Have you played it? No? I did, at PAX last year, and you couldn't be more wrong. The first thing I told a friend afterward is how awesome it was going to be because it felt like playing a prettied up and improved Diablo 2. It's amazing how you actually state your assumed opinion as fact...
I think perhaps you've confused my statements - as previously written in this thread, I'm looking
forward to the changes made in Diablo III. Blizzard have taken the time to look through what worked, what didn't, what could be improved, how things could be made more fun and interesting to the play. The removal of health potion spam, for example, is simply a game changer and opens the game up! The classes all look interesting - apart from the Witch Doctor - and unique.
I'm not a fan of the new art style direction and mentioned it here as that debate has simply consumed the Diablo III community. After the changes in product quality that we've seen from Blizzard, Wings of Liberty the primary example, the Diablo community as a whole is gravely concerned with the direction Blizzard is now shifting Diablo III towards.
Yes, single player is definitely forgettable trash, despite being critically acclaimed as being pretty damn fantastic. But of course, your opinion is the only one that counts, right? Definitely, the insanely simple mission structure of Starcraft 1 (even though you even bolded the "ever", I'm not even going to bring up the joke campaigns of Warcraft II and Warcraft) is extremely superior compared to the persistent upgrades, unlocks, and highly cinematic/story driven campaign of Starcraft 2. And the UI update to get rid of ridiculous annoyances from Starcraft 1 have opened up the game to a hugely more wide audience, which is actually sort of the opposite of MP being fun in "spite" of these changes.
Because critic are always 100% accurate? Need I remind you that Modern Warfare 2 received praise as the greatest FPS ever constructed upon it's release? I certainly hope not. Take a look at the 'general consensus' across the internet now; Modern Warfare is considered to be inferior in every regard to it's predecessor.
Starcraft II's story is pathetic. A child could have, and most likely has, written better. The production values are simply industry leading, there cannot be disagreement on this aspect. The actual content of the story - plot developments, character arcs (or rather, the lack of them), personalities, series continuity - all pale in comparison to the previous entries and previous works from Blizzard itself. The entire single player campaign has been a hotly debated topic amongst Starcraft II communities. Head over to TeamLiquid.net, or Blizzard own's Regionally Restricted Forums, to see what people who've bought the game think. It's not pretty.
The UI received the mandatory upgrade to bring Starcraft into line with this generation's games. The path finding is still highly quetionable, the A.I. needs further work (Thor + SCV being the largest abuse of the weak A.I.) to be on par with the visuals and the entire Battle.net 2.0 needs to be overhauled; it lacks even rudamentry functionality. For a game in production for so long, with a rumored budget of $100,000,000.00, it felt like a half-assed single player campaign and a bare bones multiplayer component. After 10 years, hundreds of millions of dollars and several generations of games in between, a graphical retread of a classic is still a graphical retread.
Uh, yeah, the DLC was part of the Deluxe editions, or a separate purchase for those who got regular copies. How's that holding back content?
I think when in-game characters present you with hotlinks to purchase the content for the Single Player Standard Edition on the day of release, the words 'holding back content' apply. I'm not talking about 'Special Edition' or 'Limited Edition' content - I mean content that I, purchaser of the retail release game, am charged additional money for depsite having thrown down AU$120.00 for the game on the day that I bought it.
Did Elemental have release day DLC?
...but all of your arguments are completely baseless and, quite frankly, insanely terrible. There are plenty of legitimate arguments to make, such as the state of the current Battle.net being widely regarded as a downgrade to the original, the push to make everyone use realID (even though that one failed), the crazy Facebook integration, etc.
What aspects of my arguments are "insane"? What aspects are baseless? You've failed to point out anything that suddenly renders my positions irrelevant or unquestionably wrong.
