At first people played Starcraft for the campaign, internet access in late 90s wasn't common enough for a game to thrive on mostly online multiplayer. And it was popular back then. And playing on LAN was more of "20 mins no rush" thing.
replyStarcraft came with battle.net and a mapeditor.
replyQuake3 was released a year(ish) later and effectively had no single player and it was a major success (by the standards of the day)
Being online was a major, major factor.
Yeah, the TA campaign was... not very compelling.
replyBy the time my crowd had reliable enough connections for multiplayer, the number of people who knew and liked Starcraft from that campaign was much higher than the number who'd either gotten to love TA from the campaign or from vs-computer matches.
So: money, gambling, ego bloating, greed, eye candy, narcotics?
replyWhat?
reply