Just played and won my first game in Practice League. I went Phoenix and just harassed him to no end. Picked up the queen and killed it, killed all the overlords that I could find, and very easily defended his roach army with my immortals at my ramp (Blistering Sands I think).

Haha I'm so bad at sc2; ironpham whipped me in his first few games :P

I was actually really surprised I won those last 2. I guess I got lucky that Immortals>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Roaches in that PvZ. And, in that last one, when I scouted you, you were about 15 seconds ahead of me in the teching to immortals. If you had built an army instead of investing in the warp prism, you would have demolished me.

Extremely fun, though. Can't wait to play again.

You other beta testers need to join us. This game is so fun.

Man I want to play :( Stupid school getting in the way!

Yea I teched too hard, I was counting on you not being too aggressive :P. I had the polish down but just spent too much money on nonessentials, and expanded (and cancelled late) etc.

I think that's my biggest problem right now. I'm still not sure when to do timing pushes. I guess I also need to learn more efficient build orders.....

---------- Post added at 03:37 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:55 PM ----------

By the way, Joz, our first 2v2 game should be this:
(skip to 4:20)

Hahaha yea I've seen that xD.

Btw, sorry about that 2v2. Terribad timing on my part, grandma called me away for like 10 minutes lol :<.

Don't worry about it. It was out of your control. We'll get a good game going later. Hopefully other tfpers will join?

Sounds fab. I'm logging on now for a night of sc2 :)

WC3 was fun, in a different way than SC.

I'm glad that SCII is back to its roots, though.

Anyone else think the graphics in this game are lackluster?

All of the battle reports were done in the zoomed in mega 3D mode but when you're playing from the "StarCraft 1" perspective the game simply doesn't look 10 years older than the first. I think the textures need work or something. I know it's a Blizzard game but I'm unimpressed.

In before the "graphics don't matter, gameplay does" bullshit crowd come in!

Well you may call it bullshit... but there's piles of rts's sitting around that I've stopped playing within days of trying when their gameplay didn't come close to their graphics. I like the art style despite it's shortcomings but I do wish it could be a bit more detailed for the crowd with the really hardcore pc's. It's always been Blizzard's strategy to way lowball current spec's so everyone and their uncle can play their game, which considering the success appears to be a pretty effective strategy.

I'm happily dealing with the graphics not being the newest shiniest thing on the block because the game is so damn fun to play.

So why don't they make it look like it does now on average PCs but make it look amazing for high end PCs?

I guess it's all marketing.

I finally get to play some more tonight/this weekend. And, I do agree that actually playing the game looks a lot different as opposed to those battle reports. I thought it was just me though, because my graphics card is getting a little dated.

My main beef is that the battle reports gave the illusion that we'd be able to control the camera and pan it however we wanted.


We can't, and I think this is why the game feels and looks dated. Plus epic battles like these never last this long. Huge firefights in SC2 last about 10 seconds before every unit is dead. Not epic at all.

I think one of the reasons for lack of camera control is due to the fact that we're beta testing the mp game, and full camera control is probably editable via the editor as we're been told about all of the different things it can be used to achieve. Perhaps keeping the static directional view while playing and standardizing the play perspective for all players is something they want in order to balance out everyone's experience in a mp environment.

Well I understand why they did it, but it still gave a false sense on what we should expect out of the game. The game in THAT video looks advanced from SC1. But let's be real, zooming in during SC2 just doesn't happen, it might as well be turned off. I feel like the zooming in is for Blizzard to show people that the game REALLY CAN look better than SC1 if you allow camera panning.

Meh, that game looks like sc2 to me, with a 3rd person camera rolling around in a circle. How often does zooming come into play in any game it's available to use? With the exception of Supreme Commander nearly every rts I can think of has made me want to stay as zoomed out as possible while still able to control my units effectively. Being able to view more at once is a big advantage playing this sort of game. You zoom in when you want to look what your units look like all nice and gory in awesome detail but then when you're actually playing your never playing from that perspective because it blinds you. The option to zoom in and out stays in the game to show people what the engine is capable of doing, just like with the new unit titles they added, showing the game is capable of stat tracking, even if it serves no purpose in the regular mp maps, you can certainly utilize these features to their fullest dreams using the map editor. For instance the comment from one of the dev's saying you could use the editor to make a FPS game(that zoomed in enough?)

