EPTJust want to know what you guys think about it.
Starcraft II: The Game:
A Second Column By Greth
Everyone who’s even remotely involved with Starcraft has formed an opinion about its sequel. Even though this game is far from finished, and 98% of the community hasn’t even played the game yet.
This column is different from all other Starcraft II coverage. It tells the story of how this game was knocked down by the media, how everyone had already given up; and how my trip to BWWI restored my faith.
Quoted from the article:
What I want to achieve with this column is to transport you back to that day when Starcraft 2 didn’t exist. It was a figment of our imagination. Jokingly we proclaimed that ‘it would be the game our grandchildren would pre-order’.
Transport you back to when it was on the list, together with Duke Nukem Forever, - and Diablo 3 (if you feel a strange pain in the back of your neck, that’s the irony hitting you).
A time when nobody had an opinion on what this game should be like. A time when there was no misinformation to cloud our thoughts.
http://sc2gg.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=2691
+ Show Spoiler +
Starcraft II: The Game – Abridged version
Introduction
This column has taken me a while to start. I want it to contain all my thoughts on this silly little sequel. I want it to put everyone at ease – I even want it to calm down all those hyperventilating fans that go into cardiac arrest every time they see a wing being added to a zergling and drivel their final words of angst and depression all over the internet.
I have played Starcraft 2 Alpha. I have not played Starcraft 2 – I’ve not played Starcraft 3D – I’ve not played the sequel to Starcraft: Brood war – I have not played Warcraft IV In space.
This is the one thing I want to make clear – the one message that I will say in advance to all you sceptics that I counted myself to be one of. To everyone that dissects every piece of information – even to all you fansites that were with me on that trip and after the talk with Karune could still only think about ‘how this will affect balance’.
This game is in development. Every single thing you have seen since the launch is already out of date. The build at the Blizzard World Wide Invitational 2008 was FIVE DAYS OLD and was already out of date. Karune – The Starcraft 2 Community Manager for Blizzard Entertainment – he who talks to the developers on a daily basis – Had to be told BY US that the art of psionic storm was changed in the current build – and he didn’t know about the vespene gas changes either. There was new art for the Nomad, but it didn’t get put in because it wasn’t done yet.
There are a thousand of these little things that I heard throughout my stay in Paris. And I’m not going to tell you a single thing more. Why? Because it is not relevant.
I was lucky. I got my ticket, I got my press pass and I got into the whole thing. I caught a glimpse of how it is done. I soaked up just a little bit of that Blizzard atmosphere – it was one hell of a reality check.
What I want to achieve with this column is to transport you back to that day when Starcraft 2 didn’t exist. It was a figment of our imagination. Jokingly we proclaimed that ‘it would be the game our grandchildren would pre-order’.
Transport yourself back to when it was on the list, together with Duke Nukem Forever, - and Diablo 3 (if you feel a strange pain in the back of your neck, that’s the irony hitting you).
A time when nobody had an opinion on what this game should be like. A time when there was no misinformation to cloud our thoughts.
It Begins
I remember vividly the range of emotions I went through when I saw that first glimpse.
Confusion – Disbelief – Excitement – Joy – loss of bladder control (that would be when he said ‘Hell it’s about time’ and the cinematic flashes blew every synapse I had left straight through the back of my skull, leaving all muscle activity to be suspended until further notice).
But then, I saw the gameplay video. And there was a whole different range of emotions.
Well, there wasn’t as much a range as there was a single thought that struck my brain like lightning:
“They are making Starcraft 2 – this is Starcraft 2 – They are making it! The game of our dreams – they are actually going to make a sequel to the best game ever made! The fools! What are they doing! STOP!”
And then the paranoia set in, like an autistic child stuck in a runaway Merry-go-round:
“It looks too much like Warcraft”
“Its going to be Warcrafty!” - “Warcraft wasn’t good” - “Starcraft was good” – “its Starcraft 2! They are making it!” – “they can’t make it now!” – “the engine looks bad – its ok, but it’s Starcraft 2!” – “Those animations and effects looks good” – “Oh my God they are going to ruin gameplay!” – “It’s going to be Warcrafty!” – …
This continued – the spiral of thoughts growing ever bigger – until I was found, several days later, naked in the basement of the local games store, clutching my old Starcraft vanilla manual in a firm foetal position.
Many people have since that day been stuck in that same limbo. The Starcraft community went nuclear. Websites awoke from deep slumber, calm community forums exploded. Even good old battle.net General Discussion was flooded with common internet idiocy and raving trolls.
A host of websites were created, almost instantly. Focusing solely on any SC2 information they could get their hands on – kind of silly, but it worked and they thrived.
I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed to be a member of the online Starcraft Community; I felt real shame reading those forums, reading those articles. Mass media had descended upon our slumbering little universe, and I felt ashamed of how we reacted.
The game was ripped to shreds; everything that was given to the community was dissected, chewed and spat out.
Blizzard entertainment, on of the best game designers in recent history – whom have never made a game that was badly received (even Warcraft 3 has a pro scene larger than most games can ever dream of. I consider any game still being played consistently after it’s two year anniversary a miracle) – is reaching out to the massive community of Starcraft – and the internet in general – is opening up it’s development to the common gamer; and this was how we received them:
“Blizzard are idiots” – “SC2 gonna suck!” “MBS OMG!” “SC2 gonna be for newbs” “they don’t know how to make this game! – “you can’t improve on SC1”.
I’m sure you can all add to that list – better yet, just link to any Starcraft 2 forum and just read the thread titles.
The internet was like a swarm of wasps – and I was in the middle of it, trying to form an opinion, trying to get a clear picture – but it didn’t work. The buzzing and stinging of the wasps was overwhelming, I started to take in all these stings, all these messages, ideas, opinions, predictions, analysis. All of them – poison, ignorance, stupidity, panic, fear.
And then I realised.
Blizzard was seeing all of this, reading all of this – they too were in this swarm with me, together with everyone else involved.
And I too became afraid, paranoid, and ignorant.
What if Blizzard read all of this, what if they were indeed to much involved with World of Warcraft, what if they forgot how to make an RTS, again the threat of Warcraft 3 loomed – this was not how you take on the sequel to Starcraft 2. Please Blizzard, don’t listen!
I was now forming my opinions. Multi-building selection was a thing of the devil, something handy incorporated for the Warcrafters and little twelve year olds that didn’t know the first thing about the heritage they were destroying! A pox on them!
I fought a hard battle on the battle.net general discussion forum, post after post of argumentation, pages of zealous fury surging through my keyboard. I was convinced that I was right.
Blizzard did listen. But what I didn’t realise at the time, was that they listened intelligently. They listened like normal human beings would – they weren’t in the swarm with me, with us. They had taken a safe distance.
The colour scheme was changed, Starcraft was grittier again, WoW had been driven back beyond the portal. The Mothership lost its teeth (the black hole) Command and Conquer had been driven back into myth. And many more changes were siphoned out of the deep sludge we were dredging in.
But this was not what we saw. We were all lord and master of the game; Starcraft 2 was ours. Blizzard was the ignorant and senile school teacher that we had to correct. This was just some of the corrections we gave them. None of the credit went out to them. It was US and US alone that were making this game. Good on you Blizzard, good on you laser blue, good on you Dustin, Kevin, Sam, and all of you faceless hooded big shots over there in Irvine. You finally started listening to us! Admit defeat!
