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In the spirit of not slacking off, I interviewed Nazgul and took it as an opportunity to walk down memory lane and (lovingly) make fun of Testie's hair.
+ Show Spoiler +
-Nazgul: The Modern Age. Nazgul talks about SC2, and specifically about the future of e-sports and StarCraft's place in it. There is no doubt in his mind about whether or not the game will be a success, only whether it will reach the heights franchise fans have long sought.
One question: Who would you like to see interviewed/profiled next? I've already asked a few people and would love to hear some new names suggested. And if you suggest someone who isn't a TL poster, feel free to drop me a hint as to how to contact them so I don't have to go on any search. But if that's not available, I will search.
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Nice read, I really hope that Blizzard will fix the game...
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Yep Nazgul is right on the money totaly agree with him
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cool interview.
Make Sc2 Harder!!
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I'm not sure he's right about the equalising skill part (then again he should know better than me)
but except for maybe that part I wholeheartedly agree with everything he says.
@OP since you had a little flashback introduction I feel like you should have mentioned Nazgul's own pro gamer carreer as well, not just elkys and grrrs.
Other people I'd like to see interviewed would be Hotbid and Nony.
Thx for your efforts!
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Nice interview. Interesting insights from Nazgul. I share many of his views.
We've played a couple of interesting games, but it's always been about build orders, unit composition, backstabbing and timings making the most difference rather than micro.
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Lovely interview 
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On March 04 2010 21:09 LaLuSh wrote:
Nice interview. Interesting insights from Nazgul. I share many of his views.
We've played a couple of interesting games, but it's always been about build orders, unit composition, backstabbing and timings making the most difference rather than micro.
This comes up time and again but I don't understand why the logical conclusion is that the game will have a low skill ceiling as opposed to: people are still developing their understanding of the game and aren't playing very well yet. Or to put it another way, why do people expect micro to play a huge part when they are still getting to grips with the other elements of the game?
EDIT - Apologies for jumping in like that by the way since it's not the topic of the thread and it was indeed a well-written and interesting interview.
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because you're doing a lot less than before and that by definition lowers the ceiling
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On March 04 2010 21:52 Audiohelper123 wrote:
because you're doing a lot less than before and that by definition lowers the ceiling
That's the crux of it though, are they doing less because there really is less to do or because they are still learning the game and have yet to begin pushing the boundaries of what is possible?
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Here's a spelling mistake you might want to fix.
"It’s likely the A-team Koreans are continuing to play StarCraft 1 as that’s what they are goot at and receive high salaries for. "
All in all, I definitely agree with what Liquid'Nazgul says about starcraft 2 with they way things are looking like right now. I really doubt Blizzard will fix this. Or maybe some mods to make the game harder can like become the standard, than the original game itself. That's the only solution I see to the current problem, is to take the solution into our own hands and mod sc2 to make it harder.
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Russian Federation1613 Posts
On March 04 2010 21:20 Bane_ wrote:
why do people expect micro to play a huge part when they are still getting to grips with the other elements of the game?
Because people see for probable future. When people will understand the game (~half year), the game will be empty without micro and positional tactics.
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Agreed alot with him - although i didn't play sc1 alot, if at all i always watched alot of VOD's over youtube and such. The element of "wow that move was SICK" has pretty much evapourated - so many things have disappeared such as "hit and run micro" - it's almost better not to press anything as everything fires/hits too fast anyway that it's less beneficial, "auto surrounds" - this is probaly the most ridiculous thing i've seen in terms of lack of effort for such a reward.
I just dislike the little things that seem to remove effort from the game, but rather enforce you to do nothing - such as the 2 "moves" listed above, and there is so much more that i won't even go into detail right now. Units do too much damage, or just fire too fast that the little moments that leave you in awe are replaced with, "oh i can do that too", i dislike it.
Damage just happens too fast, and positioning doesn't mean as much as it should.
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From a casual players standpoint I don't agree with some points. I played starcraft 1 from the very first day until wc3 came out. I have never watched korean tv and was no progamer, but I was happy to see that the AI was improved for wc3. Learning how to properly move the starting workers to the crystals needed some training, but after that almost everyone learned how to do it. So the only thing left was the feeling of annoyance. There were many things you needed to do to avoid the flaws of the AI in sc1. The pathfinding was gruesome for example.
Anyways I'm sure there will be enough flaws in SC2, that the progamers will find and (ab)use in the future. It's just to early to judge it imo. It took years until sc1 became the game it is now and I only played those first years. It took years for people to come up with those 'moves'.
