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Anybody played it? If so, how is it?

What's "HOTS", and what does it have to with my cat please, elaborate.

Heart of the Swarm, the SCII expansion.

starcraft game right? tried starcraft 2 and to be honest..... i hated it.

Really? Already? I'll have to go digging for my SCII then...

<-- Zerg Player

I like SCII, but if I wanted to buy it now, with HOTS, it would cost me $70. $30 for game and $40 for expansion.

hyperlite wrote:I like SCII, but if I wanted to buy it now, with HOTS, it would cost me $70. $30 for game and $40 for expansion.

Activion's influence at work.

edit: ended up getting it, brother's apparently an SC fan and we split the cost 50/50.

40 bucks for an expansion is highway robbery though xP

Tiel Attentus wrote:

hyperlite wrote:I like SCII, but if I wanted to buy it now, with HOTS, it would cost me $70. $30 for game and $40 for expansion.

Activion's influence at work.

edit: ended up getting it, brother's apparently an SC fan and we split the cost 50/50.

40 bucks for an expansion is highway robbery though xP

My understanding is that it's as much of a game as Wings of Liberty was. That was part 1, this is part 2, and Legacy of the Void is part 3.

Also, Vinyl: Your sig is getting out of hand again.

WoL was a completely new engine with new units and new everything. HotS just adds new levels, a new story, and a paltry amount of new units to the existing selection. Basically the MW2 --> MW3 relationship; it's an expansion by any other name but it'd be a cold day in hell before anyone calls it that.

Well, at least it isn't 60 bucks, although I bet if Activision had more staying power within their relationship with Blizzard it would've.

Last_Jedi_Standing wrote:Vinyl: Your sig is getting out of my hand again.

Of course, Master.

Tiel Attentus wrote:WoL was a completely new engine with new units and new everything. HotS just adds new levels, a new story, and a paltry amount of new units to the existing selection. Basically the MW2 --> MW3 relationship; it's an expansion by any other name but it'd be a cold day in hell before anyone calls it that.

Well, at least it isn't 60 bucks, although I bet if Activision had more staying power within their relationship with Blizzard it would've.

I suppose. WoL is different only because it came first, though. HotS has as much stuff; it's just not new anymore. I guess that's what an expansion is, but the line seems a bit blurry.

Anyway, you're looking at it logically. Look at it from a customer from the original Starcraft's perspective. The previous title had all 3 campaigns with just as much content, if not more, per story as the current offerings, and Blizzard managed to fit it all into one game.

This whole "we need to split the game into three parts in order to flesh each out" is complete hogwash - it's about money, because they're getting close to full retail price three times this way as opposed to just once in the traditional method.

Anyway, the game's already downloading now so I'm being something of a hypocrite at the moment, but I can't say I approve of Blizzard's new 'Activision enhanced' marketing principles.

Tiel Attentus wrote:Anyway, you're looking at it logically.

I do have a tendency to do that. But yeah, I get where you're coming from. I have WoL but never played it much, so I'd be much more likely to get the original StarCraft than HotS. $60 in general always struck me as a bit much for a video game. I know that that's the norm these days, but it's a fair bit of money if I'm not going to play the game for months, which usually I don't.

Well, they design a base system that can run these, and have the modding power to make campaigns like this with relative ease for 60 bucks, then they charge 40 bucks for some new units and a campaign. Modders could do as much. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if "HOTS campaign in WoL" comes out.

I'm watching a playthrough of it on Jesse Cox's channel. He's only 9 missions in and I can already see that i chose the right option in not buying the game. There are lots of problems with the lore and how they characters act in the game. It's basically Blizzard breaking their own canon.

Stuff like "oh noes we haz zerglings trapped in some caves, let's go save them" is completely wrong. Zerg do not save one another, they simply let the others die and breed more zerg to make up for the loss.
Then there's the "scouts report X". Since when do zerg have scouts? Since when do zerg even report anything? They're mindless beasts that serve only to execute their Queen's bidding and be her eyes and ears in a quite literal fashion.

Abathur, the zerg evolution guy, also appears to be a massive ripoff of Mordin from mass effect.