Starcraft Universe MMO raising funds on Kickstarter

Jesse

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starcraft universe mmo kickstarter blizzard starcraft mmo starcraft 2 rpg upheaval arts starcraft mmo

Many who grew up playing the original Starcraft strategy game share Ryan Winzen’s dream of a Starcraft RPG, and now, thanks to his dedication and the team he’s assembled as the company Upheaval Arts, that dream could soon be a reality.

Starcraft Universe is an MMORPG built with the Starcraft II engine, and is only $80,000 away from actuality. The project’s Kickstarter campaign started only three days ago and has already reached a quarter of its funding goal.

Starcraft Universe began as a mod for Starcraft II, with a single player campaign built primarily by Winzen. Winzen went on to form Upheaval Arts and brought together a team of developers, designers, voice actors, and a composer to expand the mod into a full featured massively multiplayer online role playing game.

Since Starcraft Universe is basically an extension of Starcraft II, players are able to find and play with each other through Battle.net. Leveraging the existing Blizzard infrastructure greatly reduces the scale of this project, and has allowed Upheaval to focus on game development with their limited resources.

Winzen assured backers that the game will be delivered if the campaign is funded, stating that Blizzard has given the green light to the project. He invited those interested to try out the single player campaign already available through Starcraft II to get a taste of what SCU will offer.

Starcraft Universe will be free to play when it launches, and won’t even require a copy of Starcraft II. As a reward for helping the project reach fruition, tiered levels of contributions grant backers special in-game items like pets, rare weapons, and vehicles. For $100, you can even name your own NPC.

Check out the video below for some awesome voice acting and the rest of the Starcraft Universe story.

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THIS is where innovation comes from.. The modding community. Game companies should encourage people to make new games from older ones such as Valve and now Blizzard instead of hitting them with cease and desist orders litigation, etc.

I have a feeling this project will be well funded by the time their Kickstarter date expires. Good luck to them.
 
Why doesn't blizzard just give them the $80k? surely if they came up with $7,000,000,000 to buy themselves, whats a couple pennies to them?
 
Why on earth would Blizzard just give away his valuable property so a bunch of modders can take people away from their own PAID MMO (world of warcraft) doesnt make any sense
if blizzard sees potential in this why dont they do it themselves and charge?

this smell fishy to me....
 
Why do you need to raise funds for a Starcraft MMO when Starcraft is owned by Blizzard-Activision, the same company behind such revenue generating behemoths as Call of Duty or World of Warcraft. The funds you would raise from crowd sourcing for such an MMO would be hysterically laughable at best when compared to the amount of money they made off of subscription fees just this month... They have MORE than enough money to throw away into making a Starcraft MMO, they just don't do it. Even though Starcraft is a concrete cult favorite, it's not a national or multinational powerhouse. World of Warcraft undoubtedly gained momentum from our society's penchant for wizardry and other supernatural at that point in time. Our current era's on the addled Comic Book hero phase, as evident by frequent release of Comic-based movies. Starcraft, as wonderful as it may be, doesn't have the same mass appeal... That's why they haven't approached it yet. It would consume more money to produce and maintain than it would generate.
 
Blizzard is not a him, nor is it a single corporate entity. It's Blizzard-Activision. Blizzard itself is a tenured company comprised of a handful of friends who started out making RTS and RPG games like Warcraft or Diablo. THEY, not him, wouldn't NEVER EVER condone third-party altercation or others attempting to generate revenue off of their intellectual property.
 
"and won?t even require a copy of Starcraft II"
wait what? if it is a map using sc2 no problem. but no require copy? think again...
if Greedy-Blizzard-Activition allows this I will play diablo3 again as penance...
 
All of you sayin this is fishy and wondering why blizzard would allow someone to make money off their IP need to read the kickstarter page and do some research...

This game is going to be available through BATTLE.NET

These guys are securing the funding and doing all the leg work but don't worry blizzard will get their piece of the pie.
 
All of you sayin this is fishy and wondering why blizzard would allow someone to make money off their IP need to read the kickstarter page and do some research...

This game is going to be available through BATTLE.NET

These guys are securing the funding and doing all the leg work but don't worry blizzard will get their piece of the pie.
maybe blizzard will have in-game ads. :)
 
Blizzard is not a him, nor is it a single corporate entity. It's Blizzard-Activision. Blizzard itself is a tenured company comprised of a handful of friends who started out making RTS and RPG games like Warcraft or Diablo. THEY, not him, wouldn't NEVER EVER condone third-party altercation or others attempting to generate revenue off of their intellectual property.
I read here (or somewhere) that blizzard is buying back its shares to become independent again.
 
I think the coolest thing about this is that blizzard have given them the go ahead.
The game it's self looks kinda.. bad. :/
 
Likely to bomb, the reason Blizzard haven't done it is there's a flooded MMO market, the IP was never intended for this use - so there's a ton of lore required to make the game feel complete, the basics they have done are average at best, the GUI is dire, the combat looks a mess and the colouring/styling? Done by artist for artists imo, looks garbage.

Makes as much sense as making the Doom film, probably a good idea on paper until you actually start doing it.
 
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