Need more minerals.

July 25, 2010 4:56 PM

Starcraft 2 is about to be released, but there is already a thriving worldwide competitive scene. Perhaps the 2 biggest tournaments of the recent public beta were the HDH invitational and the ongoing King of the Beta tournament. Aside from players making a name for themselves, a number of commentators or 'casters' have as well. Links to some of the best played or commentated games of the beta are below the fold.

The Little One vs Tester from King of the Beta, cast by Day[9]
The Little One vs Nazgul2, 3, 4 from the Team Liquid Invitational, cast by Husky and HD
Idra vs WhiteRa 2, from the HDH Invitational finals, cast by Husky and HD
randy vs demuslim, from the BIO tournament cast by TotalBiscuit (largely notable because of the quality of the commentary.)
Huk vs Pinder, MLG showmatch, cast by Day[9] and JP
LZGamer vs Nocturn 2, cast by Diggity
JessieYL vs KungFuKitten
QXC vs Huk, cast by Day[9] and someone else.
(most links found via)

posted by empath (109 comments total)

For Fox Trot fans.
posted by phunniemee at 5:04 PM on July 25, 2010 [5 favorites]

HD/Husky are good casters if you are totally new to the game, but if you are familiar with SC1 I'd skip their elementary-level analysis and go directly to Day9tv. Sean Plott is brilliant and the entire King of the Beta webcast series is great watching. He also has over 150 episodes of his Day9 daily which generally has a more analytical focus (lots of pausing & discussion & live Q&A & him staring at you).

Unfortunately I cancelled my preorder due to the RealID mess and spent that money on beer.
posted by mek at 5:15 PM on July 25, 2010 [1 favorite]

Look for new web content to plummet, along with open source software patches.

The 27th is Mrs Poe's birthday. "Honey, I got you a copy of StarCraft II to match mine!"
posted by poe at 5:17 PM on July 25, 2010

Any word on Wine functionality? No, never mind, I don't want to know. Too tempting.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 5:18 PM on July 25, 2010

Game 2 of TLO v. Tester from KotB was the best SC2 match I've ever seen. Also, I thought qxc was going to get crushed and was just in the tournament because he's Day[9]'s friend. I was wrong.
posted by cucumber at 5:18 PM on July 25, 2010 [1 favorite]

Is there a primer of some sort on SC? I'm a little too, er, nervous to play fast-paced RTS games, but I always love to watch people who are really good at video games play video games. Except I'm not entirely sure what's going on.
posted by griphus at 5:20 PM on July 25, 2010

Some definitions for following along:

A push -- A timing push is an attack timed to reach the opponent while their defenses are low, either due to 'teching up' or focusing on the economy.

BM - bad manner, it's a korean expression for impolite players.

economy -- the population of workers (probes/drones/scvs) collecting minerals and gas.

teching - researching bonuses to armor, weapons, and shields and various other upgrades, such as speed.

Tier 1, 2 and 3 units -- Some units require buildings or research to be able to produce. The lowest level are tier 1 units, the highest level are tier 3.

All-in/Rush/Cheese -- Sacrificing economy and upgrades and any chance of competing in the late game to attack early and with overwhelming force. Many players think this is 'cheesy' or 'unfair' and a sign of a bad player.

Natural - The closest expansion to your starting base.

Fast expansion - Building an early command center/nexus/hive to boost the economy, while sacrificing fighting units -- susceptible to an early push or rush.
posted by empath at 5:20 PM on July 25, 2010 [6 favorites]

Griphus, watch Husky and HDStarcraft's casts if you want an introduction, they're pretty good at keeping things simple. You'll pick up a lot of the jargon from context after you watch a few of them.
posted by empath at 5:23 PM on July 25, 2010

Definitely check out TLO vs WhiteRa game 2 from the Team Liquid Invitational. It's my favorite game from beta.

Also, I recommend watching TLO vs Nazgul as cast by Day9, whose knowledge and enthusiasm for the game is unmatched.
posted by halfling at 5:27 PM on July 25, 2010

macro - The ability of a player to produce units, buildings, new bases, upgrades.

Micro - the ability of a player to control individual units in combat.

In a SC2 game, its impossible for a player to do everything at once, so he has to make decisions on what he's going to focus on. He can win a battle with an underpowered army by micromanaging the units, but if he does that, he's going to fall behind on production (macro).

Idra, for example, is well know for being entirely macro focused. He wins by building more, better units faster than anyone else, throwing them at his opponent, and then building a new army before his opponent can recover.