Surely ‘Blizzard’ would not make it; if they needed all this help, all this assistance from people who aren’t even in the game industry, they would never make it. They would simply produce something called Starcraft 2 – something that will be even worse than Warcraft 3.
As I said in my previous column: It will never be ‘Chess 2’ it will never be Starcraft² - it will just be a sequel – Blizzard has lost it, they are all Warcrafters now. They have their (then) eight million subscribers – they are making their movie. Now all they want to do is dance on the decomposing corpses of their other franchises.
Burn Starcraft – Buurrrnn!
For the Horde!!
By now Starcraft 2 had become accepted as reality. It had been lifted from myth and had been torn to the ground, its wings eaten by the locust of the internet. Starcraft 2 was here, but it was mortal, it would be born as a mortal, and it would die as a mortal. Nothing special, just your average run of the mill ’82 points on IGN or Gamespy’, something you would rent or download in a few months time.
“Oh yeah, I liked Starcraft, so I’ll give it a go”
“Oh cool, are they making a sequel? I might get that.”
The community websites were still at it. The Zerg had been announced, which sparked interest somewhat. But again the swarm of wasps was quick to surround them, even the mighty Zerg were not able to stand up to this rush of bits and bytes.
I had become involved in SC2GG by now: Feeding off the Starcraft revival, trying to get the old girl to dance once more. If anything good would come out of SC2, it would be the inevitable flow of new players to the old – good – game. We had to prepare for this, we could also profit from the – short-lived – pro-scene that would emerge from SC2.
Again, SC2 was being treated like a mortal game; something that would come and go. We had all gotten used to the units by now; we had seen all the screenshots, all the videos. We could all imagine the game perfectly. Empty, automated, still very colourful and happy – but happy like the clown in a run down Siberian circus; his face painted to smile, but the depressed soul and father of five beneath it, praying for this last cheque to come through so his youngest won’t die of starvation.
Sometimes I would still scream “Starcraft Towoo!” to great dismay of my friends, who had already grown rather tired of my defence of the game. I defended it with zeal – I felt it was my duty to Blizzard, defend it, because it is that game we had all been waiting for. But even I was putting up an act. I had long since abandoned the trenches of the Starcraft forums. I did indulge in one war about the stacking of air units, but that was for the sake of the argument – good discussions are hard to come by on the internet today – it was a bit of fun, it had nothing to do with Starcraft really.
Good morning Vietnam
“Greth, would you like to go to the ‘Blizzard World Wide Invitational’ in Paris?”
Whut?
“Yeah, Blizzard is handing out tickets for the WWI, me and Kurogane can’t make it, you’re the only European staff member – Paris isn’t that far for you right? Would be nice to have someone represent SC2GG.”
“Erm, let me think about it – how about ‘yes’?”
Radivel – Head admin and founder of SC2GG gave me the chance to go to Paris. I didn’t think twice about going – I didn’t think at all really. I was buried in college, failing group projects, exams – exams and also exams – I did a commentary now and again – I got some fame from that – which was nice. I had no illusions that I was in any way important to the Starcraft community; I was just a useless twit with an ‘admin’ tag on a forum and a big mouth in an IRC channel. And I got to go to a ‘Blizzard thing’ in Paris – alrighty then. As far as I was concerned, BWWI was going to be a Starcraft tournament, and I was going to watch pro Starcraft live. I didn’t even bother looking at the website. I signed up, and that was it.
During my final exams, WWI was going to be my reward. I had a hard time, I knew that I was going to fail for several subjects; I had something to ease the pain at the end. The damage from the exams was minimal. They were bad, and I have a lot to make up for. I also owe a lot of favours to a several people that saved me from redoing my year. Starcraft was the last thing on my mind, even though I spent a lot of time on the forums as a desperate means of procrastination.
Suddenly I was going to Paris. After my exams were done, I only had a few days left. Illidan’s taunt seemed appropriate: “You are NOT prepared!” – and I wasn’t. I didn’t even have a hotel booked.
Divine intervention came in the form of pR0gR4m3R from Starcraft-esp.com – he offered me a hotel room that was right across the convention centre, I didn’t realise how lucky I was – I might not have made it if that offer hadn’t been there.
I screwed up the dates, had to change the train tickets, spent a little too much money, I was nervous – shit, I’m going to Paris!
The high speed Thalis train opened up like something from Myst, I waved goodbye to my parents, and I was off. The journey wasn’t as action packed as I had imagined it in my nightmares. A couple of hours, metro rides, and searching on the wrong side of the boulevard for fifteen minutes later, I settled down in the Hotel. I met pR0gR4m3R and his wife and newborn baby – sporting a ‘future alliance’ T-shirt. Chatted about what was about to go down, talked pro Starcraft, talked what the ‘big announcement’ might be. Tried to sneak into the convention building, but chickened out when a couple of security guards walked past.
Later I made the first vid and pics of the building. I went back to the Hotel, chatted a bit on IRC, nobody seemed to realise I was actually on the scene…
I was blissfully unaware of what was to happen the next day.
Blizzard Entertainment – Our Lord And Master – Hail!
I passed my history exam. This means I have intricate knowledge of every civilization up to the fall of the Roman Empire. I have imagined the rise and fall of many civilizations; I have also tried to imagine the power and terror with which ancient warlords ruled their people. I like to think of my self as an intelligent person, someone who is above mass hysteria, who is above your general elitism and Celtic tribal society.
That all few out of the window sort of around the time when I got handed my press pass.
I felt no remorse when I waltzed past security, past the hundreds waiting in line – fear me mortals, I am your superior!
It didn’t get any better when I actually got inside. Parked my stuff at the press room, name a large fansite, name a game journalism website, they were there.
I was humbled by their presence, I was just some kid from a starting Starcraft website, these guys had million dollar cameras and had a whole editing studio on their laptops. But still, I was one of them! Haha!
There was general commotion; no schedules had been handed out. Nobody knew ‘what’ was going to happen ‘when’ – this irked the reporters – we had to wait for the opening ceremony – the big announcement!
You all know what happened then. It was live streamed; it was even broadcast on MTV.
Mikey made his speech, a man with a acoustic guitar walked on stage, ruffled his fingers over the instrument, and the crowd burst into cheer.
You might have been at a rock concert before, know the euphoria of a crowd when a band walks on the stage and you see them live for the first time. I think a game announcement by Blizzard is a few steps up from that.
The cinematic started, and the cheers went silent, to be replaced by gaping jaws.
As much as I hate the new creeds of Web2.0, the stupid utterances of decaying literacy, I will say this:
You could feel the ‘awesome’ dripping off the giant bigger-than-your-eyesight screen and the ‘epic’ booming through your heart with every note of the music.
I couldn’t help but smile as Big D showed his head just long enough to let loose a roar, and the crowd answered.
Well done Blizzard, you’ve got us worshiping the Lord of Terror – and cheering as minions of hell walk the earth. We are way overdue for Armageddon; and when it comes, when Satan is impaling their bodies, Blizzard fanboys will – with their dying breaths – say, ‘totally ripped from D3’.
