Aside from not feeling like being part of the competitive community it is really hard to play any mod associated with SC2 without some level of pretentiousness or childishness. Even in casual games I have seen people drop because they get stuck with a noob. Keep in mind this happens in games which are supposed to be for fun and aren't even ranked. This is annoying but I even found myself falling into a similar line of thinking. Noob never played line wars before????!!! F THIS.
SC2 also has a much bigger problem which is it's parent company. Blizzard is old money, stuffy and boring. Years ago they came up with a formula and since then their games have become mix and match affairs. Just combine easily recognizable game elements and plot points and give it a new number. Blizzard may be rolling in money but they are creatively bankrupt.
This last part may be the biggest problem of all. I think Blizzard was afraid of alienating their fan base, the drooling horde that has played Starcraft since its inception but come on. There really isn't anything new or innovative about it at all. Sure there are new units but everything they do is stuff we have seen in previous Blizzard games. The only recognizable difference is the graphics.
The final insult to the gamer comes at the end of the campaign when you beat the game it tells you that the saga will continue in the next installment of the Starcraft 2 trilogy. So there. You beat a game and find out you will probably have to shell out another $100 to see it through to its conclusion. I take back what I said earlier about lack of innovation. Congratulations Blizzard. If there were an achievement for money grubbing in the video game industry you would have earned it.
I think the final straw came when I realized that I enjoyed watching replays more than I did actually playing the game and hell you can do that on youtube without spending $60, downloading it through Blizzard's awful servers, enjoying the benefits of a draconian security system, and having a digital copy of a game which you ambiguously "own."