TLO is more of a micro oriented player and wins by harassing workers and with clever tactics.
posted by empath at 5:36 PM on July 25, 2010

IdrA is known for some other things, too. I never watched WWF as a kid but I reckon he plays the role of what they'd call a 'heel'.
posted by cucumber at 5:37 PM on July 25, 2010

See also : A Viking's Lament.
posted by cucumber at 5:43 PM on July 25, 2010 [1 favorite]

Also, I recommend watching TLO vs Nazgul as cast by Day9 , whose knowledge and enthusiasm for the game is unmatched.

You can listen to Day[9] talking about why Starcraft means so much to him. Surprisingly touching, funny and emotional. Day[9] is an interesting guy and a great storyteller. If esports catches on. it'll be because of guys like him.
posted by empath at 5:45 PM on July 25, 2010 [2 favorites]

I'm embarrassingly excited about SC2 and have been watching replays and reading more strategies and build orders and such than I *ever* did on SC1. I did have a question about jargon as well. If on a build order they're saying something like:

15 Spawning
18 Hydra
18 Queen

or whatever

Are they meaning, build 15 drones do a spawning pool, then 3 MORE drones...or 15, then spawning pool, then 18 MORE....etc. I ask because it is clear from watching these that I've likely been Waaaaaaaaayyyyy under producing harvesters in general (I've seen some games when they're saying "so and so has 49 harvesters compared to blah de blahs 52.") and I want to know by how much.
posted by Wink Ricketts at 6:00 PM on July 25, 2010

14 pool/16 hatch means that when they have 14 workers, they build a spawning pool, and when they have 16 they build a hatchery.
posted by empath at 6:02 PM on July 25, 2010

You should never stop building workers, afaik. I've seen long games where people had as many as 90 workers.
posted by empath at 6:03 PM on July 25, 2010 [1 favorite]

Groovy, thanks Empath. That is what I thought they meant, but the ways of The Koreans and other pros are strange and mysterious to me. I thought I might be wrong.
posted by Wink Ricketts at 6:08 PM on July 25, 2010

It will be interesting to see what happens with both SC2 and Cataclysm coming out within a few months of each other. WoW is going to lose a bunch of players to SC2, and Cataclysm may not be far enough out for those players to be ready to come back at release.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 6:11 PM on July 25, 2010

a number of commentators or 'casters'

I thought they were called tators.
posted by ODiV at 6:13 PM on July 25, 2010

Since Blizzard has decided to be total dicks and enforce region-locking on the new Battle.net, I won't be getting SC2 despite the fact that I was a huge fan of the first game. Since I live in Asia, I would be stuck playing on the Korean servers...a fate worse than death, in the SC world.
posted by nightchrome at 6:21 PM on July 25, 2010 [3 favorites]

The trailer for the game is all kinds of win and awesome.

I'm surprised the Korean government hasn't declared Tuesday a public holiday yet. =p
posted by xdvesper at 6:28 PM on July 25, 2010 [2 favorites]

nightchrome, SEA players have an NA server option now.
posted by cucumber at 6:30 PM on July 25, 2010

Have they allowed LAN-based gaming yet? I don't relish playing with my friends taking up the same bandwidth to battlenet, and I sure as hell don't relish us playing in our own homes when we could be hanging out.
posted by Lemurrhea at 6:43 PM on July 25, 2010

You should never stop building workers, afaik. I've seen long games where people had as many as 90 workers.

Generally, that is the rule but you can have too many workers in the late game when players have maxed armies and large economies. At some point, you start receiving minerals faster than you can spend them and your extra workers will only be taking up valuable supply that could be used for combat units.

Expansions also have a saturation point; there's not much gain from putting more than 2 harvesters (I think that's the number) to work on a single mineral patch.
posted by quosimosaur at 6:44 PM on July 25, 2010

Yeah, but you can always build extra workers and transfer to a new base.

On LAN based gaming -- they're only allowing it for major tournaments and pro games.

---

on the trailer -- i honestly could care less about the campaign or the storyline. I don't intend to ever play single player.
posted by empath at 6:46 PM on July 25, 2010

I pretty much lost all enthusiasm after learning about Blizzard's new approach to battle.net, and their elimination of LAN play. So maybe I'll wait and see if there are hacks for LAN play and/or PvPGN.
posted by jeffburdges at 7:09 PM on July 25, 2010 [2 favorites]

I've actually been watching these playbacks quite a bit, although I'd only seen Husky and HD's channels. I'll have to check out some of the other casters. Watching the replays is surprisingly entertaining. Especially the way they get so into some of the battles.

