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For around two years of my gaming life I was obsessed with Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty. I got decent at it too, hovering around Platinum League with occasional forays into Diamond - the Koreans were hardly quaking in their boots, but I could hold my own at a reasonable level. More importantly I loved Starcraft 2. I watched it all the time, followed the tournaments and the Korean GSL, and studied the strategies of players I especially admired. After a while I moved onto other things, then 2013's Heart of the Swarm pulled me right back in - new units being the most obvious draw, but the shaking up of a tired metagame being the real secret sauce. Starcraft 2 showcases what Blizzard is better at than almost every other developer, with perhaps the only comparisons being Valve and more recently Riot. A Blizzard game does not have a fixed lifespan. If it has problems, real problems, then they will be fixed - as the company tried to do with Diablo 3. If it is growing stale then it will get regular new content, as with WoW. And if it's intended to be a competitive experience, as with Starcraft 2, then it will be fine-tuned and expanded whenever necessary.
While it would be untrue to credit Starcraft 2 for the explosive rise of eSports in recent years, it was timed almost perfectly. Before streaming and video on demand eSports was the preserve of the dedicated, but Starcraft 2 was released when these technologies were suddenly widespread - and the audience for Brood War meant that Starcraft 2 had the opportunity to take advantage. These days the scene looks very different but, despite the nonsensical catcalls that this is a 'dead game,' Starcraft 2 hangs on in there. It has many critics, yet it has even more people who continue to play it. So what, in a landscape dominated by the MOBA, does the upcoming expansion Legacy of the Void do to get this old warhorse geed up for one last battle?
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