StarCraft 2 release !!

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Cydra-Blizzard Poster wrote:
Today we announced that StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty will not be ready for release by the end of 2009. Over the past couple of weeks, it has become clear that it will take longer than expected to prepare the new Battle.net for the launch of the game. The upgraded Battle.net is an integral part of the StarCraft II experience and will be an essential part of all of our games moving forward. This extra development time will be critical to help us realize our vision for the service.
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Our mission is to develop games that deliver an epic entertainment experience. As part of that commitment, we will always take as much time as needed to ensure that our games and services meet the expectations of our players and the standard for quality that we set for ourselves as developers. As we work to make Battle.net the premier online gaming destination, we'll also continue to polish and refine StarCraft II, and we look forward to delivering a real-time strategy gaming experience worthy of the series' legacy in the first half of 2010.
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We will share more details about the beta, Battle.net, and StarCraft II's launch in the future. Keep an eye on the official website at http://www.starcraft2.com for updates, and as always, thank you for your continued enthusiasm and support for StarCraft II and all of Blizzard Entertainment's games.

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that means your Christmas gift this year will taste like shit too :-D i just hope it will be released before the end of the world in 2012
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DarkSath wrote:....

What did you expect? I'm indeed more looking forward to diablo 3

Old news. Blizzards plan is like this: Destory WC3. Destroy SC, never release SC2 and D3. Get everyone to play WOW. GAME OVER YEAAAH!

Lisianthus wrote:Old news. Blizzards plan is like this: Destory WC3. Destroy SC, never release SC2 and D3. Get everyone to play WOW. GAME OVER YEAAAH!

Actually, they are making a battle.net service that will be used by SC, D3 and WoW!!

And all they need atm to release SC beta is a working battle.net service...

well I mean they have already taken huge steps BACKWARDS with sc2... they removed being able to view replays online with other ppl. They have switched almost every races advantages vs each other, I mean its a new game and all but its still the same armies...
Auto-Mining... nuff said.. idiotic thing to put into sc lol

Eulogy wrote:they removed being able to view replays online with other ppl.

let's not make quick assumptions, will we? battle.net is still months before it's final development...

Eulogy wrote:They have switched almost every races advantages vs each other, I mean its a new game and all but its still the same armies...

reallly? with about half of all units completely new ones?

Eulogy wrote:Auto-Mining... nuff said.. idiotic thing to put into sc lol

(I hope you're not thinking "WC3 automining" here...)

That falls into the eternal micro vs macro debate, which is unresolvable => there's no absolute pros and cons to auto-mining

in my opinion, shifting a few actions from resources mining to elsewhere is definitely a good thing and no it does not reduces the overall importance of macro

I already know that they have taken away watching reps online like you can do in sc and sc brood war. they released that information.

Yes they are still the same armies.. in the middle of a war that you have been doing well in you dont shift your tactics especially when your army is still grouped around the same core units. (dragoons ARE immortals lets remember) so the protoss should keep their core "i can be anywhere on the map and still have the same advantage" thing. Terran however have seriously lost their ability to fight anything while they are moving so they NEED to creep across the map. Zerg havent really had to many VoD releases so I'm not sure about them but I know they are still pretty much no tech heavy macro race compared to the others.


By the way we are talking sc mining here.. there are HUGE con's to automining if they leave it in the game which they are still deciding.. its very resolvable... leave it the way it was in the original.. the whole point of having no auto-mining in sc was that it seperated the good players (c+ to a) from the.. decent players (d to c)

Macro of the workers is still important but having the base control to move them to the minerals/gas is left unimportant which is horrible considering you can have upwards of 70 workers in one game.

Eulogy wrote:
Yes they are still the same armies.. in the middle of a war that you have been doing well in you dont shift your tactics especially when your army is still grouped around the same core units. (dragoons ARE immortals lets remember) so the protoss should keep their core "i can be anywhere on the map and still have the same advantage" thing.

It's logical that a new game should have new units and not the old armies. But you can also go by lore:
The Protoss-shrine where they built dragoons was destroyed by the Zerg. Having a limited supply makes things like the hardened shield useful.
The Zerg "evolved", as they said in the race trailer. Since they were defeated they needed to evolve to come up with even more deadly monsters.
The Terrans smoked some strange weed which made them construct their future killing machines in a gay way and color them pink. Heck, they even put cows into suits! (Tauren Marine)

Eulogy wrote:Terran however have seriously lost their ability to fight anything while they are moving so they NEED to creep across the map. Zerg havent really had to many VoD releases so I'm not sure about them but I know they are still pretty much no tech heavy macro race compared to the others.