The Real ID thing is a huge turnoff though, I think I'll wait until a month or so later so it will be more clear how it's actually implemented.
posted by delmoi at 7:10 PM on July 25, 2010

If the single player campaign interests you, some chucklehead got the CE early this past weekend and posted all the cinematics. I'd post but the YouTubes were already taken down -- suffice to say, they're perty. Story gets a little surprising, too. Kerrigan is definitely modeled for the SEA market, though. Anime city.
posted by cavalier at 7:27 PM on July 25, 2010

Damn but people are into this!
posted by Mister_A at 7:32 PM on July 25, 2010

I've been waiting for this game for nearly half my life, but until I can play this game with my friends while we hang out I have no problem waiting until I can.
posted by Blasdelb at 8:08 PM on July 25, 2010

Oh the other thing, seeing the micro in high level games is pretty fascinating.
posted by delmoi at 8:15 PM on July 25, 2010

You know, can I just say, as a total novice, it seems to me that people are taking the LAN thing way too seriously? If you really really want to play the game, just play the game already.
posted by newdaddy at 8:24 PM on July 25, 2010

i honestly could care less about the campaign or the storyline. I don't intend to ever play single player.

Wow, really? I know the multiplayer's going to last me a long time, but Starcraft's single player was really great, enjoyably plotted and interesting. I hope SC2 lives up to that, because the universe was well-crafted in the first.
posted by graventy at 9:15 PM on July 25, 2010 [1 favorite]

Many players think this is 'cheesy' or 'unfair' and a sign of a bad player.

Unfortunately for them, the win-lose ratio is silent on the matter.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:30 PM on July 25, 2010

After the WC3:TFT campaign which had some really excellent and innovative level design (fleeing that collapsing temple as Illidan, etc) I'm very excited to see what the SC2 campaigns have in store. There are three 30-mission campaigns over 3 games... that's a lot of campaign!
posted by mek at 9:33 PM on July 25, 2010

You know, can I just say, as a total novice, it seems to me that people are taking the LAN thing way too seriously?

In SC1 days, there was a whole culture build up around LAN play; specifically around the spawn mode that allowed you to install a limited version of the game on a bunch of machines with a single product key. A lot of players view the lack of LAN play as an attack on the very culture that created Starcraft's fan base in the first place.
posted by Loser at 9:34 PM on July 25, 2010

So, what are the difrences between SC1 and SC2? I'm not a huge fan of RTS games beyond the odd blat, but the aging gamer in me wouldn't mind knowing more about the r/evolutionary changes in this version.
posted by Sparx at 9:42 PM on July 25, 2010

In SC1 days, there was a whole culture build up around LAN play; specifically around the spawn mode that allowed you to install a limited version of the game on a bunch of machines with a single product key. A lot of players view the lack of LAN play as an attack on the very culture that created Starcraft's fan base in the first place.

That's true. I want LAN play as well and irrespective of my desires there are great reasons for it. For instance, bigtime tournaments (eg, in Korea) where "sorry the Blizzard servers are down" just isn't going to fly when big sponsors and television broadcasts are in play. So it will be interesting to see what Blizzard does in this respect ... perhaps there will be a pro-only LAN version or perhaps, for a fee, one may be able to provision Blizzard servers with guaranteed uptimes and max (but not LAN) latencies. Who knows.

But for amateurs, I'm pretty sure Blizzard thinks/knows that only about 1 out of 1000 people who tell the internet "I'm not playing SC2 because there's no LAN!" are actually, at the end of the day, serious. ie, QQ.
posted by cucumber at 9:43 PM on July 25, 2010

I really grew up more on the Warcraft side of things - came to Starcraft I late and Warcraft III pulled me away from it fairly quickly - but I've been jonesing for a new Blizzard RTS for years, now. I'm pumped about this.
posted by AdamCSnider at 9:55 PM on July 25, 2010

empath: "on the trailer -- i honestly could care less about the campaign or the storyline. I don't intend to ever play single player."

That's funny, I'm really looking forward to SC2, and I'm not planning on ever playing against other people.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 10:00 PM on July 25, 2010 [6 favorites]

Does anyone know if it will be pay-to-play on battle.net like WoW?
posted by ReWayne at 10:01 PM on July 25, 2010

In the US there is no monthly fee (I assume that's what you mean by 'pay-to-play'). In some parts of the world Blizzard is offering low-cost versions with time-limited access to multi-player in addition to standard versions, which are more expensive, with no further pay-to-play. I'm not sure if there are parts of the world where the only option is monthly.
posted by cucumber at 10:11 PM on July 25, 2010

Oh man Protos v. Protos seems like it could be kind of dull but clicking around in some of the other replays I found this gamewhich was just insane.

