Starcraft Junkie

BlizzCon, the yearly celebration of all things Blizzard, has come to a close. Unlike last year, in which Blizzard fleshed out many new details about the StarCraft 2 gameplay, in this event, the focus was mainly on the single player portion of the game.

Of course, as with all Blizzard events, the latest StarCraft 2 build was playable in the convention hall, and some changes to the gameplay and unit design have been spotted as well. Check out the last part of the post for the new screenshots.

The StarCraft 2 single player is going to be a completely different experience from StarCraft 1. As we now know, the three campaigns – Terran, Zerg and Protoss -  will be separated into three packages, and each is expected to offer as much content (if not more) than the entire original game.  The first package to be released will contain the Terran campaign, along with full multiplayer capability, featuring all three races, while the next two will be released as expansions in the future.

This new strategy gives Blizzard the opportunity to accomplish a few things, all quite positive (unless you were really anxious about playing all three campaigns without paying more than 50$ for it!):

• The game, with full Battle.net 2.0 and multiplayer capability, will be released sooner
• Blizzard will not attempt to rush the single player campaign to satisfy the anxious players waiting for the game’s multiplayer and esports aspects, having time to perfect it up to Blizzard standards
• The single player campaign will offer a new, unique experience, instead of being a rehash of the same predictable formula we’ve been playing for more than 10 years
• As full expansions for StarCraft 2, they will also introduce new units, make balance changes, and improve the StarCraft 2 multiplayer game

While this may be disappointing for players who were eager to get their hands on the Zerg or Protoss campaigns, the vast majority of players will likely be excited to be able to play StarCraft 2 sooner, rather than later, and have an assurance that two more expansions are coming in the not-too-distant future. Moreover, for those single player fans, the campaign should be much more satisfying than if it was released in cut-down form.

With beta keys for StarCraft 2 being handed out to BlizzCon attendees, it is safe to say that the beta is fast approaching. Blizzard have had a long time to develop all three races for multiplayer, and according to Chris Sigaty, lead producer, they are now finishing “Wings of Liberty“, the Terran campaign. Since the other campaigns will be released at a future time, the first package should not be far away itself – there isn’t much left to accomplish before it is released. Chris also puts the ballpark for each new expansion at around a year of development.

Moving on from the technical details, we also have some fresh tidbits about the game and story:

In each campaign, the player will control a major character and follow it throughout the game. As you might have guessed, these will be Jim Raynor for the Terran, Kerrigan for the Zerg, and Zeratul for the Protoss. Controlling your character means more than just moving a hero around on the battlefield, though – the non-RTS portions of StarCraft will resemble more of an RPG.

The game will also provide the player with choices to make about how to proceed in it and perhaps even pose dilemmas that will affect the course of action and plot, but likely not the final outcome. It will feature many more missions – some optional – and allow interested players to explore the StarCraft universe in greater depth and detail. For the Terran campaign, Blizzard have revealed the Starmap, with which the player will navigate and reach chosen missions.

Unfortunately, it is doubtful that this aspect of the game will reach the magnificence of other similarly themed games, such as the other SC2 – Star Control 2, and will more likely stay at the same level of the Command & Conquer inter mission breaks.

Throughout each campaign’s non-linear ~30 missions, the player will also gather resources, with which he will be able to purchase single player-specific upgrades and technology. Players will have to make smart choices with their upgrade paths and pick the right units and technology to fight their chosen battles with. Missions are promised to be much more diverse, as Blizzard tries to avoid the normal “build up a base and kill everything” dead-end formula.

The expanded campaigns will also include many other interesting characters, some of which we’ve seen before, and quite a few new ones. Some new names that have been mentioned are:

• Valerian Mengsk, son of Arcturus Mengsk from the original StarCraft
• Tychus Findlay, who we first met in the original StarCraft II cinematic
• Rory Swann, a former Kel-Morian worker who lead a unsuccesfull revolt. Saved by Jim Raynor, he now serves on the Hyperion as the main engineer, trying to keep the war-torn battlecruiser in fighting shape
• Gabriel Tosh, a Ghost with supposed ties to Nova of StarCraft: Ghost fame, provides Raynor with his expertise
• Dr. Ariel Hanson, a young scientist who is also Raynor’s love interest (until he runs into Kerrigan again, at least)

Blizzard is trying to create something new and exciting for the single player portion of the game. This type of game development is new to Blizzard as well, and it is not surprising that it is taking a long while for them to meet their high standards. By separating the process and releasing the multiplayer game with only a portion of the single player campaign, they are giving themselves the opportunity to perfect the game without delaying it further. The result should please most fans, and provide everyone with a great gaming experience – or so Blizzard, and everyone else, hope.

