StarCraft 2 Becomes Free-to-Play Starting November 14

[TheDeeGee]

I wish WoW went F2P...

Been subbed from February 2006 till August 2017.

 

[Th3pwn3r]

Give us Warcraft 4 already please..

HAHA, I was going to say "And here I am waiting for Warcraft 4...."

 

[Thefumigator]

Too bad they aren't fixing the shitty code that powers this game and now that the game is going free the chances of it getting fixed are less than they were before. The game engine is largely a single-threaded beast (and a bad one at that) so for those people who bought into the current generation AMD Ryzen chips they're going to have a shitty experience playing this game (good luck playing at less than 30 FPS). The only way this game plays well is if you have high clock speeds.

And now you know why I didn't go AMD Ryzen with the current generation of the chips, the game runs very poorly on it. This game was made back in the days of the old Pentiums where clock speeds were king, not core counts. Sure, core counts are great today but back when this game was made all that mattered was clock speeds. Under the hood of this game is a game engine that's very poorly optimized for anything but high clock speed chips.

And yes, I still like playing this game.

Oh my where to start,
I'm on ryzen 7 1700 and I bought starcraft 2 among other games and all I can say is that it runs smooth as butter. Also Ryzen 7 1700 is a cold 65watts chip, but I'm not an overclocker anyway.
Just to see if SC2 is single threaded as you said I played an intense 1vs1 against AI and here are the results:

There are at least 3 cores intensively in use and two cores with a bit of use. What you said is out of reality... "the game runs very poorly on it" and "AMD Ryzen chips they're going to have a shitty experience playing this game".

 

[trparky]

You're the first one to say that, every person on Blizzard's own forums and Reddit said that Starcraft 2 was single-threaded. Nearly everyone said that if you plan on playing Starcraft 2 you have no choice but to pay the Intel tax. That's the primary reason why I've not gone Ryzen, the posts on Blizzard's forums and Reddit.

Do I necessarily want to pay the Intel tax? Hell no, who would willingly pay it? Certainly not I! But based upon what I've read (other than your own post) everyone said that I had no choice. Nearly everyone said that I had to pay the Intel tax if I were to get anywhere close to decent game performance with such a shitty game engine.

 

[bug]

Too bad they aren't fixing the shitty code that powers this game and now that the game is going free the chances of it getting fixed are less than they were before. The game engine is largely a single-threaded beast (and a bad one at that) so for those people who bought into the current generation AMD Ryzen chips they're going to have a shitty experience playing this game (good luck playing at less than 30 FPS). The only way this game plays well is if you have high clock speeds.

And now you know why I didn't go AMD Ryzen with the current generation of the chips, the game runs very poorly on it. This game was made back in the days of the old Pentiums where clock speeds were king, not core counts. Sure, core counts are great today but back when this game was made all that mattered was clock speeds. Under the hood of this game is a game engine that's very poorly optimized for anything but high clock speed chips.

And yes, I still like playing this game.

Wings of Liberty was launched in 2010. By 2010 we had those: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westmere_(microarchitecture)
A little googling never hurt anyone

 

[Th3pwn3r]

You're the first one to say that, every person on Blizzard's own forums and Reddit said that Starcraft 2 was single-threaded.

EVERY person LOL!

 

[trparky]

Do you know how much Googling I did? I spent months after Ryzen's launch reading hundreds of forum and sub-Reddit threads on the topic. Nearly every one said that to avoid AMD Ryzen and that you just had to pay the Intel tax to play this game. I can't imagine that the people in those threads were being paid by Intel to say that so I figured that with that many people saying that it had to be true.

 

[trparky]

Excuse me for being wrong, go ahead and tell the literally hundreds of users on both Reddit and Blizzard's own forums that they're wrong as well because that's where I got my information from.

And before you say that I should have asked here, believe me... I DID!!! Nobody answered me, nobody told me anything. It was like this game didn't exist to those who hang out on these forums. Wait, I take that back... I had one person ask me why I still played that old game. I asked repeatedly even, nobody gave me answer so I turned to other sources that told me to avoid Ryzen and that I had to pay the Intel tax.

