Outstanding game with tons of beautiful content. The single player is an absolute joy to play. Looking forward to hitting the multiplayer.

$60 price tag and no LAN play is enough to keep me away until the game's been out a while and the price comes down.

If they go to a subscription model, I'll never play. Blizzard gets enough of my money every month with my WoW fees. :-)

they missed street expectations. people thinking 2M+ just from the west not including korea. the 1.5M worldwide appears low.

I was one that did not bought the game yet. The main reason is a premium price for 1/3 of a game. I don't know what they were thinking, bug once they release the full product (which they will call a "trilogy package") then I will grab it.

And the lack of LAN does not makes it any better (not that I was going to use it much, but that would be a plus factor).

The single player is a great experience, but I think they are going to lose a lot of people that are not into the Melee Skirmish multiplayer mode. The custom game system right now is a very poor implementation; The requirement that all online content go through the Battle.Net system whether public or private is only hurting the communities ability to explore the games non-multiplayer potential.

They have many good intentions but I think for the players that don't want the traditional skirmish multiplayer as their prolonged outlet will require updates to the custom interface to make it more user friendly and more cohesive with a broader community. An online system to view popular content, ratings, comments, descriptions, screenshots, etc. is fairly mandatory if they are going to restrict all content to flow through them.

I'm loving it. The price is more than fair considering everything that comes in the game.

The missions are much better than the original and have decent replay value.
The multiplayer is more approachable and satisfying.
Best game editor ever packaged with a game.
Battle Net Interface and the replay system make the experience enjoyable even when you aren't in a game.

I still find the 1/3rd a game comments pretty silly. The core of the game is the multiplayer melee skirmish and custom maps. The singleplayer is just a bonus. On that note, the singleplayer is as long as it was for the first Starcraft with far better designed missions. You get more for your money with this game than pretty much any other.

I will admit that the gameplay is definitely not an evolution, but thats not what people wanted. A new engine, better pathfinding, better macro controls, graphics and new matchmaking make it a win for everyone who loved the first one.

Finally a game that deserves selling this many copies! Most games that do sell in great numbers these days depend more on marketing. The biggets selling point for any Blizzard game is pure quality and it's hopefull for the gamemarket that it is rewarded.

@Fábio

Just because Blizzard is releasing the three SP campaigns separately, doesn't mean a single campaigns is just a third of the average SP game experience. As long as each part is worth the price of a single game, it only means we get more content.. more starcraft!

I wonder how many of these units were from pre-sales?

I don't play MP online much, so for me the SP is the best part. And yes, it is 1/3 of the game, since some reviews I have seen say they leave much up in the air without a proper conclusion and a link to the next iteration.

It was their choice to make it this way, fair enough for them. I don't have to like it. For me, it is 1/3 of a single-player game.

Fabio, do yourself a favor and find someone with a Free trial code. Yep. They're so confident in their game that you can play for 7 hours free (any part of the game).

Fabio,

Are you saying that anything that ends in an unresolved way is 1/3 of a thing? StarCraft II is a full GAME, it's not just a plot. While you're progressing through that story, you're actually PLAYING a full game, one with an extensive system of tech and research upgrades, branching missions, and so on. Maybe what you mean is that specifically the campaign plotline is one third of the total eventual StarCraft II plotline, but it's ridiculous to say that the entire single-player game experience is only one-third of something. There's much more content there than in most other similarly-priced games.

Funny.

All the positive reactions I'm reading are from people who have played the game.

All the negative feedback is from people who haven't.

Can we get somebody to say "yeah, I played it all the way through, checked out the multiplayer for a while, not impressed"? Seriously guys. As Christopher mentions above, Blizzard is offering free trials to anybody. Check it out before deciding that one-third of a campaign isn't worth the price of admission. Half-Life 2 anybody?

Chris, I agree with you. Saying that Wings of Liberty is 1/3 of a game is like saying that Fellowship of the Ring was 1/3 of a movie.

I do understand this is a full product, I am not arguing that. What I am arguing about is that I do not care that much for the Multiplayer part :)

I will not pay full price for a product that I don't think is worth it. I have seen the game running in person, graphically it is fabulous. But I don't think I would like to play it now, then have to wait God-knows-how-many-years until Blizzard decides to release Chapter 2 of this new saga. Sorry, but that is my feeling.

Once I can play it on its entirety, then Blizzard will have my money. They went for the Multiplayer people now, I understand that. But then don't complain that some people are holding buying it untill all the saga is released :)

Geez, folks, relax. There are other games out there with complete stories in the meanwhile - so I have no hurry for this one. After waiting 10 years, I can wait a few more :)

@Justin Kwok

It was. Unlikely the Pirates of the Caribean, in which the first chapter was complete in itself. The second was not, because they forced it to be split in two. Expect the same with the next Harry Potter.

Fabio,

There's a difference between being 1/3 of a series, and being 1/3 of a single movie or game.

@Chris Remo
Exactly. And StarCraft 2 (1/3) is the second case: only 1/3 of a game. The next iteration will not be StarCraft 3, it will be Starcraft 2 (2/3). And it will not be concise in itself, it will need the third chapter to make it a whole.

The multiplayer may be complete now (really? I bet they will make the new units available in future chapters, as any expansion does, even the ones that are already present in the single player mode), but the single player has does not conclude (again, as I read about it). I don't want to take the risk of it being true and I get disappointed with the series, so I will not pay to see it until everything is available.

