Comment by IsTom
1 day ago
At first people played Starcraft for the campaign, internet access in late 90s wasn't common enough for a game to thrive on mostly online multiplayer. And it was popular back then. And playing on LAN was more of "20 mins no rush" thing.
Starcraft came with battle.net and a mapeditor.
Quake3 was released a year(ish) later and effectively had no single player and it was a major success (by the standards of the day)
Being online was a major, major factor.
A campaign is not enough to sustain a game's popularity for decades. Use Map Settings and the competitive scene did that. The latter of the two is still around and single-handedly explains the game's continuing popularity.
Yeah, the TA campaign was... not very compelling.
By the time my crowd had reliable enough connections for multiplayer, the number of people who knew and liked Starcraft from that campaign was much higher than the number who'd either gotten to love TA from the campaign or from vs-computer matches.
I beg to differ, I loved the TA campaign. Going from one lone commander with their side on the brink of defeat to orchestrating a final titanic clash of armies as you conquer the homeworld of your opposition was epic. SC never clicked with me in either gameplay or story.