At one point people thought that Nydus worm was going to be reinvigorated/buffed for HotS multiplayer, then people heard that it would be campaign-only; but now that HotS is released, they aren't even in HotS! As far as I know the model in that video just seems to appear for a boss and I think also a 'neutral' creep in evolution mission. At least they used the model for SOMETHING, but isn't it kinda disappointing Blizzard didn't do anything with the Nydus worm for HotS?
I'll go off-topic a bit here by stating a bit of a lamenting rant about why I'd rather have a different change —like nydus worm change— than the swarm host. Personally I wasn't ever much of a fan of the Swarm host. Zerg doesn't really need tank units when they already have zerglings and roaches, and another ranged attacker isn't that useful when they have hydralisks and roaches (and broodlords), and they don't really need a unit-spawning siege unit when they have the Brood Lord. Aside from that, locusts —while obviously useful— have issues where they don't work well as siege units when enemies have units that can regenerate and/or units that deal lots of damage. All protoss units have shields which regenerate, all terran units can be repaired or healed easily, and roaches can regenerate easily with burrow, making locusts very limited in their siege use if the opponent micros/repairs. Units that were already frequently used and very strong against zerg (Planetary fortress, bunker, siege tank, colossus) do excellent against the locusts and make such units even more standard.
The current state nydus worm is in also overlaps with something— overlords with ventral sacs. While one might think that it's a reason to not work more on the the nydus worm, if the nydus worm mechanics were changed enough it would make the two more distinct. Adding attacking nydus worms or creep paths (but not necessarily those options) are some ways of freshening things up and making them more useful and diverse.
I don't even know if this topic is worth discussing though, since obviously HotS is out and Blizzard isn't going to make any more big changes.
I think you summed it up in your last line. It is unfortunately not worth discussing because this will never happen, at least not until LotV. Even then, I don't foresee a huge nydus change. They're just too situational (which I think would be cool if they weren't, but no one uses them for a reason I feel).
Shooting nydus worm could be pretty OP and hard to balance, I mean how do you justify the cost of something that can pop up anywhere and tank dmg while the rest of your army does dmg. Creep worm is pretty OP because creep is already hard enough to clear simply because it slowly disapates.
Zerg has already has insane utility, and these kind of changes would be, quite frankly, ridiculous; I believe Blizzard brought up these "cool" things in the early concept stage of HotS, but they didn't make it into multiplayer for practical reasons like the one listed above.
Nydus is already ridiculous as is but only a handful of zergs use them creatively. It does not need a change. And drops do not make nydus redundant, it makes nydus even stronger...
we already have spinecrawlers that already do a bunch of damage without costing supply. and if these things are units they're just really ridiculous units that would be extremely difficult to deal with :x
The Nydus worm (the one with the "Creep Tower" and the one that hits structures) is in the editor.
Just place "Greater Nydus Worm" you can build the Creep Tower, the regular Nydus (which has cargo), and the one that attacks structures.
The Creep Tower takes 10 seconds to build and has the ability to make a long highway of creep in one direction (that lasts as long as the Creep Tower is present).
Edit - NVM, didn't know the video already showed it (bah, youtube changing things again and making it hard for me to view videos >.<).
Edit 2 - Just figured out it was because Youtube automatically entered me in the html5 trial. Opted out and phew... everyone is back to normal and working!
Have you guys seen the movie Tremors? Those kind of worms that you can move around underground and come up and stun stuff, that would be cool to have for zerg.
At one point people thought that Nydus worm was going to be reinvigorated/buffed for HotS multiplayer, then people heard that it would be campaign-only; but now that HotS is released, they aren't even in HotS!
I hate reading false info. People claimed it was "Single player only" because in early beta there were the worms models in the Map Editor, but not when playing Multiplayer.
IN FACT : The 2 new Worms were planned for MULTI-PLAYER ONLY, RIGHT FROM THE START.
Zerg Zerg are the most stable and largely unchanged since BlizzCon. The swarm host is still serving well as a zerg siege unit that can burrow and pressure the enemy from a distance (in a very zergy way), but the viper has some slightly different new abilities. In addition to Abduct, the viper also has the ability to blind biological units in an area of effect. Blinded units have their range reduced to 1. This is obviously effective against terran infantry as well as zerg roach and hydra armies. The viper can also regain energy by feeding off of minerals. This locks up the mineral patch and prevents it from being harvested, so you want to use this ability away from your base.
We have decided to keep the overseer and make the viper a pure caster. We will be taking a look at the overseer to see what we can do to make his abilities more interesting.
We are also trying some additional abilities on the nydus network to allow you to spawn different types of nydus worms. The most interesting worms have been a worm that can spew creep across several screens to create a zerg assault highway, as well as a worm that attacks only enemy buildings, meant to be used as a ground-based zerg base raider.
Dustin Browder said on US Beta forum (deleted) that it didn't make it because they couldn't balance it (which is a lame answer, they didn't even let the players play with it)
Free 1button creep spread and a teleportable building attacker that can't be stopped by anti-drop static D would be balanced by....
EPT
