Now that the NDA has been lifted, sc2gg.com has put up their article detailing what they saw at Blizz HQ.
The press conference started off with two games of private Battle Reports in a small theatre in the Blizzard building, with Dustin Browder and Rob Simpson casting live from the third row, with Moletrap, Diggity, and Psyonic Reaver sitting right in front of them in row two. One of the major foci of this presentation was to demonstrate all of the ridiculously awesome features that will be available to observers in Starcraft 2 games.
The folks at Blizzard have long emphasized their hope and expectation that Startcraft 2 will be a grand eSport. And to that end the developers are making every effort to concoct a game not only a challenging and competitive game but still agreeable to spectators. But what good would the World Cup be without a stadium to watch in or cameras to capture the action? At the recent press conference at Blizzard Headquarters, the development and eSports teams unveiled the full array of tools that will be available in Starcraft 2 for observing, analyzing, commentating, and studying the yet unborn art of playing it.
Note that images are used to illustrate various features mentioned in this article are not actual gameplay images. They have been taken from Blizzard Battle Reports or improvised on our own to give a visual example, but the functions seen in the Battle Reports were unfinished and the actual game functions will look a lot cooler and easier to read.
On June 29 2009 16:14 MaD.pYrO wrote: Didn't find this article very worthwhile tbh as there were no real new information involved
Dude. What the fuck do you expect when they tell us: "Hey! Come on over and we'll show you the new B.net and Single Player!" Then we show up and they go: "Oh gee well, we found this new bug in the B.net server so we don't want to show you it. Same goes for the Single Player. OH BUT LOOK! New Obs Mode!! Ohhh shiney!!"
I mean. I'm glad they showed us that because I am totally stoked for it but don't criticize us for giving lack of information when we were given nothing.
On June 29 2009 16:14 MaD.pYrO wrote: Didn't find this article very worthwhile tbh as there were no real new information involved
Dude. What the fuck do you expect when they tell us: "Hey! Come on over and we'll show you the new B.net and Single Player!" Then we show up and they go: "Oh gee well, we found this new bug in the B.net server so we don't want to show you it. Same goes for the Single Player. OH BUT LOOK! New Obs Mode!! Ohhh shiney!!"
I mean. I'm glad they showed us that because I am totally stoked for it but don't criticize us for giving lack of information when we were given nothing.
But then why did they embargo this pathetic trickle of information?
On June 29 2009 16:14 MaD.pYrO wrote: Didn't find this article very worthwhile tbh as there were no real new information involved
Dude. What the fuck do you expect when they tell us: "Hey! Come on over and we'll show you the new B.net and Single Player!" Then we show up and they go: "Oh gee well, we found this new bug in the B.net server so we don't want to show you it. Same goes for the Single Player. OH BUT LOOK! New Obs Mode!! Ohhh shiney!!"
I mean. I'm glad they showed us that because I am totally stoked for it but don't criticize us for giving lack of information when we were given nothing.
Then why the hell did they have a godamn NDA, jeez.
we kind of already knew this information from the battlereports, which go waaaay back into early alpha builds. only thing noteworthy to me is replay rewind but even that was leaked before the NDA began.
I have no idea why they had us sign an NDA considering they didn't show us much. Maybe they didn't want the European and Korean sites to hear that Blizzard had nothing to show them and to still make them fly out to California?
On June 29 2009 16:14 MaD.pYrO wrote: Didn't find this article very worthwhile tbh as there were no real new information involved
No real new information? Rewindable replays? That's pretty huge.
Also I heard that they were supposed to see the new Battle.net and single player features in person, but Battle.net broke the day the reporters were supposed to go there. Too bad, really, but oh well, it happens.
On June 29 2009 16:14 MaD.pYrO wrote: Didn't find this article very worthwhile tbh as there were no real new information involved
Dude. What the fuck do you expect when they tell us: "Hey! Come on over and we'll show you the new B.net and Single Player!" Then we show up and they go: "Oh gee well, we found this new bug in the B.net server so we don't want to show you it. Same goes for the Single Player. OH BUT LOOK! New Obs Mode!! Ohhh shiney!!"
I mean. I'm glad they showed us that because I am totally stoked for it but don't criticize us for giving lack of information when we were given nothing.
He was criticizing the amount of new information in the article, not the quality or people who wrote it.
Rep rewind seems cool. It was so damn annoying to have to fast forward through 25 minutes of replay to see 1 thing you missed.
On June 29 2009 16:14 MaD.pYrO wrote: Didn't find this article very worthwhile tbh as there were no real new information involved
No real new information? Rewindable replays? That's pretty huge.
Also I heard that they were supposed to see the new Battle.net and single player features in person, but Battle.net broke the day the reporters were supposed to go there. Too bad, really, but oh well, it happens.
That tidbit isn't worth a 1-week NDA. It's not like they wanted to keep people from ruining a big press release about how they have a new replay feature.
If Battle.net2 broke, they should've dropped the NDA.
On June 29 2009 16:14 MaD.pYrO wrote: Didn't find this article very worthwhile tbh as there were no real new information involved
No real new information? Rewindable replays? That's pretty huge.
Also I heard that they were supposed to see the new Battle.net and single player features in person, but Battle.net broke the day the reporters were supposed to go there. Too bad, really, but oh well, it happens.
Yeah, a few of these things, like the rewind replays and the FP views I wasn't aware of/paying attention to before, so some of this is new, at least to me.
@Psyonic_Reaver: Looking forward to your Q&A tomorrow!
liked the video at least, especially the micro against the baneling mob. Am i the only one who thinks the spine-crawlers attack animation seems weird. Imagine 3-5 of those defending a location and shooting across the screen like that.