Thanks, As far as I've gathered from reading so far is that you load the game up and it comes up with the sign on screen, you can then just click the guest button at the side to skip that. I'm kind of assuming that you can do the same thing without an internet connection but until we find out more it's hard to say.

I meant Navagon's comments about Blizzard's attitude towards the game. I definitely understand not wanting to be tethered to the internet for single-player.

That was fun.
Have you tried this one here?

1. They're monetizing the service necessary to play the game and requiring you to use it at al times...
2. Meaning you have be online to play...
3. And you'll most likely be coughing up more money to play it than the retail price alone.
4. They're splitting the game into three parts to make as much money from it as they can. No expansions or discounts. Just three full price games.
5. Horrible graphics. I can happily play old 90s games, but not when they're this revolting. This is probably for the same reason that Red Alert 3 looks terrible - they're trying to make a HD 3D game look just like its low res 2D predecessor. What works at one resolution doesn't work at another. That's something a lot of sequels suffered from around the turn of the century, but that's not something you'd expect now.
6. Oh and no LAN battles. Bollocks to that then.
7. Contrary to popular opinion, Starcraft wasn't actually the best RTS ever. It was far outclassed by Total Annihilation, a year beforehand. TA brought a wealth of strategic options to the RTS table. Which made Starcraft look like Warcraft meets 40K...
Which is exactly what it was. Blizzard wanted Warcraft to be a Warhammer game. They couldn't get the license. So they just continued with their 'inspiration' into Starcraft.

Thats the selling community maps option right? or is there something else?

Let's see..
1. Source?
2. Source?
3. Source?
4. True, although the amount of content in each game is on par with what you'd expect from a full-priced purchase. How this will tie into multiplayer content is yet to be seen.
5. False / Subjective
6. True
7. Subjective
Overall, 2/7 so far. Feel like improving your game?

I don't know. They weren't keen to elaborate on it. You can buy more content for Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2, but there was no way to tell if that was the full extent of it.
I don't really want to buy a game only to find I need to buy more maps/items to adequately compete online, though. That's effectively just an alternative to subscriptions.

1. Actually battle.net has been touted to be free multiple multiple times, there is no fee to play using it YET.
2. They have an offline mode apparently. More to come on this of course
3. That's if you do any of those microtransactions they plan to charge for, something like name changes and things like that, probably premium avatars and useless crap that some people actually pay for.
4. Actually contrary to that it is 1 game and 2 expansions, the expansions have just been preplanned. Each expansion is supposed to have 1 campaign at about 30 missions I believe and some maps of course (that's the size of the original starcraft). When you think about it we did pay full price for Brood War which included 30 missions and some units and maps. People seem to just have a natural aversion to expansions being announced before the actual game is. It is rather offputting but not as much imo as those who do it with DLC.
5. This is purely subjective I think it looks fine.
6. Can't disagree with, though knowing some people it's going to be hacked in there or a quick private server should be managable for small groups.
7. This is of course subjective as Stonebro said.

I would agree with you, but I have 42000 gamerscore... so I wont :P

Well, no shit it's subjective. I was asked what put me off the game. So naturally it's going to be down to a matter of opinion.

Very good summary post, and agreed completely on Total Annihilation too.
I'm going to have to take a closer look at the SC2 graphics. They looked okay-ish the last time I checked, but it's true that Blizzard is far from interested in pushing the graphics envelope. They want people able to play on older computers. You can sell more games that way and probably maintain a happier community. And especially with RTS's, a community is nearly everything. I think that goes for MMORPG's too, both of which are Blizzard's bread and butter.
This may be a problem that's getting worse as time goes by, because gaming has become so mainstream that not that many people look sideways anymore at people who expect to be able to play games on any computer at all, no matter how old or lousy it is. Since so many computers are sold with graphics chips integrated into their motherboards, and to people who don't know how to upgrade and are not interested in learning, or in non-standard cases like some of Dell's that won't let you upgrade, gaming companies know they will lose a significant part of their potential audience if they use cutting edge graphics in upcoming games. Compare to the good ole days, when new games strove to have bleeding edge graphics, people expected to upgrade regularly, and a new Doom or Quake game could be a primary factor in the evolution and profitability of the entire graphics and computer industries.
So we may see a big place for less than cutting edge graphics in games for a while, especially ones that are multiplayer-driven. I'm not sure how much I like that idea, but I do think that you should have the option to scale your graphics up to a nice level if your graphics card and overall system has the power.
Generally if companies can make money, they will. This is why I believe your YET needs to be not only capitalized, but bolded, in italic, with a big screaming font, and a java applet playing a soundtrack to it, maybe the theme from "Jaws." Navagon: When I used to play Everquest like a fiending fiend, Sony tried to monetize as many of those transactions as they could, and it was annoying. Things like character transfers to different servers, name changes, all kinds of things. I think Blizzard has also charged for some of that on WOW already. If the system is in place, I can't see why a company would not eventually be tempted to exploit it pretty hard. It would be leaving money on the table.
I think this is half right and half wrong. Expansions aren't usually thought of as simply allowing you to play the characters in the game. I've never seen that before in any expansion. Original games always come with multiple playable races, not just one -- in this case, the space marines. In the original SC, you could play three races right off the bat. Unless I'm incorrect here, my recollection is that you will be able to play only one race in the single player game.
So the "expansions" will be selling what has always previously been included in the original game.
Note I am not talking about the supplemental races typically introduced into expansions; I'm talking the core races of the game that you start off playing against.
Also, on another note, whether you like TA or SC better is entirely subjective, the TA unarguably made major advances in the RTS genre, and SC, which came out later, took a solid step backward by not including. It's up to whoever's opinion how much that matters. Personally I was actually shocked at the time that a game would choose to go backwards instead of forwards, especially when the improvements were so rock solid.

Let's put that other way around: why does anything related to mulitplayer no matter how good or convinient it's to people playing on the net or lan need to add any additional hurdles or complexity to people who only and ever play games in single player.
I only play singleplayer games and never ever even look anything related to multiplayer. I dont want to register my games, care or joint communities or social networs and don't wan't or need any sort of online achievements. Any game including any of them as mandatory part of playing game is instantly out of my list of games I'd consider buying.

One of those folks right here. MP holds absolutely no interest to me.
You're not the oly one. I hate all of that aswell.
Amen.

As far as I can tell, the expansions seem to be selling one thing and that is a campaign centering around a race, afaik you are able to play all races in the main game, it's just that the campaign is focused on Terran and ergo only allows the player to use the Terran race, however in all other modes such as FFA and etc you can play as any race.

Another SPer chiming in. Nothing I hate more than FORCED multiplayer. And being tethered to the damn net in order to play single-player. Also, achievements can go Fly Unified Crinoline Kites off.