no u
BlizzCon 2008
- Thread starter Tek7
- Start date
no u
Corpfox
Active Member
I'm curious about that.
Since Starcraft, came out about March 98, was it suppose to be released earlier?
Anyone got a link/info of intended releases of Blizzard's previous games?
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XionTawa
New Member
Blizzard is also really good about not really giving a release date, they will just announce a game, and you assume it would come out in the next year or so, when it could be 3 to 4 years...
IIRC, the original Starcraft took a long time before release. There are some websites that chronicle how long it took and all of the changes that took place.
The long release that comes to mind (and had the most relevance during the time I was playing) was Starcraft 1.08. The last balance patch before that was 1.05, and 1.06/1.07 were simple bug fixes. I think it took nearly two years for 1.08 to come out after it was announced. At one point, they said it would be released "before the holidays" (I think this was a month or so before Thanksgiving), and it didn't end up being released until May the following year. The joke in the community at the time was "which holiday?" and "which year?"
I think the alpha was leaked around January, and it was pretty close to the release version.
To be fair, it was a very significant patch, with the addition of replays and loads of balance changes (to date, I believe it is the last patch with any balance changes). Some of the biggest changes were psi storm damage 128 -> 116, spawning pool cost 150 -> 200, dropship speed significantly increased, supply cost decrease to battlecruisers, carriers, and ultralisks, and missile turret cost 100 -> 75.
The long release that comes to mind (and had the most relevance during the time I was playing) was Starcraft 1.08. The last balance patch before that was 1.05, and 1.06/1.07 were simple bug fixes. I think it took nearly two years for 1.08 to come out after it was announced. At one point, they said it would be released "before the holidays" (I think this was a month or so before Thanksgiving), and it didn't end up being released until May the following year. The joke in the community at the time was "which holiday?" and "which year?"
I think the alpha was leaked around January, and it was pretty close to the release version.
To be fair, it was a very significant patch, with the addition of replays and loads of balance changes (to date, I believe it is the last patch with any balance changes). Some of the biggest changes were psi storm damage 128 -> 116, spawning pool cost 150 -> 200, dropship speed significantly increased, supply cost decrease to battlecruisers, carriers, and ultralisks, and missile turret cost 100 -> 75.
Corpfox
Active Member
What!? supply cost decrease?
Oh wow, I see it.
Lately, they fixed exploits and bugs but you can still see the hackers use them, like stacked hydras and money cheat with larvas/eggs.
As for the psi storm dmg, I don't think its that high as a Goliath does live from a storm.
But, I don't know now.
Thinking about that, Kralgon, why don't they just release the game as it is and give us the updates later?
Thats what updates are for, to tweak/balance the game, as well as fixing problems.
Maybe they "can't" update since that would take even longer. UGH!
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A "release it now, patch it later" has killed more than a few retail releases. Anarchy Online, Heretic II, and Daikatana all come to mind.
Granted, Daikatana was a disaster for a hundred other reasons.
vibrokatana
New Member
"Patch later" can drive off customers. Remember SW: Galaxies, they basically rewrote the game and totally destroyed the original gameplay. Now it is practically dead and will probably be closed down in a year or two.
I made a mistake, it's actually 112 now. It definitely used to be 128 because you used to be able to kill a lurker with a single storm, so it used to be possible, although difficult, to play PvZ with no observers by using templar (see: GARIMTO). Storm has 8 animation frames, each of which deals 14 damage (it used to be 8 x 16).
A lot of developers go with the release now, patch later approach, but Blizzard doesn't for whatever reason. I think the reasons given in the thread are probably accurate. I don't work for Blizzard, so I obviously can't say for certain. They want to get it right the first time around, as seen by the Starcraft and Warcraft 3 development cycles (the end products for both games are nothing like the original incarnations) and the canceling of Warcraft: Adventures and Starcraft: Ghost (most developers probably would have been happy releasing both of these games as-is at the times they were canceled).
This and the fact that they keep patching their games years after release are what make Blizzard churn out such great games.