No, I acknowledge that it is definitely a ripoff but instead of getting a bag I am going to get this. I think it is what you do with what you buy that makes it a frivolous thing. For example, you guys like to buy those shooting games EVER YEAR claiming that it is better than the one before...saying it for the past 5 years. And then I heard theres like a lot of expansion packs for that too?
As for me, I don't play a gazillion video games like you guys, and that the only game I will be playing is sc2.
it is funny because like 3 years ago i told sixen the very same thing. that expansions really would just be more data and a few new models :p
It isn't though, there is a ton of new hardcoded data types and the whole physics engine.
You can't really blame Blizzard for making an Editor so powerful that you can replicate almost anything with it via workarounds (if you really want to and don't care about computing efficiency and that you have to do all of it via scripts). I'm more than happy with the amount of content we get in a 2 year span (also consider that they updated WoL constantly during that time most likely got some devs outsourced to projects like D3 or WoW when HotS was in early development stages), but I do think 30-35€ would be a more appropriate price for the whole package, especially as it is mandatory to buy for players who just want to play the Multiplayer and they haven't lowered the price of WoL yet, so being able to play HotS Multiplayer costs way more than it would cost to buy a fullprice game at release, which is kind of ridiculous, especially if you see how all the successful Multiplayer MOBAs are completely f2p.
A couple of friends of mine would totally buy SC2 HotS to just try out different custom games in a group of people and have some variation from playing LoL or DayZ every evening, but some of them don't own WoL yet and the price is still really high for a 2 year old game if you compare it to for example Warcraft 3 which was like 30-40€ right from release for the FULL game and not the expansion, which in my opinion is part of the reason why the custom map scene was such a success for that game (not the major one, but still a reason).
Brood War was $40 (CAD) when it came out, had less missions than vanilla SC, only a handful of models (consider that there were very few unique NPC models) and came out 10+ years earlier. I loved the campaign and the story, but just the same I've only played it through fully once and was done. The rest of the time was spent in multiplayer and custom maps.
Expansion prices are standard to me, I don't see why they are a ripoff and what standard pricing model is being compared to here (free to plays? $20 games? $1 apps?), but compared to the pricing model that Blizzard has always used, it's actually cheaper now than it was 10 years ago.
Agreed. When you add all of the new ui changes, physics, models, doodads, terrains, story, cinematics, 20 standard missions and however many evolutions missions you have $40+ of content. Like Triceron said BW was $40 and it came with so much less.
Agreed. When you add all of the new ui changes, physics, models, doodads, terrains, story, cinematics, 20 standard missions and however many evolutions missions you have $40+ of content. Like Triceron said BW was $40 and it came with so much less.
But EW is still saying d2 LOD was "amazing" even though it was just 2 classes, rehashed items and 1 poorly made act, for a poorly made game.
IN THIS TOPIC WE SHALL DISCUSS ABOUT HOTS, WHY TO PURCHASE?, WHY NOT?. NO ATTACKS TOWARDS ANY OTHER MEMBER OF SC2MAPSTER SHALL BE MADE BEING THEM DIRECT OR IMPLIED. PERIOD. NO FURTHER DISCUSSION ON THIS TOPIC REQUIRED IF IT IS NOT RELATED IN ANY WAY TO STARCRAFT 2.
In case I wasn't clear enough SHUT UP and GET ON TOPIC.
ITT:
You see, I got SC and SC: BW for like 10 bucks, both of them, like in 2007 or so, and it was actually on sale.
If you put it that way it makes sense that HotS would have this price, but still, it feels just like new data and a couple new graphics :P
I'm not opposed to buying it, I have stated that I already have bought it, nor do I see it as a rip off, but I do feel it's just a high quality campaign that we could have made :P
I think the price is okay, I think about it this way, if I go out one night have a couple of drinks, have dinner, ect, I spend that same ammount in one single night of fun. If i put it this way, hots can give me many nights for the same price :P
It's way less than what people in the us seem to spend in other franchises that really have literally no changes at all in gameplay. Shoot stuff and kill stuff to win. Whereas we get a new campaign with a complete different gameplay, same RTS concepts, as always, but different ways to play that one single RTS concept.