Btw. One of the biggest examples of "cheese" I think I've seen, and this is probably something that was removed from the game in the beta, but zerg players would go in with a drone to scout, then convert the drone into a gas extractor in the other players base. Then at the last minute they'd cancel, get their drone back, then immediately try again. I saw someone do this against terran and managed to do it something like five times.
posted by delmoi at 10:24 PM on July 25, 2010 [3 favorites]

Salvor Hardin: “Any word on Wine functionality? No, never mind, I don't want to know. Too tempting.”

You'll want to not click this link, then.
posted by koeselitz at 10:26 PM on July 25, 2010 [1 favorite]

If Blizzard was amazingly smart, they'd upgrade Spawn Mode to work over LAN itself, i.e. you'd stream the game off of the primary player's machine, using a file system driver.

The main machine would always have to be one of the players, but secondaries could always play with. That's how you make a game viral.
posted by effugas at 10:35 PM on July 25, 2010

Btw. One of the biggest examples of "cheese" I think I've seen, and this is probably something that was removed from the game in the beta, but zerg players would go in with a drone to scout, then convert the drone into a gas extractor in the other players base. Then at the last minute they'd cancel, get their drone back, then immediately try again. I saw someone do this against terran and managed to do it something like five times.

You could do this in SC1 as well. It only happened when the Zerg player scouted really early (thus sacrificing economy) and their opponent built gas very late. Everytime the Zerg player cancelled the extractor he would lose some money because he doesn't get a full refund. The Terran player could also just immediately throw up a refinery when he sees the drone appear within his vision, preventing this from happening at all. Basically, it's not free to execute, and it's easily counterable for less resources than it took to execute.

Example of a tactic that were removed: say, in Warcraft 3, in the Night Elf vs Undead matchup - the infamous level 1 KOTF entangle harass of Undead acolytes during the UD fast tech. Entangle was an instant cast skill that one-shotted the Acolytes, each time reducing their total income by 20%. It "was" counterable by experienced players - You needed to know your opponent was NE, build your base appropriately with good choke points, let the KOTF in to kill one Acolyte, then trap him and force him to burn his TP to escape. You had to pick a DL/DK hero for this to work. Basically, it's a no-risk strategy for the Night Elves, which required far more effort / knowledge to counter by the Undead. Even with a perfect counter, you would still lose 1 or 2 Acolytes to it. If you failed to counter you could lose all 5 and end up with zero income. So it got removed.
posted by xdvesper at 10:58 PM on July 25, 2010

Gas stealing and the zerg cancel trick are still very much in the game. The thing you don't notice, as xdvesper notes, is that it does drain zerg mineral resources... something like 4 minerals per cancel. Despite the micro and macro costs it's a very valuable tool to delay specific builds, much like pylon/bunker expansion blocking. Done well these tactics can seriously harm a player dedicated to a specific build, but a true pro will adapt.
posted by mek at 11:20 PM on July 25, 2010

Yeah. A lot of the value in that kind of gas steal is that you can force the opponent to make the kind of units you want to see on the field in the early game.
posted by cucumber at 11:28 PM on July 25, 2010

cucumber: Thanks, but that doesn't help me as I live in Japan, which is not part of SE Asia.
posted by nightchrome at 11:50 PM on July 25, 2010

Any word on when (if ever) the Korean pro leagues will make the switch to SC2? It'd be interesting to know how well the SC1 pros can adapt to the new game.
posted by daniel_charms at 12:20 AM on July 26, 2010

The few Koreans who have made the switch seem to be dominating, and they're not even top-level Koreans.
posted by empath at 12:55 AM on July 26, 2010

The trailer for the game is all kinds of win and awesome.

It seems weird to show nothing but cutscenes in a trailer. Shouldn't they show some of the actual, uh, game?

A lot of it was really cool but why oh why do they insist on including cheesy juvenile dialogue like "if there's on thing I know, there are some things worth fighting for!". Really? That's the best you can do?