Yeah exactly, the zoom in is useless. But that's not my point. My point is that the panning camera WOULD make the game look better and give an entirely new experience. It may hinder your ability to micro but I'd at least like the option to pan around and then leave it in a different place for the rest of the match. It feels like they have a great engine built here but you never get to see what it can do.

The engine is retardedly powerful. It'd be very easy to edit in basic camera controls and have an otherwise melee map. Right now delete and insert give you temporary, limited panning a la WC3.

I'll have to try that tonight.

I'm in the middle of creating a custom campaign. It's basically going to be like Desert Strike if anyone remembers it. I went with a 3rd person behind the back camera instead of the isometric camera though. It's still early yet. All I've really done is fix the camera, Hide the default UI, and give my Banshee the ability to carry passengers. I'm hoping that It'll be a fun little game. It will be if I can translate my ideas.

Good luck! I have dozens of ideas in the works, but starting siiimple :3

We'll have to make a TFP repository of customs.

I'd definitely be interested in seeing what kind of customs you guys are making.

I've played around a little today and added some weapon/armor/HP upgrades along with the ability to change my unit's color. Guess I'll work out a score/point system next and start charging for the upgrades. I can't wait to actually start designing the map. :)

I know this sounds like heresy, buy I won't buy SC2. I'd probably buy the paperback though, just to see how the story pans out. As brilliant a game as starcraft was - (and the campaign plot is one of the best of any game I've played), my dislike for the level of micromanagement and the multiplayer metagame made me lose interest. It basically degenerated into a mad rush of perfected efficiency. It was no longer a game, and no longer really required responsive strategy. Just perfect the formula and roll it out.

I would consider buying Starcraft 2 if the multiplayer community delivers something better than DotA. Otherwise, I'll wait for Diablo 3.

surprising that none of you came in here to announce the release date.

Say goodbye to your summer, July isn't that far off.

Yea I knowww xD. I'm excited.

@Vault: The campaign plot is going to BLOW away sc1's. Blizz is spending something on the order of 500x the resources on their campaigns this time around.

As to multiplayer, it's a lot more complex than that. Are you a fighter (think street fighter) fan? How about sports? Let's take baseball.

I was bored to tears by baseball most of my life. 4 hour games for 20 minutes of action...seriously? Since my whole family loves it, though, I've allowed myself to be subjected to it and understand it a bit more now. When the pitcher is sitting there before the pitch, instead of being bored I'm wondering which pitch he'll throw. It hasn't made me LIKE baseball, but I can at least tolerate watching it.

Street Fighter. At the competitive level, it is very very refined. I direct you to Sirlin for an indepth review of playing to win at that. StarCraft is similar: there is an entire RICH metagame of play above the casual level, that allows for virtually any strategy, executed properly with the proper scouting of the opponent and room to adapt.

Just walking into the melee you're going to get rolled because you don't have a grasp of these mechanics. I don't mean to be condescending here, sorry if it's coming across that way. But the more I play and learn about starcraft melee (and I'm really quite bad), the MORE I enjoy it as it requires more focused play, not less.

As for DotA, there's no contest. The map editor is orders of magnitude more powerful than warcraft III's. Most simple games have already been recreated, from Tetris to FPS to Sonic. A quote from TL the other day: "I wouldn't be surprised if the WCG (World Cyber Games) in a decade are composed entirely of StarCraft II and customs built from its engine."

I don't think he's far off, either.

I got placed in Copper in Division 150 or something. At least I've won a match since being placed ha ha ha ha ha

Grats :D. Division count means nothing, it's just a method of separating people. Division 1 is as good as division 9001 - league is all that 'matters' (and it doesn't do all that much atm).

So the #1 ranked person in each Division of each League are essentially tied?

So lately, I've mostly been playing with my old grade school buddy that I used to play SC1 with. And, by mostly playing, I mean I've really only had time to squeeze a few games in here and there. But, I finally finished up my 1v1 placement matches. I got into Platinum. I think this is absolutely ludicrous. I can't compete in Platinum. My APM barely averages 60. I might've been okay in Gold, but in the last placement match (the only guy that stood a chance since everyone else was copper/bronze level type players) the dude disconnected.

So, yeah I can say "I'm a Platinum level player," but in actuality I'm going to get dominated in this league.

