[hnick]

You just reminded me that SC2 was split up into 3 parts. I'd completely forgotten. I can't remember how they justified it at the time, but through the lens of history and their other actions it certainly looks like they thought it'd just be easy to make us pay 3 times.

Either way, I enjoyed SC2 for a while but it just felt like it was missing something compared to Brood War. I never did buy the other 2 parts.

[Tehnix]

The campaign took a different focus on each parts of SC2. I personally enjoyed this, and thought it was much better than a much shorter storyline crammed into one game (or alternatively a delay of several years before release).

IMO SC2 was a great success, but it feels like they are no longer giving it much love because it’s not a recurring revenue driver for them :(

[hnick]

Pretty sure they hated KeSPA piggybacking off their game and they hated the entire idea of eSports. They took an extremely hands-off approach on that side of things and intentionally or not did a lot to try and cripple it for SC2.

I feel like I need to share the old bnet 2.0 vs rock picture now: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/c7ft8/stone_vs_b...

This was possibly my first exposure to the situation where a major new software release looks prettier but loses so many useful features. I have fond memories of playing SC1 on custom servers, and even downloading custom chat clients to talk to friends in channels but without the game open. Bnet 2.0 completely destroyed a lot of the culture around the game, just like peer to peer matchmaking did when it replaced servers for some FPS games. The game itself was solid and despite all that did have some legs as an eSport, but it was the first time I really felt that Blizzard was changing, which was solidified with Diablo 3 and then Hearthstone. Both those games were designed with a recurring revenue stream, and I'm thinking SC2 got a little less attention because it didn't have that.