Starcraft 2

Somehow I reported this news on my Diablo 3 site but not here.

Well, if you’re living on the Moon, yes, Starcraft 2 has it’s official release date set at 27 July 2010.

Now, this will only include the Terran campaign (as far as I know). You’ll have to pay separate for the Zerg and Protoss campaigns and I bet they’ll make it so that you have to buy them in order to have a NORMAL multiplayer experience.

The good news is I’ve played the Starcraft 2 beta and it looks like an amazing game. It improves greatly on Starcraft, it’s a lot more dynamic and diverse.

One of the more interesting features is the new Battle.net. The rankings, the leagues, and different rewards stimulate a “one more game” mentality.

I would write more but really the beta ends this month so boy oh boy, I need to return to play more games as random. This is really excellent practice.

The really sad part is that I’ve played over 100 games as Protoss but when I play as random, I only lose big time if I play Protoss. Go figure!

Another batch of videos demonstrating Zerg gampleay…

Part I: Zerg vs Protoss

Part II: Zerg vs Protoss

This is from the 2006 quarterfinals – to be honest, I’ve never tried countering a 4 drone rush with drones but since it doesn’t look it works, I’m not terribly disappointed.

In the latest BlizzCast (#6), Bashiok goes through a bag of questions from Starcraft fans. One of the more interesting one concerns the role of the anti-armor units in Starcraft 2.

Bashiok: Cool. The next question comes from gamer-source.com. With the all the anti-armored units like the marauder and the hydralisk – is this meant to counter the end game units? And also what role do you think end game units will play on the battlefield?

Dustin Browder: I’m not really sure what an end game unit is, I guess it would be like a battlecruiser or a carrier or a thor or ultralisk, I guess it’s what we’re talking about here. But the hydralisk has always been anti-armor, even in the original Starcraft had a strong anti-armor role.

The marauder of course gives the Terrans some additional anti-armor capability from the barracks which we felt was very important since we moved the ghost back so far allowing the ghost to fulfill more of a core role on the battlefield for the Terrans. We didn’t think that the ghost made a lot of sense as fundamentally anti-armor with his sniper rifle. If he’s going to be anti biological and sort of taking head shots and taking out individual targets then we really needed the Terrans to have some way to deal with stalkers and immortals and to a lesser extent siege tanks and roaches. So that’s really what the marauder is pointed at, the marauder is pointed more at stalkers and roaches and you’ll see marauders used in that role. They also can tear apart a colossus or thor which is an added advantage for the Terrans from the barracks again.

If you think the billions that Blizzard makes on the back of World of Warcraft have made them less greedy, think again.

They have just announced (at Blizzcon 2008) that Starcraft 2 will not be a single game but in fact a TRILOGY. There will be three separate campaigns: the Terrain will come out first, followed by Zerg and Protoss.

Tell you what – I never cared for single player. I want a game that will allow me to choose a race and fight human opponents. It looks like I’ll have to buy three games – each will probably be around $40, so that’s over $100!

This is the panel discussion regarding Stracraft 2 gameplay at the WWI in Paris (where Diablo 3 was announced). The video is a bit long but worth it!

There’s still nothing on Starcraft’s release date though – I hope it’s early 2009!

Here’s a Zerg gameplay video… There should be zerglings as well as the new Banelings!