Beta invites have been sent out. Anyone here get one? I didn't :(.

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I've got mine installed. Beta invite from Blizzcon 08.

I managed to get two invites, one from a family member who works in the industry and got an invite from his Activision rep, and one from attending Blizzcon 08. So my good buddy from SC1 days will be happy.

Good lord I just got done reinstalling SCI out of sheer boredom. Must find a way to get an invite for this

I'm pretty sure you want to give me, a practical stranger, that extra invite instead of your buddy. It's only logical. :thumbsup:

Blizzard can suck a dick. They announce their games WAY too early. Diablo 3 won't be out until MAYBE Christmas next year, and Starcraft 2 will probably be november/december of this year. Even the lead designer admitted they announce them too early. I'm tired of waiting for this crap.

Anyone got an extra beta key??? :) :)

When the news got out about the last Activision conference call they said SC2 should be out middle of this year, WoW: Cataclysm at the end of this year and D3 next year sometime. so it's not that bad. Wish I had keys for everyone I knew, definitely tons of interest out there. I can't wait to play it more but I'm stuck at work for a few more hours!

Earliest estimate on sc2 release was late 2008.

l o l.

I didn't get a key T_T.

Blizzard is TERRIBLE with release dates. I remember Diablo II was in the making for like 10 years. I don't mind waiting between each game, but I do get annoyed when they release content 2-3 years in advance making us think the game is almost done.

The thing with Blizzard is that they DO "finish" the games years early, but they are just so anal about not releasing any game or expansion until it is 100% bug free that they take forever to come out. I was playing both Starcraft 2 AND Diablo 3 at Blizzcon 08.

I didn't get an invite for this wave, I think this was mostly the blizzcon/industry crowd.

I've been playing starcraft broodwar for years and I cant wait for SC2. Applied for beta with no luck. ='[

Its very easy to get a hacked version of the beta right now; you won't be able to play online though. You'll have to make do with watching replays or playing against the AI (which is slightly clusterfucked on the hacked version).

Not really interested in this game as much as I thought I would be.

I guess the RTS genre has just been stagnant and dead for so long that it's hard for me to care about another "harvest/research/produce/destroy" routine based game that has remained mostly unchanged in the 10+ years since it's last incarnation.

That said, I'll play it because I know the story will be great, the voice acting cast for this will be great, and that will hook me long enough.
But I don't forsee the multiplayer holding me unless I somehow develop a fetish for being raped by asian micro reflexes.

Shauk: Please please please please please consider custom games haha. While I liked the melee scene as a diversion in sc1, the custom scene had a much lower barrier for entry, and entertained an entirely different caste of players.

I'm just sad glynnis won't be returning; aside from that the voicecasting looks amazing.

The SP will of course be ridiculously awesome (unfortunately that pretty much requires you to get all three installations).

I'm really excited for it, but I don't know how it'll fit in my gaming time with it focused on LoL and a bit of BLC on the side.

I tried the watching replays/play against AI hack, but for some reason I couldn't get it working. It kept saying I was missing some files (I assume it was talking about the maps), but I have all the maps and cache files....

People are too good at RTS games for me now. The micro management is just crazy. I still love the game though. I spent most of my later days in the editor doing custom stuff of my own.

Maybe SC2 will have a good casual following for a while so I won't feel as bad as I do when I pop in SC1 and get my face melted due to the crazy people that still play.

The matchmaking system in SC2 should make those that hate getting pwned by superior players constantly very happy. It's still very early in functionality now and there is an extremely limited pool of players to pick from but it's working very well all considering.

After 10 "placement" games in your league of choice say 1v1 the game will rate you based on your playstyle and place you in a league Bronze Silver Gold Platinum, from there each league will be split into divisions which max out around 100 players and then your division is in a constant mini tournament within itself. If you end up performing above/below your league the game will move you to a more appropriate league at the end of the current tournament. At first I thought the win/loss ratios were all it was checking but the skill evaluation seems to be a lot deeper in telling how exactly good of a player you are, but blizzard is keeping quiet on how exactly it works.

...orchrist totally beat me to it lol.