Also: Is there a relatively straightforward summary of the plotline to date? The Wikipedia one is a little more in depth than I was hoping for. I'll probably pick up SC2 but pretty much have no idea what happened after Kerrigan got all Zerged.
posted by Justinian at 1:19 AM on July 26, 2010

The story so far.
posted by cucumber at 1:51 AM on July 26, 2010

You know, can I just say, as a total novice, it seems to me that people are taking the LAN thing way too seriously? If you really really want to play the game, just play the game already.

On my particular hillbilly mountain I have no internet, I do however have several neighbors and one brother who I would like to murder with my terrible army of Protoss. I am paying $60 for the game, and would like to be able to play it.
posted by St. Sorryass at 3:55 AM on July 26, 2010 [4 favorites]

I have no idea what anybody is talking about.
posted by jbickers at 5:37 AM on July 26, 2010 [1 favorite]

Since Blizzard has decided to be total dicks and enforce region-locking on the new Battle.net, I won't be getting SC2 despite the fact that I was a huge fan of the first game. Since I live in Asia, I would be stuck playing on the Korean servers...a fate worse than death, in the SC world.

I don't mean to sound like I'm defending Blizzard's new bnet system, but if this is a decision you're making out of pragmatism over principle, I'm fairly certain you can import a US version of the game and play on US servers
posted by p3on at 6:03 AM on July 26, 2010

They also said they were looking into letting more people besides SEA play on American servers in the future, I believe.
posted by empath at 6:43 AM on July 26, 2010

Do I dare check my older Intel Mac's specs to see if it can run this?
posted by robocop is bleeding at 6:58 AM on July 26, 2010

I don't mean to sound like I'm defending Blizzard's new bnet system, but if this is a decision you're making out of pragmatism over principle, I'm fairly certain you can import a US version of the game and play on US servers

I'm in the UK. I'd be wanting to play with both friends who live near by me (ideally LAN play as while my own connection is passable, the one where we LAN game isn't), and my buddies online in mefightclub, who are largely in the US. Since doing so would require purchasing two copies, one of which would be an expensive import, and LAN play is a no-go, Blizzard can go take a hike. I'm not a fanatical player, but I do like the odd RTS multiplayer match, and the whole region locking, no-LAN play and RealID business demonstrated blizzard really don't give a toss about the gamers that paid for their success in the first place.

I'm not particularly bothered; I have a whole stack of other good games to play at the moment. On the other hand, I know quite a few people who won't be buying for similar reasons. Still who cares? It'll sell like gangbusters no matter how much Blizzard give the finger to the older gamer like me.
posted by ArkhanJG at 7:38 AM on July 26, 2010

SC2 is now released and live for players in SEA.

p3on : yeah, that blows. I really hope there's a LAN release or at least that someone figures out the protocols and makes an underground bnet emulator.
posted by cucumber at 7:44 AM on July 26, 2010

I burned a lot of hours playing SC1 and the expansion. SC2 has been on my radar for a long time now - but they took so long to actually get around to making it that I don't think I'll be buying a copy.

I'm old now and I don't have time for the games I have. Still haven't even played more than a few levels of the WCIII expansion. I wish that I had the free time I used to have, but a kid and a fairly demanding job leave me a lot less time to play games than I had back in college.

It looks like the game will be pretty cool though. Unfortunately it also looks like I'll have to miss out on this one. On the plus side, SC levels are pretty short and self-contained, so if I ever do pick up a copy down the road, I might be able to work my way through it in the free time I do have.
posted by caution live frogs at 8:02 AM on July 26, 2010 [3 favorites]

All I want to know is how long will it be until the player created scenarios start showing up on Battle.Net!?!? I want to play a SCII game themed like waring PizzaHut franchises (NO RUSH 15 NOOBS ONLY!!!!!1!)
posted by jermsplan at 9:19 AM on July 26, 2010

There are a ton of custom maps already.
posted by empath at 9:35 AM on July 26, 2010

Looks like my Mac is on the cusp of not being able to run this...
posted by Mister_A at 10:42 AM on July 26, 2010

Re: differences between SC1 and SC2. This is a hard one for someone who's not already playing one of the two. Let's see.

The changes are most definitely evolutionary, not revolutionary. As a matter of fact, in many ways SC2 could be seen as one of the most backward, conservative RTSes released in a long while. Instead of abandoning base-building altogether, like WH40k: Dawn of War II did, it embraces the classic base build. If you traveled here in a time machine and had only played Dune II before, you'd be totally familiar with how base building works (only concrete is now called creep, and only one of the three houses has it). All the army types will feel perfectly familiar to anyone who's played SC1; lurker, firebat, reaver and certain other units from the first game may be gone, but there's plenty that survived intact and feel much the same as they used to.