Yes Lasereth, but mobility is pretty high so top rated players generally rank up in divisions. Rank 1 plat is really the only rank of meaning at the moment. As time goes on league will matter more: right now it's mostly an indicator of how many of your starting 5 games you won rather than your real skill level.

@ironpham: lose. Lose a handful of games and you should be bumped down right quick. As I said to Lasereth, league doesn't mean all that much right now; there are PLENTY of people in exactly your situation (which is platinum competition...isn't really that fierce). You might meet the roving great white shark of a nigh pro gamer, or someone who's been playing for 2 hours. It's beta, they're working on it :3.

annnnnd you will be able to add your FB friends to battle net 2.0

this is madness!

Rraaaafh this thread is making me jealous. I just preordered last weekend from amazon- longest "up to 5 business days" ever. :(

:< <3

On the light side: first friend invite! Hurrah. Now my RL friend that I played sc with when we were like 11 years old can join :3

I've been playing the shit out of this beta the past 2 weeks. I think I have over 60 wins in 2v2s already and my record can't be good, so I don't know how many games that translates to. haha. I think I have been ranked as high as 3rd in 2v2 random though.

Can't wait for the full release and the campaign and then the multiplayer community to explode full force.

Loving it!

...give your name and id foo! Skystriker.joz here, to repeat :P

Same boat. Watching my email..

Avoid The Bombs! - StarCraft 2 Maps - SC2Mapster.com

I made a UMS! It's just a stupid little minigame that I made after getting tired of working on my other helicopter game. Tell me if it's too hard/easy. I'm a horrible judge of difficulty.

So, I played some 2v2 with my brother who used to be so so so so so good at sc1. Turns out, he's absolutely no good at sc2. He asked me for control of my ground units while I dominate the air (which I did for the 2 games we played). It worked out the first game because my void ray rush just demolished. The second game, I took out 1 guy's main, but my brother's macro couldn't keep up with the other guy. Since I had void rays which were pretty much all taken out after I killed the other guy, my ground army was a little lacking, but my brother's shouldn't have been.

I did switch back to ground army and kept my macro pretty good for losing so many void rays, but I couldn't get enough, and the guy I took out was able to get mass speedlings to harass my economy. I guess I'll have to teach my brother how to play Protoss because I think his biggest flaw was not being able to counter the other Protoss ground force.

I gotta try this...

lmao I saw that awhile ago, epic.

Got my beta key and installing now. Best mother's day evar. ;)

Wow one of your kids sure knows how to pick a present. Grats!

;D

Spanxxx.thespanxxx

Look me up. I often play around 11am-1pm (CST), and then 8pm-11pm(CST) most days of the week.

Sounds good; you gonna be on today?

Probably going to get on here in a few minutes for a quick game or two.

Eating lunch but then I shall join you :)

I have concluded that void rays are overpowered. Once they get to that next level of attack, they can switch targets and it'll still be on that next level (granted it will bump back down after a short period but the period is not nearly short enough). For instance, marines are supposed to be a good counter, which is true if it's just straight void rays vs. marines with no buildings in sight. But, if there are any buildings, I can just focus fire the building until the attack goes up to the next level, then switch to the marines and wipe the floor with them....I don't think I should be able to do that.

You know, that's interesting. I hadn't really noticed that, but I often start attacking someone by focusing on their building as a rally point from a distance. When the rays get there, they start attacking immediately, and then when reinforcements get there, I switch attack to general attack and usually wipe out most everything but a huddled mass of hydralisks, or a massive herd of marines with stim.

The key for terran defense against air I've noticed is to have some turrets, and have the turret upgrade. With the upgraded range and the fact the turrets are far more durable now, they will put a punishment on some void rays. Couple that with a dozen marines with stim and a med ship, and it really is lethal.


I am with you on the void rays though. I really do think they are overpowered. I suspect a balance will come before too long. Unless someone is building a counter, a 2 (or 3) void ray rush is basically a game ender against prot or zerg. I did notice today that the infestors ability makes a difference for zerg. It locks the voids in place and prevents retreat which is imperative to a successful void ray hit and run technique early game. Hit a building, fly away, come at another building, fly, etc. Until you pump out 2 more voids then join in with 4 or 5 and death becomes quick and lethal usually.

I'm not sure they're overpowered if you scout them. Stalkers take em down pretty quickly, especially with blink in areas without other targets.

Hydras destroy void rays.

Terran Vikings outrange VoidRays, Marines are good, but they have to be -enmasse-. 8 marines are not going to take down 2 void rays.

I'm starting to like the Phoenix a lot more now too. With the new shoot on the move thing, I think they are a far more capable unit in the air. With their lift ability, and super fast speed, they are a great harass unit now too. 3 Phoenix can do a far amount of harass damage to an expansion pretty quickly. Lift, kill, lift, kill, lift, kill, repeat. i can kill at least 6-10 workers in short order, then zoom away when calvary arrives.

Best part is you can get them out fast, and use them for scouting otherwise.

You know you have a problem when...

You've only been playing a few weeks and already get agitated about mandatory server maintenance downtime!

Phoenix were decent before, and now are amazing.

I actually haven't tried them out since the update. Maybe I should check it out. I think they're fantastic against zerg. Kind of reminds me of the bisu build.

Also, here's an interview with a Korean pro (supposedly one of the best, if not the best sc2 protoss player). It's pretty interesting. He says terran is the best race and even gives out an easy counter to vr rushing.

SCforall.com

Finally got the beta key and got it installed last night; turns out I'm pretty terrible at countering the new strategies.. like void ray and/or marauder rushes. Though I did successfully sneak past a terran who had blocked his choke with supply depots and bunkers and ultimately win.. it's very similar to the old, enough so that I get caught off guard by the weird behavior of the new units..

Were you been Joz? Man, I desperately need a solid 2v2 partner. What are your normal play times? I haven't seen you on again after we played the one game together.

This week has been solid RL friend time; should be clearing up for some online time very soon though :)

Old school!

Beta ending soon, the lamentations of the masses were many.

We have til the end of the month!

As for the voidrays...expect them to be neutered. :) Though, with the recent phoenix improvement there's at least some competition for protoss air choices.

My expectation is that after Closed beta ends, open beta will begin. This is a norm for Blizzard, and I doubt they will change it. They've even said that they expect to push 3v3 and 4v4 before the end of beta. My guess is that they will open those up either here very soon, or wait till June and do it with an open beta push to completely stress test the servers and the full range of multiplayer options.

The beta ends May 31 and then reopens a few weeks later.

StarCraft 2 beta ends May 31, returning 'several weeks' later -- Joystiq

Man I am going to go into serious withdrawal when they close the beta down... VS AI simply ain't gonna cut it.

Oh well, I am kinda disappointed that blizzard isn't taking stronger measures to balance out cheese tactics (void ray rush n such). I know that good scouting will tell you if a player is prepping to rush, but then you counter and generally you either win or lose, but the game ends there less than 10 mins... I only really get to play till late game with 2v2 matches, which is a shame I would like 1v1 matches that go the distance but they rarely do.

i probably wasted years of my life on battle.net back in the day. i am seriously wondering whether it is a good idea for me to get involved in this.... :P

who am i kidding, though. i am sure i will cave and buy it.

@Quaren: I think cheese is good for the meta so long as it's not the dominant strategy, which I don't feel it is. It's similar to SC1: scout scout scout.

information information information.

I'm leaning back on this yet again. so often games are won past the 10 minute mark by having the right information plus having board control.

If you are constantly scouting, have the watch towers, and monitor the board you can prevent expansion, look for weak points, stop an advance, cut off a drop or ghost, etc.


I find the zerg to have the most frustrating ability to monitor the board until you've researched burrow. then, for as cheap as zerglings are, there's no reason not to have some buried all over the board so you can at least see troop movements and slow down expansions.

Patch came today. Looks like they are down right now for maintenance. 3v3 and 4v4 added, several other changes and balances. Some look good.

StarCraft II Beta -- Patch 13 (version 0.15.0.15449)

General
Map Publishing is now enabled: Using the map editor, you can upload your custom maps to share with the Battle.net community.
Facebook feature is integrated: Here’s a quick way to expand your social network by seeing who among your existing Facebook friends also has a Battle.net account.
3v3 and 4v4 formats are now enabled.
Numerous updates have been made to the Leagues & Ladders system:
Removed Copper League and added Diamond League above Platinum League.
Player ratings start at 0, rather than 1000.
No longer displays loading screen odds in placement or practice league matches.
Matchmaking system logic updated.
UDP is enabled to help improve game performance.
Numerous performance and stability improvements.


Balance Changes
PROTOSS
Sentry
Force Fields can now be destroyed by Massive ground units walking over them.
Void Ray
Range decreased from 7 to 6.
Warp Gate
Subgroup selection priority changed from 2 to 3 so that it takes priority over Gateways when selected.

TERRAN
Marine
Stimpack research cost decreased from 150/150 to 100/100.
Combat Shield research cost decreased from 150/150 to 100/100.

ZERG
Infestor
Infested Terran spell removed.
Frenzy spell added:
Costs 25 energy.
Targets a single biological unit which deals 25% more damage and is immune to snare, stuns, and mind control for 30 seconds.
Overseer
Contaminate spell added:
Costs 75 energy.
Targets a single enemy structure which cannot train units or research upgrades for 30 seconds.
Infested Terran spell added:
Costs 125 energy.
Infested Terrans have the same stats as those previously created by the Infestor and are placed directly under the Overseer when spawned.
Ultralisk
Life decreased from 600 to 450.
Damage changed from 25 to 15 (+25 Armored).
Damage versus structures increased from 60 to 75.


Hotkey Changes (English Only):
Zerg Set Worker Rally Point changed from R to G.
Zerg Spore Crawler changed from W to A to avoid conflict with the Select All Warp Gates hotkey.


Battle.net Interface
Revamped summary pages for player Profiles and Leagues & Ladders.
Added a Help system with tech trees and other tips and tricks.
Removed identifier from the character naming process and added the ability to refer friends for invitation into your party or lobby.
Updated the Battle.net user interface to consistently use a nested menu system.
Added in-game blocking and player muting.

Hey guys, I finished one of the UMS maps I was working on. It's multiplayer only but if you have 4-9 people to play with you, it'd be awesome if you could leave some comments. It would go a long way in helping make it better, The game really doesn't get fun until you have 5 people. With 10 players, I can only imagine how hectic it gets.

The game is published on US servers you can just search for it in join game under "Tag! You're It"

Releases tomorrow!

Release map list:

2 - Agria Valley
2 - Blistering Sands
2 - Burial Grounds
2 - Crossfire
2 - Desert Oasis
2 - Incineration Zone
2 - Jungle Basin
2 - Junk Yard
2 - Scrap Station
2 - Steppes of War
2 - Worldship
2 - Xel'Naga Caverns
3 - Elysium
4 - Arid Wastes
4 - Debris Field
4 - Delta Quadrant
4 - Discord IV
4 - High Orbit
4 - Kulas Ravine
4 - Lost Temple
4 - Metalopolis
4 - Monlyth Ridge
4 - New Antioch
4 - Nightmare
4 - Red Stone Gulch
4 - Scorched Haven
4 - Shakuras Plateau
4 - Tarsonic Assault
4 - Terminus
4 - Twilight Fortress
4 - War Zone
6 - Arakan Citadel
6 - Colony 426
6 - Dig Site
6 - Dirt Side
6 - Frontier
6 - Monsoon
6 - Quicksand
6 - Tectonic Rift
6 - The Bio Lab
6 - Typhon
6 - Ulaan Deeps
6 - Abyss
8 - Extinction
8 - Forbidden Planet
8 - High Ground
8 - Lava Flow
8 - Megaton
8 - Outpost
8 - Sand Canyon
8 - Tempest
8 - Toxic Slums

I'm very excited about the campaign mode and mods for this game. Maybe I'll be more into the MP this time around since there will be challenges to help train you.

Ok CE's are so damned scarce around here, had to call a few lesser known stores to get one in my name and even then they're making no hard reservations. "Just be here" is the response I get.

Gamestop said they couldn't help me cuz I waited til the last minute, best buy never sent me a verification email on my preorder so bleh to that. Cuz they specifically said during the checkout process not to go try and pick it up til I got that email.

StarCraft II


/rawr

I love achievements, they are so finely tuned in this that it's going to add a ton of re-playability to unlock avatars/decals etc..

Instead of buying a new Mac mini or iMac to play SC (it won't play on my Mac mini with the integrated GMA video), I've decided to put together a custom gaming rig with the singular purpose of playing StarCraft 2. I've got the SC2 disc sitting on my desk and the Newegg shipment won't be here until Monday, which is an eternity. Still, once I get the thing together, I'll have a quad-core AMD machine with a Radeon HD 5770 that can handle most games out there easily. The fact I can get such a fast machine for about $600 really does tell a tale about the premium Apple puts on their hardware.

It's going to be strange switching over to Windows 7 after using OS X for so many years.

LOL you have became assimilated!!!!!!!!!

BTW did you buy an assembled PC from NewEgg? I recommended one to a coworker (for SC2) a couple days ago that had a 5770 and an AMD quadcore in it as well.

I'm putting it together myself. I found a nice mobo, the MSI 870A-G54 (USB 3.0!!), and just built from there. I've got the Athlon II 2.9GHz quad with the aforementioned video card. The case was only like $14. Throw in 4GB ram, a WD Caviar 500GB HDD, a 500W PSU and a basic optical drive and I'm ready to go. All said, it's only like $600 worth of hardware but it should be able to tackle Crysis at respectable specs.

Down the road, I can upgrade to the Phenom II x6 CPU and faster video cards if I need, too, which is nice.

Actually, I owe you a big thank you for your video card buyers guide. You're the reason I grabbed the 5770.

Campaign mode is great. It's short compared to SC1's campaign though. I'm on the final mission right now. It took 11 hours to get that far, might take 11 more to finish this insane mission... holy hell I got fckt up... I need sleep..

Yeah I'm kinda taking it easy, I predict many late night league sessions once I feel like I've honed my macro on the computer hard modes. I don't see the point in going online until that becomes easy to me because I know there are people out there who breathe the hotkeys and build orders in their sleep. they can probably recite the 150 key presses it takes to tech up to a protoss mothership or something.

I haven't beaten it yet but I thought blizzard said the whole idea of them splitting it into three games was that each campaign was supposed to be bigger than original starcraft and brood war combined. That's disappointing.

yup, which is why I dislike playing rts online. I'll wait for starcraft 2 dota before picking this up, thanks. I'll stay on my console for now.

It feels shorter than SC1 because, well, it is. It's 26 missions with 6-8 of those being optional compared to SC1's 30 missions and it's way shorter if you count Brood War's 25 missions. The story is also much more narrow and focused. It's Jim Raynor's story and while it's pretty badass in parts it's not to the scale of the original's plot. Now, 15-16 hours of game time, and a shit ton of replayability makes the game a much better value than anything else on the market.

What you feel is better value smells like pure fail to me. Is this worth waiting 8 years for? I expected more. Poorer plot than the original, less play time than the original, so you're basically saying that the only thing it has going for it is better graphics and physics, which is expected.

Is anyone else playing the campaign on hard? Normal was way too easy so I turned it up to Hard and restarted. The lava mission where you have to gather 8000 resources just kicked my ass!!!!!!!! The game is actually challenging on Hard though...on normal I beat the first 6 missions or so and completed all of the objectives and rarely lost even 1 unit.

I'm going to complete the playthrough on normal, then I'll do hard, and if I'm not bored with it by then, and my skills actually improve, I'll do brutal. (or cry trying)

apparently there isn't too much difference between hard and brutal aside from kill priorities, for example they'll single down any scv's in your vehicle/mech based army if they so much as breath a point of repair towards one of them. They def have the "kill the healer" mentality.

---------- Post added at 08:37 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:35 AM ----------

ok?

Kerrigan's still hot.

You expected more? like what exactly?

They've been fairly open with the development process. What I mean by that is, they've made it clear they are going to release this game in 3 campaigns. They released a FULL multiplayer experience, which is what this game primarily is trying to cater towards as an e-sport. Like many PC games of THIS generation, the single player elements are usually an afterthought or not the primary focus (Mostly an FPS problem tbh) Being used to that kind of afterthought bullshit, I find this campaign to be very fun, diverse, and well told.

I wouldn't say the plot is "poorer" than the original, it's just not new to us anymore, we know who the zerg are, we know who the terrans are, we know who the protoss are, as far as play time, it really depends on the player. One thing that I will say is that while SC1's missions all seemed to eventually disintegrate in to "build massive army, win" this one actually seems to change up mission types a lot more, defend a mining laser while it goes through a door, survive 20 minutes against a rush, collect a certain number of minerals in a volatile lava environment, hijack trains, spectre/ghost solo mission, capture and hold points while uploading data to towers (lolsup Odin)

Some are the typical build/push/conquer type but they seem rare and usually there to showcase the strengths of a unit you have available.