Why'd you say that? Crawling forward is a common Terran tactic in SC1, too, if I remember correcly.
Although I fail to see fast-moving M&M or Vulture masses in SC2, there's the cliff hoppers, the more useful air transports, the Vikings (I foresee Viking spam as a viable tactic) and the firebats on bikes (though I will miss the Vultures..). While they have units like Thor or Siege tanks, they still have quite some mobility.

Tamer wrote:

Eulogy wrote:By the way we are talking sc mining here.. there are HUGE con's to automining if they leave it in the game which they are still deciding.. its very resolvable... leave it the way it was in the original.. the whole point of having no auto-mining in sc was that it seperated the good players (c+ to a) from the.. decent players (d to c)

WC3 has the most basic economic system anyone can seriously imagine, yet, there are a handful of players who are in a league of their own - players that can't be beat by anyone except less than 10 other people

stating that auto-mining would be THE ONLY THING that separates the good from the bad players in SC2 is just wrong...

Actually there are tricks to mine a little faster in WC3. Alot of good players do this, too (or at least they used to when I played it..).

But I agree on the other part. If I watch a replay of some C-players and another one of some A-players, then I can clearly see how the C-players start doing mistakes especially in late game.
They didn't see an enemy drop coming, they miss their time window for attacking, they lack unit micro and thus lose battles..
When I now look at the really good players I rarely see this sort of grave mistakes.

Blizzard tries to balance this "lack of needed skill" by putting stuff like the MULE or the additional larva into the game. Consider this to be your mining micro.
Also, I'm pretty sure that you will be able to mine a little faster by manually assigning the drones:
If you set a waypoint to one of the mineral patches and produce a few workers, the second one will probably first move to that assigned patch, then notice it's occupied, then move towards another one. That's losing you some time, esp. in the very early game.
Or maybe a well placed Pylon can do the trick again ^.^(doubt that,though).

I thought everyone knew SC2 wasn't coming out this year by the time January Hit *shrugz*

eh the thing is s3rius, Thor's get RAPED by stalkers which are like 10x more efficient to use early game as protoss AND have blink lol... Terran players used to be able to push without crawling to their mineral only ect. now they have to crawl every step of the way cause if the P see's it they can crush them so much easier than before.

Zerg didnt lose either btw. Kerrigan ended up devistating both the UED and the Protoss Fleet in the last mission for bw:campaign and the bonus mission with Zeratul never mentioned any loss of her army. the other thing is that ok you gain like 5 seconds mineral time early game by rallying and manually using probes *as you did before* but after you get 10-11 probes it doesnt matter any more.. no more idle probes for D ranking players EVER is just dumb.. better players deserve the stronger econ in bw because they can handle the base management while they macro.. it was something you needed to be good at to win =/

Back to the T thing, most T's didnt crawl properly but they attempted it for the most part lol.. but I mean full out CRAWL across the map now.. so the P has time to double expo at the start because of the stalkers =/ I have watched a group of stalkers kill a Thor and 4 siege tanks like nothing =/ but they become weak as hell mid-late game.. kinda like dts I suppose lol

Eulogy, you realize that :

1- SC2 haven't started beta yet?
2- No matter the newb-friendly functions that are implemented, the typical D player will remain a D player? He will just be able to do more than he did previously, and so will the C, B and A players.


I honestly think that making ANY comment about the overall game balance right now is doing nothing more than conjectures...and very weak ones at it...

I have considerably more experience in WC3 than any other game, so I can confidently relate only to it.

Ok, I know WC3 is not SC or SC2 and they will be considerably different games. But if you take a look at the big picture, you can realize that the game constantly evolves - if might be slow, but it still does - and even if we're talking the same patch. The strategies you see at the top level of starcraft are not exactly the same from a few years ago, some have been refined, others got invented...and we're talking the same balanced game you obviously cherish

My point is: EVEN when the game will be released and you will have played hundreds of games on it you (nor me) still won't be able to draw big conclusions that will hold true in all circumstances and through time about overall balance of the game. The patches will change the game as well as the players, so that a "this unit is broken" conclusion might not stay true later even if Blizzard make no changes to it.

Tamer... SC2 Beta has started

Eulogy wrote:eh the thing is s3rius, Thor's get RAPED by stalkers which are like 10x more efficient to use early game as protoss AND have blink lol... Terran players used to be able to push without crawling to their mineral only ect. now they have to crawl every step of the way cause if the P see's it they can crush them so much easier than before.

And in SC1 a siege tank gets raped by a dragoon (just get close to it). Still Terrans use tanks vs Toss
Thors are no early-game unit, neither are they a one-man army. Isn't Thor a heavy Anti-Air unit anyway? Or did they change that again?