Right, differences. You wanted to hear about differences.

First of all, they removed all the stupid. I've been playing RTSes forever, but I only really got into it at around Warcraft III. So Starcraft: Brood War was something I played casually only, against a few friends, not bothering too much about winning. (That's a bold faced lie: I'd get so pumped up about games I would yell. But I didn't do much to improve my win:loss ratio). I played War3 and TFT (the expansion) for a VERY long time, very competitively. Then I discovered the pro SC1 scene in Korea, and after watching countless hours of Bisu and Flash and July I decided to give SC1 another go. After all, I was pretty good at it back in '99, wasn't I?

I wasn't. Nowhere close. SC1 demands SO MUCH from you, for the most stupid tasks. Workers must be told manually to go harvest minerals/gas, even if you rally directly onto the patch/geyser. You need to click every single unit producing structure to produce a lot of units. You can only put 12 units into a hotkeyed control group. Units can be told to go somewhere once they're created ("rallying"), but that somewhere can only be a fixed spot on the map, not another unit. And so on.

I played a few games of SC1 against a friend, and they were all frustrating. Massively frustrating. I was used to performing at a certain level from War3, where even if I lost a game, at least I played a decent game at home; meaning my techpatch was smooth and well-directed, my production was running well, expansions went up in a timely manner and became saturated ("filled" with workers) soon. That just didn't work in SC1. You have to micromanage everything. I don't mind micromanagement when it is mind vs mind, human competing with human to see who outsmarts whom. If it's just you vs the system... why, I have that in every-day life!

SC2 has workers that auto-harvest if you rally on resources, unlimited number of units that you can put into one control group, smart autobuilding (where you can have any number of building structures selected and hit the hotkey for a certain unit as many times as you want and the system will sequentially fill the structures with orders), auto-surround, rally-on-unit. Basically it allows you to concentrate on playing a game against a human by no longer having you play a game against the interface.

There are other minor changes you won't care about: up-hill battles have been changed (from a percentage-based miss chance to "you can't see uphill, so unless you have vision you can't attack the unit above you"), bases default to having two gas geysers now (and gas geysers, once depleted, are ACTUALLY depleted, not mining at a reduced rate), and so on. But basically the take-away here is: SC2 is SC1 without the stupid. And with added shiny.
posted by DanielZKlein at 10:55 AM on July 26, 2010 [3 favorites]

I recently started playing through SC1 a few months ago in anticipation of the sequel. I'd never played through the original and have just gotten started in Brood War. (I've got quite a bit to play tonight before my Amazon pre-order comes in the mail tomorrow, but I digress.) The Team Liquid wiki has tons of strategy and builds for SC1 that may be useful.
posted by daHIFI at 12:03 PM on July 26, 2010

The changes are most definitely evolutionary, not revolutionary. As a matter of fact, in many ways SC2 could be seen as one of the most backward, conservative RTSes released in a long while.

That's a good summary of Blizzard in a nutshell. Blizzard makes incredible games but they tend to be evolutionary and not revolutionary. Releases a lot of games (relatively speaking), full of polish, good fun, but they tend not to be the most innovative games ever made except in the sense that a well-enough made game raises the bar for other companies. Blizzard takes an established archetype and tries to make the best possible game within that framework.

Blizzard's mirror image is Valve. Valve is slow as molasses. Hell, Half-Life 2 was released 6 years ago and there still isn't any sign of Episode 3. But Valve doesn't try to make the best game inside a fixed framework, they say "what framework?". Portal, TF2, and so on.

The third game company I used to include with Blizzard and Valve as the Holy Trinity of Gaming was Black Isle Studios. But they no longer exist. The closest to filling that spot now is Bioware but they just play it a little too safe to fill that slot. They seem to want to be both Valve AND Blizzard and as a result don't quite live up to either. Valve looks like a bunch of guys who love games making the games they want to play and, hey, if a couple million people also want to play them GREAT. Bioware knows how to make awesome games but instead of just making the best game they can they seem to try to design-by-focus-test to appeal to as many people as possible while still not alienating their core RPG demographic enough to cause then to cease buying games. As a result they end up with good games but not necessarily great ones.

