News is that MLG will not be having Starcraft 2 as an E-Sport. This is pretty much the sign that Starcraft 2 is at the end of its popularity (of whatever popularity it had). People want Blizzard to just get out the Legacy of the Void expansion and be done with this game.
So what is going on? Why did Starcraft 2 run out of gas unlike the original Starcraft or even Warcraft 3? I think I can whittle it down to a few solid reasons that just spawned massive frustration with players until they eventually shrugged their shoulders and said, “I don’t care anymore.”
1) The game is too fast.
I’ve been playing with Blizzard employees since the original Starcraft (actually Warcraft 2). I’ve also played with Starcraft players such as Maynard before they became famous. It was told to me that Starcraft 2 was played at a slower rate (more like the original Starcraft). Someone introduced a faster speed as a ‘joke’. “And then, the faster speed became the default speed :( ” the Blizzard person told me. Someone up top must have thought ‘faster speed’ would mean ‘more exciting e-sports’. What actually happened was that multiplayer became too stressful that less people played which meant less people wanting to watch other people play.
The game being too fast is the number one problem with Starcraft 2 and why dedicated fans, such as myself, eventually stopped playing it. The game was more stressful than fun.
2) Planned expansions made the game feel incomplete.
People who love Zerg or Protoss hate Starcraft 2 because only Terran could be played in single player. Imagine the Protoss fan being told that he has to wait over half a decade to play his race in single player. The expansions just dragged the game out too long. Expansions have always been made in response to a game being popular and fans wanting more (and they are cheaper to make than an entire sequel). Blizzard totally lost sight of the role of the expansion.
Blizzard also didn’t understand what was unique about RTS single play: it is the multiple perspectives. Every RTS game allows you to play every single faction and each faction has ‘their perspective’ which made the game fun. For example, in Red Alert the Soviets view gassing the entire rebellious village as virtuous because it eliminates opposition. That is a very Soviet concept. It is fun to play as the bad guys. Starcraft 2’s single player lost the perspectives.
Even worse, the single player campaigns of Starcraft 2 revolved around characters which is a no-no for video games. This is not TV, movies, or books. This is a video game. The only character is the player (which Starcraft 1 correctly had the in game characters address you, the player, as if you were participating in the events). After the two Starcraft 2 ‘parts’ so far, I can think of nothing that has happened in the Starcraft 2 universe except Arcturus has died (or has he?). Even de-infesting Kerrigan (which I thought was an interesting bold move) was undone. Why the hell am I even playing these missions?
3) Top down control over the game instead of bottom up from the community
It was the community that was a huge part of the appeal of Blizzard games. The community wasn’t perfect, but they kept the fires going in the game. They were organizing tournaments and it was gamers entertaining gamers. Blizzard had a heavy-handed corporate approach.
Much of this heavy handed approach is revealed in the ‘always online’ requirement for multiplayer. Blizzard has a good point wanting everyone to pay for the game and not pirate it and play on private servers such as was done in south Asia for Warcraft 3. But this solution is like preventing murder by chopping off everyone’s arms.
Blizzard wants Starcraft 2 to be sold like a traditional PC game for $60 or whatever, but Blizzard doesn’t want Starcraft 2 to be able to be used as a traditional PC game did. If Starcraft 2 did have offline multiplayer, it would be a way to compete against the ‘free games’ or ‘new model’ games. People still have a soft spot for the traditional PC gaming ways.
The reason why free or cheap games are cheap is because the player lacks control over the product. And the reason why people will spend money to buy expensive games is because the player DOES have control over the product. Blizzard was trying to have their cake and eat it too.
All the complaints of Bnet 2.0, it really all comes down to the feeling like ‘this thing is controlling me’. It kept feeling like Blizzard was saying, “My way or the highway.” So people took the highway.
4) The editor was the antithesis of fun.
With Warcraft 2, I remember the pride Blizzard had in saying that their editor was as easy as Microsoft Paint. You just clicked on the tree icon, held the button, moved the mouse, and “trees would appear”! Starcraft’s editor was much more complicated, of course, but it still was simple. What Blizzard probably didn’t realize was that Warcraft 3’s editor was extremely complicated and that was just making the maps. It was 3d after all. They probably saw all the JASS work and thought everyone wanted ‘more detail’.
The Starcraft 2 editor is simply not fun to use even once you learn how to use it. Blizzard should really make two editors. One for the very simple jobs most people want it to do such as making a multiplayer map and editing, creating units, build orders, etc. for everything and the other that messes with the programming of the engine (such as manipulation of the unit ai).
The reason why you don’t see much user made content for Starcraft 2 is because the map maker is so not fun to use. The maker of those cute Starcraft 2 cartoons said that the reason why he started making cartoons is because he couldn’t handle the editor anymore.
Another VERY BIG REASON for the lack of custom content is the lack of variety in the art. Warcraft 3 was so big in custom content because there was art for nearly everything except science fiction. Starcraft 2 was so constricted in the art including the terrain. All the terrain felt dark or industrial which meant you couldn’t do ‘happy funky RPG in Celtic Wonderland’. Even Starcraft 1 felt like it had more variety in terms of using the in-game art as fodder for user visions of custom maps.
Starcraft 2 had a ton of momentum going into its release. The reason why Starcraft 2 ran out of gas wasn’t because of some other game, a MOBA, but because of the reasons I listed above.
To whittle it down to its most simplistic form: Starcraft 2 simply isn’t fun. Minecraft is fun. Starcraft 2, not so much.