Finally, Blizzard have also released a few amazing in-game screenshots, featuring new tilesets and giving us a glimpse at the newest unit redesigns.

Here are some notable excerpts:

* A Thor guarding the entrance to the Terran stronghold, completely surrounded by lava

* Jackals, now called Hellions, roasting a huge pack of Zerglings to a crisp with a few fell swoops

* The Battlecruiser unleashes its new Missile Barrage on a few poor Zerg fliers

* The Medivac Dropship in action, healing Marauders, who come under attack by Roaches

* A group of Nighthawks, the new design for the old Nomad, come under attach by Archons, who have also received a small facelift

* A few more shots of the new Nighthawks, which seem to have borrowed their design from the more sleek and less square and bulky Protoss, alongside their deployed Auto-Turrets

That’s all for now. When the dust settles and all reports from our operatives are handed in, a complete gameplay follow-up piece will be published.

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Before we get into the gory gameplay, balance and multimedia details which were revealed during BlizzCon, two important and confirmed bits of information our readers should know about :

1) As confirmed by Mike Morhaime, President of Blizzard Entertainment, this year’s BlizzCon attendees receive StarCraft 2 beta keys.

No, StarCraft 2 Beta was not announced, and no planned schedule exists. However, it is reasonable to assume that Blizzard will make the beta available before 2009’s Blizzcon.

 2) During the StarCraft Gameplay Panel, it has been revealed that StarCraft 2 will be released as a game trilogy:

• Wings of Liberty (Terran)
• Heart of the Swarm (Zerg)
• Legacy of the Void (Protoss)

The trilogy is required only for the single player campaign, and the full-featured multiplayer (Battle.net) experience will be available to players who purchase even just one of the above. Splitting the game into 3 distinct products was an uneasy development decision, and according to Rob Pardo, made due to StarCraft 2’s giant single-player project scope, among other considerations.

 

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SC2Blog is going to Blizzcon, and so are 4 of our readers – we are running a last-minute 24 hour Old School competition, and the first to answer the quiz correctly, will receive Blizzcon entrance badges !

Questions :

1) It’s StarCraft B.net Season 2, you are on River Styx versus some Protoss player. A few minutes into the game, your worker line is decimated by a very surprising strategy – a Reaver that pops in and out of a shuttle.

 

Fill in the x’s in your opponent’s name :

x_COOL_xxx 

 

2) Name at least 3 members of the IN clan.

 

3) What was the name of the popular 20$ one-time fee service that WarCraft 2 games were played on?

 

4) What was the name of the league that put Tillerman on a trading card ?

 

5) What MIT student became a brilliant Protoss player, contributed greatly to StarCraft : BW’s balance, and later became a Blizzard employee based on the aforementioned achievements ?

Send your answers to Anderson AT Sc2blog.com, along with your name. The first four people to answer all questions correctly, will receive a confirmation, and their details will be sent to Blizzard.

Remember that you must not only answer all questions correctly, but also be able to attend to convention at Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California on October 10 and 11.

 

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As Blizzcon looms near, Blizzard’s key employees and community managers have been dishing out quite a bit of interviews and have re-iterated through almost every key aspect of StarCraft 2. Karune, Frank Pearce and others have commented on key issues such as MBS, the new Gas Mechanics, Single player and Account unification issues. However, the build used as the basis for all this coverage is none other than the WWI two-month old version of StarCraft 2.

Out of two dozen Interviews, we have picked the bits of info that shed additional light on what is already known about Blizzard’s RTS flagship.

Gameindustry Interview highlights :

So like Warcraft III, the replay functionality wasn’t something we contemplated from day one, it was an afterthought and wasn’t implemented as well as it could have been – so that’s something that we can do from day one for StarCraft II, which should be pretty cool.