I never liked wc3 as much as sc1, but I felt that with the reign of Korea over Starcraft it left no room for the casual player. Although the source of that problem was the not yet introduced matchfinding system in battle.net.
Now with the lack of AI errors in SC2 I'm sure that the progamer that are creative and still willing to learn will prove to the rest what makes them better. The ones that rely too much on their past efforts and won't fully commit to the new game will play in B-Teams or stay with sc1.
Side note to the interview: The gamers who are equally good will win in 50%. That's a coinflip, but isn't this the same thing in sc1?
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On March 04 2010 21:20 Bane_ wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2010 21:09 LaLuSh wrote:
Nice interview. Interesting insights from Nazgul. I share many of his views.
We've played a couple of interesting games, but it's always been about build orders, unit composition, backstabbing and timings making the most difference rather than micro. This comes up time and again but I don't understand why the logical conclusion is that the game will have a low skill ceiling as opposed to: people are still developing their understanding of the game and aren't playing very well yet. Or to put it another way, why do people expect micro to play a huge part when they are still getting to grips with the other elements of the game? EDIT - Apologies for jumping in like that by the way since it's not the topic of the thread and it was indeed a well-written and interesting interview.
Every step up the tech tree is such a hard counter to the lower tiers. I dunno but it feels as if there aren't any soft counters. If someone starts producing a certain unit countering your lower tier unit it just rolls your units so fast it's not even a challenge.
It's like they gave every unit ridiculous amounts of a specific attribute so it could be called a "counter". They gave roach 200000 armor, hydra +20000 damage against certain armor types, Marauder a slowing attack and +10000 against certain armor types etc etc.
The result of it all is that it makes certain units obsolete after a point in the game. Lings deal like 1 damage to roaches, what's the point in using them? 5 roaches literally take out 30 lings with 3-4 if not all of them surviving.
In Starcraft you need to micro to make it work. No unit deals +over9000 damage to a certain unit type. And if they do (let's take vulture vs zeal as an example), they require alot of attention and micro, and they're very fragile units if mismicroed.
Mismicro in SC2? No problem. It's a hard counter anyway the opponent's units deal 0 damage.
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At BlizzCon 08, blizzard showed a clip of SC2 where the zerglings actually swarmed instead of moving in a single line. Everyone cheered, but this one kid at the back yelled "THIS IS BS. ZERLINGS ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO SWARM. YOU RUINED SC2". He got escorted out. True story.
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With good hit-n-run micro can a marauder beat pre-charge zealots/slow zerglings assuming it can slowdown all of them?
I'd test it myself but got no beta key! From the streams it just looks like it could allow some vulture-esque micro.
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On March 05 2010 00:10 Pupsilein wrote:
Side note to the interview: The gamers who are equally good will win in 50%. That's a coinflip, but isn't this the same thing in sc1?
example a: equally good players battle it out, the player whose micro/macro slips first will probably lose. one game deciding aspect very prominent in X. bo advantages/disadvantages are another aspect/dimension which decides games based on strategy/luck/calculation.
example b: equally good players battle it out, the player who got the superior bo / counter to bo of the other will probably win as micro and macro mistakes are not as heavily punished as in other instances (thx to AAI = auto AI). the aspect of the right choice of bos and respective counters is the prominent game deciding factor in Y.
you may assign sc:bw and sc2 to X and Y
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Nice read.
I do not agree with him stating that build order is a "coin-flip" thing. Especially after saying "if everyone plays perfectly...". Come on - if you play perfectly, how can build order be a "coin-flip" thing? You would always get the perfect build order for the situation...
So either it is not possible to play perfectly (which means the players skill is never high enough in order to not matter) - which I believe is the case, or build order is actually a skill, and it is not static. You have to scout, see what the opponent is building and adapt, and defy his important tech by harassment. How is that not skill?
One thing I am worried about is that the units in SC2 cross distances so fast, it almost makes it possible to roll a huge "ball" across the map and get everywhere in time. That surely decreases depth and need for multitasking.
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On March 05 2010 00:36 bendez wrote:
At BlizzCon 08, blizzard showed a clip of SC2 where the zerglings actually swarmed instead of moving in a single line. Everyone cheered, but this one kid at the back yelled "THIS IS BS. ZERLINGS ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO SWARM. YOU RUINED SC2". He got escorted out. True story.
:o we'll see what blizzard does. It's the same with world of warcraft where at some point they just wanted to make more money and thereby making the game more casual.
I hope for the hardcore players they actually fix tons of little things in this game and make it much much better.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://www.mymym.com/gfx/testie6.jpg)
