StarCraft 2 - Modernizing the Competitive RTS Landscape
StarCraft 2's crowning achievement is in globalizing access to competitive RTS in a way Broodwar could not. StarCraft 2 deliberately designed away many of the mechanical challenges and limitations found in its predecessor, to some players' dismay. However, it is thoroughly a hardcore RTS game and Starcraft game, built on asymmetrical design of the same 3 races as the previous game while making the game much more concerned with tactics and strategies. It has not fared as well in the Korean audience due to a multitude of reasons (such as fallout of negotiations between Blizzard and KeSPA that prevented the most popular Korean pro gamers from officially competing in its early years), but Starcraft 2 has been pivotal to modeling video game competitions for games and genres beyond itself and pushing streaming and especially video game streaming forward since its release.
