has little to no replay value sixteen years later, but you better respect it. By today’s standards in RTS (real-time strategy) game play, it is a laborious and unbalanced game that is so paltry when compared to its impressive sequels it is easy to forget they are even related. The Fog of War is so precise that half the mission was spent uncovering tiny chunks of darkness, knowing full well that nothing of importance could fit hidden beneath. Catapults decimate entire armies in a single shot, usually your own as your footmen engage the enemy directly in the blast radius. Excessive road building becomes an obsession harkening back to Sim City and wasting tons of time better spent skirmishing. Yes, all these details have aged worse than Lothar himself, but that being said: you better respect it because the game had magic.