I hear ya, Reese. I remember being good at Warcraft 2, but that was only because the micro and macro management skills required were far less than those compared to Starcraft and Warcraft 3. That and the fact that the only viable competitive strategies all revolved around getting Ogre-Magi and bloodlust. There's just too much going on sometimes in WC3 and SC for me to get good.

Though, they are fun.

That's pretty much how I feel about SC2. I'm sure I'll buy it and I'm sure I'll play through it, but I just don't have the energy or interest to learn how to play a game like SC at the competitive multiplayer levels a lot of people do. In a lot of ways, it's a solo experience for me, which may be missing a big part of the game, but I'm cool with that.

i just got invited to the beta! weeeeee!

Dorm neighbours just downloaded a crack to play the beta offline (single player only, so far...!) There goes the week!

But what if you were only paired up with other players of your general level of expertise?

And only ranked against them? (You could be in silver division 8, and be competing with only 100 other players worldwide for the #1 spot!)

That's what SC2 is geared for: people of ALL skill levels.

I'm mostly looking forward to the SP campaign for my part, I spent far too much time being amateur competitive in Warcraft III without any progression or anything to show for it :( (don't handle losing very well in RTS, a bad streak could really ruin my day) Casual gaming with friends should be good, though :D

So for those of you that don't know, you can play the cracked version of the beta in an offline vs AI mode.

I've been playing for about a week.

The link for the instructions to DL and such is here:

Starcraft 2 Beta Cracked & Available for Download

The new updated AI StarCrack AI Official Thread (Latest Version: 6.1)

I can personally attest that it is 100% clean. I'll play a game, and post a few screenshots :)

Just a few quick screen's of the Terrans!

I got in to the beta yesterday.

I gotta say, the textures they use aren't very flattering. I know it's a lot better looking than the old SC but it's really easy to lose visual track of some units (the dreadnaught cruiser for example) if it's sitting over one of the terran buildings since they seem to share that same "earth metal" texture.

The lack of campaign mode really leaves the newcomers out in the cold. I had a match against this guy who never played the original and didn't really know what was going on. I took him out with literally one unit.

Ghost / Nuke combo over and over.

they need to increase the amount of time it takes to build a nuke I think. I felt like a cuban missile base.

IMO the beta isn't really for newcomers :P. That's what release will be for, and they will be dazzled with awesometastic campaign goodness then :p

Well that's what beta is for to weed out the tactics that are too overpowered. I've used zealot rushes to ridiculous amounts of success... chrono boost ftw... Waiting for that to get nerfed like the mothership did.

Too much complaining about lack of campaign and better ai though, it's a beta they're testing what needs to be tested!

pshhh zealot rushes get raped by my roach rush

Thanks for the screenshots.. I am SOOOOO looking forward to this... Re-live some of my youth when I'd spend all night playing the original with guys from work and then spend the next day at work talking about the awesome gaming from the night before.. Ahh good times..

It's sad that protoss have to tech to tier 2 to counter zerg's tier 1 roach. They should make stalkers or sentries a little more even with them I think.

stalkers are pretty okay at defending roaches. Roaches really shine when you get burrow.

man after my 10 entrance games I was placed in the gold league and I've just been getting murdered left and right. :(

sigh, my battle.net account was hacked, I called all day long yesterday to the blizzard billing and customer service department to get "we're sorry all of our operators are busy we have are experiencing a high call volume. please call back another time." And when I finally got through I had to wait on hold for 50 minutes. The lady said my WoW account was reopened after like a year of being closed. I could care less about that. I want to play SC2. So the lady closed that email and put my other email...but she got the address wrong. Mixed an 'n' with an 'm'...so I tried calling today several times and got the same high volume, call us back later bullshit. Man, blizzard customer service is fucking awful.

I just want to play SC2...

Damn, dude that sucks. Hope you get it back soon.

Anyone know of any cracks out there which can support LAN? I'm still waiting for my invite through Blizzard.

I'm pretty sure there's no LAN in SC2.

First in my copper league division xD.

Ok so NO ONE in this thread so far has posted their tags. I'm playing on Shared.jessep atm, and will let you know when I get my own key (few days hopefully).