Eulogy wrote:Back to the T thing, most T's didnt crawl properly but they attempted it for the most part lol.. but I mean full out CRAWL across the map now.. so the P has time to double expo at the start because of the stalkers =/ I have watched a group of stalkers kill a Thor and 4 siege tanks like nothing =/ but they become weak as hell mid-late game.. kinda like dts I suppose lol

Except of Siege Tanks (and maybe Thors) the Terran does not have any set-up units or units with a minimum attack range. Stalkers will have to sacrafice attack power for their blink (or higher cost). I'm pretty sure that a Protoss will have to spend a lot of money on Stalkers if he wants to kill the Terran's eary army (Marauders will probably be the weapon of choice).
If it turns out that Stalkers are too powerful then that's just a balance issue, not a problem with Terran's army composition.

I agree, however, that scouting will be even more important for Terran if you look at the Phase Prisms, Stalkers, Nydrus worms

Proxy wrote:Tamer... SC2 Beta has started

I guess he means open beta.

sc2beta would be available when bnet2 will be online ...
then after you can count like 6 months at least of public beta test and finnally have the game in stores .
That makes something like april/june for a possible beta and november/december for 1st release , that sound commercially normal to have a game like this released just before Christmas

D3 / SC2 delayed , WC4 in your dreams

and that give them time to make an add-on for WoW

s3rius.. tanks > dragoons... every toss player knows siege tanks melt dragoons.. i'll use an example.. Python or Longinus or any map with a choke/ramp (all of them) 3-4 siege tanks, barracks, supply depot in the way > 7-10 Dragoons.

Bamboo Rush > Protoss early game Dragoons (also known lately as the Gundam Rush)

SC2 is in Beta testing Tamer. Both by the Pro's and by Blizzards staff... they have released a lot of video's of them playing on it and I can already see the flaws in some of the game play. I'd also like to note that a sc korean hasnt lost a match yet lol xD Even Boxer won his match vs Grubby xD

I thought Thor was supposed to take out stalkers fairly easily but in one of the games I watched the commentators were like wow that Thor was so bad.. and then it shot again and they were like what? its not dead yet? I guess it kinda took a nap... and then it blew up rofl it was so useless

Either way they were trying to keep the core fundementals for each race.. Obviously lol you can't exactly swap these things out... its like making a sequel to a movie and changing the actor who plays the main character from lets say Will Smith to Jack Black.

It is true that the mineral line is now in need of heavy defence but it always was.. vulture drops, lurker drops, mutalisk harass, dt harass. ect.

The thing is wc3 Ladder fails hard compared to sc:bw Melee... I don't want to see them adapt to much into wc3 ladder on a rts like starcraft.. wouldn't be right

Eulogy wrote:s3rius.. tanks > dragoons... every toss player knows siege tanks melt dragoons.. i'll use an example.. Python or Longinus or any map with a choke/ramp (all of them) 3-4 siege tanks, barracks, supply depot in the way > 7-10 Dragoons.

Yes, but a single set-up tank loses to a single dragoon if you count no other units in. That's it's disadvantage - tanks need other units (or buildings) to protect them while they deal the damage.
That's the way I see the Thor, too. Letting it fight without proper support is suicide (of course it doesn't mean that Stalkers aren't overpowered, or that the Thor isn't too weak, but that are things that can easily be fixed).

In which video did you see that Thor<->Stalker action? I can't recall that I've ever seen a battle where a Thor was being used. Was it some new or old vid?

I found it on youtube randomly it was 2 Blizzard employee's or testers or something in a huge conferance Hall... basically showing how the game worked but it was so brutal lol..

Ah but I must add one thing 1 tank > 1 dragoon, it fires once and unsieges. pretty common if you see it happening

oh I must add one more thing, tanks in most cases will actually fire twice in siege mode before the dragoon gets inside its minimum range leaving them with 2-3 hits of a regular tank mode to kill them T.T

Eulogy wrote:I found it on youtube randomly it was 2 Blizzard employee's or testers or something in a huge conferance Hall... basically showing how the game worked but it was so brutal lol..

That might have been the BlizzCon 2008. Would explain why the Thor was actually firing at the ground targets. The last thing I've heard of the Thor was that they transformed it into a heavy anti-air unit.. which kind of makes the whole discussion obsolete

s3rius wrote:I guess he means open beta.

not really, unless you consider a beta closed to thousands of players an "open" beta because of the sheer number of players

to me an open beta is one where anybody can join it at will, no invitation required => that's usually the case only during the stress test phase, which doesn't last very long...

Proxy wrote:Tamer... SC2 Beta has started

I don't consider internal or Friends & Family beta to be a real beta when discussing the balance of the game...