It's more the novelty factor than the 'sheer content' factor, there's nothing datawise in there that someone on here couldn't make with moderate effort.
At that point it's the design of the levels that could make a difference and save boring abilities and interactions, but that's never been a mechanical challenge in WOL and it doesn't look like there will be in HOTS either.
Brood War was $40 (CAD) when it came out, had less missions than vanilla SC, only a handful of models (consider that there were very few unique NPC models) and came out 10+ years earlier. I loved the campaign and the story, but just the same I've only played it through fully once and was done. The rest of the time was spent in multiplayer and custom maps.
Expansion prices are standard to me, I don't see why they are a ripoff and what standard pricing model is being compared to here (free to plays? $20 games? $1 apps?), but compared to the pricing model that Blizzard has always used, it's actually cheaper now than it was 10 years ago.
Yes but remember with Broodwar you got 3 campaigns which made up the entire story experience. Here, you're paying $40 for a portion of the story(Zerg) which has only so many additional mission to make it seem long and worth a lot content wise. But really its just dragging out the story as much as they can. I mean, you can present a campaign plot or story through 10 missions, without the need to drag it out through 20-30 just for the sake of another expansion and an additional $40.
WoL was $40?. So now for $80 you can experience 2/3's of the campaign and well multiplayer is not changing that much really. And there you have it.
Atleast Dawn of War 1, the expansions always added several races. So that was pretty big.
The expectation is that Blizzard should do more. Not play it safe/standard just for $$$.
Also, Why dont they add a 4th race?. Warcraft 2 had a leap from 2 races to 4 races in Warcraft 3.
Where's the creativity and originality that defines Blizzard?. Yes we all like the standard 3 races, but are you really telling me we cant do something huge and set the precedent for Starcraft 3?
Add the Xel'Naga. Make the damn game fun, new and interesting. We could certainly do with less mirror matches at the very least.
Stop selling me watered down dumb games for $40. I never thought I would say this but with Mists of Pandaria, I think the WoW development team is still currently the best from all their franchises. Creativity, ingenuity and they know what exactly the player base wants/needs.
Diablo 3. The greatest game sequel of all time is coming out on consoles. Not to milk it of course, heresy!. Its so totally going to renew my love for the game. Yaaaaaaaaaay!!!
I guess the point Blizzard has here might be that HOTS isn't really an 'expansion', but rather 'one of the three parts that make up StarCraft 2', i.e. part 2 in a trilogy. That's really a semantics thing though - if they sold it at a similar price to an original game I'd start considering not buying it, tbf.
I guess the point Blizzard has here might be that HOTS isn't really an 'expansion', but rather 'one of the three parts that make up StarCraft 2', i.e. part 2 in a trilogy. That's really a semantics thing though - if they sold it at a similar price to an original game I'd start considering not buying it, tbf.
Well, Technically it is an expansion, Its an expansion of the first story-line, I think its been said that this game starts off where the last finished so it WOULD be an expansion to the first story. Still It has a NEW UI, Leveling system, skins, decals, portraits, challenges I guess,Campaign, Campaign Units, upgraded editor, Clans and Groups, Start from replay,new ladder units, New tutorials, new assets, new physics engine, Unranked play, and more.
All of that stuff is paid for by HoTS, therefore it is part of HoTS, Be lucky WoL got it, That was to be nice, they didnt HAVE to do that, it was one of the benefits of having it always online though, that its cheaper to maintain less servers.
I dont see where the complaints are just because they gave you half of the game already.
Probably because it wouldn't make sense, story-wise... I'm guessing the Xel'Naga is going to be part of the protoss campaign, you can guess that from the storyline in WoL already (especially with the last mission from the shard). I don't see any point in allowing players to control the Xel'Naga as a separate race, they are more or less "heroes" from the past... It wouldn't make sense to train them by dozens from a base, with its own tech tree etc...
