New Blizzard Game: Starcraft 2 or MMO? Diablo 3?

UPDATE: The new game is Starcraft 2. My comments here.

When a company has a track record like Blizzard’s, it’s quite exciting when they tell you they’re going to announce a new game soon. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of RTS games but even I’ll admit that Starcraft was a very good game. Not good enough that I would still play it today like so many other people around the world (especially South Korea) but still a very good game. In truth, Blizzard never really made a bad game. They don’t put out too many but every single one of them is a winner. I mean, they haven’t produced a game other than World of Warcraft since 2003 but c’mon…it’s one of the most popular MMORPG’s in history so who could really blame them.

So on May 19th, Blizzard will be announcing what they’re working on next and many speculate that it will be either a new Starcraft game or a third in the Diablo series. As I said, I don’t really like RTS games so I’m sort of hoping it won’t be a second Starcraft game. I just can’t be bothered to play that genre. I mean, I have a free copy of Supreme Commander that came with my new computer parts that I haven’t touched.

With such success in World of Warcraft, choice business-wise for Blizzard would probably be…well, Universe of Starcraft? I mean, obviously they would have to believe they could duplicate the success of millions of subscribers but personally, I don’t think that would be a good idea on their part. First of all, they’re creating a competitor for their own game and secondly, the Warcraft is full of lore and a rich background. There have been three Warcraft games to build legends and well developed characters and settings. You can’t really say the same for Starcraft. I only remember that one semi-dead chick that was converted to the alien race that kind of had a hot voice and…well, evil chicks are sexy.

However, that being said, it’s not like Starcraft would be difficult to write for. There are humans and such so building a background wouldn’t be out of the question. And hell, I know I’m going to play it anyways since I haven’t found another good MMO to get into after I quit World of Warcraft. I just don’t think it would be as good as WoW.

That leaves us with Diablo 3, which is kind of the underdog in this little game of speculation since most believe Blizzard will announce a new Starcraft game. Personally, I’d prefer a new Diablo since the first two were such fantastic games. Many have tried to copy Blizzard’s single player “kill = reward” formula before but very few have come close to the awesomeness that was Diablo 2. I remember when they announced that game that they said there would be a separate persistent world for multiplayer but that never happened. With the advances since the second installment, they could easily have both a single player and a MMO style Diablo game.

There are a couple shortfalls though. I mean, how many times can we beat up on poor Diablo? We killed him, his brothers and millions of henchmen twice now. It’s gets harder now for Blizzard to come up with original ways to bring him back to threaten the world again. However, we also defeated Gamon, Bowser and the Nazis countless times and we still play Zelda, Mario and…well, there are a lot of WWII games, aren’t there?

in Entertainment