One Valve or Blizzard is worth a dozen other companies. Of the two, I prefer Valve games. But that may be because I'm not a big fan of RTS and many of Blizzard's biggest games have been in that genre.
posted by Justinian at 1:26 PM on July 26, 2010 [3 favorites]

I used to follow HD and Husky's videos, but after seeing this, Day[9] is the only one I can watch.
posted by tylermoody at 1:39 PM on July 26, 2010 [1 favorite]

Starcraft was revolutionary for balancing three races with dramatically different play styles. Earlier RTSs like WCII, Dunes, etc. all used essentially identical races with extremely minor variations.

WCIII forced the four races into essentially identical play styles through the need for heros and multi-unit-type groups. You might argue the heros themselves were an interesting development, you'd be wrong, but you might make the case.

Starcraft II seems like they've just polished and improved upon Starcraft. For example, warp prisms are now substantial differentiation from Terran medevacs, while transports and drop ships were previously basically identical. Also, the elimination of medics in favor of the more costly medevacs fixes the most glaring game imbalance in Starcraft.

I vaguely feel that Starcraft II needed to push the envelope more, perhaps by adding a fourth dramatically different race, but maybe Blizzard just recognized their limits.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:15 PM on July 26, 2010

I vaguely feel that Starcraft II needed to push the envelope more, perhaps by adding a fourth dramatically different race, but maybe Blizzard just recognized their limits.

I'm pretty much super-happy that they resisted the urge to add another race or do something that would make it not Starcraft. Seems like balancing 3 races against each other is vastly easier than balancing 4.
posted by explosion at 3:16 PM on July 26, 2010 [1 favorite]

Is Blizzard on some kind of mission to out-shoulderpad Games Workshop?
posted by Artw at 3:57 PM on July 26, 2010

Download Dune II for free
posted by Artw at 3:59 PM on July 26, 2010

Is Blizzard on some kind of mission to out-shoulderpad Games Workshop?

Oh come on. Have you seen the last Space Marine codex? Nobody's going to out-shoulderpad GW anytime soon.
posted by Caduceus at 4:08 PM on July 26, 2010

GW is still struggling to overcome Rob Liefield's shoulderpad gap.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:22 PM on July 26, 2010

Yes, it's tricky enough balancing three races. Yes, four overlapping races isn't an improvement over three distinct races. I merely observed that SCII breaks no new ground. Four truly distinct races would break new ground.

Or maybe they could've further differentiate how different races cross terrain, ala colossi. It'd make sense if some several zerg units along with ghosts and dark templars all had late game climbing upgrades, protoss already get colossi and stalkers.

Afaik, the only major change that makes the races more similar was removing the overlord's observing ability.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:22 PM on July 26, 2010

empath, you convinced me to buy this game. where's the metafilter gaming thing? isn't there a sub-site or something?
posted by neuromodulator at 8:16 PM on July 26, 2010

It's called MefightClub and we'd love to have you aboard.
posted by ssmith at 10:18 PM on July 26, 2010

The finals of the King of the Beta is going to be broadcast in about an hour. They're just starting a TLO hour where they're going to show him pwning noobs in placement matches, I think, which should be hilarious.
posted by empath at 10:36 PM on July 26, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'm watching noobs get owned but I don't really understand what's happening, except the noobs are definitely getting owned.
posted by Justinian at 11:14 PM on July 26, 2010

Ok, the TLO dude just owned some idiot so badly that he took the time to SPELL OUT TLO with some Raven stuff in the other dudes base. And then when the idiot got wasted, he said and I quote "FUCKING GAY LAG". Which tells you a lot about playing online.
posted by Justinian at 11:20 PM on July 26, 2010 [5 favorites]

For the sake of fellow mefites, I am going to suggest we do not spoil the King of the Beta tourney matches here, as many people are out buying (or playing) SC2 and will want to watch them once they are uploaded.
posted by mek at 1:02 AM on July 27, 2010

Total Biscuit sounds like a pro sportscaster, it's amazing - he's got the cadence and emphasis pitc perfect, ramping up the enthusiasm at exciting points, adding in slick commentary in the quieter spots. I was really impressed - he's got a career calling rugby matches or motorcycle races if this videogame thing doesn't pan out.
posted by Slap*Happy at 4:04 AM on July 27, 2010

TLOwnage, commentated by Chill, from last night.
posted by empath at 6:35 AM on July 27, 2010 [2 favorites]

(skip the intro, btw, it's pretty embarrassing, I think the games start 3 minutes in.
posted by empath at 6:46 AM on July 27, 2010

Awful quiet in here today...
posted by Tenuki at 1:06 PM on July 27, 2010

I can't believe Sean got those two voice actors to show up last night. That was completely badass.
posted by cucumber at 2:29 PM on July 27, 2010

I have SC2! It took forever to download, what with being 7gb and some kind of throttling on the bandwidth but it is here. I will now cease being productive.