Concerning the features added in HotS now, I don't see why you hate them so much. What exactly did you expect? There are a lot of tiny features added, along with an entire campaign (2 or 3 missions shorter, indeed, but so were the BW campaigns compared to SC1). There are new units, who are actually changing a lot of things in melee (which also means we're going to have hundreds of patches in the coming years... just like BW). I can't help but feel like SC is actually not your kind of game... You're expecting SC2 to be like WoW or Warcraft, at least in terms of content. Would you compare Saints Row to Darksiders? They're from the same company but it doesn't mean each game individually can't have their own strengths and weaknesses... They don't have to be the same in terms of content, yet they are both interesting games to play, worth paying the full price for.
Maybe $40 is a bit too much for an expansion, but as far as I'm concerned they provide enough content to make my SC2 experience completely different, both from a player and a mapper points-of-view. So either way, I'm pretty sure I will buy the expansion and I will like it. I also know features will keep coming during a few years (just as it happened between the release of WoL and HotS), so in the long term I'm pretty sure the expansion will be worth the $40 it costs... If we're lucky, it will even cost less in a year and you hopefully won't be as skeptical as you are now.
Probably because it wouldn't make sense, story-wise... I'm guessing the Xel'Naga is going to be part of the protoss campaign, you can guess that from the storyline in WoL already (especially with the last mission from the shard). I don't see any point in allowing players to control the Xel'Naga as a separate race, they are more or less "heroes" from the past... It wouldn't make sense to train them by dozens from a base, with its own tech tree etc...
Keep in mind that Blizzard is 'story-wise', though. While I agree that a fourth race within the current lore may have felt a tad strange and out of place, they could have easily adapted the lore to allow for it. For example, how's this: in HOTS it is revealed that while Protoss cannot be infested by Zerg, there is in fact a fourth race in the galaxy that was also created by the Xel'naga and shares Protoss DNA, but is more similar to Terrans in terms of physiology - the DNA of this race is revealed to have been the missing piece of the puzzle and explains the creation of the Hybrids. Meanwhile, this race has been severely molested by the Dark Voice and has because of that learned to trust no one and hide when possible, setting it up for a storyline involving the Terrans/Protoss trying to reach out to them.
I made that up in three minutes. Blizzard has had more than a year. I'm not saying they should have definitely added a fourth race or HOTS would be crap, but EW really has a point - they could've done much more in terms of new and even revolutionary mechanics, yet what we're getting is mostly stuff that I could probably recreate in the data editor in a week or two if I worked full-time on it. Don't get me wrong, it'll be a great story I'm sure, but it definitely seems overpriced. It's like they'd be charging 20 bucks for the Insurrection StarCraft campaign.
I actually think that a 4th race wouldn't be so out of the question. In fact, the reason why I believe they haven't implemented one is because of the "outrage" that the community would give. (Rightfully or wrongly)
Anyways, I don't think it would be so much of an issue to bring into the story line. Who says that there are only 3 races in the universe? What about critters? I know that sounds stupid, but I'm being serious. The first thing that comes to my mind is Avatar... I'm not talking about tribal people, I'm talking about something based off of nature? The idea might sound stupid, but what about a race of "plant people"?
To fit into the storyline, the zerg (or terran) could invade a planet, only to find a "primitive" race living there. They are bound to their planet by the laws of plants, it could go on and on.
I'm just saying, I came up with an idea (granted, not a very good one, but still an idea) in less than 30 seconds. With the entire Blizzard team, I'm sure they could come up with something that would make sense, and would add A LOT to the game.
I actually think that a 4th race wouldn't be so out of the question. In fact, the reason why I believe they haven't implemented one is because of the "outrage" that the community would give. (Rightfully or wrongly)
Anyways, I don't think it would be so much of an issue to bring into the story line. Who says that there are only 3 races in the universe? What about critters? I know that sounds stupid, but I'm being serious. The first thing that comes to my mind is Avatar... I'm not talking about tribal people, I'm talking about something based off of nature? The idea might sound stupid, but what about a race of "plant people"?
