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Reading the Heart of the Swarm preview in the featured news has got me thinking about a lot of the points mentioned. It seems like they are still deep in development, and tbh I have no idea why they decided to rush out this preview, other than to let people know that they are actively working on it. From what I read though, I don't expect it to be released for at least 6 months, but more realistically like 12 months.
1) They mentioned new units. It looks like the overseer is going to be out, with some other kind of scouting mechanic tied in to some other cool unit. Overseers really are limited I guess, with spawning changelings not being too popular in high level play (though I like doing this a lot myself), and gooping up production buildings hardly worth the risk of losing your overseer.
They also said that some other units will be removed because having too many "waters down" the roles of each of the individual units. I'm not sure I agree with that. I guess there are only so many different abilities you can have.
In the video the single player shows upgraded banelings, one of which gives the baneling a chance of splitting into many smaller banelings. Seems cool, but I don't see that this would be a significant change in the mechanic. There was also a purple baneling and something that looks like a yeti, probably a melee unit. Oh, also some upgraded zerglings are seen (Swarmlings/Raptors)
I guess that as long as you can continue to play WoL then it's ok if they remove units for HoTS.
2) They are introducing a marketplace where you'll actually be able to buy/sell custom games and maps for real money. To me this seems a little bit like wishful thinking. Clearly Blizzard are planning on releasing some paid-for custom games themselves to try to cash in on this market. Custom map-packs a-la Call of Duty are also an option, which I actually think people would go for (as long as you can play them on ladder). This is an area I haven't really made up my mind on yet so I'm interested to hear what people say. I personally can't see myself buying stuff, but I do buy DLC on other platforms so I guess it's a proven model.
3) As for the single player, it looks like it is going to be based around Kerigan with the empahsis very much with her as a hero unit. She clearly has RPG elements where you can choose to upgrade her abilities as you wish. Protoss are seen in the preview, but in the interview it is made clear that most of the action is going to be vs Zerg and Terran opposition. In all honesty I'm not too bothered about the single player campaign. I'll play it out of curiosity, but it's job is to attract brand new players, which I'm sure it will.
If you have the inclination I recommend reading the article in the featured news section, this is just the condensed information with some of my own thoughts.
 
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"will be" is much too strong right now. they think about it. so far i feel like nothing is settled and they just wanted to show some HotS stuff to keep us excited 
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I am not that excited at all. Since this is just too early in the production, Blizzard just made some stuff up and throw it to the fans. I doubt many of this will make it into the later product.
We have to wait untill Blizzcon to see whats really going on.
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My reaction is that Blizzard is years away from realeasing HotS
They dont know how their bringing Kerigan back to life in the story
They dont know what units are going to be in the single or multiplayer
They dont know how many missions their going to make for single player
Ill be happy if im wrong though.
PS: Biggest reaction, I dont give a shit about single player
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Did kerrigan get stasis and spawn broodling? Anti seige tanks ftw.
Hoping they get put into multi player. Toss gets some sorta way to not use sentries but get arbiters instead. Queens get spawn broodling.
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I suspect that although Blizzard acknowledged that the overseer was largely useless (though day9 may disagree here), the will most probably address this issue not by simply removing it, but by either giving it new abilities, changing its tech/resource costs, or completely revamping it.
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On May 31 2011 21:11 CortoMontez wrote:
I suspect that although Blizzard acknowledged that the overseer was largely useless (though day9 may disagree here), the will most probably address this issue not by simply removing it, but by either giving it new abilities, changing its tech/resource costs, or completely revamping it.
I hope that doesn't mean that they'll only fix in a year
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On May 31 2011 20:56 noob styles wrote:
My reaction is that Blizzard is years away from realeasing HotS
They dont know how their bringing Kerigan back to life in the story
They dont know what units are going to be in the single or multiplayer
They dont know how many missions their going to make for single player
Ill be happy if im wrong though.
PS: Biggest reaction, I dont give a shit about single player
you see kerrigan in her ghost outfit in the teaser trailer :O
and it seems that nova's just hunting her now. So they're being treated as renegades or nova's group is simply some sort of tac squad sent out to assassinate her regardless. Given the situation, of course raynor goes out of his way to protect her etc.
Could be interesting, i dont expect anything moving or epic to occur though
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The sad part is the campaign is going to feel like undoing most of the anti zerg stuff done in WoL. Looks like they're going for the amnesia-thing story wise ("I dont remember..did I create you?'). So we might actually see some terran missions when she was a ghost, and also some zerg missions while she was the head of the swarm.
The zerg are slowly losing their image of disgusting evil creatures, with them introducing these extra humanoid like characters. The overmind and cerebrates were menacing ,even though they were nothing more than an eyeball and a blobs. I will still playthough the campaign, but losing interest in the story portion of starcraft, which was a major part of the lure for me pre WoL.
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Canada13403 Posts
Multiplayer Beta will exist. Im am happy even if the beta is far away the fact it will exist is amazing. Also blizzcon we will see multiplayer for the first time. Its gonna be amazing
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On May 31 2011 21:11 CortoMontez wrote:
I suspect that although Blizzard acknowledged that the overseer was largely useless (though day9 may disagree here), the will most probably address this issue not by simply removing it, but by either giving it new abilities, changing its tech/resource costs, or completely revamping it.
I wouldn't expect too much depth from Blizzard, they only seem concerned with the fact that the Overseer isnt "kewl" enough. They're probably going to make it explode on death or give it the planet cracker ability 
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The most interesting part of all that to me was the insight into their story telling methodology regarding Tassadar. Tassadar's appearance prompted a mini-backlash amongst fans because of how not only unrealistic it was, but also stereotypical (Star Wars comes to mind). When asked about it, they said:
in WoL we were expressing a pretty radical concept to Zera'tul; the fact that the overmind was not what he thought that it was, and we needed someone that he would really believe, someone that he would buy into almost immediately - we didn't have a cutscene or a ton of time to get it across, and it was believable to us that he could still be out there in one form or other. The character need to immediately allow Zera'tul to believe and understand what was going on, without a lot of backtalk.
Basically: they needed to explain how the zerg were actually just the forsaken from Warcraft, and needed a trustworthy character to convey this message. It didn't seem completely impossible to them that Tassadar was alive, so they go with him. Who writes these games?!?! Is there no pre planned narrative whatsoever after 10 years? This, and the fact that "they're not really sure how kerrigan gets to char, they'll let the game designers figure it out" has completely shattered any hope I had that in the coming games the story would turn around for the better. Fuck Blizzard. This is lazy and abusive. At least the multi-player is pretty cool.
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Yea, although it doesn't upset me quite as much as some other people around here, the story for SC2 (especially compared to SC1) is fairly underwhelming and very VERY cliche. No skin off my back , I play for the competitive multiplayer aspect. The campaign is fun but the story has gotten so predictable that I found myself rolling my eyes at all the big 'revelations' (zerg being enslaved, and whatnot).
It's a shame, but at least the gameplay is there in spades.
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