[steckerbrett]

It's unfortunate how much the original game has rotted, the online servers are up but the program itself is becoming more are more unplayable. The OSX versions have been dead for a long time, on windows it seems to be getting harder and harder to run as well. The recent job posting hopefully indicate they're interested in de-breaking them, couldn't care less for a HD remake, just a version that actually works again.

Impressed that Blizzard still runs the IRC servers necessary for that part of Battle.net though, far more modern games have lost all of their multiplayer within a couple of years let alone two decades on. There's third party remakes of the server daemons but you need a hacked up client to use them, or at least you did last I looked a decade ago.

[terda12]

IMO, the game works great on Windows. I can't imagine playing games like SC2 or CSGO on OSX. It's just not economical for Blizzard to do an OSX port.

The game has been kinda dead for a while now, because it's so unaccessible to the general population. Games like Dota and League of Legends have taken the place of Starcraft 2 because it's pretty accessible to newbies yet offers a very high skill ceiling for those who want to play competitively. Starcraft 2 is simply too difficult of a game - you have to micromanage not only whole armies but also create new buildings and new units, looking for ways to boost your economy, and micromanaging research, all at the same time. It's simply too much to ask for a new player looking to break into the game.

Dota existed because players just wanted to play a single hero inside an RTS game, and not have to control an army. The army is automated, there is no research, and there is no building/economy to worry about. You simply control one unit. Then League came and made it even more accessible to new players. Starcraft just simply cannot compete with both of these games, it just takes too much effort to even be remotely good at the game.

[nemo44x]

I played SC2 heavily when it came out and for some time after and I loved it. But you're right - the game does not allow someone to be casual or even semi-casual.

It is an unbelievably stressful game and you have to not only master all 3 races abilities but understand numerous and ever changing strategies around them, have excellent macro skills and understand timings, etc. If you don't keep up aggressively with practice and all these other things you'll simply get slaughtered over and over. And although their rating system tries to pair you up it has become harder and harder to find casual players.

I think it's one of the best games ever made and I love watching the top players to this day even though I do not play any longer. But I wish they could come out with a scaled down version with fewer units, easier macro and certain rules in place to limit cheese play, etc. Have smart units or something where different strategies can be used throughout a game and various units will intelligently play a certain role of scouting, attacking, defending, etc.

The truth is the game is amazing because of its difficulty and also unplayable for most people for the same reason. I am not "gosu". I have a life and can't play for hours every day - or every day for that matter.

[Steko]

SC2 needs a game mode where one player is run by 2 casuals.

[tgb]

Depending on what you mean, that is a feature of the new release: archon mode, where two players have shared control of a single base. This was also a feature of starcraft one but was never very popular. This time it should be easier to use and find matches through matchmaking. The recent blizzcon had a match between 4 pros in this mode, and the casters really couldn't keep up with the side engagements that were happening. So it's even interesting from a competitive scene as well.

[Steko]

Oh thanks for the info, I had no idea. Too absorbed in the Hearthstone coverage I guess.

[ionforce]

> It is an unbelievably stressful game

This is why I don't play. So much stress.

[douche]

> bit about LoL and Dota

This sounds like its catering to the deathmatch/Counter-Strike crowd, rather than the people who actually want to play an RTS game. StarCraft 2 is incredibly streamlined compared to some of the pioneering RTSs that people my age and older cut their teeth on. Sweet Jesus, some of those early games didn't even have multiple unit selection...

I'll admit, I'm an oddity, because I have almost never played any games multiplayer - for me, it is all about the single-player experience, which boils down to story, and how fun the actual gameplay is. I don't really care about the meta-game, or how friendly the game is to e-sports, and really, the optimizations that make a game more attractive on those fronts make it less attractive to me.

[tareqak]

Blizzard pretty good recent track record with supporting OS X. World of Warcraft, StarCraft 2, Hearthstone, and Heroes of the Storm all run under OS X.

Unfortunately, Blizzard's latest game, Overwatch, will not be coming to OS X. That question happened to be the first one asked by a member of the audience in the first Overwatch panel on Friday, November 6 at the BlizzCon 2015.

