EPTI typed the key I got with haste to check wheter it was taken or not and I made a grin so wide it felt like my face would break when it was an actual working beta key. With haste I started the download and asked from one of my friend how long it would take with patches and whatnot, he's reply was "varies, there's one patch though that takes ages". Some few hours later everything was done... the gates were flung open and the menu splashed to the screen.
After going through the initial check up on the features and stuff, I hopped on to play placement matches to see how I would fare. I thought I'd place gold or platinum depending how fast I could learn all this new stuff and wheter my initial skill from SC:BW had rusted over time, after all I hadn't played for over half a year.
Very first match and I was nervous... what if I get shot down for not knowing every unit's gimmicks? Will I get a really strong opponent so early? ... I ended up underwhelmed, my opponent was protoss (mind you I play random currently) and I was terran, since I scout some two early gates from him I prepare my wall and produce some marines while checking the tech tree tab and units.
Soon after I was beginning to wonder where his initial rush was and went scouting, he had built his third gate and was setting up a forge with no zealots, stalkers nor sentries in sight. So I was confused and decided to just go and wreak some havoc on him. Long story short my initial group of marines walked straight past his warping mass of cannons and killed his workers, he said #"%& or something and left.
"What was that supposed to be?" I asked myself and hopped on to next match, this time facing against Terran as Zerg, I decided to go some 10 pool variation and basically walked into one marauder with my initial 6 lings, taking it out with some lazy micro I proceeded into his base and he just left without trying. "Will every match be like this?" I pondered while going for the next one.
This time it was Protoss and I ended up as Terran, I decided that I'd scout a lot more to see whate level of play he'd show. This time it seemed a bit more solid early one gate opening, he produced one zealot to chase my scout and I thought I might as well retreat to closest watchtower to see wheter he'd come with some sort of early harass or something.
It didn't take long from him to send his own scout, my watcher scv saw it and I intercepted it with 2 marines, he barely saw my wall and probably thought I was playing really safe. Which at that point I was, preparing another barracks and setting up a tech lab and so on.
He, however never tried to scout more nor sent any troops to check on my expansion spot so I took my watcher scv and sent it to scout, only to reveal his just finishing fast expansion with two pylons.
Seeing this my mind instantly flashed, 600 minerals spent on fast expansion, no troops seen -> punish him! Kill him! Now! my hands became slightly sweaty as I lowered my supplies down rallied my barrackses to his expansion, took a group of marines with few scvs and proceeded to execute traditional-ish bunker rush. He noticed my scout soon and started to pump zealots, but by the time they reached my forces the bunker was almost up and his minor force was dealt with minimal losses.
When my first reinforcements entered his expansion I thought "damn, this expansion isn't enough if he plays like that I can just raid his main" and so I started my fight with lining few bunkers from ramp towards mineral line and continuous harass with my current task force of marines and marauders. His zealots were in trouble and soon afterwards he said "you have to defend a lot in this game right? so many t1 rushes" and left.
At this point I started to question wheter the rest of matches would jump up in difficulty a lot, since I had fared so well so far, at least I'd attempt to catch up with my friend who had scored gold, his words of the major increase in skill in later matches haunted me, but it could have been his bad luck I thought.
Fourth game, "maybe I should play this safe" I mumbled while pressing the quick match to start, it matched me against Terran, this time giving me Zerg (random favors zerg for me, and it's my slightly weaker race than others) so I go with the 10 pool variation (for those interested it's 10pool, 9drone, 10lord, pop 3 lings and queen the moment pool finishes you'll have just the money if you only scouted with lord) and manage to rush his wall. For my suprise there was not a single marine, but instead a just finished tech lab attached to barracks, I desperately claw through the depots and he tries to bring scvs to repair. "It's either reaper or marauder though the map seems to favor reaper play" I ponder while fighting against time to get there and intercept it.
Eventually I break through the wall just when reaper pops out, his few scv's go crazy on my lings but didn't try to block them from reeaching the reaper, resulting in everybody dead save for one weak scv who goes back to gather. At this point of time I had already massed a batch of drones and set all new larvae after that into lings since my wall breaking seemed to work and the moment his second reaper popped out my lings entered his base, ripped this newborn reaper apart and he quits.
I relaxed, I had ranked at least the same as my friend and had a break. Later on I returned to test my skill and prehaps luck on the dreaded final confortation, prehaps the match would be against some far better since I managed so easily this far? And that is exactly what happened.
Final placement match of 1v1, I ended up once again as Zerg (random is dedicated to make me learn to play Z too apparently) and my opponent was Terran. I continued with my previous opening to test the initial skill of my enemy and he greeted me with a scout that I hunted down near his base and met his friend "wall-in", shortly put I put some pressure but he actually produced marines and tried to come out a few times with scv or two marines only to get driven back or slaughtered by my 8 to 12 ling wanna-be-containment.
This was the point of my downfall, I got greedy expecting him to fly his CC or push out with small force to soon take his expansion, he had few marines to keep out my overlords from ever seeing anything in his main and I expanded thinking of overwhelming him. After I had my expansion up and some roaches and drones along with lair on the way he scans me and pushes out with whole lot of upgraded marines, few hellions and medivacs and rushes straight at me. I managed to pop up few roaches started to set up a bunch of spine crawlers and so on, but his forces gunned down my initial roaches (damn medvacs you make marines actually tough) and caught some of spines before they finished ending the game right there.
That's how I ended in Gold league. The few games I have managed so far were easy compared to this Terran I met.
Shortly put similar thing happened in 2v2 quick matches, except most of them ended up a lot more challenging due meeting every other game a team and most of the time these teams were ZZ. Despite that I managed to land in Gold on 2v2 too, some of the matches were a lot more interesting but they were horribly long too. (Some games resulted into complete or almost tech tree usage, though that might be partially because most players played really carefully).
After the placement match I heard a whole lot of my friends had managed to get their hands on beta keys too, though most of them haven't played much RTS or have been mostly playig rather casually. So I decided to spectate their games and try to give tips and teach them what I know so far.
They learned fast, most of them were from low copper to low bronze in skill initially and now I think pretty much everyone can break at least bronze and have a chance at silver (one of them landed on silver after finally playing his placement matches, most of them have yet to play theirs).
Most of them who finished 2v2 placements landed on bronze, but that's expected as the random partners and opponents vary a lot on skill.
While I'm trying to rework on my rusty skills and aim to at least low platinum I'm simultaneously trying to help them to climb towards me and prehaps even past to get more fun games with them, as when they started I could take them easily in 1v2, but currently it should be in their favor. They mostly play games against each other while finally completing placements and tasting the ladder to experience and learn all kinds of builds and strategies.
There's still one (possibly two, depending wheter we can hook this one) friends that lack a key and since their pre-order is really uncertain (as in wheter to buy the game or not) I'm pretty much sitting around and waiting for Blizzard to some day pop a friend key to me or some of my other friends, while entering few raffles and contest for possible faster solution.
After this huge wall of text I can only say I have enjoyed the beta a lot, it differs from it's prequel in both good and bad but it's certainly a very enjoyable game of its own.
Now I'm only waiting for them to release bigger maps and the 3v3 and 4v4 modes so we can once in a while (should most of us be online at same time) wreak some havoc while chatting in skype.