 

We want to take the storytelling component in the single-player campaign to the next level, so we’re talking about branching missions, decisions on the gamer’s part in terms of the technology that’s available to them – there’s a lot of buzz on the Internet around social communities, and we’ve got those social communities around our games and we want to leverage that to bring those players closer together on Battle.net.

Blizzard is definitely aiming high with its next-generation unified gaming platform. Blizzard’s new account system, the online store and the Global Achievement system. Coupled with Frank’s “social” vision , these ingredients form a recipe for a unique and unprecedented gaming platform, bringing together gamers from very different genres under one massive roof. It should be noted however, that the social gaming niche is already being explored by services such as Raptr.

Q: Do you see lots of crossover between the different players of your games?

 

Frank Pearce: We did some research, and I can’t remember which direction we did it in – whether it was StarCraft players that played WoW or vice versa – and there’s a fair amount of overlap.

In a brief reply to  VG247, Pearce also confirmed one of the most obvious estimations one could make – StarCraft 2 is not planned to be released in 2008.

 

“This year? Like, 2008? Too much work to do,” Pearce told VG247.

He added: “We don’t have a specific release date in mind yet. We still have too much work to do.”

 

StarCraftWire, Incgamer Network’s new StarCraft site, manages to score quite an informative Q&A with Karune during the PAX expo

StarCraftWire.net: Will the Medivac Dropships be able to heal each other?

 
Karune: No, the Medivac Dropships will not be able to, however, SCVs can still be brought to them in order to repair them

 

StarCraftWire.net: Will it be possible to play Starcraft II at LAN Parties?

 
Karune: While the idea is still there, the main focus right now is Battle.net and Multiplayer to determine whether or not LAN will be available.

Unlike StarCraft: BW’s medics, Medivacs won’t be able to keep themselves in full health throughout the battles, and will require maintenance to be kept operational. We will be seeing more SCVs coming with every Terran infantry drop in order to keep these vital support units alive.
Considering the wave of coverage about Blizzards grand account unification plans, we can expect Blizzard to pay significantly more attention to the way players interact with their centralized systems, and implement only the minimal, if any, features for closed multiplayer environments.

StarCraftWire.net: When can we expect to see more updates to the Starcraft II official website, and what can we expect to see?

 
Karune: Not really sure when there will be an update to the site, although there may be misc. updates now and then for units, but otherwise waiting for closer to the Beta to really update the website.

 

StarCraftWire.net: Has there been a decision on what units will make it into the final game?

 
Karune: No real decision has been made really, we’re still trying to decide what units will make the cut, as you’ve seen that we dropped a couple units, one of our goals may be to try to keep the unit number closer to to that of the original Starcraft as we don’t want to have a unit be in the game and have it be useless to the battle.

 

 

StarCraftWire.net: What is Blizzard currently focusing on in Starcraft II?

 

 
Karune: Single player. Single player is still our primary focus right now, as it’s our main concern, afterwards, our focus will be on the multiplayer aspect which shouldn’t be too difficult, with the Editor being our final focus for Starcraft II.

Blizzard Developers’  StarCraft 2 single player efforts have long been mentioned, but it was the technical aspect that has really shown how much development and thought is invested in this somewhat overlooked aspect of StarCraft 2. SC2’s single player campaign was worth developing a separate and innovative 3D engine for, and the hype just keeps coming.

And interesting glimpse into the long term StarCraft Universe strategy is provided in this TotalVideoGames interview

VG: You talk about expanding the lore this time around in a similar manner as Warcraft II to Warcraft III; the next step after Warcraft III was World of Warcraft, so I have to ask – is this laying down the foundations for the often rumoured ‘Universe of StarCraft’?

 

 

Pearce: Anything we do to evolve the storyline in a franchise lays the foundation for whatever we want to do in the future. One of our goals with these franchises is to create rich, deep worlds that we can use to leverage for all sorts of things, whether it’s novels, comic books, games of different genres, or even movies. We’re also in the process of trying to have a Warcraft movie made.

 

Colayco: In recent months we’ve had a StarCraft board game introduced, and manga comics. So having a greatly fleshed out lore and background to a story lends itself to all these different projects.

These are not fantasy plans, either. The WarCraft movie is due to be released some time during 2009, and is produced by none other than the makers of 300 and The Dark Knight – Legendary Studios. Serious business, so to speak. Leveraging a rich and immersive Universe to build a multi-million fan base that follows it across multiple genres and platforms is perhaps the best and most challenging long-term strategy a VP of Product Development can embrace. 