[rincebrain]

I wonder why not - they've always been pretty aggressive about Mac support, as you observed.

Maybe the overhead required for developing a new FPS engine (which, AFAIK, Blizzard's never done in-house before, even SC:Ghost was another developer) was too much for them to have OS X support in the initial timetable.

[froo]

Honestly? They've been posting a lot more Mac developer jobs lately and their Mac client's quality for WOW has been degrading consistently over the last few major versions.

I'd say their devs familiar in that space are getting poached/spread to other teams and its not feasible to support OS X on team 4 at the moment.

[theandrewbailey]

I remember watching a video of some SC2 panel at Blizcon from 5-ish years ago, where they were talking about how flexible the engine and editor was. They showed some third person shooter level built in the stock SC2 editor, and it looked interesting enough. I bet that Overwatch's code is closely related to their other games, rather than something from scratch.

[lost_name]

You might be correct, but the SC2 engine (which also powers Heroes of the Storm) seems to run significantly worse than Overwatch engine on my computer.

The content of each game is so radically different that the comparison might not be appropriate.

[theandrewbailey]

That's generally par for the course. There's a lot of CPU simulation that happens in RTS engines, like visibility/range testing and simulating hundreds of moving/(semi)autonomous entities, not to mention pathfinding for them. Some RTSes simulate individual projectiles with startling quality. Most of an FPS is GPU work, environments are mostly static (less CPU), and there's some hitbox detection and maybe insane physics thrown in.

[MadManE]

The reason that I heard was something about OpenGL. I was very disappointed about this, mostly from what implications it has on the future of their other games.

[MrJagil]

Hearthstone runs but is not optimised for retina, nor does full screen mode work as it should (i've heard it's a trivial fix from other unity devs).

[catshirt]

i played SC2 and CSGO on OSX just fine for years. when i switched to better graphics hardware on Windows my CS rank jumped from MG2 to LEM, but i can't attribute this to the OS at all.

also, having only one hero to control only gives you the illusion that Dota/LoL is easier. it takes just as much effort to be "remotely good" at Dota as SC2. this is why most people who play casually are trash. MOBAs have so many players who don't even understand enough about the game to recognize they are bad. at least in SC it's obvious.

[rhaps0dy]

I agree with you. But realize that having "players who don't even understand enough about the game to recognize they are bad" makes those players happy with little effort. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

[froo]

> at least in SC it's obvious.

I watched Life in the World Championships on the weekend do like 300APM constantly.

I'd honestly be going GG at about 1 minute in I think.

[catshirt]

sure but it's irrelevant. it's like saying "baseball is inaccessible because Derek Jeter is amazing". or "i can't play chess because Carlsen Magnus is a grandmaster".

there are so many responses suggesting Starcraft cannot be played casually. it's no different than saying chess cannot be played casually- which is ridiculous.

[froo]

Not necessarily. Some people have serious problems multitasking and can't juggle resource management, unit constraints, tech trees and defense/offence simultaneously themselves (my girlfriend being one of them, she just can't play RTS's) on a basic level.

Never mind trying to also throw in micro and optimum game strategies into the mix.

[catshirt]

sure- but just like chess, it's about finding an opponent of equal skill to have fun with and play together.

SC2 specifically has a few options for this. one really fun option is playing 2v2 vs CPU. or 1 v CPU on easy mode (it is essentially a passive CPU). the expansion is also introducing "archon mode" which is 2v2 but each team of 2 controls one base/army. "comp stomps" were prominent in SC1 because even though they were, by definition extremely easy, it's a fun social way to play. there are also "fastest" modes that completely eliminate the need for resource management by giving all players unlimited minerals.

my point is that while SC2 is daunting, there are a dozen options for players of all skill levels, even those who don't intend to play competitively.

maybe a better analogy than chess would be learning an instrument. it's difficult to become a good guitar player, but it takes an advanced lack of interest to not have fun learning.

