I’ve been thinking about this for a while.
“WoW 2” sounds pretty lame, updating the old world is enough. There’s not much to upgrade gameplay wise, and there’s not much left to discover either. We’ve seen most of what we can expect to see in this universe.
The StarCraft universe is fascinating though. Dark, gruesome, immersive and completely different from what we have here. Sci-fi MMORPGs are also pretty rare, which is a shame, because there are countless new mechanics and gameplay modes enabled by a futuristic universe.
Protoss Zealots would be your typical warriors, High Templar your typical mages, and Dark Templar your typical rogues.
Marines would be ranged glass cannons, and Marauders would be the tanks. Medics would be the obvious healers.
You could get really creative with the Zerg race if it were playable, with potentially limitless Abathur adaptations and mutations. In Allods Online, there’s one race where you control 3 characters together - I could see the Zerg working a bit like this.
This was 15 years ago. They now have the tech and the experience to come up with some very creative ways to exploit a sci-fi setting in an MMORPG.
I believe that it’s worth considering.
Can’t say I’d be interested in trying unless it’s something impressive. The one time i blindly followed the hype for lost ark I regretted it. But the idea sounds fun so why not
An FPS game would basically force you to be a Terran.
MMORPGs allow for much more creative freedom. The potential is huge.
Having different planets with different gravity, which would affect collision and pushback effects, would be a really unique approach to combat. And that’s just one example.
The limitless customization of a playable Zerg character is also very appealing.
No, because StarCraft as a story and a lore medium with worldbuilding is concluded. It was told to its ending in StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void.
That franchise doesn’t have more story to pursue. And you can’t really make anything new up, because the cosmic lore of the Xel’naga has been covered.
I realize that Blizzard evidently toys with the idea of more StarCraft games, and that may well happen in the way that Warcraft Rumble is a Warcraft game only because it dresses up in a Warcraft skin suit made from the corpse of the Warcraft IP.
Blizzard may do something similar with StarCraft, i.e. milk the franchise for whatever nostalgic potential it has left.
So no.
Blizzard’s next big bet is on their open world survival game, which will release in 5…6…7…a dozen years or so, probably. The other existing franchises are either dried up, convoluted enough in their existing games, or kind of meh.
You can always come up with new things, and pull stuff out of thin air. Blizzard proved this with Shadowlands.
Kerrigan left a bunch of Queens “govern” their own little swarms. The Protoss are still alive, and so are the Terrans. Conflict can very much still arise, especially over thousands of years - there’s no need for Xel’naga involvement.
That’s the worst sales pitch for a game I have ever heard.
The Nova missions basically revolved around this.
It makes for quaint small stories, hence why Blizzard could present it as a DLC with a story mission.
But it’s not something you can build a full-fledged MMORPG from.
That’s just not happening.
It’s not happening here.
And it’s not happening at Blizzard.
Besides, Blizzard basically booted their entire StarCraft team and all the developers who were passioned about the franchise.
If you want more StarCraft, check out Stormgate. That’s basically where the fan-base are migrating to.
I thought it was a funny example to give, yes. It works though, it does serve my point.
Shadowlands lore was total garbage, but the fact remains that you CAN, in fact, create new lore in an existing franchise.
Obviously, you’d want that new lore to be decent. But surely that’s not an impossible feat?
It’s another RTS though.
I’m specifically interested in an MMORPG set in a completely different setting than the usual “medieval fantasy” stuff we’re always getting over here.
MMORPG players don’t really care about StarCraft, because they’ve been playing WoW for the past 20 years and not StarCraft.
StarCraft fans don’t care about MMORPGs, they care about RTS games. That’s why they don’t play WoW but look to Stormgate and other RTS games like AoE IV.
You can’t sell the StarCraft franchise to WoW players, because they’ve already shown that they don’t really care for it.
And you can’t sell the MMORPG genre to StarCraft fans, because they’ve already shown that they only care about the RTS genre.
So who’s a StarCraft MMORPG with weak-sauce story and lore supposed to be for?!
Well good luck then I guess. I don’t really see the point of debating the topic at nauseum, so I’ll withdraw here. I just find it completely and utterly unrealistic to the point where it seems ridiculous to even entertain the idea. But maybe I am overly pessimistic.
I’m having a hard time even imagining what this would look like, with planetary travel and personal space ships.
I would be interested, but I believe the risk reward/ratio is not in favour of something of this scale at his time.
Then again what do I know haha I would definitely have a peek.