We have read through many StarCraft interviews, articles and videos in order to extract the maximum updates from the recent news wave, which to remind you, is still based on the WWI build.

Brace for Blizzcon.

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Three new videos, all in high definition, have emerged from the Leipzig Gaming Convention. Although players were given the chance to play for 15 minutes at a time, so far, these short videos contain the only worthy StarCraft 2 gameplay footage from the event.

The first video shows a Protoss base, as it is being built, up close. Nothing majorly interesting happens, but one can’t help but notice how pretty it all looks.

The next one is the most interesting of the bunch. It features a Terran attack on a minimally-defended Zerg base.

The two defensive buildings in place, the Spine Crawlers, are quickly taken out by Siege Tanks in siege mode, and the reinforcements being hatched come too little and too late. The Swarm units are making their first appearance – these can be seen when the Terran army destroys the Spawning Pool at 0:47.

The Swarm are the same units that emerge from the Swarm Guardian’s new attack, and are basically StarCraft 2’s Broodling units. They are very fragile, deal little damage – 4 points at melee range, and die off by themselves after a few seconds. However, they serve to keep an attacking enemy busy for a short time, which can be precious under some circumstances. In this video, we can see another great benefit – they close the distance to the attacking Marines quickly, drawing Siege Tank fire to them, and this greatly damages the friendly Marines themselves.

The Swarm are only created when major buildings are destroyed – the more important the building is, the more of them will come out. This is very reminiscent of the Command & Conquer games, where basic, wounded infantry units have a chance of popping out of destroyed buildings.

The rest of the video shows the slow and painful death of the Zerg base by the remaining Terran Siege Tanks. Two Reapers make an appearance before the end, moving in on the mineral line, quickly mowing down Drones with their dual guns. It’s clear that these units were designed with devastating the enemy economy in mind, as evident by the amazing speed in which two of them completely obliterate all the workers.

The last video is another short one, with a few brief, interesting bits. A few seconds of the living, breathing Zerg base are seen, and the video quickly jumps to show Protoss units abusing an unhatched Zerg egg. Later, a group of Zealots and a Stalker are captured at the moment when they destroy a neutral barrier, moving on to attack another Zerg base.

Throughout the videos, and especially in the Zerg portions, it’s very easy to see how alive everything looks. The creep is constantly shifting underneathe its purple skin, buildings have protruding, constantly undulating tenctacles, and everything seems to breath. Everything in StarCraft 2 is always in motion, enhancing the sense of immersion,  yet such high level of passive activity might impede the player’s ability to focus on meaningful animations . Either way, it’s highly apparent, with each new demonstration, that the graphical aspects of StarCraft 2 are being constantly honed and adjusted, just like the gameplay.

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ATI – AMD’s “Advances in Real‐Time Rendering in 3D Graphics and Games Course“, during the highly technical SIGGRAPH 2008 conference, included a whole chapter dedicated solely to the implementation of the shader framework and the rendering techniques used in StarCraft 2.
As the name implies, the paper, which won’t be an easy read even for seasoned programmers, is a part of a course with the following prerequisites:

Prerequisites
This course assumes working knowledge of a modern real‐time graphics API like OpenGL or Direct3D, as well as a solid basis in commonly used graphics algorithms. The participants are also assumed to be familiar with the concepts of programmable shading and shading languages.

The StarCraft 2 engine definitely has a split personality, and for a good reason – there is a fully interactive, playable “Story Mode”, which requires a completely different form of real-time rendering. Rendering four high-resolution characters and a detailed static environment is quite unlike rendering two hundred units with hundreds of constantly changing lighting sources, but both of the above scenarios must be supported by the same engine.

Starcraft II is supported by an engine that in many ways has a split personality; during normal game play we typically render scenes from a relatively far away distance, with high batch counts, and a focus on action rather than details. At the same time, we really wanted to push our storytelling forward with Starcraft II, and this is where the game’s
“Story Mode” comes in. In this mode, the player generally sits back to take in the game’s rich story, lore and visuals, interacting with other characters through dialogues and watching actions unfold….

…story mode generally boasts lower batch counts, close‐up shots, and a somewhat more contemplative feel – all things more typical of a first person shooter.