To fit into the storyline, the zerg (or terran) could invade a planet, only to find a "primitive" race living there. They are bound to their planet by the laws of plants, it could go on and on.
I'm just saying, I came up with an idea (granted, not a very good one, but still an idea) in less than 30 seconds. With the entire Blizzard team, I'm sure they could come up with something that would make sense, and would add A LOT to the game.
I think they may do something like the naga from WC3 (lol, the name is so similar). The Xel'Naga could be playable for part of the campagin but are not a "full" race. But even if they did that, it would likely be part of LotV instead of HotS.
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A 4th race argument doesn't make sense in the slightest outside of a custom map scenario. I've argued this point many times on different forums in the past, and it's always brought down to one fundamental point - You don't understand Starcraft if you want a 4th race.
A 4th race is highly idealistic and difficult to argue against. People have an idea in their mind of something shiny and new. They're bored seeing the same 3 races. They run with ideas and think 'Yeah! That'd be great to add!'. It's all an illusion though, and it's a case of 'the grass is greener on the other side', simply wanting something that doesn't exist. I can't argue with whatever image of a perfectly balanced 4th race you have visualized in your mind, so I won't.
This is incomparable to Warcraft because War3 doesn't have a strong asynchronous balance model. Each faction contains units parallel to each other, and gameplay draws upon a Rock Paper Scissors model. This is the type of game that you could add 5+ races to and still be fairly balanced, because the strategy was focused on Hero use and micro rather than unit composition. Keep in mind that Warcraft 3 was originally designed with 6 races until they cut 2 in development.
The reality is that the 3 races are more than enough depth to keep the game interesting due to the strategic depth that exists between each of the matchups. This is what allowed SC1 to be so popular for so long. It's not about adding more, it's about adding what's needed to keep gameplay interesting. The current 3 offer enough depth for you not need more races, you simply aren't investing the time to learn or master the game - a 4th race isn't going to fix that.
I preordered HotS on January 8th from a retail store from where I also bought War3 RoC&TFT back in 2004, and SC2 WoL in 2010. I like having the boxes of the games I play and seeing that people already got bored with D3, I am glad I didn't buy that one. I could notice it does not bring D2's greatness since beta.
I also gave my 2nd HotS key to a mate who plays ladder regularly there, so it was well used, I am glad. Ironically I may not be able to play the game from day 1st of its release unless I buy and fix my video card problem... would 1GB be enough at least for High settings and models in HotS? (and WoL?) After the last patch of WoL that killed my video card I felt they want us to run it with GBs of memory...
I pre-ordered HotS for the beta access. Talk about a brand loyalty. Other reason was to fix a few bugs related to one of my maps which aroused due the changes made by Blizzard.
@EternalWraith: Go
No, I acknowledge that it is definitely a ripoff but instead of getting a bag I am going to get this. I think it is what you do with what you buy that makes it a frivolous thing. For example, you guys like to buy those shooting games EVER YEAR claiming that it is better than the one before...saying it for the past 5 years. And then I heard theres like a lot of expansion packs for that too?
As for me, I don't play a gazillion video games like you guys, and that the only game I will be playing is sc2.
It isn't though, there is a ton of new hardcoded data types and the whole physics engine.
You can't really blame Blizzard for making an Editor so powerful that you can replicate almost anything with it via workarounds (if you really want to and don't care about computing efficiency and that you have to do all of it via scripts). I'm more than happy with the amount of content we get in a 2 year span (also consider that they updated WoL constantly during that time most likely got some devs outsourced to projects like D3 or WoW when HotS was in early development stages), but I do think 30-35€ would be a more appropriate price for the whole package, especially as it is mandatory to buy for players who just want to play the Multiplayer and they haven't lowered the price of WoL yet, so being able to play HotS Multiplayer costs way more than it would cost to buy a fullprice game at release, which is kind of ridiculous, especially if you see how all the successful Multiplayer MOBAs are completely f2p.