I don't like it, just like I don't like the new Sonic being split into episodes. I don't like episodic games.

fools, its a full length game... I don't know if I would say that it lasts as long as the original starcraft, but I think thats just because I'm progressing through the content quicker. firstly, many of the missions are time based, so there is no procrastination. secondly, I'm playing it on normal, which is probably too easy for me. but MAINLY, despite only really getting to play the one race, the gameplay is FAR more VARIED than the first one ever was! despite getting to play all 3 races in the first, all the missions felt far more similar than they do in starcraft 2! they have been VERY creative with keeping it interesting throughout, and so I'd say the main reason I got through it quicker is that I never got bored!

by today's standards certainly! you are getting a full game with starcraft 2! even if you only play the campaign!

also, you get some protoss missions thrown in there as well.
and you do NOT have to be online to play any single player component. it works like steam with an offline mode.

however:
lack of lan mode IS LAME!
and as far as I can tell, the only way to play your OWN custom maps without publishing them online, is via the test button in the editor! and as useful as that button is... WHY THE HELL can't we just access our own local store of maps in game!!

I also would have liked to see more AWESOME blizzard pre-rendered cut scenes... I mean come on blizzard... you can't be strapped for cash! but oh well, on the plus side, the in engine ones are quite impressive!

@Bob, I don't know what you are talking about.

after playing the original to death,
the story makes sense to me. if it is a little passive and predictable. further more, people here are talking about the GAMEPLAY, not the story. and you would be insane to suggest that the gameplay isn't more dynamic than it was in the first one (remember: destroy a base, destroy a base, destroy a base, collect a mcguffin(after destroying a base) ).

while the story may not be amazing, may not even be as interesting as the first's, it certainly doesn't detract from whole experience of the single player, which I think, is great.

Meh... What I liked about SC1 and Warcraft RTS: Playing my cool custom maps on Lan with my friends...

Another stuff I liked: Story.

Stuff SC2 has: online play with lots of tournament-style play.

Stuff that I hate in most RTS: online play (because of all annoying people) with lots of tournament-style play (I like to build my base, fiddle with tech tree, and attack the enemy when is already impossible to lose...)

So, no, I am not buying SC2... at least, not until it is complete (ie: with all campaigns) and cheap (ie: not 60 USD)

But I have no hurry anyway... (Warcraft III for example I finished only 2 years ago)

Currently I am playing Deus Ex for the first time...

My 2 cents, after having played through the whole campaign and dabbled a bit on the MP side:

- 15+ hours long single player campaign (29 missions in total), with lots of replay value: tech tree, non-linear & branching missions, unit upgrades, mission specific achievements.

- Superb mission design. Varied, interesting objectives that leverage the game mechanics. No two missions are the same, each one has a different twist, pacing, or cool mechanic that sets it apart from the others (sorry Relic, the bar has been raised, again). Don't focus only on "cheezy timing" or "spending limits" to make your half-assed point, there is a lot more to it than that.

- A story that's actually enjoyable and well delivered, even though it has it's share of clichés (seriously, I'm getting tired of magical artifacts from dead alien races and end-of-the-world prophecies) and inconsistencies (the Raynor/Kerrigan relationship took a strange turn).

- A core game that is really FUN to play. Yeah, yeah, you want to blow a hole on the ground, go play Company of Heroes (which is awesome in it's own way).

- My only complaints are a couple of random crashes, laggy play on Battle.net (maybe the servers are overloaded), and the lack of closure to the story.

To me, all this is well worth 60 dollars (euros in my case) even without taking into account MP, the new Battle.net, and the editing tools. To the doubters, get a Trial code and check it out. You got nothing to lose.

The best part of all this, is that none of your opinions matter, at all, because this game is going to outsell any PC game in the last five years, and anything that would come out in the next five that isn't also by Blizzard and named Diablo III.

The one third of a game comment is stupid, and misinformed. It's an internet meme perpetuated by people who want a reason not to buy the game. I also find the $60 price tag complaint hilarious, because PC games being $50 was actually a relatively recent thing, and games in general used to be quite a bit more expensive than they are today. The fact that it's taken this long for prices to rise, given how much budgets have gone up, is actually the surprising part.

To those commenting that the 1.5m figure is low: That's in the first 48 hours. Let's see what the NPD numbers are in a month. The UK is already reporting that SC2 has outsold SC1 over it's entire lifetime, in a week. So I think the sales numbers will be perfectly rosy for a PC title. In fact, SC2 is the first PC title in quite a while to top the UK's All Formats list.

Here in America, they can't keep it on store shelves near me. I had to go to three different places yesterday to find a copy for a friend, and the place I finally fund it had two left from a massive display stand that had basically been picked clean. Whenever something this popular comes out, you're always going to have the "I'm just not going to like it because it's popular" crowd, and that crowd is out in force with SC2. For those of us with the game, well...we'll be enjoying it while that crowd sits around grumpy about why their WoW raid night isn't happening anymore because half their guild is playing SC2.

They took out the LAN so that you can only play online on Battle.net so you would have to buy a legitimate copy of the game if you want to play with other people.
They half-assed the single-player with another generic storyline like every other Blizzard game ever released, so you would get bored of it and want to play multiplayer.
The multiplayer relies on a highly competitive, rigid, social hierarchy designed to reward those who play the most, and thus keep you playing but putting you in constant conflict with other players.
They are talking about charging a monthly subscription fee for multiplayer...

Seeing any patterns here?

@Matt
You are absolutely right, it doesn't matter what anyone thinks here, the game is selling...and selling well. Despite the fact that the game does not do anything new in terms of strategy games (and pretty much nothing new compared to SC1), the anticipation from the game's massive fanbase ensured its success. And just think, these figures are not really including Korea so we'll see what the sales look like after their country is factored in (considering the game is practically a national pastime there). I'm sure we'll have this same argument about this and that gameplay element, worth the cost, etc. when the other SC games come out. Same goes for WoW:Cataclysm and Diablo 3, same thing will happen but the result will remain the same: Blizzard will make a ton of money.