All technical details aside, Chapter 5 includes one over-quoted statement which presumably reveales the GPU system requirements for StarCraft 2.

Yet we also wanted to utilize the full potential of any available hardware to ensure the game’s looks were competitive. This meant supporting a widerange of hardware, from ATI Radeon 9800/NVIDIA GeForce FX’s to the ATI Radeon HD 4800s and NVIDIA GeForce G200s, targeting maximum utilization on each different GPU platform.

The above statement effectively puts the minimum requirement bar at an ATI Radeon 9800 or at Nvidia’s GeForce 5 family – cards which have been introduced more than 5 years ago. Blizzard’s developers are staying loyal to their tradition of aiming for the mainstream and putting an emphasis on gameplay instead of intense system punishment.

Reports from the Game Convention in Leipzig are streaming in, but considering that the presented build is actually identical to the World Wide Invitational one, nothing major is expected to be either announced or discovered during the event.
IGN’s brief interview with Frank Pearce, Blizzard’s senior vice president of product development, hasn’t revealed much, but it did confirm that there is no super-secret  StarCraft 2 closed beta testing group, and that the beta is months away at best.

Currently, the testing for StarCraft II doesn’t include that many people. “It’s like a limited internal alpha phase,” says Pearce. “The development team that’s working on it is playing it and we’ve released some alpha builds to some other development teams internally and then the quality assurance department is also playing it.”

…We asked when the field of testers might expand to beyond Blizzard’s walls. “That’s months away,” said Pearce. “We still have to expand our internal alpha to include the rest of the organization, iterate on that feedback, and then we have to evaluate what kind of beta we need, whether we need one at all. There’s a pretty high level of certainty that we’re going to need a beta and then we have to decide if we want to do a host beta or a closed beta or both. So, months.”

Another interview was given to VideoGamer, with Frank’s line remaining consistent – things are going well, but the game is far from being being ready to be released.

VideoGamer.com: Which leads me nicely on to the next question which is when will they get the chance to play the game? Do you have even a rough ballpark for when the game’s gong to be released?

FP: Not really. We still have a lot of work to do. Anyone that’s had the opportunity to play it at any of the shows we’ve shown it at might think wow, this feels pretty good, this feels pretty complete, so why don’t they just release it? But we still have a lot of work to do on the Battle.net side and we still have a lot of work to do on the single-player campaign side. And until that stuff is done, the total package isn’t there.

The second part of the interview, however, is interesting, and sheds quite a lot of light on the development and decision making processes inside Blizzard. When the interview touches WoW and the possibility of a StarCraft MMO, Frank puts things in perspective by reminding that World of WarCraft has been in development since 1999, and says that bringing the StarCraft Universe to the same level won’t be easy.

VideoGamer.com You’ve made it difficult for yourself!

FP: Yeah, we’ve made it very difficult for ourselves and it’s an overwhelming thought! I’ve been there at Blizzard since we started on WoW and it’s been a very long and arduous journey. And to think about taking that journey again with the StarCraft franchise is a little scary! It makes an RTS like Starcraft 2 seem very achievable [laughs].

VideoGamer.com: Fans say a StarCraft MMO would be great, but they don’t see your side of things do they?

FP: The World of Warcraft team is 135 people. The StarCraft 2 team is 40 people.

During the interview, Frank also confirms that unlike StarCraft (which was ported to Nintendo 64), StarCraft 2 is not planned to be ported to any sort of console, mainly due to the game’s fast pace.

FP: It’s not something we’re specifically planning for right now. The development team is working on the game and the interface with the PC and the PC interface peripherals in mind.

BC: One barrier to entry there is just the speed of the game. If you look at how the RTS genre has evolved a lot of it has slowed things down, make things a little bit more, not a plodding place, but a little bit more of giving players more of a chance to evaluate. StarCraft is really action packed.

All in all, It looks like once again, StarCraft 2 fans are going to have to wait for BlizzCon for real news and information about the game.

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Blizzard hand picks the events which are used to showcase its pre-beta stage games, and it is not often that StarCraft fans are presented with the chance to play the current StarCraft 2 build. One such event, however, is about to take place on the 20th of August, 2008, in Leipzig.