A couple of friends of mine would totally buy SC2 HotS to just try out different custom games in a group of people and have some variation from playing LoL or DayZ every evening, but some of them don't own WoL yet and the price is still really high for a 2 year old game if you compare it to for example Warcraft 3 which was like 30-40€ right from release for the FULL game and not the expansion, which in my opinion is part of the reason why the custom map scene was such a success for that game (not the major one, but still a reason).
Brood War was $40 (CAD) when it came out, had less missions than vanilla SC, only a handful of models (consider that there were very few unique NPC models) and came out 10+ years earlier. I loved the campaign and the story, but just the same I've only played it through fully once and was done. The rest of the time was spent in multiplayer and custom maps.
Expansion prices are standard to me, I don't see why they are a ripoff and what standard pricing model is being compared to here (free to plays? $20 games? $1 apps?), but compared to the pricing model that Blizzard has always used, it's actually cheaper now than it was 10 years ago.
@Triceron: Go
Agreed. When you add all of the new ui changes, physics, models, doodads, terrains, story, cinematics, 20 standard missions and however many evolutions missions you have $40+ of content. Like Triceron said BW was $40 and it came with so much less.
But EW is still saying d2 LOD was "amazing" even though it was just 2 classes, rehashed items and 1 poorly made act, for a poorly made game.
@Taintedwisp: Go
Okay, just to be clear:
IN THIS TOPIC WE SHALL DISCUSS ABOUT HOTS, WHY TO PURCHASE?, WHY NOT?. NO ATTACKS TOWARDS ANY OTHER MEMBER OF SC2MAPSTER SHALL BE MADE BEING THEM DIRECT OR IMPLIED. PERIOD. NO FURTHER DISCUSSION ON THIS TOPIC REQUIRED IF IT IS NOT RELATED IN ANY WAY TO STARCRAFT 2.
In case I wasn't clear enough SHUT UP and GET ON TOPIC.
ITT: You see, I got SC and SC: BW for like 10 bucks, both of them, like in 2007 or so, and it was actually on sale. If you put it that way it makes sense that HotS would have this price, but still, it feels just like new data and a couple new graphics :P
I'm not opposed to buying it, I have stated that I already have bought it, nor do I see it as a rip off, but I do feel it's just a high quality campaign that we could have made :P
I think the price is okay, I think about it this way, if I go out one night have a couple of drinks, have dinner, ect, I spend that same ammount in one single night of fun. If i put it this way, hots can give me many nights for the same price :P
It's way less than what people in the us seem to spend in other franchises that really have literally no changes at all in gameplay. Shoot stuff and kill stuff to win. Whereas we get a new campaign with a complete different gameplay, same RTS concepts, as always, but different ways to play that one single RTS concept.
It's more the novelty factor than the 'sheer content' factor, there's nothing datawise in there that someone on here couldn't make with moderate effort. At that point it's the design of the levels that could make a difference and save boring abilities and interactions, but that's never been a mechanical challenge in WOL and it doesn't look like there will be in HOTS either.
You can bet on funny eastereggs though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCraft:_Brood_War#Critical_reception
Yes but remember with Broodwar you got 3 campaigns which made up the entire story experience. Here, you're paying $40 for a portion of the story(Zerg) which has only so many additional mission to make it seem long and worth a lot content wise. But really its just dragging out the story as much as they can. I mean, you can present a campaign plot or story through 10 missions, without the need to drag it out through 20-30 just for the sake of another expansion and an additional $40.
WoL was $40?. So now for $80 you can experience 2/3's of the campaign and well multiplayer is not changing that much really. And there you have it.
Atleast Dawn of War 1, the expansions always added several races. So that was pretty big.
The expectation is that Blizzard should do more. Not play it safe/standard just for $$$.