It doesn't really matter what I say, You've made up your mind to wait to even pick the game up out of some principle or another and some people just like to downplay or bash the experience they're missing out on even though they have no 1st hand knowledge. The fact that youre nitpicking a positive review and focusing on the unsaid negatives (aka putting words in people's mouths) really is all I need to know.

Just chill, it's a game, it's a really good game. If you cant/dont have/want the ability/desire to play it then... dont. No need to make up imaginary reasons to hate on it though.

Personally, I have friends who play it, and Co-op is a riot.

Also I like watching sc2 replays :p

The story is not poor. It's different. It's up to the players to decide which they like more but neither are bad. SC2's missions are much better though and there's no arguing about that.

Lasereth, You can change the difficulty anywhere. No need to play through the whole thing on the same difficulty. I played on Hard for most missions. I turned it down to normal on a couple of missions that I just didn't want to fail again. If you play on Brutal, you'll want to save your game every couple of minutes because things can go from well to fail in seconds. Having that recent save can prevent a lot of frustration.

so is Starcraft like Warcraft in space, or a totally different sort of game?

It's a real time stategy, much like the first 3 Warcraft games. It's nothing like World of Warcraft though. So, Yeah, It's basically Warcraft in space.

oh,I can do turn based strategy games... but real time ones always panic me

Yeah I know, I wanna play it on hard on purpose.

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/profile/.../achievements/

Just to see where I'm at on the game for anyone curious.

This game is AWESOME...but rapes my poor little integrated graphics laptop up the butt. I couldn't find a decent ded. when I bought it. I think I'm going to be going for what willravel purchased in a few weeks when I'm out in CA with the new job.

@YaWhateva: I didn't hear that they said it was supposed to be bigger than both SC1/BW combined...it's equal to one of them though imo. The quality however is leaps and bounds improved.

@Vaultboy and others: Multiplayer isn't so scary as in sc1. The league system really separates you from the people who breathe the game. They will be clawing each others eyes out in Platinum/Diamond, while we can tinker down in practice/bronze/silver/gold. Also, there are already a slew of customs that are high quality, though I hadn't seen a DotA the one time I checked in. It'll be there within the week I'm sure, though at an unknown quality level. Join us!

I do believe I've seen DotA already. Haven't played it yet though.

Yet you spend a good couple of paragraphs on justification for a two-line comment of mine?

As you say, I've made up my mind. But do not make assumptions that I've done this blindly, or on "imaginary reasons".

My resolution to buy the game based on whether it has a Dota map hardly constitutes "hate", as you put it. And similarly I hardly "bashed" the game. I just stated my opinion. No need to get all offended just because we value different things.

Yes, the league system is a definite improvement. I'm just never become a fan of online rts multiplayer, so the warhammer style campaign split (and its brevity) is a minus for me, hence my decision to wait for a dota map, or some other equally fun map that spreads by reputation, and for a price drop.

there was no offense taken, I just thought it was a silly reason to down a game, if you want to play dota, play dota, or LoL, or HoN, or any of the other knockoffs.

I don't see the point of buying SC2 to play a Dota knock off in the SC2 engine.

A SC version wouldn't be a knock off. It would be Dota 2, provided of course that Icefrog and co invest the years developing and refining it. Or do you miss the point that games often evolve with new engines? Yes, dota is merely a map, but it is also a game unto itself, as Hon and LoL have shown. Except Blizzard brings way more game to the table i.t.o. engine, server stability and tech support than Riot does, given their resources.

I have seen enough to realise that SC2 does not merit enough for me to buy it. Dota 2 would, especially given that I would then have all of the 'standard extras', plus other custom maps.

Would be a bit like not buying HL2 because Counterstrike: Source wasn't out yet.

SC2 is fucking awesome, by the way. I've been playing the challenges a lot. I like the micro ones especially. Anyone acutally playing, if you've just done singleplayer and multiplayer, check out the Challenges. They're actually great practice for dealing with particularly tough things - micro, matching units to enemy forces, and dealing with rushes..

I golded all the challenges easily except two :<.

Jozrael.250 here, or croselius@gmail.com. What's everyone elses tags?

I've picked this game up a month ago and have been casually playing it.

lordeden@gmail.com is my email on there. Friend me for some co-op or 1v1 play.