Starcraft II
 

I got lucky and found out I got in the Beta this morning. Too bad I'm terrible. Looks awesome though. Will probably watch a few replays today to get a feel for the changes.

I watched a ton of streams the day the Beta got released, but actually sitting in front of the game is another whole beast.

Discuss how you do or do not care.

I loved Starcraft and put a lot of hours into it way back when. I never got to sample it's multiplayer. I enjoy RTS games in a 'closet gay' manner - never talk about it, but I put a lot of hours into them. Halo Wars is fucking awesome, Endwar had its moments.

The competitive demands are steep, steeper than fighting games. When you get raped you get raped. And there's something about watching a set up you took 15mins to build get slowly destroyed that sells your defeat.

^Yeah. Been a RTS fan from the start of my computer gaming days.

Age of Empires and its Rise of Rome expansion were awesome. Played the shit out of those online on zone.com against people. Was never awesome at it, but I was good enough to beat a lot of people.. until I got Hittite rushed or something. Don't remember much about what people would do, but it was fun as hell.

Love RTS games. Never got into C&C really, cause I didn't go for modern RTS games as much. Was always a fan of fantasy ones more. Warcraft 3, and such, or I still like to play some city building games. LOVE the city-building genre. Managing a city with resources as opposed to military.. love laying out my cities and such.

I liked Warcraft 3 but the 3D visuals made it seem slow to me, Starcraft with its sprites seemed faster. Warcraft 2 was my first RTS, and we had to learn how to play it without the manual. We thought it was an RPG for days, the trial and error was epic considering it was the first for us, but we ended up loving it.

I remember we were obsessed with SNES' port of Sim City 2000. We pulled our mom in the room to see what we came up with. That game taught me how taxes and urban infrastructure worked (not in depth, but certainly notable for what would usually be taught to kids my age). I remember Sim City 64 promising to let you walk around in your city. I'm still waiting for that game, though I suppose The Sims kinda delivered on that... I despise The Sims, though.

I remember Starcraft getting ported to the N64, but the splitscreen multiplayer misses the point entirely. We avoided that on principle. I watched patiently as developers tried to get RTS games right on console, many missed their mark. I thought Endwar was great, but that was just buffed on praise from returning to a genre I really liked. Halo Wars was a surprise and quite honestly the best console effort to date. Microsoft forcing the Halo brand on the engine probably hurt it's potential appeal.

BFME was pretty fun, but I never got to play it against anyone.

RTS on consoles are generally shit. The only game I've ever mildly enjoyed on console in the RTS genre was C&C: Red Alert.

I love Blizzard's RTS, also a fan of C&C. Played some AoE with some guys from here back in the day, I think RBF, Dragon and RDD. Possibly Joel. I was like 12 tho, used to get fucking raped.

I took it over to some friends last night who are far better than I, and really enjoyed the differences from the original. There are certainly enough differences to shake up any old Starcraft players, and still please the ones who might still want to do a Zergling rush.

I played da_king in AoE II a few times

I really haven't had a chance to play it. But I've been playing the board game instead.

Don't laugh.

I'm playing the beta right now, got a key for pre-ordering the game.

Maintains the Starcraft 1 "feel" but at the same time incorporates new units/elements that differentiates this installment.

They only started offering beta keys with pre-orders.

Still haven't had a chance to play, but a friend has been using my account anyway. He's in Platinum League, so it probably isn't worth playing anymore. I won't be learning anything from an excessive beatdown.

I'm sure its Blizzard's doing, mainly because they wanted to limit the beta originally to a small group of people (10,000 I think). Now they should be stress-testing the new Battle.net.

Dunno, spending 100 bucks on a game is a bit much.

HO - LY - SHIT! HO - LY - SHIT! HO - LY - SHIT! HO - LY - SHIT! HO - LY - SHIT! HO - LY - SHIT! HO - LY - SHIT!

Chill out, dickwad.

Will you be delivering it to me on a silver platter? With BRAINS?

I probably wont pull the trigger until I can get some gamer credit with it. Considering I don't even play the beta, I probably don't need to purchase it just yet.

:yes:

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company...es.html?100505 :eek:

:eek: FUCKING SWEET!

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Out today, gentlemen. 12 years for a sequel.

I am installing this right now.

Still contemplating getting this, even though my cousin is telling me to constantly since the day he started the beta.