@EternalWraith: Go
Also, Why dont they add a 4th race?. Warcraft 2 had a leap from 2 races to 4 races in Warcraft 3.
Where's the creativity and originality that defines Blizzard?. Yes we all like the standard 3 races, but are you really telling me we cant do something huge and set the precedent for Starcraft 3?
Add the Xel'Naga. Make the damn game fun, new and interesting. We could certainly do with less mirror matches at the very least.
Stop selling me watered down dumb games for $40. I never thought I would say this but with Mists of Pandaria, I think the WoW development team is still currently the best from all their franchises. Creativity, ingenuity and they know what exactly the player base wants/needs.
...Meanwhile what is Blizzard upto?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/02/20/diablo-iii-coming-to-ps3-and-ps4/?commentId=comment_blogAndPostId/blog/comment/1360-15782-26878
Diablo 3. The greatest game sequel of all time is coming out on consoles. Not to milk it of course, heresy!. Its so totally going to renew my love for the game. Yaaaaaaaaaay!!!
I guess the point Blizzard has here might be that HOTS isn't really an 'expansion', but rather 'one of the three parts that make up StarCraft 2', i.e. part 2 in a trilogy. That's really a semantics thing though - if they sold it at a similar price to an original game I'd start considering not buying it, tbf.
Well, Technically it is an expansion, Its an expansion of the first story-line, I think its been said that this game starts off where the last finished so it WOULD be an expansion to the first story. Still It has a NEW UI, Leveling system, skins, decals, portraits, challenges I guess,Campaign, Campaign Units, upgraded editor, Clans and Groups, Start from replay,new ladder units, New tutorials, new assets, new physics engine, Unranked play, and more.
All of that stuff is paid for by HoTS, therefore it is part of HoTS, Be lucky WoL got it, That was to be nice, they didnt HAVE to do that, it was one of the benefits of having it always online though, that its cheaper to maintain less servers.
I dont see where the complaints are just because they gave you half of the game already.
Probably because it wouldn't make sense, story-wise... I'm guessing the Xel'Naga is going to be part of the protoss campaign, you can guess that from the storyline in WoL already (especially with the last mission from the shard). I don't see any point in allowing players to control the Xel'Naga as a separate race, they are more or less "heroes" from the past... It wouldn't make sense to train them by dozens from a base, with its own tech tree etc...
Concerning the features added in HotS now, I don't see why you hate them so much. What exactly did you expect? There are a lot of tiny features added, along with an entire campaign (2 or 3 missions shorter, indeed, but so were the BW campaigns compared to SC1). There are new units, who are actually changing a lot of things in melee (which also means we're going to have hundreds of patches in the coming years... just like BW). I can't help but feel like SC is actually not your kind of game... You're expecting SC2 to be like WoW or Warcraft, at least in terms of content. Would you compare Saints Row to Darksiders? They're from the same company but it doesn't mean each game individually can't have their own strengths and weaknesses... They don't have to be the same in terms of content, yet they are both interesting games to play, worth paying the full price for.
Maybe $40 is a bit too much for an expansion, but as far as I'm concerned they provide enough content to make my SC2 experience completely different, both from a player and a mapper points-of-view. So either way, I'm pretty sure I will buy the expansion and I will like it. I also know features will keep coming during a few years (just as it happened between the release of WoL and HotS), so in the long term I'm pretty sure the expansion will be worth the $40 it costs... If we're lucky, it will even cost less in a year and you hopefully won't be as skeptical as you are now.
Keep in mind that Blizzard is 'story-wise', though. While I agree that a fourth race within the current lore may have felt a tad strange and out of place, they could have easily adapted the lore to allow for it. For example, how's this: in HOTS it is revealed that while Protoss cannot be infested by Zerg, there is in fact a fourth race in the galaxy that was also created by the Xel'naga and shares Protoss DNA, but is more similar to Terrans in terms of physiology - the DNA of this race is revealed to have been the missing piece of the puzzle and explains the creation of the Hybrids. Meanwhile, this race has been severely molested by the Dark Voice and has because of that learned to trust no one and hide when possible, setting it up for a storyline involving the Terrans/Protoss trying to reach out to them.
