First post, by mockingbird
Back in the day, I used to spend hours playing Warcraft II. I believe the game only had IPX support, so you had to use a third-party tool called Kali to play a multiplayer game, but it usually worked pretty darn well, considering everyone was using 56K modems, at best.
When Warcraft III was announced, everyone expected a new story, new campaigns, new music (The old Warcraft II soundtrack should win an award as one of the best PC game soundtracks of all time), etc... But instead of the charming imagery of the former, we got this ugly, poorly-animated 3D, uninteresting, overrated and overhyped game that has a completely different style of gameplay and pays no homage whatsoever to its predecessor. What we got was something like Diablo with Warcraft characters.
Now I know what some of you are thinking: Starcraft II.
But I could never warm up to Starcraft. I can't relate to foreign ideas like the Zerg race or the Protoss as well as I can relate to Humans and Orcs, things I am already familiar with. Don't get me wrong, I very much enjoy watching SCII replays from time to time, and I am pretty familar with many facets of the game, it's just that because I can't relate to it that I don't want to play it.
And there's another problem with Starcraft. It has too much going on. I thought Heart Of The Swarm was already overcrowded with units, now with Legacy Of The Void, they introduced even more. Blizzard programmers are always trying to overcompensate by adding more to the game. What they don't get is that with all their efforts to micromanage unit stats with each incremental update (and by the way, Warcraft II hasn't had unit stats touched since forever and people still like it just fine), the game will never be Warcraft II, it just lacks all the charm.
Now the Koreans do like their Starcraft very much, I know this. But Warcraft II is a game based on European culture and lore. Is all that's left of Blizzard is a company that caters to the whims of Asians (Starcraft) and children (World Of Warcraft)?