DarkSath wrote:then after you can count like 6 months at least of public beta test and finnally have the game in stores .

No RTS beta from Blizzard lasted more than 4.5 months. The longest was RoC beta and when it launched, it lacked huge parts of the game like buildings, units and skills...

SC2 will be in a phase of development that can not be compared to RoC's beta, it will be much more complete. Therefore, the focus of the beta will be elsewhere: balance, game stability, etc.

There's no a priori expectations for the beta to last any longer than previous RTS' betas.

DarkSath wrote:november/december for 1st release , that sound commercially normal to have a game like this released just before Christmas

Blizzard has never first released a PC game during december, ever. Diablo (the original) and WoW are the only ones released in Q4, but a relatively small % of the total sales were made during that Q4/christmas period.

The commercial window for Blizzard games last nothing less than 360 days a year (stores close for holidays...)

Eulogy wrote:SC2 is in Beta testing Tamer. Both by the Pro's and by Blizzards staff... they have released a lot of video's of them playing on it and I can already see the flaws in some of the game play. I'd also like to note that a sc korean hasnt lost a match yet lol xD Even Boxer won his match vs Grubby xD

cf. my reply to proxy

+ Grubby isn't a SC player...even you might have beat him if he didn't have hundreds of SC games under his belt

also, by "a lot", you mean less than 10?

Eulogy wrote:The thing is wc3 Ladder fails hard compared to sc:bw Melee... I don't want to see them adapt to much into wc3 ladder on a rts like starcraft.. wouldn't be right

I'm pretty sure the SC2 ladder will use anonymous match-making... Although they probably will add the possibility to have custom games ranked for ladder, that was mentioned in some interview if I remember correctly

It is in Closed Beta right now. There are quite a few testers I know a chick that got accepted she said it's amazing but thats all she would tell me ):

Proxy wrote:It is in Closed Beta right now. There are quite a few testers I know a chick that got accepted she said it's amazing but thats all she would tell me ):

whena game sucks, people talks about it a lot cuz they don't care about the non-disclosure they signed.... but if the game is great, they shut their mouth to make sure they get caught and lose their chance to continue playing ^_^

lol yup. and try over 50 vods of sc matches.. lol Grubby played on sc2 the exact same amount of time as Boxer did 2 both of them are new to it

SC2 is in a beta test right now regardless of how you call it a "beta" its being tested LIVE so people can send them their support/oppinions lol and s3rius I checked up the Thor your right its kinda funny to watch xD

Besides if you dont consider that a real Beta then sadly half the games in existance never had a real beta test before they were released.

Eulogy wrote:lol yup. and try over 50 vods of sc matches.. lol Grubby played on sc2 the exact same amount of time as Boxer did 2 both of them are new to it

But only one of them has a lot of SC experience, you'll agree with me that SC is closer to SC2 than WC3 is...

Eulogy wrote:SC2 is in a beta test right now regardless of how you call it a "beta" its being tested LIVE so people can send them their support/oppinions lol

lambda/casual gamers are pretty irrelevant to improving the game balance imo

invited pro players have been playing it since a long time ago, so there's little difference between then and the current beta status

Eulogy wrote:Besides if you dont consider that a real Beta then sadly half the games in existance never had a real beta test before they were released.

apparently, you forgot/missed out/did not consider the modifier "when discussing the balance of the game" which provides a whole different meaning to "real beta"

sc2 is as differant from sc as it is from wc3, only knowing the original helps slightly yes but... the other thing is that sc took/takes more skill than wc3 ladder... which is the main reason th sc gamers are winning vs the wc3 pro's.

I'm not sure i understand what you mean about the beta test.. regardless they have been in Beta Testing for awhile now which makes it real regardless of if some people like their way of doing it or not. =/

Eulogy wrote:sc2 is as differant from sc as it is from wc3, only knowing the original helps slightly yes but... the other thing is that sc took/takes more skill than wc3 ladder... which is the main reason th sc gamers are winning vs the wc3 pro's.

I'm not sure on what grounds you can make such a statement. The WC3 pros don't use the WC3 ladder at all...

Eulogy wrote:I'm not sure i understand what you mean about the beta test.. regardless they have been in Beta Testing for awhile now which makes it real regardless of if some people like their way of doing it or not. =/

think of "real" as "relevant" => a friends and family beta is 99% irrelevant to providing additional balance to the game, while a beta with tens of thousands of players is much more relevant, that's what I meant by "a real beta when discussing the balance of the game"

ok, yes, a few pro players have played the game, but most certainly not as much as they will when the beta will launch or as many pro/good players will

this much increased number will highlight abuses that are not known yet and that is relevant to balancing a game