An announcement on WoW Forums by an official Blizzard poster, confirms that 

We’re excited to be able to showcase some of Blizzard’s games at this year’s Games Convention in Leipzig from 21 to 24 August. We’ll be providing playable demos of StarCraft II(http://eu.starcraft2.com/) and….

This is not the first time that the Leipzig Games Convention is used by Blizzard to showcase StarCraft 2. Even though last year’s event was anything but exciting, the comfortable location provides a great excuse for European gamers to attend one of the fastest growing and important events in the industry.

The most important thing you should know about this event is… the pricing. This is the cheapest way to play StarCraft 2 – tickets go for as low as 4,50 Euros, and you can pre-order here.

Day ticket** 12,00 €
Day ticket, reduced rate* 8,50 €
Evening ticket (from 3.30 p.m.) 6,00 €
Day ticket, child rate  4,50 €
Day ticket parents (adults in the company of children) 8,50 €
Four-day ticket** 29,50 €

Children up to the age of five years have free admittance with the company of an adult.

* Concessions apply to schoolchildren, students, pensioners and the unemployed
** Cards in the advance booking available

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The official BlizzCon 2008 site is up. The site currently contains information about the panels that will take place during the convention, and will be used to release updates and information pertaining to the upcoming mega-event. Most importantly, however, this is where wishful fans can purchase tickets.
What is BlizzCon, you ask?

In addition to serving as a gathering place for the different Blizzard Entertainment gaming communities, BlizzCon will offer an array of activities, including discussion panels, hands-on playtime with upcoming games, tournaments, contests, and more.

The event is going to take place on Blizzard’s home turf, at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California on October 10 and 11. Until then, anxious enthusiasts may take a sneak peak at the swag bag that each visitor will receive upon entering the premises of the convention:

If you’ve ever been on the verge of finishing off a paladin, only to be foiled at the last second, you’ll appreciate the 16″ inflatable divine shield ball, complete with a paladin inside in the midst of hearthing away. Half of the goody bags handed out will contain the bubble-hearth ball, while the other half will have…

n

Frostmourne. The very name of Arthas’s runeblade strikes terror into hearts across Azeroth. Now it comes to you in a more convenient package, and you don’t even have to travel to Icecrown Glacier to get it. As you go about your daily activities, whether they be raising legions of the undead or just brooding on your throne, carrying this 48” inflatable Frostmourne will grant you an extra touch of sinister majesty.

Aside from the goody bag, fans will also have access to the on-site store, which will feature all sorts of Blizzard game-related products – Diablo health and mana stress balls, pandaren brewmaster bottle openers, Zerg Creep, and much more.

Of course, no Blizzard event will be complete without a Murloc, and this one is going to be special:

“ This one has developed a taste for speed, and sits astride an exclusive polar bear mount, waving a BlizzCon flag. It’s the perfect way to cruise Northrend in style.“

As previously announced, the tickets to BlizzCon 2008 are now available for purchase – starting today. Get them while they’re hot!

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BlizzCon 2008 is fast approaching, and tickets to the event will soon be available for purchase. Hot on the heels of Blizzard’s recent mega-event, the World Wide Invitational, BlizzCon is going to be another stage where Blizzard will exhibit the latest developments to its games. Hopefully, StarCraft 2 will get more exposure this time around, like it did on last year’s BlizzCon.

What else can be expected from the event?

In addition to serving as a gathering place for the different Blizzard Entertainment gaming communities, BlizzCon will offer an array of activities, including discussion panels, hands-on playtime with upcoming games, tournaments, contests, and more.

The event is going to take place on Blizzard’s home turf, at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California on October 10 and 11. For those who can’t make it or can’t afford the admission price, the event will be televised using DIRECTV pay per view in high definition.

“Meeting and interacting with our players at BlizzCon is always a great experience for us,” stated Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We’re also pleased to be working with DIRECTV this year to bring the show, for the first time, to those players who are unable to attend.”

Tickets for the convention will cost $100 each, and will be available for purchase on the official BlizzCon website. Pricing for existing DIRECTV customers and programming details will be available in the coming weeks from Blizzard Entertainment and DIRECTV.

For more details about the BlizzCon convention and a taste of last year’s event, check out the official BlizzCon 2007 page.

