MetalCraze said:
That never stopped tons of WoW (and many other MMORPGs) freeshards from coming into life. And the only things WoW has client-side are basically models and textures. I imagine WoW's server code is much more complex than the one of a simple auth-server, considering that SC2 will have some kind of LAN code now.
In fact I believe Cattle.net emulators will appear only a few months after the game's release - so the only ones who will lose are sheeple again.
Skyway, that's shite and you know it. Blizz's RTS products have been competitive RTS league and e-sport staples. Whilst most gamers aren't interested in tournaments, a huge proportion of regular RTS-gamers play ranked league as their main gaming. That way you end up playing competitive and fast matches against good opponents (or, if you're stuck at the lower rankings, at least someone of approx the same skill), as opposed to the legion of shite (with more than the occasional cheater) that infests the custom map and non-ranked matchups. If nothing else, once you've got a decent ranking then the Btard 10-year-old-kiddie inane noob comments and insults (when you're kicking their ass) mostly disappears. It isn't about epeen stats, it's that if you're going to play chess against strangers, it's more fun playing against people who are moderately competitive and are there to play a match, rather than people who are still asking how each of the pieces move and whine when you're playing to win rather than moving stuff around the board randomly.
Now you can go and list a bunch of rts's that might be better than Blizz's products (though if you're saying SC1 is shite then most people will rightly ignore you as trolling) - and hey,there's every possibility that SC2 might be crap compared to other RTS games coming out in the next couple of years. But the problem is that none of those games will have the same dedicated userbase to build and maintain a competitive gaming community for the next decade. Whether or not SC and WC3 were shite compared to DoW or Supreme Commander, the comparison is moot because if you want to game competitively, it's far easier to get good-quality matchups with the Blizz products than their competitors - even taking into account that you have to smash about 10 btards to get your ranking up high enough that you don't get matched with the morons (or at least they'll be focussing on the game too much to have time to troll during the game).
Frankly, that's my main motivation for being interested in SC2. I get put off most new RTS's because it just doesn't seem worth it to get my skills up and learn the tactics of a new RTS only for the community to disappear a couple of years later. And for people in that situation a shite official multiplayer matchup service is fucking awful, because the non-official ones aren't going to provide the same level of competition and anti-cheat measures (though they probably have less sum total idiots).
If I'm wrong, and the non-official servers provide good anti-cheat measures and a decent ranking system with a competitive community, then that's great. I'm just a bit skeptical about their ability to deliver on that - which means getting stuck with whatever Blizz wants to exploit us with, or passing up on the game (I find single-player RTS a bit naff - the AI is never as good as a decent human opponent, and it's a really poor medium for story-telling, always feeling like a gimped rpg). The latter option is looking rather inviting.