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posted by Fnord666 on Monday February 17 2020, @06:14PM   Printer-friendly
from the ghostly-appearance dept.

Blizzard's cancelled 'StarCraft: Ghost' leaks in playable form

Blizzard's cancelled StarCraft: Ghost has been the stuff of gaming legend. It was supposed to mark Blizzard's big leap into 3D action games, but it never came to pass -- delays, changing developers and evolving game platforms led the studio to put the game on "indefinite hold." Now, however, gamers appear to be getting a first-hand look at what they've missed. YouTube users Leers Meneses, Delso Bezerra and others say they've obtained a playable build of Ghost for the original Xbox through a leaked developer kit. It's unsurprisingly broken (the first two missions don't work properly, Meneses said), but appears to have been well into development -- you can fend off Zerg and engage in Metal Gear Solid-style chats.

StarCraft: Ghost was announced in 2002, put on "indefinite hold" in 2006, and officially cancelled in 2014. Blizzard is attempting to squash the leak:

In January 2020, videos appearing to be from the Xbox version of the cancelled game started appearing online. On February 16, 2020, numerous videos showing different missions, areas, and gameplay were uploaded to the web. Reports of the Xbox development version game files leaking to the public started to emerge. Journalists at gaming publications such as Kotaku verified the legitimacy of the code that began to disseminate online. Throughout the day, infringement notices were issued to channels hosting footage of the game on YouTube, resulting in many videos being removed. Eventually the files widely disseminated online through filesharing methods such as public torrent trackers. This was the second time a playable, albeit unfinished and rough, version of a Blizzard game has leaked online, after Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans being leaked online in September 2016.

Also at Wccftech.


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @07:35PM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @07:35PM (#959255)

    They've had a number of missteps since the Diablo Immortal debacle. It's past time to write the entire studio off.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Freeman on Monday February 17 2020, @08:09PM (7 children)

    by Freeman (732) on Monday February 17 2020, @08:09PM (#959262) Journal

    Personally, I would call Diablo 3 the inital misstep. While it was imminently playable, the whole auction house debacle, just left a cloud of stink. I never got around to giving it another go after my initial play through or so, but the feeling I got was that they were aiming for a whole lot more MMO than RPG. In an RPG, you want to be able to get all the cool gear. In D3, the gear was so rare, you would have to buy it. That was the first nail in the coffin so to speak.

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @09:50PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @09:50PM (#959305)

      Doing only WoW was their initial misstep. As popular as the game was, the reality is that by investing so much in just one game, the necessary talent to create new series more or less evaporated. They haven't released anything worth playing since WoW that wasn't based heavily on games they had done previously. And even the games that were based on previous IP haven't lived up to their previous standards. SC2 was a joke, same goes for Diablo III that didn't even have a singleplayer option as they were so convinced that nobody wanted it.

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Tuesday February 18 2020, @12:15AM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 18 2020, @12:15AM (#959362) Journal
      Starcraft II was the last game for me. They required you to have both an online account and active internet connection. It worked ok for a while, but then I went to other things for a while. Later I toyed with the idea of going back to Starcraft II, but I would have needed to get my account reactivated and I was working at places that didn't have reliable internet connections. It was too much bother for the reward. When I saw they were pulling the same crap with Diablo III, I just left and never looked back.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2020, @01:49AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2020, @01:49AM (#959392)

      D3's skill progression was much less fun.

    • (Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Tuesday February 18 2020, @03:52AM (3 children)

      by RandomFactor (3682) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 18 2020, @03:52AM (#959424) Journal

      I only heard about the AH bit in D3, I came to it after that.
      D3 has a number of things it has done better than anything else I've seen. It may not have started there, but it got there.

      1) Loot system. Drama is essentially eliminated.
      2) Loot system. There is nothing the best, hardest core, biggest clan player in the game can obtain that a casual soloer can't also.
      3) Grouping. Not required, speed things up and open some other play options (e.g. zdps)
      4) Raiding. Does not exist. Screw spending hours setting up some highly coordinated raid with 40 of my best friends
      5) Builds. Many viable builds. There's always 'the best' but anything close will get you there.
      6) PVP. Do not want balance based on it. Also 100% completely and unequivocally optional.
      7) Nerfs. D3's philosophy is to build other things up to balance instead of nerfing things. It's a lot more fun to never log in and be weaker than you were yesterday. (And no they aren't perfect at this, but they are better than other games)
      8) Social. Gotta have it. Clans handle this aspect nicely.
      9) F2P. Doesn't have to be, but that's a nice bit.
      10) Seasons. I find them fun, i like the way they change things up and theme them.

      D4 is going to balance around PVP. This is actually really depressing.

      --
      В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
      • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday February 18 2020, @03:33PM (2 children)

        by Freeman (732) on Tuesday February 18 2020, @03:33PM (#959544) Journal

        The Loot system is what I found the most annoying. I was able to get cool sets pretty easily on D1 and D2 along with other cool things. In D3, it seemed like the entire loot system was geared towards making things super rare, so you had to buy from the auction house. It was still broken a short while after the auction house was dumped. Sounds like they may have fixed it, which would be cool. Still, it reeked of cash grab. Which turned me into not a fan.

        --
        Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
        • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2020, @11:39PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2020, @11:39PM (#959707)

          They changed the drop rate on things, rebalanced drops, and removed some conditions from conditional drops. Interestingly enough, if you look at the patches, not all of them are disclosed. Instead people noticed by comparing across versions or from silent updates to the official guides.

        • (Score: 2, Interesting) by RandomFactor on Wednesday February 19 2020, @02:30AM

          by RandomFactor (3682) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 19 2020, @02:30AM (#959755) Journal

          Yeah, whatever they did up front may have been utterly horrible, but I got there after the AH was gone and it just doesn't sound like the same game people talk about from early days.

          It certainly isn't a cash grab now :-)

          There have been a couple of expansions over the years to buy, but I'm fine with that and perfectly happy picking those up for what they do to improve the game and to support it since it doesn't nickel and dime me the rest of the time. With working on D4 I don't know if there will be any more though.

          --
          В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды