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It was the first real-time strategy game the company had released since Warcraft II, coming off the heels of their popular Diablo at a time when online multiplayer was coming into huge demand, and boom. It was also a content engine built around a global gaming service, and I think Blizzard just happened to release the game at the right time. Ultimately, StarCraft was not just a real-time strategy game. It’s lazy to go with the popular game journalism narrative that StarCraft is the best real-time strategy game ever, because I don’t think it is. If the base multiplayer modes were too complex, then players could play anything that the community created.
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And when players began creating their own content for use on, that further lowered the barrier of entry. But for beginners, it works.) But in addition, StarCraft also shipped with an excellent official map editor. (For this reason, I think the StarCraft single-player campaign is overrated and has way too much hand-holding. I would also argue that StarCraft‘s single-player game mode was very conservative and introduced new concepts very slowly, making it easy for beginner players to learn the basics. When compared to StarCraft, the complexity of games like Total Annihilation and Settlers 3 seems absolutely terrifying. The appeal of StarCraft lies in its well-developed tactical component and its extremely fast action. What do I mean by “product”? Well, in spite of what the community will tell you, StarCraft is a strategically simple real-time strategy game. The other being that, as a product, StarCraft has an extremely low barrier of entry. (For instance, 1995’s Warcraft II would not be adopted for until 1999, long after the rest of the genre had stolen its thunder.) Warcraft II and Command and Conquer were played through popular third-party services like Kali, but they simply couldn’t get the same exposure as “online gaming service coded and built directly into the game client”. Unlike most of the popular real-time strategy games of the day ( Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, Command and Conquer: Red Alert, Total Annihilation), StarCraft got the benefit of a centralized, company-endorsed online gaming service at the time of its release. Michael Lowell: There’s two reasons, the major reason being. Southern Cross: Why was it StarCraft that gained so much popularity, and not, let’s say, Total Annihilation or one of Command and Conquer games? The interview was conducted in February of 2013 and withheld until publication of the subsequent article was finalized. In-text links and citations have been added for reference. * While the answers have been checked for grammar, spelling, and other errors, they are otherwise unedited.
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This interview was conducted with site reader Southern Cross and formed the basis of a publication in the Polish-language game magazine LAG.