"Personally I was not just happy because of the game itself, more likely because I saw a chance of RTS community consolidation."
The most important fact that stands behind the argument that StarCraft II is going to be a great game is that ever since Blizzard released WarCraft II in 1995, every next title that came after was even better and more popular than the previous game. Of course there always has to be an exception which in this case goes by a name StarCraft: Brood War, second key word – South Korea.
In Korea StarCraft is still much more popular than WarCraft even though the game is already 10 years old. My personal opinion is that it's because of the spectator side of the game. StarCraft is an intense game from spectator's point of view which makes it more interesting to watch which in consequence leads to higher popularity. Of course we could from now on start an arguments between SC and WC3 fans but since that's not the point of this text let's move on to the main question.
The question is, can StarCraft II unite the two biggest RTS communities and can it be a new home for all the pro players who are nowadays settled in these communities.
The decision basically lays in the hands of people that stand behind all the big tournaments, both international like WCG or ESWC and South Korean leagues. It's obvious that players have to go after the money and that is absolutely a normal thing. The problem occurs when we start to think about all the pro gamers that will hate StarCraft II, we don't want to lose great eSports names just because the game they loved literally died; on the other hand I'm quite sure that spectators would really like to see a consolidated community. People obviously want to see games like sAviOr vs Grubby, Mondragon vs Lucifer and so on.
Two best RTS titles of all time are surely different games and StarCraft II is going to be closer to StarCraft than WarCraft in terms of gameplay, but I don't see a huge problem in that. Players are able to adapt and if they like the game I'm sure they will want to adapt to it. It's important not to force players to switch games because of money, but to make them want to do it because of their own will. That is a hard job for the producers.
"It's important not to force players to switch games because of money, but to make them want to do it because of their own will."
New games always bring freshness, which works really well for the community; raising the motivation of particular players or bringing more attention from spectators. I've noticed that there are some players that can't wait for StarCraft II to be released just because their motivation to play WarCraft has fallen. On the other hand some gamers are not so enthusiastic about the new release, for example Korean pro gamers saying the game could be too easy to play.
Blizzard has a huge task here, it's obvious that future of RTS community is in their hands right now. For 13 years they did not disappoint me with any title, and I don't think they are going to do it with their latest game.
The new alliance approaches, but please don't turn it into false hope.
Picture from StarCraft2.com
