Heh, might find this interesting:
Dear Blizzard,I am a gamer. Contrary to the current stereotype, I am not fat. Nor do I live in a basement, nor with my parents. I do not get an erection when a gaming company releases a screenshot from a cutscene, insinuating that this is what their newest title will be like. I do not fall for false hype - nor do I spend my money, based solely on a game's title. It is important that you understand this because I represent a very large demographic that your marketing department should be aware of: the rational, thinking gamer. While Starcraft 2 is still in production, please take into consideration the following wish list compiled by that very group.
1.) We'd like to be able to install our game and then immediately play it.We've waited almost a full decade for this. We've just spent $50 that could have easily been relocated to our beer and stripper fund. We've called in sick to work and hired a baby sitter so that we could spend the first full day with it. Please don't make us wait two weeks to play it because you're working on a fix for the Protoss Turd-Launcher to correctly launch turds.
This is a trend in the gaming world that has developed over the past ten years or so, has gotten progressively worse with time, and needs to stop immediately. We're not talking about hardware incompatibility here. We're talking about the basic functionality of the game. We'll use World of Warcraft as an example:
In the beginning, there were boats that took the player from continent to continent. Or rather, they were supposed to. In reality what they did was take a player halfway there and then dump them into the ocean, killing the character and wasting thirty minutes of the players' real lives as they resurrected and then traveled back to the same spot, only to have it happen again. The programmers then replaced those boats with "magical portals" while they fixed the problem. Once it was patched, the portals were removed, and the player could once again ride the all-important ships. Only to have it happen again. This cycle persisted for roughly a year.
Not pictured: Boat.
You have testers. Use them. We're not asking for a perfect game because that's an impossible request. Of course there are going to be minor glitches and blemishes here and there. We just want to make sure that, of the three basics [1.)buy game, 2.) install game, 3.) play game], we can access step three. We have the first two covered.
2.) Is there something we can do to eliminate the kiddies from the game, entirely?At first, I thought this was just a personal request because I'm getting impatient in my old age. However, the more I speak to my peers, the more I find it's a living, breathing, pulsating, universal hatred held by all respectable gamers. None of the kiddies can type in their native language. None of them can respectfully accept defeat without wielding the word "cheater" or "hacker" like a torch to a mob of brain-eating zombies. And all of them have mastered the art of annoyance to the point of breaking at least five protocols of the Geneva Conventions.
We rational gamers offer a few suggestions, if not solutions, to curb this problem.
No matter what the rating is for the game, make this the cover art for Starcraft 2. We don't mean "put it down in the corner so that it appears to be a game meant for players age 17 or older." We want it to be the entire cover, encompassing 100% of the box's surface. We do understand that kids still find ways to obtain games like Grand Theft Auto, and we understand that there are certain parents who don't mind their children playing those types of games with those ratings, but at least this way we can weed out the ones who are too stupid to get around the system. Worst case scenario, we've eliminated the absolute stupidest of the stupid.
I personally suggest creating a mandatory registration form that has to be submitted via the internet before online play is accessible. At the bottom of that registration would be a box wherein the potential Battlenet player would be forced to write a minimum of one hundred words, declaring why they want to play the game. When submitted, if the contents of that box contains a single smiley, misspelled word, or any form of "lol," that player would not only be denied access to online play, but be banned from Battlenet for life and his hard drive melted. Sure, that would exclude a small chunk of adults, too, but only the really stupid ones. That's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.
Blame them.
3.) Give us as few useless units as humanly possible.We understand that there will be specialized units whose only job it is to take out other specialized units. But please make these at least somewhat versatile. To some people, that's a part of the online excitement: out-planning an opponent... watching him rush 100 Carriers into a base, only to see 100 Carrier-****ers tear open 100 condoms in unison. Just don't put us in too many games of rock, paper, scissors where we pump out 25 to 50 specialized troops and then just have them standing around, hoping that our opponent happened to produce their counterparts. At the very least, let us have the ability to hand them a broom and say, "If you got time to lean, you got time to clean."
4.) Few if any indoor maps.We've already heard statements from Blizzard, saying that they will be focusing more on the online aspect of Starcraft 2. They said that there will be a story mode, just as the original had, but the heart and soul of this game will be found through online play. We understand that, and we won't argue. However, remember this: not all of us are online players.
On a personal level, I have no desire to have my ass handed to me and then endure the broken-English mocking of a twelve year old Korean kid. I do not have plans, neither present nor future, of wading through festering cesspools of hackers, scripters, and exploiters who could have easily beaten me legitimately because of my self-admitted jaw-dropping level of suck. Therefore, my focus will be on the offline play.
The bane of my existence was the indoor levels of Starcraft 1. Running through a fog-of-war maze with a handful of troops, looking for the enemies' iPod is not my idea of fun. I did not enjoy fighting my way eastward through the building and hitting a dead end because the door was locked. Then, fighting back to the west until I found a large glowing circle I could stand on... the way doors are opened in the future. Then running back to the east, through the now-opened door to find another large glowing circle.
"****. The bathroom door is locked, Dave. Is there someone in there?"
"No, in order to open it, you'll have to teleport down to Sector 7. Then, make your way east until you come to the prison gates. Open that door and stand on the circle. That opens the gate in Sector 4, where you'll find three more circles in the northern, southern, and eastern wings. Stand on the eastern wing first, and then-"
"Too late. I pooped a little."
5.) Better movement AI on mass units.This should have been fixed in the first place, and we hope it never needs fixing in this version. In the original game, if a player massed an army of ground troops and sent them into a tight entrance ("bottleneck" or "choke point"), the first of those units would make it through just fine, but clog that entry point. Those that lagged behind would hit the clog, and thinking that it was impassible, they would attempt to find an alternate route into the enemy base. All we're asking for is a little courteousness from the troops.
Is it so hard to make an AI that tells the units to exercise a little patience? We're not asking that to be smartasses. The vast majority of us have never programmed a game, and never will. It just seems that it wouldn't be all that complicated to tell the battalion to walk in a single file line when going through that type of entrance. Or at the very least, give them a line of code that tells them not to travel half the map in the wrong direction just because the troops in front are walking a little too slowly for their taste.
6.) Take your time. We're in no hurry.That statement may sting a little for anxious gamers, but those are the people we're thinking of when we say it. We want you, the staff responsible for designing arguably the most anticipated computer game ever produced, to take your time and make sure that what you package is something you're proud of. If it takes a few extra months to put on the finishing touches, the by all means do so. We've been waiting for this game for almost a decade, so you have a lot to live up to.
We are a generation of whining, crying, *****ing, moaning, impatient pussies. No matter what you do, there will be an insufferable barrage of complaints being hammered out by preteens, frothing at the mouth and nitpicking every pixel of every map, just hoping to find something - anything that they can use to feed their insatiable urge to be heard... even if they have nothing to say. It is to be expected because the overwhelming majority of today's gamers are semi-retarded douchebags by nature. Just please - pretty please - don't give them a legitimate reason to do so. It only helps the kiddies justify their flaming idiocy.
He needs just one reason. Any reason at all.