Now that the record has been set straight I may look at Ryzen again.

Now if someone can get me benchmarks for Diablo 3, another such game that hundreds of people over at Blizzard's forums said that would perform badly on Ryzen. And before you ask me why I still play that game the answer is... because I do!

 

[Thefumigator]

Excuse me for being wrong, go ahead and tell the literally hundreds of users on both Reddit and Blizzard's own forums that they're wrong as well because that's where I got my information from.

I have no problem to say all those guys are wrong. I also don't believe anything anyone say.

And before you say that I should have asked here, believe me... I DID!!! Nobody answered me, nobody told me anything. It was like this game didn't exist to those who hang out on these forums. Wait, I take that back... I had one person ask me why I still played that old game. I asked repeatedly even, nobody gave me answer so I turned to other sources that told me to avoid Ryzen and that I had to pay the Intel tax.

I'm not sure why nobody answered your question here. I would have answer something like "go any route, but intel has better single threaded performance by a low margin against Ryzen"

I know that old games are fascinating even today, Diablo 3 is among those golden jewels. I play Anno 2070 which was relased quite a while ago.
We are not talking about the intel tax or whatever, we are talking about the concept you put over the table: You believe that with Ryzen a 2010 game would be completely unplayable and the intel route is the way to go... ? Only the Sith believe in absolutes.
I can benchmark Diablo 3, just let me see if I can borrow a copy...

 

[Totally]

No, it's not, considering he qualified it with "one of."

It's an insanely popular game, like it or hate it.

He's saying it is and I'm saying not anymore. I won't deny that it was popular worldwide at one time, but presently it is not. Going f2p is a last ditch attempt to shore up the waning playerbase for those living far away from the region's where starcraft is pretty much a religion. It's in a spot where enough people play that keeps the game alive but the distribution of players leave many left out connecting to each other seriously high latency.

 

[Tartaros]

@trparky

I played wings of liberty on a phenom II x4, 8gb ram and a hd5870, maxed out, no framedrops. I played the 2 expansions on an ivy bridge i7 quad core, 16gb ram, gtx970, maxed out, no framedrops. I played multiplayer for some time on the ivy bridge, even in my laptop which is an ivy bridge I5 with 8gb of ram and a gt640m (had to lower details on the laptop), still no framedrops in online games. I refuse to accept what you say because that would mean Ryzen is slower than phenom II and ivy bridge and I don't think that's the case. Something is not right in what you say.

 

[bug]

Do you know how much Googling I did? I spent months after Ryzen's launch reading hundreds of forum and sub-Reddit threads on the topic. Nearly every one said that to avoid AMD Ryzen and that you just had to pay the Intel tax to play this game. I can't imagine that the people in those threads were being paid by Intel to say that so I figured that with that many people saying that it had to be true.

Well, it would seem your googling skills need an urgent upgrade, because here's WoW perfectly playable at 4k, 3 years ago: https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/R9_280X_Gaming_6_GB/21.html

 

[Th3pwn3r]

what i choose to spend my money on is my choice lol

I have no problem to say all those guys are wrong. I also don't believe anything anyone say.



I'm not sure why nobody answered your question here. I would have answer something like "go any route, but intel has better single threaded performance by a low margin against Ryzen"

I know that old games are fascinating even today, Diablo 3 is among those golden jewels. I play Anno 2070 which was relased quite a while ago.
We are not talking about the intel tax or whatever, we are talking about the concept you put over the table: You believe that with Ryzen a 2010 game would be completely unplayable and the intel route is the way to go... ? Only the Sith believe in absolutes.
I can benchmark Diablo 3, just let me see if I can borrow a copy...

He's saying it is and I'm saying not anymore. I won't deny that it was popular worldwide at one time, but presently it is not. Going f2p is a last ditch attempt to shore up the waning playerbase for those living far away from the region's where starcraft is pretty much a religion. It's in a spot where enough people play that keeps the game alive but the distribution of players leave many left out connecting to each other seriously high latency.

