After seven years, Blizzard’s renowned competitive sci-fi strategy game goes free for everyone (provided they have a PC, of course). The game is scheduled to go live on November 14.
Though tagged with the monicker “Free to Play”, the Starcraft 2 version offers the whole vanilla game, SC2: Wings of Liberty, without knee-capping the experience. On launch, the game is expected to be complete with the campaign, multiplayer, and co-op mode. For those who already own the game, Blizzard instead offers the second expansion, Heart of the Swarm, for free.
To maintain the integrity of the multiplayer arena, Blizzard assures veteran players that new players would have to prove themselves via 10 “First Wins of the Day”. Known for being intensely competitive, Starcraft 2 multiplayer has that image of browbeating newbies, worrying would-be newcomers.
You might also be asking, “What would they get for going Free-to-Play?” One of the reasons I think is that it might be due to the prior paragraph. The lack of new players can put a cork on any game’s multiplayer community. No new players plus dwindling numbers equals dead game. Also, to market and sell the expansions. Of course, having an expansion pack, in a developer and publishers perspective, is unprofitable if the vanilla or base game doesn’t have that much traction. So to encourage people to buy them, the base game goes free. Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty is already more than seven years old, so the profits made would have been maximized to an extent. Lastly, the game also aims to capitalize on one of it’s game modes, namely co-op. Heroes aside from Raynor, Kerrigan, and Artanis, are all capped at level 5, so in order to proceed, one has to dish out some moolah to appease the corporate gods.
But what the heck. Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty is for free. And for us gamers, free is free!
Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty’s Free-to-play launch follows Blizzard’s statement of giving out 1998’s Starcraft and it’s critically-acclaimed expansion, Brood War, for free.