That other game
I was still a bit smouldering, you know – when you’ve just seen a really good movie trailer, but multiply that by something needing a hex notation – as I made my way back to the press room. I didn’t really know why I was going there, I had everything on tape – but it was over an hour so it would take far to long to process, I was going to do that later (I have not done this, till this day, that tape is still unprocessed, I might do it after I finish this – it includes my introduction and everything, meh)
I walked past the Starcraft 2 computer ‘farm’ – indifferently, just like I had walked past the WoW farm upstairs. The first time I passed it, and saw the big ‘Starcraft 2’ logo there was a mild thrill running down my spine, but it was more because it was the first time I saw the Starcraft name in such big letters, then it was still seeping in that ‘this was the house of Blizzard’ ‘this is really happening’. Then I had a very ugly thought, something I was startled about even then. I thought:
“I’ll have to evaluate that game later; I want to look around a bit first.”
I want to beat up myself for saying that. My eleven year old self, back in 1998, would not have hesitated to scratch out my eyes. What the? I am standing in front of three hundred computers running Starcraft 2 – but I have better things to do, I am a member of the press!
The second time I walked past, filled with the glory of Diablo Three, I saw that people were already at the Starcraft 2 computers – better yet – they were STILL there.
I couldn’t believe it – those … those idiots! They missed the opportunity to see the launch of a Blizzard game, to play an … an alpha!? Phsaw!
The day moved on, and although I was corrupted by the power of the press, I had one of the best days of my life. The panels, the games – generally walking around with a camera and camcorder with that press tag around my neck (generally feeling pretty damn good about myself). But then I ‘forced’ myself to go play ‘that game’. That thing I had been fighting for, that great unknown, that big let-down.
I’m trying to think of a way to build up the suspension – but there was none. I walked to the exit of the farm, bypassing the line of hundreds queuing up, waved the press pass with a stupidly smug grin, and entered.
I sat down, still completely devoid of excitement, and powered up my camera, ready to take a shot of the starting screen, “I bet nobody’s taken a picture of that yet”.
While the camera is taking its sweet time, I look around. I’m sitting at the outer corner of the farm, behind me are dozens of people hanging over the fencing, gawking at the sight of SC2. Next to me, someone is microing a host of colossi with some stalker support. To my right, someone is moving around a small force of m&m&m – Marines and Marauders with a medivac backup. Further down the line a screen is lit up and a lot of ooh’s and aah’s are heard as a nuke manages to take out a Zerg expansion- the creep slithering away into nothing after the hatchery is mopped up by a thor or two.
I looked back at the screen – I had taken the picture and had thrown the camera aside.
‘So this is actually happening then’ I thought, as I selected ‘Zerg’ as a race – I try to play them in SC, so why not.
‘Play Zerg AI (easy difficulty)’
ZvZ? No thanks.
‘Play Protoss AI (medium difficulty)’
My ZvT is horrible, so I better pick Protoss.
The screen loads, a bar, a bit like the one in world of Warcraft, with concept art spooling in the background. No time to think.
A hatchery, drones and an overlord – I know this. I selected the drones, cloned them to the best of my ability, I went to the hatchery to build a drone, but I had already pressed ‘S,D’ and it was already building.
Starcraft 2
The creep was moving. I had almost gathered enough minerals for a spawning pool, and the creep was moving, not like in the screenshots, it was actually alive, it looked good. 240 minerals, I had missed the pool, I was too busy staring at everything. The pool morphed, it looked – zergy, not like the stuff I had seen on youtube; I based my opinion on a youtube flick, damnit.
My mind had gone blank – I was starting to think like a reporter again. What do I need to do? How do I report this? Do I talk about the units? Do you talk about the tree? Do I – hang on my first Zerglings are out – hehe – zerglings! Look at them!
Oh, scouting probe, even with six of them they look like a little swarm – cool. Bye probe!
… Did the cpu just sent out a scouting probe? Better do the same – two lings out to scout, better plant down a … Roach – den … Right, those bastards, fine. 5,S,Z,Z,Z – Anti MBS- you need to press for every larva, got used to it after about five minutes. Third and second hatch, a scouting zealot! Four lings will do. Hopping their way to the armoured ninja, they have improved a lot, but still I called them that – bias. Lost a few lings, hmm. Lair’s done – Hydras are tier two now – better get some of those, for old time’s sake. I should also- …
…
…
I AM PLAYING STARCRAFT 2
…
…
I felt tricked. Ten years of playing Starcraft, you develop instincts. A game becomes familiar, you start to glaze over things, shapes and forms are instantly recognised. A certain rhythm develops, a certain feel. If Starcraft had one thing, it was fluency. Even playing it in ’99 with a 56kb modem on Battle.net – lag that made the game seem turn based – there was a flow in the game. This game I was playing, it was different, it had different colours, it had different units, but it was the same. It was Starcraft.
I don’t care what you say about 2D vs 3D, I don’t care about how cartoonie you might think it looks. This game is Starcraft, that’s all I can say. There was no transition period – there was a quick stare at a tooltip, there was a quick jerk as I pressed the wrong hotkey when I wanted roaches. But I was playing the same game I was when I was back in Belgium, going through the campaigns again for old time’s sake.
This is the thing I want to convey to people who have not played the game. Say what you want about units and balance, what you can’t see on youtube and on still images – the soul of Starcraft is there. Different form, different engine, but those Frankenstein doctors at Blizzard somehow managed to siphon the life-force of Starcraft: Brood War and implant it into this new shell.
Everything you can do, micro wise, spam wise, hotkey wise, - it is there. The speed, of the units – the same. Sure, the zerglings put on a little performance act, and hop around rocks and zealots like they are in a feature film – it’s completely useless and I have practiced in the days of yellow and such to make my lings do that, to no avail, and now they come with that standard feature – I grinned ear to ear, be sure of that.
Not just the Zerg look and feel like the original, over the course of the two days I did play the other races, and they do not disappoint.
Probes beep and gloat as they still cannot be destroyed, not even by a horde of siege tanks and banshees, Terrans wall in with their little transformer depots, prepare drops and crawl around the map in little balls. Stalkers are dragoons that don’t run into walls out of shear stupidity (they can teleport away when they do now and act like it was part of the plan) tanks still serve as an early to mid safe haven for the turtling Terran. Zerg still roam the map and force the others to prepare their defences. All of this is so natural, so familiar.
My sincerest and deepest apologies to Blizzard Entertainment. My personal apologies to Dustin Browder, whose name I’ve thrown around in discussions like he was some kind of African warlord. Blame Browder was a mantra for many. He worked on C&C3, and that wasn’t great, so everything he does must be sub-par. Not anymore.
This game is working, and the best part? It’s only in Alpha, so it still needs to get scrutinised in Beta. This game is a construction yard, and it already feels like home.
But it says Starcraft TWO!
There is more. I am not done fluttering about like a rabid fanboy just yet. Because yes, many will see all this as just that, but I consider myself to be a bit more than just a fanboy. This is why I am writing this quite a while after the events, to let it sink, to make sure I’m making the right claims, the right descriptions. I’ve known Starcraft for ten years; I’m past my fanboy days. I was one – I was eleven when it came out – it was a good game, and the patches made it better, into legend. Then the pro scene, I realised I wasn’t just being a little overactive with my opinion. More people seemed to think this game was alright.
I wonder what people thought about Starcraft when it was in Alpha – the fanbase wasn’t that big – not by today’s standards; but I guess you did have the lads at CWAL.
… But I digress.
What I’m about to say about Starcraft 2 is my personal opinion, if you haven’t noticed – most of this column is. But I’m a bad liar, and I honestly believe that this is right.
