Starcraft has a lot more then two strategies. Watch some pro-korean games on youtube. This is just for easy finding, even between "average" players online there are many different strategies. When I say "average" I am referring to those that do not play on "$$maps" and mass battlecruisers. Turtling is something that really only Terrans do on a regular basis. Rushes are quite easy to counter if the player has enough skill to scout early with a worker.
Three distinct factions is better then a mass amount of generic factions where there is a lot of blurring between units and races making each of those races less distinct. Each race in Starcraft is very distinct and plays extremely different from the other.
I'd say Starcraft's "time" is not quite over yet, it still has a very active online community and continues to sell.
In my opinion Starcraft is a "better" game to those who put effort into playing it. To others this "effort" seems like "work", obviously this is not the game for them. That said to those that see starcraft as an extremely simple game lacking different strategies, these players have most likely failed to reach a skill level where more strategies come into play. This might be due to the fact that it requires "effort" to reach higher skill levels.
Nothing against those who feel it is a "chore" to each his own form of entertainment. Some individuals like very competitive fast paced games, others like very laid back and relaxing games; I like em both.

Oh no! I think i remember trying that game.... Is that the game where when you give commands, the unit voice effects sound like you just jiggled the dildo up his ass and made him very happy??

Wow. In one extremely biased sentence you just decried as "not worth playing" Supreme Commander, Command and Conquer 3 (Not to mention every previous C&C game), Battle for Middle Earth (sure, four factions, but only two distinct factions), Warcraft III (Linear campaign), Emperor: Battle for Dune, every RTS made before WarCraft III, StarCraft 2...

Supreme Commander is not worth playing?!? You, sir, fail.

"Map-based, non-linear campaign and more than three distinct factions" would also leave out Company of Heroes, which seems to be a very successful franchise... even if I didn't like it that much (too scripted for my taste).

Perception is a wonderful thing. Perception means variation in point of view. Starcraft isn't over-rated, its just that it got "old" for some people faster than others. For instance, I still play X-Com: UFO Defence / Terror from the Deep on occasions, how many others would? Some games, like Jagged Alliance 2 I'll happily play over and over, despite the lack of multiplay, and generic storyline.

The fact that it is still played suggests that it wasn't over-rated. An over-rated game to me is a game that was hyped up, failed to deliver, and led to disappointment, which clearly Starcraft hasn't to a majority of people that played it. Of course, over-rated may also mean something else entirely, again going back to the idea perception

One person at a games shop I overheard said that she normally sells one copy of Starcraft in a week. That was this year.

By the way, I personally could never get into Starcraft, I can't really reason as to why.

Starcarft was really the only classic "RTS" style game I ever enjoyed. I'm not really a fan of the genre...for me, most games that bill themselves as "RTS" have more to do with twitch and skill at interface manipulation, rather than actual strategy. But I really enjoyed Starcraft for the very well-concieved factions, balance, artistic design, story, and dialogue.

It is the oldest game I have that's still on my hardrive.

I wanted to buy supreme commander actually.... but they also decided to join in this new phenomenon of dissalowing LAN play with only 1 copy.

I like to buy games i can take home and play with my wife without having to buy the game twice!! needless to say, i have not bought any new games since Dungeonsiege 2 because of this problem. I can see i will be needing to switch to a console because pc game companies have all suddenly decided to become greedy on mass.

so in conclusion Supreme commander is NOT worth playing.

Yet not for the reasons you stated.

I'd love to play it, especially with the expansion out, but I remember something from the beta: you have to be willing to spend the time to get decent before it's really worth the investments, since the game is tough on newbies past that whole "HOLY SHIT LOOK AT THE SIZE OF MY ARMY" stage... resource management is a tricky affair.

Quite frankly, I don't have that time. Outside of second year Computer Science being a complete pain in the ass, there's Mass Effect in just over a week and Mario Galaxy is already out. On top of everything else I need to do, I just don't have the time to spend to really appreciate a multiplayer centric strategy game like that.

To be honest, Blizzard is possibly one of the best companies for creating RTS games. They seem to figure out the mistakes they made with each game as well as learning from the successes of other games. For that reason, I know that StarCraft 2 is likely to take the best elements of the RTS industry and improve upon them.

For example, their demonstration of the campaign for the game (I think you can find videos of it on Youtube). From details given in that demonstration, StarCraft 2 is going to be map-based, non-linear play with a very definite campaign. And, they're already making the three races even more distinct than they were in the original.

Also, someone brought up WoW earlier. I have played it. Remember the issues with Diablo 2 and class balance? Unfortunately, Blizzard hasn't learned from that mistake and they've repeated it.



I would recommend Dawn of War: Dark Crusade for you. You'll want the original Dawn of War and the expansion pack for it as well. You'll probably notice some similarities between some of the units in it and StarCraft. This is not a coincidence. It's pretty easy to identify the Warhammer 40k elements that were adapted to StarCraft. Isn't the first time that scifi items have been adapted for other uses, and it certainly won't be the last time either.

Supreme Commander is too spam focused for my tastes. At least in SC I had to use the individual units to my advantage.

That said, I generally prefer TBS games over RTS because there's more Strategy and less CLICK FASTER THAN THAT GUY.

Also, as a LONG TIME fan of the C&C series, since the very first game...

C&C3 was a pile of crap.

Starcraft is still on my hard drive. In fact, I just ran through the origonal campaign last spring.
X-com 2: Terror from the Deep has been mentioned. I haven't played that in awhile but was going to boot it up in september. I found out about the new expansion for GC II, and have been playing DA and the beta since (one of these days soon though).
Dawn of War is a game that once you reach Dark Crusade (at least with the DVD version) you don't need more than 1 copy to play LAN. It also has a new expansion coming out late next spring.

Not being made by Relic though :/ Any RTS by relic I'd pretty much buy sight unseen. The new expansion is being farmed out to the "Titan Quest" studio, so um, we'll just have to wait and see.

I too would recommend DoW through Dark Crusade, or even just Dark Crusade as a cheap stand alone entry point...the campaign mode in that makes the sinlge player slightly more interesting. 40K is the best intellectual property that there is, and if you liked Starcraft, you'd definitely like it. And like I said before, I dont even really *like* "RTS" games.

Obviously if you're not into Multiplayer RTS games then you won't enjoy Starcraft for much more than the time it takes to finish the campaign, and you'll probably prefer other games. However, while one can't compare Starcraft to non-RTS games directly I think it's important that Starcraft has dominated its genre far more than any game ever created, it's for that reason that I would find it hard to disagree that SC is the best game ever made.

Starcraft is by far the best multiplayer RTS ever made. No game in that genre that has come before or after it has had as good balance whilst retaining as much variety in the different races as well as still giving the player 100s of strategic options. The only area where Starcraft has been bettered as a multiplayer RTS is in the interface itself, which is obviously extremely dated (for example you can't have only one unit cast a spell when you have 12 selected) and of course the graphics.

Now take any other genre, whether it be RPG, TBS, FPS, MMORPG, fighting games or whatever and you always have at least a few titles that are up there and competing for the title of best in their genre, and there are always good arguments for each case. But ask any multiplayer RTS fan which is the best game in that genre and you'll almost always get the same answer.

Actually, just to be nit-picky, I would say that Myst has the clicky-puzzle-type-game genre dominated about as well as StarCraft has the RTS genre.

Here, here. And how many folks on this forum have expressed their pining for MoM, with others talking of the extremes to which they have gone (keeping a DOS box/partition/emulator, etc) just to run MoM.

If the Civ franchise weren't such a cash cow, we'd all still be playing Civ 1, too!

Its the gameplay, man.

drrider