a) Not everyone in Korea is gonna run out to buy a new computer just to play Starcraft 2. Starcraft 1 could run on any computer. Starcraft 2 can’t.
b) It’s not as good or as balanced as Brood War (when adjusted for period it came out) - there’s a real reason for this, which is that Blizzard put “e-sports” first and game quality second, and it really does show. Maybe Brood War was an accidental masterpiece or whatever, but they didn’t even try for this one.
c) They pissed off KeSPA, which is an organization that holds all the cards when it comes to televised gaming, by shutting them out and signing an exclusive contract with their (smaller) competitor, GomTV, which, despite the name, doesn’t actually hold any broadcasting rights but is a streaming service.
d) No LAN; internet cafes are not going to pay $3000 for their 50 computers just so their customers can play 1 game. All the Korean kids who are forced to study for 10 hours a day are not going to convince their parents to buy them a new computer plus Starcraft 2 so they can bring shame to the family or whatever, so the only other place where they could possibly play won’t have it.
Blizzard’s not releasing their sales figures in South Korea. Unless it’s embarrassingly low, I don’t see any reason why they would hide it.
Blizzard was freaking out about intellectual property rights or something.
I’m probably in the minority here (someone who even cares about this, is what I mean), but I fucking hate “announcers,” especially those who really don’t know what they are talking about. I’d much rather have a calm “commentator” who has an inkling of whats going on. I think I watched 30 seconds of one of the BlizzCon WoW Arena tournaments before I unzipped my pants and vomited onto my genitals. A good current example would be HDStarcraft vs. Huskystarcraft. I guess I just don’t want the pro-gaming community to “sell out” or something, which is pretty lame of me I guess. I don’t know maybe it is cause of my “humble beginnings” at SSBM tournaments, though the commentary was always a joke, literally (wombo combo is a good example) and kind of goes against one of the points I was trying to make
I use them kind of synonymously - KeSPA is the one with all the good commentators.
HD and Husky are very low-level commentators who only give you a play-by-play of what is happening (like if a football commentator had no idea what the popular plays were, or what the history of each team was, but knew the basic rules and the names of all the players), but they’re not too bad.
Oh man, I’ve still got ways to go before I get back to how good I was at SC1/BW. I’m improving though! I’m getting better with the transitions and I’m getting comfortable with more and more builds. Playing random slows me down too.