[usrusr]

Excellent observations, allow me to propose a semi-ironic counter position: at the time of its greatest success, SC had a very unique value proposition: instead of pay to win, it was pay to imagine winning. They were selling the daydream of getting one's entire attention and and ambition consumed in a game like a fourteen year old, to greying forty-years olds who grew up core gamers but who stopped a long time ago sinking quality hours into games. Now either hardly any hours at all, or just downwinding hours. The reality of PvP might be bleak, but an imagination of PvP is the best of all imagined gaming. Of course this form of virtual virtual entertainment can't go on forever because it's always been built on the promise of one day ditching one of the virtuals, but it's been quite a ride, one of its kind.