Do it


FUCKING AMAZING

Loving this game so damned much.

i'm on

flattiresuited@yahoo.com


send me a friend invite or something. I suck

Spent like 8 hours playing online multiplayer last night.

Unbelievable.

I'm a competitive savant and RTS versus is too hardcore for me. I am afraid to step foot in the Starcraft arena. Fuck that.

Yeah, people are insane over this game.

Look at this bullshit of Starcraft: Brood War. APM is actions per minute, basically how active you are in a game. What this Korean guy says is pretty much true:

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His words per minute are a bit lacking.

I think that guy is a little over the top. APM is important obviously, but I think where you're looking and what you're doing is the most vital, obviously. I never click around in the beginning of the game because everything is more timing than anything else, not how much you can look around.

APM is highly important in micro battles, and games can be won and lost there. APM is also important on a macro level, because once your macro is at a high level, you need to be constantly producing units/expanding. So APM is important to the game, but I disagree slightly that you have to click around like a maniac at times.

A lot of times RTS has to be very precise, but other times, you can get by on dumb luck, just not for long. I think SCII has a good system of ranking so that players are going to play other players of their level.

The league I'm in, platinum (diamond is the only one higher), has seen me in some very close games. I've lost some, won some, but the competition is very good. I don't feel like I'm severely outmatched. I feel that as long as I don't have any self inflicted mistakes, I can at least be competitive. I've been on the ropes some games and won, and had people on the ropes and lost. I would recommend SCII to anyone who even has a passing interest in the RTS genre.

OOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I think some Blizzard fans can be pretentious, maybe that's it?

Their RTS is second to none in my opinion. They have incredible balance.

Didn't Warcraft itself originally start out as a game for Games Workshop?

I dabbled in WoW for quite some time but I gave up when I hit max level, people took it far too seriously for my liking.

Dude, don't you play D&D?

You know, LotR with the serial numbers filed off?

Blizzard borrows 75% of their ideas from other games. WoW blatantly re-used major features from other MMOs, and then added in some of their own dumbed down ideas. Blizzard goes for accessibility - no high system requirements, and an easy learning curve.

*shrug*

You were bitching before about jonesing for some D&D.

It seems dumb to bitch about something not being original when you're a fan of something else that's unoriginal. Unless there's a huge discrepancy in quality, but D&D is probably less original.

I dunno. I don't really care if Blizzard takes concepts from another source. If a concept is good, why not? I mean, I can see that criticism with WoW, but RTS is a pretty archaic formula in and of itself. We obviously have seen variations with games like the Warhammer series and the latest C&C (which is just what comes to mind now, not saying they blazed trails or anything.) Fundamentally though, RTS is pretty straight forward.

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Yeah I'm lazy.

I'm still shocked to see how much a video game matters to an entire country.

And retarded and gay, but still.

Japan says Hello, as well. Not over Starcraft (or maybe), but other titles.

So, like, seriously, how likely am I to enjoy it if I snag Starcraft's battle chest? It's like ten bucks now, so I'm considering just trying it instead of buying the new one. They similar enough that it would be worth grabbing the first to decide if I like the new one? I'm not really a RTS player as such, but SC2 is getting some serious praise even from folks who aren't inherrently RTS gamers.

Hard to ignore that.

I think SC1 plays a little slower than SC2. There are some changes to the units in SC2, such as new ones, and old ones from SC1 being removed.

It's tough because if you're not a fan of the genre it may not appeal, period. But, as far as RTS gaming goes, it's as good as it gets. The game is kept incredibly balanced. The ranking system that they've implemented works pretty well in my opinion. You can expect not to be constantly matched up against superior or inferior players. If you string together a couple wins, you may face an opponent of a higher "ladder", but that is designed as a test to move you up. It's definitely not focused on the single player experience. Unless you're attracted to the competitive multiplayer aspect, I wouldn't bother.

From what I played of the beta, they certainly feel very similar, so I think SC1 would give you a good idea of whether you would like SC2 or not. Haven't gotten my copy of SC2 in the mail yet, but reviews seem to highlight the varied single-player campaign over the first one, which really only had handful of mission types.

That being said, the game fills an awful lot of nostalgia for me. I would say SC1 has dated well gameplay-wise, but not a whole lot else.

The campaign is fun, but to me it's drastically different than multiplayer. The units are different, and it's not like the story is meant to be this amazing epic tale.

If anybody wants a Guest Pass, here's one I was about to throw away:

G4YE4D-4782-RJH8NK-NKPM-CJNCDR