So it plays like Starcraft: Brood War – ok. What’s the catch?
There is one problem with Starcraft 2 – the feel is the same, but it’s fake. It is artificial.
The skill in Starcraft was in the flaws of the engine. Accidental as they were, they forged a large part of the game, the major part, the professional part. Skill, as in a first person shooter, in an RTS game; unheard of.
This was the major fear of a lot of the pro scene folks, the ones that looked beyond the pretty pictures.
Is there skill in Starcraft 2?
Short answer? I bet you are begging for a short answer by now.
Yes. Yes there is skill in Starcraft 2.
Long answer; there is skill in Starcraft 2, but… As far as I can tell, with my limited ability and my limited time – with an alpha version. This skill is not engine based. This is not bunny hop skill of Quake 1; this is not old school mechanical skill. You won’t see Probes jumping over minerals using a pylon. You won’t see the little tricks that may or may not be banned or cheered on by the crowds as they are used once or twice by progamers. I don’t know if this is a bad thing. The skill in Starcraft 2 is obvious, it is made to be used, not to be discovered.
The engine is clean, crisp, made by a team of professionals, and not just by one man locked in his office. I am sure, that in many years, things will be found – little exploits that may or may not be patched or expanded.
Do I sound negative? I didn’t mean to. Wait, did I mention that the game is more than overflowing in this newfound skill? That almost every unit, new and old, is bathed in different possibilities, different functions, different patterns in which to use them? Does this sound like Starcraft again?
Starcraft, The Second.
There were two things I didn’t expect from this build. One, the detail. One half of the units didn’t even have full portraits yet, the other half – especially the Terran mechs, looked like they just rolled off the showroom floor. They looked like monsters from Doom 3, at high res. This being the last game I could play on full detail on my current computer, this means I’m impressed at the detail of the models.
The second one, I wasn’t prepared for. I was too busy having fun with rolling around banelings (so much I got rolled over by colossi and I had to start over again, yes, rolling banelings around on max zoom lost me a game to a toss AI, sue me). I was having fun, fun like in ’98, I was exploring a new toy I could play with and it did everything I imagined it could.
When I reached mid game tech, I didn’t know what to do. I built units, and I used them, but then, I could do more with those units. I had a full arsenal at my disposal, and yet I hadn’t even built half the tech buildings. As Zerg, for instance, I hadn’t even built any air units, I didn’t have lurkers yet. And yet, I was too busy managing my base, using the queen, scouting around with overseers, expanding by using nydus worms and creep spreading overlords. With Protoss I was flying around with a phase prism, using the warp in to raid an expansion, I hadn’t even teched to templars yet, hadn’t even gotten my robo bay up, and yet I was already capable of raiding the whole map, I had end game high tech at my disposal, but I didn’t even have a mid game army yet. Also, if I didn’t micro my units, they just simply disappeared off the face of the map. I attacked with a superior force of upgraded zealots and stalkers. I went back to morph my gateways back to normal and maybe plant down an expansion, and wham! My (human) Zerg opponent managed to clean up my force with some hydras and roaches and maybe a lurker or two. It pissed me off, but that was the way it is supposed to be!
This game has a second layer of skill and cunning. Like the new player that doesn’t know how to stack Mutalisks, this potential will require training to unlock. The magnitude of the tech possibilities together with the need to micro and think about your actions creates a whole new level of involvement that was not present in Starcraft 1.
It is all the tinkering and grandeur of possibility that was attempted in Warcraft 3, but it didn’t work. Now, the simplicity of Starcraft is combined with a refined, perfected and sleek version of that tinkering. It is not a bad thing, it adds to the game.
I spent a lot of time playing Starcraft 2, but I haven’t even seen half the game. Beta is not only going to test the game and the balance, it is also going to test the endurance of its testers.
This game is going to test it’s players. It will find out if you are worthy enough to judge it, and not the other way around. You will have to be a good Starcraft player in order to form a decent opinion on balance, because there will be so many factors.
The automation of tasks that made Starcraft a sport does not kill it’s potential, because all of those ‘menial’ tasks that made up whether you are a good player or not have been replaced by things that are visible to the spectator.
Yes, you will have to return to your base, not to place probes on minerals. Yes, these new tasks will be artificial. You will see that these tasks have been engineered by designers, and not by flaws of the aging engine. But this game is trying hard, and it will pose a significant adversary to all who will try to master it. You showed the world that you can put probes on minerals, but can you micro a victory against a swarm of zerglings with only a nullifier and a handful of blinking stalkers? The crowd will love it if you do. Oh, and by the way you still need to maintain your base. Multi building selection will help you build the forces, but that doesn’t mean you still don’t have to think about your unit mix and everything that comes with it.
Hard line macro has been scaled down, because the fights on the battlefield are a lot harder.
Everyone who fears that this game is filled with gimmicks and game ending abilities or that combat is reduced to the buttonmashing and single unit micro like in Warcraft, please give Blizzard some credit!
The boogiemen (and women) with names like the Queen and Mothership are nothing to be afraid of. There is a reason to why these units have been changing almost on a daily basis for as long as they exist. Yes, these units can do awesome things, but please do remember some units in Starcraft 1, the Templar, killing half a Zerg army with psy storm (Right! If you don’t micro!) Defiler, nullifying every ranged unit (e.g. almost the entire Terran arsenal).
These units require context!
A quick example (as I think this is going to stick for days to come) the Queen requires an initial cost, then it has one ability (healing buildings) after the lair, it can be upgraded again, gaining the mutate larva ability (instant build larva that can move around the map – no cooldown and cost 1 supply and some time to morph, every larva has to be selected individually, they are detached from hatchery selection – and that’s all I’m going to say!) and deep tunnel (teleport to a friendly Zerg building).
Hive, another upgrade cost, another ability: turning Zerg buildings into defences.
I got attacked, left my queen at the front because it was healing buildings – it died just like any other unit dies in Starcraft – quick and without a lot of fuss. I didn’t build another one- why? It would have cost me about as much as an entire control group of units and enough time to attack with them. I didn’t have time to tinker with the queen anyway, I had three bases going and I had too much macroing to do.
“You require more APM to build this unit – Play more Starcraft”
Almost every unit has new tricks, each one more amazing than the last. Some units might even need an entire strategy guide dedicated to them if they make the cut and aren’t discarded to the ever filling pool of rejects in the map editor (yes it can).But if you’re not the one to tell them what to do, they are just going to sit there, staring at you like a lobotomised puppy while they get reduced to a smoking crater or steaming pile of rubbish falling apart with havoc physics. And this is not the only thing you’re going to do. The entire game of Starcraft is still there, hiding under the illusion that this new game is easy.
And no, you’re not good enough to do all of this. You will sweat, be sure of that. Unless you are Boxer or Savior –in that case, yes, yes you can and thanks for reading.
In closing
I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I was already making up stories, making up strategies. I only played for an hour or three, but this game got into my head. I didn’t stop playing in my mind
At the end of day one, at 10pm – the fansites were scheduled to have dinner with some of the Blizzard staff, including Karune.
The building was being closed off, and everyone was waiting outside. Inside still was Karune, he was on one of the Press room PC’s that had SC2 installed. Everyone was waiting, but Karune was still playing Starcraft 2 against an AI. The staff members of the building came in, they stood behind him and asked kindly to leave, as they had to lock the doors for cleaning.