[steckerbrett]

It was originally released with PowerPC binaries on the disk, and then later re-released with Intel OSX compatible binaries, the only reason it doesn't work now is the requirement of 256 colour mode which was removed in like, OSX 10.5 or so. Starcraft 2 was released on OSX, same as all Blizzard games I'm aware of. This is a Cider wrapped OSX binary so not truly native, but works well enough that nobody seems to complain.

[kaoD]

CS:GO works on OS X :) http://store.steampowered.com/app/730/ OS: MacOS X 10.6.6 or higher

It'd be interesting to know if it was economical for Valve to do these OS X ports. I guess they wanted to spread Steam usage to other OSes. I'm curious if it worked and if it was worth it.

[mAritz]

They did the OpenGL ports anyways for Linux and CS:GO was originally developed for PS3 and XBOX 360 as well, so porting to OS X was likely not as much of a problem as it is for other games, because it had portability in mind.

Source runs rather well on OpenGL as well. The same can't be said about most other engines.

[qznc]

And yet I shy away from Dota, LoL, etc, because it wants me to learn the stats of a hundred heroes before I can play it somewhat competitively.

[AlisdairO]

Starcraft is really heavy on twitch skills and multi-tasking, while Dota rewards knowledge.

Obviously you still need strong twitch/multitask skills to be really great at Dota, but you can go a surprising distance without them. I found that when picking up Dota I started to have fun and feel vaguely competent quicker - despite the fact that I didn't play for very long or get very good. I was aware that to progress far I'd need to pick up an enormous amount of information, but I could still feel good playing against other newbies.

With Starcraft (where I generally hovered between high gold and low platinum on EU), I always felt like I was doing really badly. I think this was probably due to the stress of the multitasking, at which I'm no natural :-).

[kmkemp]

I am a mid-gold elo LoL player and was a Diamond SC2 player when Diamond was the highest league. In my experience, MOBA's are winning because controlling one unit doesn't give you the same stress level that comes with controlling an army, setting control groups, preventing supply caps, scouting, considering what you need to build next to counter your opponent, and taking steps to stop every cheese strategy that your opponent might try. Even if you've executed at a high level, you can still lose in the blink of an eye if you fail to react. I stopped SC2 because it left me with an uneasy feeling once I got near the top. LoL, on the other hand, barely requires the kind of APM that SC2 does at a high level. It's more about knowing the correct items to build and when you can win a fight. Sure, you still need mechanics to get high creep score and execute in team fights, but you can play champions where that reliance is mitigated.

[ploxiln]

The best way to run original Starcraft these days is Wine (implementing windows XP behavior), on OS X or linux. I've done both, it works pretty well.

IIRC the mouse acceleration was sometimes problematic in OS X, you might need one of the many third-party utilities for OS X that let you disable or tweak it, e.g. USB Overdrive, or maybe Smoothmouse would work.

[xlcashlx]

For those interested, the recent job opening mentioned can be found here -> http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/careers/posting.html?id...

[realharo]

I don't know about multiplayer, but for the campaign parts of the original StarCraft, there is a fan-made remake of them on the StarCraft 2 engine, http://www.sc2mapster.com/maps/starcraft-mass-recall/.

[rasz_pl]

someone could dissasemble it again http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/15820-starcraft/

[ThePhysicist]

If on OS X, you can probably run it inside a virtual machine (Windows 98 images can be downloaded for free from the MS site I think).

Performance-wise it shouldn't be an issue on today's hardware.

[steckerbrett]

Running games in a VM is always a totally crappy experience, running it in wine is better but still not completely perfect. With Yosemite there's some graphical glitches which make it effectively unplayable, most of it runs at about 2 FPS.

[XorNot]

To be fair Blizzard's game release cycle is about that long too.

[Fiahil]

I play blizzard games on a MBP, and they're working quite fine; but, I'm not expecting alienware-like performance either.

[knd775]

What do you mean by "alienware-like performance"? Even the higher end alienware systems offer subpar performance.

[Fiahil]

I should update my knowledge of Gaming PCs to 2015, then. What are the latest trendy high-end systems nowadays?

[knd775]

Honestly, most people who care just build their own now. Custom gaming PCs are more common these days.