‘StarCraft’ is 15 Years Old
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15 years ago,1998, the world embraced a plethora of activities: France hoisted the World Cup, Bill Clinton was in his second term as the President, and StarCraft released on PC.
released on PC. The landscape of gaming has changed dramatically since then, butitself has continued to be a shining staple of how a polished product can make an old game remain highly relevant for many years after its release.
Originally intended to be a simple in-between game crowd pleaser for the WarCraft series, the original StarCraft went through a radical redesignwhich would see the game completely scrapped and restarted in the development process – a move which would later prove to create one of the best real-time strategy franchises ever conceived It launched to overwhelmingly positive reception and would transform both the gaming industry and eSports scene, as well as setting a high standard for the genre.
Its successor, StarCraft 2 , would go through over 16,000 buildsbefore it was deemed satisfactory as a sequel, a process which would see fans wait over 10 years to continue the fight. Despite the wait, gamers worldwide were thankful that Blizzard was so patient in the development process across the series, resulting in consistently entertaining games. With over 15 years in its storied history, the StarCraft series is one worth celebrating – and that’s exactly what Blizzard intends to do.
Any gamer who plays an online game of StarCraft 2 before April 17th will be given the ’15 Years of StarCraft’ Achievement, which will unlock the classic character portraits shown above in the header image. The Achievement itself is worth 10 points, but is mostly there as a trophy-case achievement for longtime fans. Veteran gamers may remember the classic portraits from the original StarCraft booklet, which gave a detailed history of each race and their respective units and factions.
Whilst no one can take a guess at how many games have been played across the series worldwide, one can fathom that the number is in the billions, with death tolls possibly (or even probably) beyond the trillions.
Blizzard also released a commemorative wallpaper which features a marine, zergling and zealot – it can be downloaded here.
We here at Game Rant hope Blizzardhave a great year as they celebrate the Koprulu Sector’s 15th birthday.
Source: Blizzard
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