“Yeah, ok – just have to finish this last game… He’s down to one expansion.”
This guy works at Blizzard, he’s the community manager of the damned game. And he had to be removed from the computer by French staff members of the convention centre before he would stop playing. And I knew exactly how he felt.
Forget your bias. Forget everything you know about Starcraft 2 – be hopeful.
Blizzard knows what they are doing, they are creating a legend.
This game is good, and it’s not even in Beta yet.
It’s time to get excited again.
Greth – for SC2GG.com
jar dot antheh at gmail dot com
Introduction
This column has taken me a while to start. I want it to contain all my thoughts on this silly little sequel. I want it to put everyone at ease – I even want it to calm down all those hyperventilating fans that go into cardiac arrest every time they see a wing being added to a zergling and drivel their final words of angst and depression all over the internet.
I have played Starcraft 2 Alpha. I have not played Starcraft 2 – I’ve not played Starcraft 3D – I’ve not played the sequel to Starcraft: Brood war – I have not played Warcraft IV In space.
This is the one thing I want to make clear – the one message that I will say in advance to all you sceptics that I counted myself to be one of. To everyone that dissects every piece of information – even to all you fansites that were with me on that trip and after the talk with Karune could still only think about ‘how this will affect balance’.
This game is in development. Every single thing you have seen since the launch is already out of date. The build at the Blizzard World Wide Invitational 2008 was FIVE DAYS OLD and was already out of date. Karune – The Starcraft 2 Community Manager for Blizzard Entertainment – he who talks to the developers on a daily basis – Had to be told BY US that the art of psionic storm was changed in the current build – and he didn’t know about the vespene gas changes either. There was new art for the Nomad, but it didn’t get put in because it wasn’t done yet.
There are a thousand of these little things that I heard throughout my stay in Paris. And I’m not going to tell you a single thing more. Why? Because it is not relevant.
I was lucky. I got my ticket, I got my press pass and I got into the whole thing. I caught a glimpse of how it is done. I soaked up just a little bit of that Blizzard atmosphere – it was one hell of a reality check.
What I want to achieve with this column is to transport you back to that day when Starcraft 2 didn’t exist. It was a figment of our imagination. Jokingly we proclaimed that ‘it would be the game our grandchildren would pre-order’.
Transport yourself back to when it was on the list, together with Duke Nukem Forever, - and Diablo 3 (if you feel a strange pain in the back of your neck, that’s the irony hitting you).
A time when nobody had an opinion on what this game should be like. A time when there was no misinformation to cloud our thoughts.
It Begins
I remember vividly the range of emotions I went through when I saw that first glimpse.
Confusion – Disbelief – Excitement – Joy – loss of bladder control (that would be when he said ‘Hell it’s about time’ and the cinematic flashes blew every synapse I had left straight through the back of my skull, leaving all muscle activity to be suspended until further notice).
But then, I saw the gameplay video. And there was a whole different range of emotions.
Well, there wasn’t as much a range as there was a single thought that struck my brain like lightning:
“They are making Starcraft 2 – this is Starcraft 2 – They are making it! The game of our dreams – they are actually going to make a sequel to the best game ever made! The fools! What are they doing! STOP!”
And then the paranoia set in, like an autistic child stuck in a runaway Merry-go-round:
“It looks too much like Warcraft”
“Its going to be Warcrafty!” - “Warcraft wasn’t good” - “Starcraft was good” – “its Starcraft 2! They are making it!” – “they can’t make it now!” – “the engine looks bad – its ok, but it’s Starcraft 2!” – “Those animations and effects looks good” – “Oh my God they are going to ruin gameplay!” – “It’s going to be Warcrafty!” – …
This continued – the spiral of thoughts growing ever bigger – until I was found, several days later, naked in the basement of the local games store, clutching my old Starcraft vanilla manual in a firm foetal position.
Many people have since that day been stuck in that same limbo. The Starcraft community went nuclear. Websites awoke from deep slumber, calm community forums exploded. Even good old battle.net General Discussion was flooded with common internet idiocy and raving trolls.
A host of websites were created, almost instantly. Focusing solely on any SC2 information they could get their hands on – kind of silly, but it worked and they thrived.
I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed to be a member of the online Starcraft Community; I felt real shame reading those forums, reading those articles. Mass media had descended upon our slumbering little universe, and I felt ashamed of how we reacted.
The game was ripped to shreds; everything that was given to the community was dissected, chewed and spat out.
Blizzard entertainment, on of the best game designers in recent history – whom have never made a game that was badly received (even Warcraft 3 has a pro scene larger than most games can ever dream of. I consider any game still being played consistently after it’s two year anniversary a miracle) – is reaching out to the massive community of Starcraft – and the internet in general – is opening up it’s development to the common gamer; and this was how we received them:
“Blizzard are idiots” – “SC2 gonna suck!” “MBS OMG!” “SC2 gonna be for newbs” “they don’t know how to make this game! – “you can’t improve on SC1”.
I’m sure you can all add to that list – better yet, just link to any Starcraft 2 forum and just read the thread titles.
The internet was like a swarm of wasps – and I was in the middle of it, trying to form an opinion, trying to get a clear picture – but it didn’t work. The buzzing and stinging of the wasps was overwhelming, I started to take in all these stings, all these messages, ideas, opinions, predictions, analysis. All of them – poison, ignorance, stupidity, panic, fear.
And then I realised.
Blizzard was seeing all of this, reading all of this – they too were in this swarm with me, together with everyone else involved.
And I too became afraid, paranoid, and ignorant.
What if Blizzard read all of this, what if they were indeed to much involved with World of Warcraft, what if they forgot how to make an RTS, again the threat of Warcraft 3 loomed – this was not how you take on the sequel to Starcraft 2. Please Blizzard, don’t listen!
I was now forming my opinions. Multi-building selection was a thing of the devil, something handy incorporated for the Warcrafters and little twelve year olds that didn’t know the first thing about the heritage they were destroying! A pox on them!
I fought a hard battle on the battle.net general discussion forum, post after post of argumentation, pages of zealous fury surging through my keyboard. I was convinced that I was right.
Blizzard did listen. But what I didn’t realise at the time, was that they listened intelligently. They listened like normal human beings would – they weren’t in the swarm with me, with us. They had taken a safe distance.
The colour scheme was changed, Starcraft was grittier again, WoW had been driven back beyond the portal. The Mothership lost its teeth (the black hole) Command and Conquer had been driven back into myth. And many more changes were siphoned out of the deep sludge we were dredging in.
But this was not what we saw. We were all lord and master of the game; Starcraft 2 was ours. Blizzard was the ignorant and senile school teacher that we had to correct. This was just some of the corrections we gave them. None of the credit went out to them. It was US and US alone that were making this game. Good on you Blizzard, good on you laser blue, good on you Dustin, Kevin, Sam, and all of you faceless hooded big shots over there in Irvine. You finally started listening to us! Admit defeat!
Surely ‘Blizzard’ would not make it; if they needed all this help, all this assistance from people who aren’t even in the game industry, they would never make it. They would simply produce something called Starcraft 2 – something that will be even worse than Warcraft 3.
As I said in my previous column: It will never be ‘Chess 2’ it will never be Starcraft² - it will just be a sequel – Blizzard has lost it, they are all Warcrafters now. They have their (then) eight million subscribers – they are making their movie. Now all they want to do is dance on the decomposing corpses of their other franchises.