Of course I was never very productive to begin with so whatever.
posted by Justinian at 8:38 AM on July 28, 2010

Man I can't even figure out how to change the hotkeys. I am terrible.
posted by Justinian at 9:38 AM on July 28, 2010

you probably don't want to change the hotkeys. They're chosen for maximum efficiency in multiplayer.
posted by empath at 10:21 AM on July 28, 2010

That doesn't actually appear to be the case. Even were it the case, that would depend on you having the same keyboard as the developers.
posted by Justinian at 12:00 PM on July 28, 2010

Blizzard is apparently trying to destroy my life. Logging in to my Battle.net account I noticed that right below Starcraft II on my games list is World of Warcraft: Cataclysm beta.
posted by Tenuki at 12:04 PM on July 28, 2010

This is my envy.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:14 PM on July 28, 2010

So how does the RealID system work when you buy the game? Is it obnoxious? Is it used at all?
posted by delmoi at 2:05 PM on July 28, 2010

When I installed the game I had to register with Battle.net by providing a valid email address and creating a password. Then I had to pick a username which could be anything I wanted. That's it.

I'm sort of failing to see the problem so far.
posted by Justinian at 4:30 PM on July 28, 2010

The problem with RealID is with World of Warcraft. The Starcraft II RealID bits, at least from what I remember from the beta, are pretty unobtrusive and unproblematic.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:37 PM on July 28, 2010

I'm sort of failing to see the problem so far.

Well, i wanted to see what it was actually going to be like before I plopped down cash for the game.
posted by delmoi at 4:55 PM on July 28, 2010

Delmoi, there are a couple of buttons on the Home screen inviting you to add Real Id friends, through the game or through Facebook, but you can totally ignore them. My friends list has only people added under their gaming nicks through the normal friending process.
You can see what it looks like here.
posted by aldurtregi at 6:23 PM on July 28, 2010

Can anyone recommend good non-1v1 matches to watch? One on one gets so boring after a while.
posted by Eideteker at 8:21 AM on July 29, 2010

Oh, and where are the finals? The link upthread just goes to a ustream page saying the channel is offline now. I mean, I can find lots of vids, but I have no idea which are the finals.
posted by Eideteker at 10:47 AM on July 29, 2010

They'll be posted here eventually.

I actually missed them, so I've been waiting for them, too.
posted by empath at 11:38 AM on July 29, 2010

Ugh. Blip.tv sucks so hard. Their stream is so slow that I leave the vids to buffer while paused. Then when I come back, they haven't downloaded at all. It's impossible to skip around, and once I went back 5 seconds because I missed what he said and I just completely lost the video (audio only).
posted by Eideteker at 12:25 PM on July 29, 2010

So apparently in the Warcraft best forums someone complained that The Maelstrom zone wasn’t epic enough so in the latest patch Blizzard added Epicus Maximus, the Paragon of Epicosity.
posted by Tenuki at 1:39 PM on July 30, 2010 [1 favorite]

I haven't added any friends yet, but how does it work exactly? Is there an "invisible/offline" mode?

If I tell a friend I'm too busy to help him move, will StarCraft 2 rat me out?
posted by ODiV at 8:05 PM on July 30, 2010

iPistol
posted by homunculus at 9:17 PM on July 30, 2010

My inability to follow directions has finally paid off! I got a "Feat of Strength" achievement because I totally failed to accomplish the stated goal in one campaign mission and instead decided it would be better to wipe the map clear of enemies. Hah.
posted by Justinian at 12:42 AM on August 1, 2010

Ugh. Blip.tv sucks so hard.

You're not kidding. I have two videos loaded and paused in my browser and they keep randomly unpausing for no reason I can determine. It's quite annoying.
posted by ODiV at 6:31 PM on August 1, 2010

I totally failed to accomplish the stated goal in one campaign mission and instead decided it would be better to wipe the map clear of enemies. Hah.

I apparently got the "Couch Potato" achievement for viewing 10 UNN videos. And it's apparently one that gets you a custom profile picture: Kate Lockwell, the reporter.
posted by delmoi at 3:04 AM on August 4, 2010

You know, Day[9] is really interesting, and I'm grateful you brought him to my attention, empath.
posted by neuromodulator at 9:23 PM on August 9, 2010

Treating Starcraft addiction with antidepressants
posted by homunculus at 11:25 AM on August 22, 2010