Teil 2 der Interview-Reihe mit Jos 'Ret' de Kroon

Ret über den Status von StarCraft II

Ret on the state of StarCraft II

This is the second issue of our three part series with Jos 'ret' de Kroon. After having talked about the development eSports has gone through, todays piece focusses on the status of StarCraft II in general. Tomorrows topic will be rets status quo.

Scene Dying?

readmore.de:Did you watch the Proleague Finals? Did that event manage to remind you of the old Brood War days?

Jos 'ret' de Kroon: Yes, I enjoyed them thoroughly. I always feel nostalgia watching Proleague because of Brood War, and this venue and crowd was awesome. It still doesn’t compare to Brood War Proleague in it’s glory day, but Koreans still seem to care about their StarCraft heroes!

Team Liquid also participated in this year’s The International, where they won 50,000 US-Dollars for finishing in tenth place. If that was to be split into five, it is pretty much what your team mate Yun 'TaeJa' Young Seo gets when he wins a premier tournament title. Is StarCraft II still to be taken seriously when that is the case?

Of course it’s to be taken serious. The International is the super bowl of esports and was crowd funded into oblivion way higher than even some of the worlds premier sport events! Can’t compare.

Once and for all: StarCraft II „dedgaem“?

I think it all depends on how Legacy of the Void will look like. If they release a finished product, charge 50$, and consider the StarCraft II triology complete, that’s bad news. For a game to be alive there needs to be incentive for the developer to work on said game. If LotV is to be a similar release to WoL and HotS it will be dead the moment it’s finished, much like WoL and HotS. Save occasional balance tweaking.

Balance and Game Design

Which game do you like playing more? StarCraft: Brood War or StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm? Which of these titles do you prefer to watch? Do you think Blizzard did a good job transitioning into StarCraft II?

I haven’t played Brood War in four years. Right now I definately prefer playing SC2 more because I’m used to it and I’m decent at it. If I played Brood War now I’d suck terribly and it’d be really frustating for a few weeks. (laughs) For that same reason I enjoy watching SC2 more now, because I can take something out of it and I know exactly what’s going on in games. But Brood War will always be my first and biggest love. (smiles)

All things considered I think Blizzard have created a really good RTS game in SC2. The second best of all time, which is no small feat. I’m really biased and I just can’t help it. I apologize to all the WC3 fanboys!

In the last year, the Arcade mod StarBow received a spike of attention after TotalBiscuit announced it to be featured in ShoutCraft Clan Wars. Did you try the mod? How do you like the idea of recreating a „Brood War Feeling“ within StarCraft II’s engine?

I didn’t even play it once. It just felt completely pointless to me because as long as I’m a professional gamer I have to play the game I have to compete in. I think it’s great for the fans of Brood War and people who want to enjoy different things, but personally I didn’t have the desire, I quite enjoy playing SC2 as it is.

How do you like the way Blizzard is going with maps? Lately we have seen a higher number of four player maps being introduced as well as generally increasing map sizes.

I’m really happy with the introduction of map contests, and the way we have new maps being created by the community, which also votes on them. There’s incentive for people to make good maps. Lately we’ve seen a lot of different concepts, some have been really good and some not so much, but at least there’s constant progress and development making the map scene more alive. In the end this will hopefully yield solid results. As for the current map pool, I don’t know Kev.