Burn Starcraft – Buurrrnn!
For the Horde!!
By now Starcraft 2 had become accepted as reality. It had been lifted from myth and had been torn to the ground, its wings eaten by the locust of the internet. Starcraft 2 was here, but it was mortal, it would be born as a mortal, and it would die as a mortal. Nothing special, just your average run of the mill ’82 points on IGN or Gamespy’, something you would rent or download in a few months time.
“Oh yeah, I liked Starcraft, so I’ll give it a go”
“Oh cool, are they making a sequel? I might get that.”
The community websites were still at it. The Zerg had been announced, which sparked interest somewhat. But again the swarm of wasps was quick to surround them, even the mighty Zerg were not able to stand up to this rush of bits and bytes.
I had become involved in SC2GG by now: Feeding off the Starcraft revival, trying to get the old girl to dance once more. If anything good would come out of SC2, it would be the inevitable flow of new players to the old – good – game. We had to prepare for this, we could also profit from the – short-lived – pro-scene that would emerge from SC2.
Again, SC2 was being treated like a mortal game; something that would come and go. We had all gotten used to the units by now; we had seen all the screenshots, all the videos. We could all imagine the game perfectly. Empty, automated, still very colourful and happy – but happy like the clown in a run down Siberian circus; his face painted to smile, but the depressed soul and father of five beneath it, praying for this last cheque to come through so his youngest won’t die of starvation.
Sometimes I would still scream “Starcraft Towoo!” to great dismay of my friends, who had already grown rather tired of my defence of the game. I defended it with zeal – I felt it was my duty to Blizzard, defend it, because it is that game we had all been waiting for. But even I was putting up an act. I had long since abandoned the trenches of the Starcraft forums. I did indulge in one war about the stacking of air units, but that was for the sake of the argument – good discussions are hard to come by on the internet today – it was a bit of fun, it had nothing to do with Starcraft really.
Good morning Vietnam
“Greth, would you like to go to the ‘Blizzard World Wide Invitational’ in Paris?”
Whut?
“Yeah, Blizzard is handing out tickets for the WWI, me and Kurogane can’t make it, you’re the only European staff member – Paris isn’t that far for you right? Would be nice to have someone represent SC2GG.”
“Erm, let me think about it – how about ‘yes’?”
Radivel – Head admin and founder of SC2GG gave me the chance to go to Paris. I didn’t think twice about going – I didn’t think at all really. I was buried in college, failing group projects, exams – exams and also exams – I did a commentary now and again – I got some fame from that – which was nice. I had no illusions that I was in any way important to the Starcraft community; I was just a useless twit with an ‘admin’ tag on a forum and a big mouth in an IRC channel. And I got to go to a ‘Blizzard thing’ in Paris – alrighty then. As far as I was concerned, BWWI was going to be a Starcraft tournament, and I was going to watch pro Starcraft live. I didn’t even bother looking at the website. I signed up, and that was it.
During my final exams, WWI was going to be my reward. I had a hard time, I knew that I was going to fail for several subjects; I had something to ease the pain at the end. The damage from the exams was minimal. They were bad, and I have a lot to make up for. I also owe a lot of favours to a several people that saved me from redoing my year. Starcraft was the last thing on my mind, even though I spent a lot of time on the forums as a desperate means of procrastination.
Suddenly I was going to Paris. After my exams were done, I only had a few days left. Illidan’s taunt seemed appropriate: “You are NOT prepared!” – and I wasn’t. I didn’t even have a hotel booked.
Divine intervention came in the form of pR0gR4m3R from Starcraft-esp.com – he offered me a hotel room that was right across the convention centre, I didn’t realise how lucky I was – I might not have made it if that offer hadn’t been there.
I screwed up the dates, had to change the train tickets, spent a little too much money, I was nervous – shit, I’m going to Paris!
The high speed Thalis train opened up like something from Myst, I waved goodbye to my parents, and I was off. The journey wasn’t as action packed as I had imagined it in my nightmares. A couple of hours, metro rides, and searching on the wrong side of the boulevard for fifteen minutes later, I settled down in the Hotel. I met pR0gR4m3R and his wife and newborn baby – sporting a ‘future alliance’ T-shirt. Chatted about what was about to go down, talked pro Starcraft, talked what the ‘big announcement’ might be. Tried to sneak into the convention building, but chickened out when a couple of security guards walked past.
Later I made the first vid and pics of the building. I went back to the Hotel, chatted a bit on IRC, nobody seemed to realise I was actually on the scene…
I was blissfully unaware of what was to happen the next day.
Blizzard Entertainment – Our Lord And Master – Hail!
I passed my history exam. This means I have intricate knowledge of every civilization up to the fall of the Roman Empire. I have imagined the rise and fall of many civilizations; I have also tried to imagine the power and terror with which ancient warlords ruled their people. I like to think of my self as an intelligent person, someone who is above mass hysteria, who is above your general elitism and Celtic tribal society.
That all few out of the window sort of around the time when I got handed my press pass.
I felt no remorse when I waltzed past security, past the hundreds waiting in line – fear me mortals, I am your superior!
It didn’t get any better when I actually got inside. Parked my stuff at the press room, name a large fansite, name a game journalism website, they were there.
I was humbled by their presence, I was just some kid from a starting Starcraft website, these guys had million dollar cameras and had a whole editing studio on their laptops. But still, I was one of them! Haha!
There was general commotion; no schedules had been handed out. Nobody knew ‘what’ was going to happen ‘when’ – this irked the reporters – we had to wait for the opening ceremony – the big announcement!
You all know what happened then. It was live streamed; it was even broadcast on MTV.
Mikey made his speech, a man with a acoustic guitar walked on stage, ruffled his fingers over the instrument, and the crowd burst into cheer.
You might have been at a rock concert before, know the euphoria of a crowd when a band walks on the stage and you see them live for the first time. I think a game announcement by Blizzard is a few steps up from that.
The cinematic started, and the cheers went silent, to be replaced by gaping jaws.
As much as I hate the new creeds of Web2.0, the stupid utterances of decaying literacy, I will say this:
You could feel the ‘awesome’ dripping off the giant bigger-than-your-eyesight screen and the ‘epic’ booming through your heart with every note of the music.
I couldn’t help but smile as Big D showed his head just long enough to let loose a roar, and the crowd answered.
Well done Blizzard, you’ve got us worshiping the Lord of Terror – and cheering as minions of hell walk the earth. We are way overdue for Armageddon; and when it comes, when Satan is impaling their bodies, Blizzard fanboys will – with their dying breaths – say, ‘totally ripped from D3’.
That other game
I was still a bit smouldering, you know – when you’ve just seen a really good movie trailer, but multiply that by something needing a hex notation – as I made my way back to the press room. I didn’t really know why I was going there, I had everything on tape – but it was over an hour so it would take far to long to process, I was going to do that later (I have not done this, till this day, that tape is still unprocessed, I might do it after I finish this – it includes my introduction and everything, meh)
I walked past the Starcraft 2 computer ‘farm’ – indifferently, just like I had walked past the WoW farm upstairs. The first time I passed it, and saw the big ‘Starcraft 2’ logo there was a mild thrill running down my spine, but it was more because it was the first time I saw the Starcraft name in such big letters, then it was still seeping in that ‘this was the house of Blizzard’ ‘this is really happening’. Then I had a very ugly thought, something I was startled about even then. I thought:
“I’ll have to evaluate that game later; I want to look around a bit first.”