@trparky

I played wings of liberty on a phenom II x4, 8gb ram and a hd5870, maxed out, no framedrops. I played the 2 expansions on an ivy bridge i7 quad core, 16gb ram, gtx970, maxed out, no framedrops. I played multiplayer for some time on the ivy bridge, even in my laptop which is an ivy bridge I5 with 8gb of ram and a gt640m (had to lower details on the laptop), still no framedrops in online games. I refuse to accept what you say because that would mean Ryzen is slower than phenom II and ivy bridge and I don't think that's the case. Something is not right in what you say.

Well, it would seem your googling skills need an urgent upgrade, because here's WoW perfectly playable at 4k, 3 years ago: https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/R9_280X_Gaming_6_GB/21.html

You know, I never really considered that he could be bored and trolling until just now.

 

[trparky]

You know, I never really considered that he could be bored and trolling until just now.

Um no, not trolling. I just reported on what I read several months back. I searched under the keywords "starcraft 2 ryzen" which is a simple enough Google query. I read not only the European forums but the US-based Blizzard forums and both of them said that people should go with Intel if playing this game. I even went to the Starcraft 2 sub-Reddit and they too said that I would be better off going Intel.

God damn it, I could have built a Ryzen system by now but I've instead been saving up the nearly $1600 that I would need to build a proper Intel-based system. Then again, I still need that $1600 if I were to go Ryzen and upgrade to a 2K monitor with GSync but by then the new Ryzen chips will be out next year and quite possibly whatever is going to be the upgrade to the GTX 1080 Ti card.

 

[Gasaraki]

Wasn't it because of the unlocked framerate in the menu? GPUs were pushed to max?

Yes. The menu didn't have a frame rate limiter so because it was "easy" to render, it ran as fast as possible and it burnt out GPUs that didn't have good cooling and air flow in cases.

 

[NeoGalaxy]

I played the 1st campaign, that was decent, maybe boring half the time but well ok. I wasn't really interested in the 2nd campaign but I should finish it, and the 3rd... well... I have to finish it also MP is boring in anything above 1vs1, but ok since the balace is a mess anyway. Co-op is ok, I find it decent, well but not that interestesting since one has to buy some heroes... but I think it's the best part being played right now. To be honest I am still a big fan of Dune II, Total Annihilation and well old Settlers games and I don't mind playing SC II, but what annoys me the constant nerfing (called changes ) they bring to the game. Also the engine is pretty lame, works on 1 thread, maybe in five years Blizzard can develop it to work for multiple cores, maybe. But it's a decent, well good game. There's not that many players playing it but everyone should try it since there's a very low number of RTS games in this moment.

 

[Ahhzz]

I may give it a swing, but I was so ticked off about them originally offering the game in three different sales, that I promised I'd never buy it.

 

[CounterZeus]

@trparky

I played wings of liberty on a phenom II x4, 8gb ram and a hd5870, maxed out, no framedrops. I played the 2 expansions on an ivy bridge i7 quad core, 16gb ram, gtx970, maxed out, no framedrops. I played multiplayer for some time on the ivy bridge, even in my laptop which is an ivy bridge I5 with 8gb of ram and a gt640m (had to lower details on the laptop), still no framedrops in online games. I refuse to accept what you say because that would mean Ryzen is slower than phenom II and ivy bridge and I don't think that's the case. Something is not right in what you say.

I played the original campaign on a Pentium D 830, 2GB RAM and a crippled 9600GT...

 

[Frick]

Also the engine is pretty lame, works on 1 thread, maybe in five years Blizzard can develop it to work for multiple cores, maybe.

Now that I don't believe.

Also, anyone can disable all cores but one and see if it runs as well as with more cores? I find it next to impossible that the game truly does not benefit at all from more cores. The same was said about Paradox Clausewitz engine games, but that is not correct at all.