15 years on, real-time strategy games are still chasing the high of 'StarCraft 2'

Remember when Blizzard Entertainment used to make strategy games? Even after the company turned much of its attention towards other genres — conquering the planet with World of Warcraft — StarCraft 2 arrived in 2010 to critical and player acclaim. But 15 years later, the StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty launch still feels like the last big hurrah of the real-time strategy (RTS) genre as a whole.

That's not to say the genre is extinct. Sure, most major publishers have abandoned it in favor of multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) releases like League of Legends or DOTA 2 — which ironically owe their births to Blizzard's 2002 masterpiece Warcraft 3 — but smaller studios and companies have stepped up to fill the void. We have countless indie teams trying to replicate the magic of the golden e