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The WWI event in Paris gave Blizzard a chance to showcase many of the new changes to StarCraft 2 in the latest build. Some of these, the most important ones, we’ve covered during the event, but there are still many interesting tidbits to discuss. Here, we will gather up all the remaining pieces and get a clearer view of the puzzle.

First up, this artistic presentation provides a direct comparison between Blizzard’s first attempt at some of the units of StarCraft 2 and their current look. It’s evident that Blizzard won’t rest until they’re all perfect, Blizzard-style. Pictures courtesy of SCLegacy.

Here are a couple of units that have been restyled to fit better with the StarCraft 2 theme:

* Click for Big

* Click for Big

This part of the presentation explains Blizzard’s art direction with StarCraft 2:

* Click for Big

Next in the presentation, a Q&A session. Here are the highlights:

Q: How are you going to make the nydus worm travel through different types of terrain (water, space, etc)?

A: We still have to work on that but in your current build there is no worm it functions as a nydus canal – creep here, creep there, it shows up there.

The Nydus worm previously acted like a normal transport unit, actually traversing the terrain to reach its target location. Now, it functions like the StarCraft 1 Nydus Canals – point, click, and the Worm pops out at its destination after a short delay.

Q: Are you still creating units?

A: Everytime we have a finished race we end up redoing half of it. I’m sure that once we’re in Beta you good people will show us the error of our ways and we’ll make new units to fix those. And of course we’ll end up patching it for ten years .

Q: Will the dark templar be changed – have they changed – especially considering all the flak you’ve received?

A: The dark templar is still a unit that we’re going to go over. What I’d like to do is go over it and make the old dark templar and maybe have people vote on it. I can’t promise that but it’s still in the process of being worked. And we’re still working on our cloaking mechanic so that will have an impact on the design as well.

Check out SCLegacy for the rest of the presentation and Q&A.

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Lucky visitors to the WWI event also got the chance to glimpse a new unit joining the Zerg roster: the Changeling. No picture is available for this new unit yet, but it did get the honor of a full exposition by Dustin “Cavez” Browder, lead game designer:

Overseers can create a Changeling by spending energy. The Changeling is a small unstable Zerg creature with timed life. When he gets near an enemy structure or unit he will change shape into the correct basic unit type and color to match that player. So if you get near a Blue Barracks you become a Blue Marine. If you get near a Red Stalker you become a Red Zealot, etc.

The Changeling is very vulnerable and has no attack. It cannot actually fight or take any damage, and is only meant to be a spy for the Zerg. The opposing player cannot control or even select the unit, making this attempt the only way to find out the Zerg agent amongst the ranks of real troops.

What it does for the game:

1) Gives the Zerg a fun way to scout (though really they already have plenty of scouting options). 2) Makes enemy players constantly fearful of all of their own units. Is THAT a Changeling?! What about THAT GUY!?

In live games it is pretty difficult to keep on top of the “Changeling Problem” if an enemy Zerg player is trying to sneak into your base. However when you do catch them it feels pretty good.

This is a cool concept for the Zerg, reminiscent of the Queen’s old “Parasite” ability, which served a very similar purpose. This ability/unit contributes to the Overseer’s role as an intelligence gathering unit for the Zerg, along with its extremely large sight radius, which increases the longer it stays in the same position, and its detection ability.

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Eurogamer.net have an extensive interview with a few of the top figures at Blizzard: Frank Pearce, the executive vice-president in charge of product development; Bob Fitch, the lead software engineer; and Sam Didier, senior art director. This interview won’t surprise any devout StarCraft 2 fan, but a few gems can be found:

Eurogamer: The in-game editing package in StarCraft – did that push the game’s development and community?

Bob Fitch: When I play other people’s games, one of the things I’m constantly saying to myself is, “Boy, I wish this game had X,” and every time I say it to myself I come back here and say, “we’re having that”. So every time I played a game and I said “I wish this game had a map-editor” I come back here and our game has a map editor. That’s how these things get into the games.

It’s no secret that one of Blizzard’s greatest strengths is gathering the best features from all games in a genre and applying them perfectly in the game that they create.

Eurogamer: You sold 1.5 million copies of StarCraft in the first year, over ten million copies of WOW so far. What keeps you going?

Frank Pearce: [Shouting along with Bob Finch] Because we want to play cool games!

Frank Pearce: One of the best ways to ensure that we get to play the games we want to, is to make them.

