RTS is pretty much a dead genre these days. There have been indie releases but nothing did well enough for a big studio to take notice. They tested the water with a Command and Conquer remaster a few years ago too.

That’s fine, just let it die. But they gotta milk the goddamn IP dry.

It's been like 11 years since the last game, it seems a bit reactionary to call that "milking the goddamn IP dry."

The most ive done with RTS the last decade is watch some mass Beyond All Reason videos (I dont have the hardware for mass battles myself.) LoL and other moba dota-likes I think took the a bulk of the rts competative crowd. Now I feel like the traditional rts community has to butt heads with other strategy genres to take players if they want to approach old school rts levels of success. Trying to pull moba players back seems like it would have massive diminishing returns.

I think RTS could continue to work if someone made a massive leap of faith and put all the modern infra around it that a AAA extraction shooter would receive in 2026. The biggest problem with RTS is the matchmaking and onboarding experience.

The game itself doesn't have to be dumbed down (i.e., removing base building, etc.). Making the RTS simpler is NOT the solution to player adoption. Starcraft II has some extremely complex mechanics (Zerg production) which have survived for 16 years without significant changes.

The reality is that RTS is very much alive if you are willing to get your ass beat constantly. What I think many people are actually asking for is that nostalgic experience where everyone kind of sucked at these games and they could cheese their way to easy wins. RTS felt better when everyone was kind of bad. In a shooter you can still get lucky shots and catch people off guard. In an RTS, if someone is 1000 ELO better than you, the chances you defeat them are essentially zero.

According to?

I play AoE2 and it’s still growing.

Have you tried playing the Command and Conquer remaster? They barely upgraded the UI and it just doesn't feel like you're in command. Games move like your wading through molasses and you just win basically everything (except the online mode, where you have no chance whatsoever)

And there isn't much variation.

The cutscenes were almost the best part of the original game. Now they're really the only reason to even look.

I knew RTS was dead when they started porting AoE games to console.

Yup, it is. MOBA replaced most of it (which DOTA innovated). I don't like MOBA at all, but neither do I like PvP RTS.

I believe Destiny proved an open world shooter in this genre can work.

Also, didnt they announce a Warcraft HOTS?

What would be the point in making SC3? SC2 is free to play, great game, and still barely gets any players. I play against the same 30-40 people every time in ranked.

> They just abandon the entire RTS fan base

They did announce a new Warcraft 3 expansion at Blizzcon too.

They literally released a 30 hour Warcraft campaign yesterday.

Making an rts in 2026. They are not a charity my guy. If you must capitalize on nostalgia you are better off making an mmo.

That said i do not trust blizzard to make anything that isnt lame and slop.

I don't really get why people just assume RTS means it's going to fail? Like what major RTS games have come out since Starcraft 2 (which was not a critical or commercial flop) that resulted in cementing the genre as being dead & guaranteed to be a commercial failure? Starcraft 2 and it's 2 expansions all broke 1 million sales in less than 24 hours. SC2 was at 6 million sales after 2 years. Yet we're all supposed to just take it as obvious that a SC3 would be a commercial flop? Why the fuck should we assume that?

Meanwhile how many AAA hero shooters and extraction shooters have we watched get released and been massive commercial flops? Yet we don't consider those to be dead genres?

> They just abandon the entire RTS fan base

A full warcraft III expansion is not nothing

Did you catch that we can't LAN with it? Might seem small, but that's how some of us still choose to play. Being able to host on our own terms is kind of the main reason we still play the ancient versions...