I’m a little surprised there’s no thread on this yet. Heart of the Swarm is coming out tomorrow (3/12). Right now I’m playing through the first few games, currently in the middle of the UED campaign in Brood War (it’s amazing how much better the writing in Brood War is than in vanilla SC). I don’t really know much about the new units or anything. I get that the story (very minor spoilers already pretty much spoiled in the trailers):
Has to do with Kerrigan harboring a very, very seething need for revenge on Mengsk. Which is kind of understandable I suppose.
I’m not too interested in the ladder multiplayer, I’m a weirdo who mostly plays Starcraft for the campaign. I have heard that they finally fixed the atrocious custom map system though (as in, you can join lobbies rather than the stupid popularity thing), so I’m really, really hoping some good custom maps came out. Probably my most played game is (non-DOTA) Warcraft III custom maps before the security update that broke everything so I’d be very, very happy if it’s anywhere near the glory of WCIII’s heyday.
Oh, I’m gonna play the crap out of this. As a Zerg player I’m looking forward to the HOTS campaign, way more than I did to the WOL campaign.
New units will be cool, looking forward to trying out the swarm host…
I’m another one who prefers campaign play to competitive (though my favorite, when available, is cooperative campaigns). I hadn’t realized it was quite so imminent. The timing is good, as I’m currently on spring break: I won’t have time to play it tomorrow, but by Wednesday I probably will.
I’m waiting for Legacy of the Void because my favorite race is Protoss (I don’t know why, it’s become clear to me from replaying that at least in SCI Protoss is probably my worst race.).
Anyway, they’re having a really long launch event (up until midnight PDT).
Right now it looks like they’re about to do some sort of community thing with Day[9] and Team Liquid, then move on the the French launch. Do some more Day[9] stuff, and then do the Irvine launch. The Korean launch just finished up, I caught the last two matches, they were pretty good. Though the 2v2 ended pretty quickly – it was Bisu vs MVP paired with a high-level fan. Bisu’s team started off good but then lost pretty hard.
One really cool feature they introduced is the ability to actually play replays. As in, you can jump to specific time in a replay and take control of one of the players (kind of like a save game I guess). They used it for a “what if” in one of the matches. One player one and they asked the other player what he thought the turning point in the match was, so they restarted the match at that time and then saw what both players would do with their knowledge of how it played out previously (FWIW, the player that lost the first time won).
I’m not a competitive player, but that sounds like a really cool feature and would really take some of the suck out of practicing, because you could get some replays and train yourself in specific scenarios.
Looking forward to the campaign as well! so many games to play right now, simCity, Tomb Raider, etc, that my plans to replay the WoL campaign first, might be kaput though
Based on my experience in the beta, Protoss in HotS is possibly the most changed race for multiplayer. I’m primarily a Protoss player, and it’s been a blast trying out the new stuff.
I can see how it would be less appealing for campaign players, though. Based on the new achievements list (which you can see in WoL for some reason), there don’t appear to be any Protoss missions. But there’s at least a couple available Terran missions. I guess that’s in line with WoL.
The replay feature is great. It’s already been used in tournaments. When the server blinks or somebody’s machine freezes, the tournament directors can just have the game reloaded and restart the match. It might kill momentum, especially if somebody is in the zone, but it’s less annoying than a complete restart of a match.
Some of the other changes were also patched back into the original WoL. One includes automatic rallying of gatherers to mineral patches. Another is a toggle option that gives you a display over bases to see how many workers you have on mineral patches and gas. I’m sure it’s less useful for pros, but it’s been great for me to figure out how many more workers to build and when to stop. The graphics update is also fun.
I’m lookng forward to it. I had pre ordered it ages ago, loved the WoL campaign. Like others said, I actually enjoy campaign and custom games modes over straight competitive play.
I’m interested in how they develop this mysterious universe-devouring shadowmonster they touched on in WoL. And all the funny little easter eggs Blizzard sticks in their games
I really love the interface changes they made in Starcraft II and in the beta expansion pack, and the multiplayer is wicked fun. I played a fair bit of the beta, and it’s absolutely worth your gaming dollar if you liked laddering in the first one.
That said, I’m hoping they salvage some storytelling in the campaign. I’d really like to enjoy some single player campaign time, and the Wings of Liberty story was both derivative and silly. They managed to derail the campaign momentum to do those ridiculous Zeratul prophecy missions, which are a lazy writer’s way of getting Raynor to do a bunch of stuff that is out of character and makes no sense otherwise. Postponing his deserved revenge on Kerrigan and Mengsk because someone tells him that otherwise a character that we’ve never heard of before and don’t see in the campaign will eventually destroy the whole universe? Uh-huh. I really liked the campaign in Starcraft and Brood War, so I know they’re capable of better. At least the missions themselves were pretty entertaining.
Hmm, no not really. I see 500,000 concurrent BN players on right now, but I’m not sure if that includes WOW players. I see 7400 world wide SCII games on right now though.
So at the end of the launch, one of the producers said something and I want to add my speculation just so I can say I called it if I did, indeed, call it.
Very, very, super vague not really spoilers (except total and complete spoilers for Brood War):
[spoiler]He said we’ll meet someone important from a previous game.
I’m calling Duran. The end of the Zerg campaign would be the PERFECT place to show up and introduce his little hybrids to set the stage for Legacy of the Void.[/spoiler]
The returning character has been known for a few weeks. The single player achievements spoiled it (btw, don’t look up the achievements list if you don’t want spoilers).
It’s Stukov, DuGalle’s assistant from Brood War. He’s been zergified.
Well, that was my plan. I’ve been doing more TombRaiding than city building.
I think I’m going to give the SC2 mutiplayer another go after the campaign. I sucked, but there are a ton fo new newbie guides out there so I might be able to learn not to suck so completely.
I am looking forward to the expansion, but Starcraft Multiplayer just frustrates the hell out of me. Whenever there’s a patch, people figure out one or two domination strategies under the new conditions, and then it’s just an exercise of who can follow the formula with the least slack time.
You’re not weird, I do the same thing. Or else we’re both weird. Ok, you’re weird, but Starcraft has a great storyline. I suck at it, can barely beat the computer, so I never play online against people. I love the campaign, I play it over and over again, and am currently in the process of playing Wings of Liberty again so I can refresh my mind of the story before I play Heart of the Swarm