I want to beat up myself for saying that. My eleven year old self, back in 1998, would not have hesitated to scratch out my eyes. What the? I am standing in front of three hundred computers running Starcraft 2 – but I have better things to do, I am a member of the press!
The second time I walked past, filled with the glory of Diablo Three, I saw that people were already at the Starcraft 2 computers – better yet – they were STILL there.
I couldn’t believe it – those … those idiots! They missed the opportunity to see the launch of a Blizzard game, to play an … an alpha!? Phsaw!
The day moved on, and although I was corrupted by the power of the press, I had one of the best days of my life. The panels, the games – generally walking around with a camera and camcorder with that press tag around my neck (generally feeling pretty damn good about myself). But then I ‘forced’ myself to go play ‘that game’. That thing I had been fighting for, that great unknown, that big let-down.
I’m trying to think of a way to build up the suspension – but there was none. I walked to the exit of the farm, bypassing the line of hundreds queuing up, waved the press pass with a stupidly smug grin, and entered.
I sat down, still completely devoid of excitement, and powered up my camera, ready to take a shot of the starting screen, “I bet nobody’s taken a picture of that yet”.
While the camera is taking its sweet time, I look around. I’m sitting at the outer corner of the farm, behind me are dozens of people hanging over the fencing, gawking at the sight of SC2. Next to me, someone is microing a host of colossi with some stalker support. To my right, someone is moving around a small force of m&m&m – Marines and Marauders with a medivac backup. Further down the line a screen is lit up and a lot of ooh’s and aah’s are heard as a nuke manages to take out a Zerg expansion- the creep slithering away into nothing after the hatchery is mopped up by a thor or two.
I looked back at the screen – I had taken the picture and had thrown the camera aside.
‘So this is actually happening then’ I thought, as I selected ‘Zerg’ as a race – I try to play them in SC, so why not.
‘Play Zerg AI (easy difficulty)’
ZvZ? No thanks.
‘Play Protoss AI (medium difficulty)’
My ZvT is horrible, so I better pick Protoss.
The screen loads, a bar, a bit like the one in world of Warcraft, with concept art spooling in the background. No time to think.
A hatchery, drones and an overlord – I know this. I selected the drones, cloned them to the best of my ability, I went to the hatchery to build a drone, but I had already pressed ‘S,D’ and it was already building.
Starcraft 2
The creep was moving. I had almost gathered enough minerals for a spawning pool, and the creep was moving, not like in the screenshots, it was actually alive, it looked good. 240 minerals, I had missed the pool, I was too busy staring at everything. The pool morphed, it looked – zergy, not like the stuff I had seen on youtube; I based my opinion on a youtube flick, damnit.
My mind had gone blank – I was starting to think like a reporter again. What do I need to do? How do I report this? Do I talk about the units? Do you talk about the tree? Do I – hang on my first Zerglings are out – hehe – zerglings! Look at them!
Oh, scouting probe, even with six of them they look like a little swarm – cool. Bye probe!
… Did the cpu just sent out a scouting probe? Better do the same – two lings out to scout, better plant down a … Roach – den … Right, those bastards, fine. 5,S,Z,Z,Z – Anti MBS- you need to press for every larva, got used to it after about five minutes. Third and second hatch, a scouting zealot! Four lings will do. Hopping their way to the armoured ninja, they have improved a lot, but still I called them that – bias. Lost a few lings, hmm. Lair’s done – Hydras are tier two now – better get some of those, for old time’s sake. I should also- …
…
…
I AM PLAYING STARCRAFT 2
…
…
I felt tricked. Ten years of playing Starcraft, you develop instincts. A game becomes familiar, you start to glaze over things, shapes and forms are instantly recognised. A certain rhythm develops, a certain feel. If Starcraft had one thing, it was fluency. Even playing it in ’99 with a 56kb modem on Battle.net – lag that made the game seem turn based – there was a flow in the game. This game I was playing, it was different, it had different colours, it had different units, but it was the same. It was Starcraft.
I don’t care what you say about 2D vs 3D, I don’t care about how cartoonie you might think it looks. This game is Starcraft, that’s all I can say. There was no transition period – there was a quick stare at a tooltip, there was a quick jerk as I pressed the wrong hotkey when I wanted roaches. But I was playing the same game I was when I was back in Belgium, going through the campaigns again for old time’s sake.
This is the thing I want to convey to people who have not played the game. Say what you want about units and balance, what you can’t see on youtube and on still images – the soul of Starcraft is there. Different form, different engine, but those Frankenstein doctors at Blizzard somehow managed to siphon the life-force of Starcraft: Brood War and implant it into this new shell.
Everything you can do, micro wise, spam wise, hotkey wise, - it is there. The speed, of the units – the same. Sure, the zerglings put on a little performance act, and hop around rocks and zealots like they are in a feature film – it’s completely useless and I have practiced in the days of yellow and such to make my lings do that, to no avail, and now they come with that standard feature – I grinned ear to ear, be sure of that.
Not just the Zerg look and feel like the original, over the course of the two days I did play the other races, and they do not disappoint.
Probes beep and gloat as they still cannot be destroyed, not even by a horde of siege tanks and banshees, Terrans wall in with their little transformer depots, prepare drops and crawl around the map in little balls. Stalkers are dragoons that don’t run into walls out of shear stupidity (they can teleport away when they do now and act like it was part of the plan) tanks still serve as an early to mid safe haven for the turtling Terran. Zerg still roam the map and force the others to prepare their defences. All of this is so natural, so familiar.
My sincerest and deepest apologies to Blizzard Entertainment. My personal apologies to Dustin Browder, whose name I’ve thrown around in discussions like he was some kind of African warlord. Blame Browder was a mantra for many. He worked on C&C3, and that wasn’t great, so everything he does must be sub-par. Not anymore.
This game is working, and the best part? It’s only in Alpha, so it still needs to get scrutinised in Beta. This game is a construction yard, and it already feels like home.
But it says Starcraft TWO!
There is more. I am not done fluttering about like a rabid fanboy just yet. Because yes, many will see all this as just that, but I consider myself to be a bit more than just a fanboy. This is why I am writing this quite a while after the events, to let it sink, to make sure I’m making the right claims, the right descriptions. I’ve known Starcraft for ten years; I’m past my fanboy days. I was one – I was eleven when it came out – it was a good game, and the patches made it better, into legend. Then the pro scene, I realised I wasn’t just being a little overactive with my opinion. More people seemed to think this game was alright.
I wonder what people thought about Starcraft when it was in Alpha – the fanbase wasn’t that big – not by today’s standards; but I guess you did have the lads at CWAL.
… But I digress.
What I’m about to say about Starcraft 2 is my personal opinion, if you haven’t noticed – most of this column is. But I’m a bad liar, and I honestly believe that this is right.
So it plays like Starcraft: Brood War – ok. What’s the catch?
There is one problem with Starcraft 2 – the feel is the same, but it’s fake. It is artificial.
The skill in Starcraft was in the flaws of the engine. Accidental as they were, they forged a large part of the game, the major part, the professional part. Skill, as in a first person shooter, in an RTS game; unheard of.
This was the major fear of a lot of the pro scene folks, the ones that looked beyond the pretty pictures.
Is there skill in Starcraft 2?
Short answer? I bet you are begging for a short answer by now.