I made that up in three minutes. Blizzard has had more than a year. I'm not saying they should have definitely added a fourth race or HOTS would be crap, but EW really has a point - they could've done much more in terms of new and even revolutionary mechanics, yet what we're getting is mostly stuff that I could probably recreate in the data editor in a week or two if I worked full-time on it. Don't get me wrong, it'll be a great story I'm sure, but it definitely seems overpriced. It's like they'd be charging 20 bucks for the Insurrection StarCraft campaign.
I actually think that a 4th race wouldn't be so out of the question. In fact, the reason why I believe they haven't implemented one is because of the "outrage" that the community would give. (Rightfully or wrongly)
Anyways, I don't think it would be so much of an issue to bring into the story line. Who says that there are only 3 races in the universe? What about critters? I know that sounds stupid, but I'm being serious. The first thing that comes to my mind is Avatar... I'm not talking about tribal people, I'm talking about something based off of nature? The idea might sound stupid, but what about a race of "plant people"?
To fit into the storyline, the zerg (or terran) could invade a planet, only to find a "primitive" race living there. They are bound to their planet by the laws of plants, it could go on and on.
I'm just saying, I came up with an idea (granted, not a very good one, but still an idea) in less than 30 seconds. With the entire Blizzard team, I'm sure they could come up with something that would make sense, and would add A LOT to the game.
Great to be back and part of the community again!
That's not stupid, that's an awesome idea.
I think they may do something like the naga from WC3 (lol, the name is so similar). The Xel'Naga could be playable for part of the campagin but are not a "full" race. But even if they did that, it would likely be part of LotV instead of HotS.
@zeldarules28: Go
My point exactly. :)
@EternalWraith: Go
A 4th race argument doesn't make sense in the slightest outside of a custom map scenario. I've argued this point many times on different forums in the past, and it's always brought down to one fundamental point - You don't understand Starcraft if you want a 4th race.
A 4th race is highly idealistic and difficult to argue against. People have an idea in their mind of something shiny and new. They're bored seeing the same 3 races. They run with ideas and think 'Yeah! That'd be great to add!'. It's all an illusion though, and it's a case of 'the grass is greener on the other side', simply wanting something that doesn't exist. I can't argue with whatever image of a perfectly balanced 4th race you have visualized in your mind, so I won't.
This is incomparable to Warcraft because War3 doesn't have a strong asynchronous balance model. Each faction contains units parallel to each other, and gameplay draws upon a Rock Paper Scissors model. This is the type of game that you could add 5+ races to and still be fairly balanced, because the strategy was focused on Hero use and micro rather than unit composition. Keep in mind that Warcraft 3 was originally designed with 6 races until they cut 2 in development.
The reality is that the 3 races are more than enough depth to keep the game interesting due to the strategic depth that exists between each of the matchups. This is what allowed SC1 to be so popular for so long. It's not about adding more, it's about adding what's needed to keep gameplay interesting. The current 3 offer enough depth for you not need more races, you simply aren't investing the time to learn or master the game - a 4th race isn't going to fix that.
I preordered HotS on January 8th from a retail store from where I also bought War3 RoC&TFT back in 2004, and SC2 WoL in 2010. I like having the boxes of the games I play and seeing that people already got bored with D3, I am glad I didn't buy that one. I could notice it does not bring D2's greatness since beta.
I also gave my 2nd HotS key to a mate who plays ladder regularly there, so it was well used, I am glad. Ironically I may not be able to play the game from day 1st of its release unless I buy and fix my video card problem... would 1GB be enough at least for High settings and models in HotS? (and WoL?) After the last patch of WoL that killed my video card I felt they want us to run it with GBs of memory...
I pre-ordered HotS for the beta access. Talk about a brand loyalty. Other reason was to fix a few bugs related to one of my maps which aroused due the changes made by Blizzard.