“Be the change that you want to see in the world” – Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

***

SC-Source have written a long, comprehensive review of each of the three StarCraft 2 races. These offer valued insight into the game as it currently plays. Here are a few interesting excerpts. There are many, so be sure to check out the rest at SC-Source.

Terran:

The Terran have been reimagined, and I think they are the most interesting race in Starcraft 2. They have retained their identity, but they have gained flexibility and adaptability that they were clearly lacking in the original. The new Terran are fast, mobile, and offensive.

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The real improvement the Marines have gained is the UI. The Marines clearly gain more from large groups than their Zerg or Protoss counterparts, the Zergling and the Zealot. Their ranged attacks make them extremely devastating in large groups, and now the UI allows you to manage these groups effectively.

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Reapers are the true guerrilla fighters of the Terran. With their ability to hop cliffs, no base is safe from raid. At the WWI, most players were still leaning on original Starcraft build strategies, and because of this, 90% of players were wide open for a Reaper attack in the earl-mid game.

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The Siege Tank has not changed at all since the original Starcraft. Due to this lack of change, I don’t feel that it factors in well with the new Terran feel of guerrilla fighting. Siege Tanks are great for base defense, however that is about it. Largely, I ignored this unit in many of my games.

Zerg:

The Zerg are very frightening, everything about the makes you feel like you really are controlling a massive swarm. Visually, they have done some amazing things. First off the creep. They have changed the way creep looks from the gritty purple mass to a purple slime that appears to ooze and move. When creep expands they have changed it from adding blocks of creep to an effect that appears to be creep tendrils stringing out, corrupting the land. It makes everything else seem much more alive.

The buildings of the Zerg have also gotten a great overhaul. They all ooze and pulsate. Its almost to the point where you get dizzy from all the constant movement on the screen. The Zerg really are a living race now, instead of just having ugly buildings on strange purple stuff.

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Roaches are your tanks before you get Ultralisks, so for the majority of games, they will be taking the damage. The Roaches however, are not perfect. They lack a speed upgrade which means that unless you spend a lot of effort micro’ing your units they will blaze right past your Roaches and go straight into the fight, negating the Roach’s entire role.

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The Baneling is a unit that I feel has been over hyped. It is fun to watch and interesting indeed, but beyond basic harassment, it falls short. The Baneling is too weak to send into battle, and although it does do massive damage, it is extremely hard to deliver effectively.

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The Ultralisk is extremely powerful. Its new cleaving attack makes it so that it can dispatch mass amounts of units. It has a huge amount of life and armor which makes it a great front runner for your Hydralisks and Lurkers.

Protoss:

Once your base is up and running, Zealots are a must. Considering there is no goons anymore, pumping Zealots seems to be the only viable strat after the first gateway.

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Warping works great and is really efficient, especially used with MBS. Just assign all your Warpgates to a group, and once your Psi Field is set up you’re just making new units in 5 seconds, straight into your enemy’s workers. By the time he cleans up that attack, the cooldown is already over and you can Warp some more!

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Concerning the Mothership, it’s pretty much useless. It comes with all its abilities fully upgraded, but since you build it from the Nexus, you’d have to go all the way across the map to get into your enemy base. Which wouldn’t be a problem really, if it wasn’t so ridiculously slow. It’s probably slower than a Reaver in BW, except you can’t load the Mothership into a transport unit to make it go faster.

***

Along with the screenshots we posted previously, three new ones have appeared on StarCraft2.com:

Epic battles in all three!

***

The OnlineWelten has conducted an interview with Rob Pardo, Executive Vice President of Blizzard. Rob is mainly asked about the development process of Blizzard’s latest games and Blizzard’s game creation philosophy. Of note is this answer:

OnlineWelten: A few months ago you offered a job on the official Blizzard webpage, considering a next-gen MMO. A community manager added that it’s an unannounced title. Is there any information? Is Diablo 3 the next-gen MMO?

 

 Rob Pardo: No, obviously, since it’s not an MMO! We have another dev-team, that’s …

 

 OnlineWelten: So there is still one project, which is … ?

 

 Rob Pardo: Yeah, there is still one unknown project!

World of WarCraft was announced on September, 2001, and released a little more than three years later, on November of 2004. Four years later, what are the chances that Blizzard is NOT working on a sequel?

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