The heck is this?

[Fliits 112]

I've always been under the impression that StarCraft 2 has been dead for nearly half a century. Is there really still a community behind this game? I mean, of course there is, but does it compare at all to the other Blizzard game communities?

[Ragnaroasted 1]

Well, any time I log into StarCraft 2 on the Americas server, there are around 10,000 games being played and around 8,000 other people in chat. That's not counting the Europe server, or the massive Asia server.

[Arkpit 101]

14 hours ago, Fliits said:

but does it compare at all to the other Blizzard game communities?

Sadly no. SC2 is still probably the least played Blizzard game at this point if you do not count Diablo but that is not a PvP game really :)

[Tich 0]

It is not the most popular game anymore, but it is in no way dead. There are thousands of players online, with pro tournaments all around the World. World Championship Series Leipzig started today, the Global Starcraft League in Korea has begun it's first season, and Intel Extreme Master PyeongChang and Katowice are coming soon.

[Brutalis 165]

With the game now free there's a lotta new players and honestly there are no up to date SC2 learning resources now so it makes sense that this website is trying to become the source for said new players. It's already the number 1 site for info on all of Blizz's other games so why not SC2 as well?

 

[SharkyIzrod 1]

There seems to be this misconception that Heroes is larger than SC2. It really isn't. In terms of esports viewership it remains quite far behind, and in terms of playerbase it is mostly on par. So to answer your question, yes SC2 has a community comparable to other current Blizzard games, specifically it is roughly on the same level as Heroes and larger than D3 (which, of course, is because D3 is mostly in maintenance mode; the Diablo franchise has the most mainstream appeal of the big three Blizzard IPs, outselling both SC2 and WoW in terms of speed, and almost equaling Overwatch when it was released on only on PC, that's how fucking insanely strong the Diablo IP is).

But if your question is, and I imagine it is, how does it compare to the big as hell Blizzard games, Hearthstone, WoW, and Overwatch, it is far smaller. It is a large and successful competitive game, and easily the king of its genre, but it is not the behemoth those three are.  It has a subreddit with more activity than Heroes' or Diablo's and enough of a community to support a community website like teamliquid.net (and be bigger than its Hearthstone, DotA, and LoL sections, at times combined, though that is due to their history with the StarCraft Series) and tabs on multiple other esports websites, but it is not of a huge size like HS/WoW/OW, with multiple times more reddit subscribers and many more community websites that are having no trouble being successful.

Also you have to always keep in mind that StarCraft II contains a huge following that doesn't participate in the 1v1 competitive ladder. There have been times when Blizzard have stated that the Co-op mode is more popular than regular multiplayer, and I believe Dustin Browder mentioned years ago that about half of all players who buy StarCraft never touch the multiplayer (i.e. buy it for the campaign). And that's not including the small but still most definitely active (and with the boost of attention that F2P has brought, growing) community that stays mostly in the Arcade (custom games). 

So, and this is also a bit of a TL;DR, it is not Overwatch, or WoW, or Hearthstone-sized. But StarCraft II has lots of players and with the release of F2P, the potential for serious growth (see here for growing ladder numbers, likely similar slope for Co-op and Arcade, and the recent dip is caused by a bug in Blizzard's API, so the upwards slope is more consistent than that). And compared to the other not-huge-as-fuck Blizzard titles, Heroes and D3, it is on par with if not bigger than both.

[llllllllllllllllllll 0]

http://www.rankedftw.com/stats/population/1v1/#v=2&r=-2&sy=g&sx=a

 

Approaching launch numbers for Legacy of the Void, and this is not counting co-op and arcade players, which are a considerable part of the playerbase, SC2 could easily be in the top 5 most played games on steam, Blizz doesn't release playercount numbers though so I guess we'll never know.

Edited January 28, 2018 by llllllllllllllllllll

[Guest]

The SC2 community is alive! It's around the size of the HotS one.

Edited January 28, 2018 by Guest

[Valks 2,375]

The numbers that the broadcasts still pull and the fact that there are still streamers that survive from playing the game will always be my marker for the game not being dead. It went F2P, fine, the numbers are declining sure, but it's definitely not dead. 

If the franchise announced another extension, whether through an expansion or new Starcraft game, you'd absolutely see heaps of people returning to play it. 

IMO, the franchise and the game itself are still alive and kicking.

[Daedrik 4]

Well, considering the IEM and WCS tournament VoDs on YouTube have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of views, I'd say there's definitely no one paying attention anymore. [;

[HeroesBetz 0]

The sc2 community is from my understanding bigger than the Hots. But not sure how it is compared to Overwatch and Hearthstone?

[Cassius 0]

I think Starcraft 2 is better than ever these days. I'm really enjoying grinding out the ladder.