mesiah

July 19, 2010 at 3:44pm

You will never see a fee to play in the US. Although its perfectly fine to sell a fee based game and then go free to play later, you can't sell a game as free to play and then change it to a fee based model. That is not to say they won't try to charge a monthly fee for the expansions, but Wings of liberty will always be free to play in the US.

As for the fee to play in certain other countries, Starcraft is big business in places like South Korea. Starcraft 2 in south korea is a professional "sport" the way poker is in america. There is tons of money to be made on the game. Players persona generate a lot of revenue. If people are going to make money off of the game, you can bet blizz is going to make sure they continue to make money off of the people.

someuid

July 19, 2010 at 3:27pm

Since I don't have a subscription to the WSJ, I couldn't read the article in full.

I do know Starcraft I was hugely popular is South Korea, to the point there were paid professional teams that competed for prized in heavily advertised events (read: big money).

It is possible the overseas version has some sort of ranking system for players and teams and hence the monthly fee?  Its hard to say since the WSJ didn't let the whole article be free.

I doubt they will tack on a monthly fee here in the US.  There are too many other games one can play.

I Jedi

July 19, 2010 at 1:26pm

I would imagine that the U.S. is Blizzard's biggest consumer of its products; however, I, too, find it odd that a company wouldn't just charge right off the bat.

mesiah

July 19, 2010 at 3:52pm

battle.net is the only DRM they need. You have to sign up for a battle.net account. A games key can only be registered to a single account. And you have to sign in to battle.net before you play. Since the beta doesn't contain any of the single player matches I can not say whether or not disconnecting from the internet will halt single player game play, but it wouldn't surprise me if a constant connection to the internet is needed. If you remember, they ditched lan play all together from this game, now we can see it is because it is not possible to play the game without an internet connection.

I know a lot of people will complain about this DRM model, stating that it is unfair and a hassle to force people to have an internet connection to play a single player game. Personally, I don't mind it. Most of the world has some access to the internet these days. And with this model, if I lost my copy of the game it doesn't matter. I can always download the client from the companies site if I lose it. They can give it away all they want since it can't be played without a registered account.

praetor_alpha

July 19, 2010 at 1:53pm

I'd think the DRM would be battle.net.

And don't count on it coming out on Steam. Ever. No other Blizzard game is.

praetor_alpha

July 19, 2010 at 8:49am

I have been a long time fan of Starcraft. It was the ONLY game I
played for several years. When they announced the release date, I
preordered on Amazon a week later. Then the next Saturday, to my great
surprise, I find a beta key in my email.

If you think you like
RTS, get Starcraft. It is to RTS what Half-life is to FPS.

I'll
buy Starcraft 2! I'll buy it three times! (it's a trilogy, remember?)

armada439

July 19, 2010 at 8:40am

I will get this game, when its $30.  I was in the beta and its fun, and I enjoyed SC1 too.  But there are just too many flaws (imo) to spend $60 on it