Yes. Yes there is skill in Starcraft 2.
Long answer; there is skill in Starcraft 2, but… As far as I can tell, with my limited ability and my limited time – with an alpha version. This skill is not engine based. This is not bunny hop skill of Quake 1; this is not old school mechanical skill. You won’t see Probes jumping over minerals using a pylon. You won’t see the little tricks that may or may not be banned or cheered on by the crowds as they are used once or twice by progamers. I don’t know if this is a bad thing. The skill in Starcraft 2 is obvious, it is made to be used, not to be discovered.
The engine is clean, crisp, made by a team of professionals, and not just by one man locked in his office. I am sure, that in many years, things will be found – little exploits that may or may not be patched or expanded.
Do I sound negative? I didn’t mean to. Wait, did I mention that the game is more than overflowing in this newfound skill? That almost every unit, new and old, is bathed in different possibilities, different functions, different patterns in which to use them? Does this sound like Starcraft again?
Starcraft, The Second.
There were two things I didn’t expect from this build. One, the detail. One half of the units didn’t even have full portraits yet, the other half – especially the Terran mechs, looked like they just rolled off the showroom floor. They looked like monsters from Doom 3, at high res. This being the last game I could play on full detail on my current computer, this means I’m impressed at the detail of the models.
The second one, I wasn’t prepared for. I was too busy having fun with rolling around banelings (so much I got rolled over by colossi and I had to start over again, yes, rolling banelings around on max zoom lost me a game to a toss AI, sue me). I was having fun, fun like in ’98, I was exploring a new toy I could play with and it did everything I imagined it could.
When I reached mid game tech, I didn’t know what to do. I built units, and I used them, but then, I could do more with those units. I had a full arsenal at my disposal, and yet I hadn’t even built half the tech buildings. As Zerg, for instance, I hadn’t even built any air units, I didn’t have lurkers yet. And yet, I was too busy managing my base, using the queen, scouting around with overseers, expanding by using nydus worms and creep spreading overlords. With Protoss I was flying around with a phase prism, using the warp in to raid an expansion, I hadn’t even teched to templars yet, hadn’t even gotten my robo bay up, and yet I was already capable of raiding the whole map, I had end game high tech at my disposal, but I didn’t even have a mid game army yet. Also, if I didn’t micro my units, they just simply disappeared off the face of the map. I attacked with a superior force of upgraded zealots and stalkers. I went back to morph my gateways back to normal and maybe plant down an expansion, and wham! My (human) Zerg opponent managed to clean up my force with some hydras and roaches and maybe a lurker or two. It pissed me off, but that was the way it is supposed to be!
This game has a second layer of skill and cunning. Like the new player that doesn’t know how to stack Mutalisks, this potential will require training to unlock. The magnitude of the tech possibilities together with the need to micro and think about your actions creates a whole new level of involvement that was not present in Starcraft 1.
It is all the tinkering and grandeur of possibility that was attempted in Warcraft 3, but it didn’t work. Now, the simplicity of Starcraft is combined with a refined, perfected and sleek version of that tinkering. It is not a bad thing, it adds to the game.
I spent a lot of time playing Starcraft 2, but I haven’t even seen half the game. Beta is not only going to test the game and the balance, it is also going to test the endurance of its testers.
This game is going to test it’s players. It will find out if you are worthy enough to judge it, and not the other way around. You will have to be a good Starcraft player in order to form a decent opinion on balance, because there will be so many factors.
The automation of tasks that made Starcraft a sport does not kill it’s potential, because all of those ‘menial’ tasks that made up whether you are a good player or not have been replaced by things that are visible to the spectator.
Yes, you will have to return to your base, not to place probes on minerals. Yes, these new tasks will be artificial. You will see that these tasks have been engineered by designers, and not by flaws of the aging engine. But this game is trying hard, and it will pose a significant adversary to all who will try to master it. You showed the world that you can put probes on minerals, but can you micro a victory against a swarm of zerglings with only a nullifier and a handful of blinking stalkers? The crowd will love it if you do. Oh, and by the way you still need to maintain your base. Multi building selection will help you build the forces, but that doesn’t mean you still don’t have to think about your unit mix and everything that comes with it.
Hard line macro has been scaled down, because the fights on the battlefield are a lot harder.
Everyone who fears that this game is filled with gimmicks and game ending abilities or that combat is reduced to the buttonmashing and single unit micro like in Warcraft, please give Blizzard some credit!
The boogiemen (and women) with names like the Queen and Mothership are nothing to be afraid of. There is a reason to why these units have been changing almost on a daily basis for as long as they exist. Yes, these units can do awesome things, but please do remember some units in Starcraft 1, the Templar, killing half a Zerg army with psy storm (Right! If you don’t micro!) Defiler, nullifying every ranged unit (e.g. almost the entire Terran arsenal).
These units require context!
A quick example (as I think this is going to stick for days to come) the Queen requires an initial cost, then it has one ability (healing buildings) after the lair, it can be upgraded again, gaining the mutate larva ability (instant build larva that can move around the map – no cooldown and cost 1 supply and some time to morph, every larva has to be selected individually, they are detached from hatchery selection – and that’s all I’m going to say!) and deep tunnel (teleport to a friendly Zerg building).
Hive, another upgrade cost, another ability: turning Zerg buildings into defences.
I got attacked, left my queen at the front because it was healing buildings – it died just like any other unit dies in Starcraft – quick and without a lot of fuss. I didn’t build another one- why? It would have cost me about as much as an entire control group of units and enough time to attack with them. I didn’t have time to tinker with the queen anyway, I had three bases going and I had too much macroing to do.
“You require more APM to build this unit – Play more Starcraft”
Almost every unit has new tricks, each one more amazing than the last. Some units might even need an entire strategy guide dedicated to them if they make the cut and aren’t discarded to the ever filling pool of rejects in the map editor (yes it can).But if you’re not the one to tell them what to do, they are just going to sit there, staring at you like a lobotomised puppy while they get reduced to a smoking crater or steaming pile of rubbish falling apart with havoc physics. And this is not the only thing you’re going to do. The entire game of Starcraft is still there, hiding under the illusion that this new game is easy.
And no, you’re not good enough to do all of this. You will sweat, be sure of that. Unless you are Boxer or Savior –in that case, yes, yes you can and thanks for reading.
In closing
I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I was already making up stories, making up strategies. I only played for an hour or three, but this game got into my head. I didn’t stop playing in my mind
At the end of day one, at 10pm – the fansites were scheduled to have dinner with some of the Blizzard staff, including Karune.
The building was being closed off, and everyone was waiting outside. Inside still was Karune, he was on one of the Press room PC’s that had SC2 installed. Everyone was waiting, but Karune was still playing Starcraft 2 against an AI. The staff members of the building came in, they stood behind him and asked kindly to leave, as they had to lock the doors for cleaning.
“Yeah, ok – just have to finish this last game… He’s down to one expansion.”
This guy works at Blizzard, he’s the community manager of the damned game. And he had to be removed from the computer by French staff members of the convention centre before he would stop playing. And I knew exactly how he felt.
Forget your bias. Forget everything you know about Starcraft 2 – be hopeful.
Blizzard knows what they are doing, they are creating a legend.
This game is good, and it’s not even in Beta yet.
It’s time to get excited again.
Greth – for SC2GG.com
jar dot antheh at gmail dot com
But looking forward to reading it.
