One of the biggest announcements of BlizzCon 2017[1] was that StarCraft 2 is going free-to-play[2]. The real-time strategy game has seen a steady flow of updates after Blizzard wrapped up its final campaign - Legacy of the Void. Gadgets 360 spoke to StarCraft 2’s Lead User Interface Designer, Christoper Reed to find out why the free-to-play route was taken for StarCraft 2, and what we could expect next.
“The biggest reason for this decision [to go free-to-play] was to bring in more players. Now that we have our giant trilogy completed you get to play as one of the each races [Terran, Zerg, and Protoss]," Reed explained. "We have co-op missions, we have a new wave for new players to engage, before it was a lot of versus and it was difficult for a lot of players, but co-op brings in a nice unique way for players to come in and digest the content which is really cool. We feel that the timing is right now. We have enough that we can give to players and the big purpose was to give as much as we can.”
At BlizzCon 2017, Blizzard said that the first campaign, Wings of Liberty, would be free but users will have to pay for the next two campaigns - Heart of the Swarm, and Legacy of the Void - or just the last one if players already own the first two. We asked if Blizzard had plans to make Legacy of the Void free.
“Well, we love you. We love for being that far in [owning the first two campaigns]," he says. "But that's where that journey ends. If you want Legacy of the Void or Nova Covert Ops then you'd have to purchase...