official site:
Brian
Why does someone always beat me to these announcements by mere moments? Damn youuu, N9. 
I’m uh, woah … this looks … neat. I’m off to … soak in all the hype, and stuff.
I love the subtitle, “Hell, it’s about time.” And they’re right. I’m stoked. This might just take the #1 slot for me above Spore… though I don’t know when we’re going to get it.
– IG
Right. That trailer just blew my mind. I’ve been waiting for Blizzard’s ever-evolving cinematic wizardry to be applied to this neglected universe, and I am absolutely impressed with the result beyond all expectations. The engine and unit animations look better than I would’ve expected, incredibly smooth and polished, eschewing quite a bit of the blocky polygon look of WC3 and WoW. The engine is claimed to have built-in physics modelling, but I guess we won’t see that until at least tomorrow when the gameplay video is online. Reports are suggesting it’s no lie, though. Here’s a really grainy gameplay shot from the event in Korea, perhaps taken from the gameplay trailer that’ll be online by tomorrow.
I always wondered how the marines got into those combat suits. Now I’m wondering how the hell they get out … or don’t they? I love the incredible detail they labored over with every single detail of that suit. Even the small rocker arms that get licked by the flaming jet thrust in his shoulder-mounted nacelles as they power up. Just incredible. The quip about it being damn time is great.
In other news, the rest of the world released a huge sigh of relief as the Doomsday Clock was turned back. A spokesman for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was quoted as saying “A Starcraft MMO could have ended it all. We may never know just how close we came to the complete and utter destruction of society as we know it.” (quoted from a Slashdot posting) 
Click here for three nice gameplay videos showing off new units and new abilities for old units.
SC1 is still the most popular competitive RTS after nearly 10 years. I don’t think SC2 will live up to the hype in the multiplayer component, although I’m sure it will be very, very good. Then again, it IS Blizzard…if anyone can do it they can.
Still, I really just want to see the continuation of the single player campaign. Go Kerrigan! 
Best video game villainess ever.
My impressions:
- Retains the fast, responsive, smooth style of the original (there was a fear it may be a WC3 redux)
- The masses of zerglings are perfectly animated, like a tsunami of claws.
- Good muta design
- The stalker with the blink and the reapers with their booster looks like they could be quite promising for competitive gaming.
- Good trailer music. I especially liked the “artwork” video from the official site (although it had some live stuff in there too).
- Mothership? Might be fun for single player, but not exactly very SCish when it comes to multiplayer…we’ll see.
- Immortal/stalker design is…meh.
- Dropships have to land to deploy the units. Yuck! Hopefully it’s just for the demo.
- The tanks look dumb. It’s true to the SC1 artwork but the ingame tank looked way better sieged. A longer barrel is better, eh? Ahem…
Oh wow, that zerg rush scene from the gameplay trailer is just incredible.
This is going to be awesome.
-FrL-
About the mothership: The announcer in that film did say pretty early on that in a real game she would have been killed already, and they were artificially sustaining her shields etc. So it doesn’t sound to me like a game breaker, though I agree it is worrying.
-FrL-
FYI, here’s the press release I got yesterday concerning it.
Gogo lockdown. Poor mothership…
Speaking of changing things, hopefully some of these names are just placeholders. They’re about as generic as can be.
Y’know, I thought I heard millions of South Koreans cheering earlier today.
Wwwwwwwwaooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooaoaoaoaoaoaoaooaoaoaoyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah!
So is anyone else wondering what the Terrans and Zerg are going to have new? The only new things we see here are those Reapers (apparently, low-power infantry which can somewhat ignore terrain) and “Nydus Worms”, which apparently are more mobile variants of the Nydus canal. But ignoring terrain and quickly deploying units to the front lines are both things we saw with the Protoss, there, as well: What are the Terrans and Zerg going to have that’s distinct?
Also, it looks like the balance is maybe a little too much Rock-Paper-Scissors. OK, so Reapers are more effective vs. Immortals than Siege Tanks are… But it looks like Reapers actually do more damage than Siege Tanks in that situation? That’s… odd.
And where are the Xel’Naga? One would expect that, in the continuation of the story line, they’d be the next logical opponent. But they’re saying that there’s still only three races.
Sweet googly moogly. That trailer just blew my pathetic little mind. I’m just playing it over and over. I was excited just from the announcement, not even from seeing the trailer.
hyperventilates
– IG
The trailer’s awesome. Just one question, though… aren’t the shoulder mounted thrusters mounted a bit… awkwardly?
Yes and no that it’s odd. The shield only activates when hit by something powerful, so the little potshots can get through without having its damage reduced. But it’s pretty similar to BW in certain unit match ups (e.g. explosive damage does full vs. large size, half vs. small size, so a tank does more damage to a goon than a zealot or a marine).
But yeah, it seems like immortals would own a tank line since it could just absorb the first volley while the rest of the Toss army charges in. But we don’t know what other units the Terran may have to balance the field…
The Xel’Naga isn’t quite next logical race, at least by itself. There was certainly some speculation about a fourth race, but it would’ve been the hybrids shown in BW (or a combo of both) since the Xel’Naga seem to prefer to stay behind the curtain and there are probably very few of them left alive after their worldships were massacred when the Zerg learned how to use space flight.
But the three race thing is VERY good news. Balancing four races is a nightmare. I’m sure the hybrids will be in the single player campaign though (see: artwork for the tube).
I just hope it’s not too spell heavy. I want to select a large number of units with my mouse and make them all go march in formation with a single click, not memorize 50 hotkeys. WC3 had too much emphasis on twitch reflexes, so I hope Blizzard is able to tune it back a bit for SC2. Less micro, more macro.
Meh, same old 4x stuff though, only with better graphics? Is kinda like buying a new chess set made of jade or something to replace your plastic set no?
No need to get excited so soon, its from Blizzard so it’ll probably be at least 3 more years away.
Maybe there’s no need to get excited, but I sure am. Woohoo!
Daniel