In regards to all of that:
Narud is Duran backwards. I’d say that’s a healthy clue!
[spoiler]Yes, but all we’ve gotten from Blizz is that he’s connected to Duran. It may be some weird thing where every member of whatever the hell Duran is aligned with has a name that’s an anagram of Duran. Kind of like how all the nobodies in Kingdom Hearts are anagrams of their “creator” with an x in it somewhere (e.g. Sora->Roxas).
Or maybe he’s a vanity project of Duran’s, like a hybrid that can assume human form, or something.[/spoiler]
I enjoyed the campaign for SCII WoL, so I’ll definitely enjoy HoS. But the myriad custom games is where I sink all my time. Squadron tower defense and so on, you know. I can’t stop with that stuff 
I’m not so great at the straight up competitive multiplayer. I do enjoy compstomps with my friends from time to time though!
I’ll probably give this one a miss. I’m terrible at the multiplayer and I’m fairly disinterested in the Zerg faction. Terrans are awesome and the Protoss are pretty cool, but I’ve always thought the Zerg fell flat.
Before you give up on it, consider Blizzard set up each game to have a different general theme- Wings of Liberty was a “mercenary” theme where you picked different missions and hired mercs. Heart of the Swarm is supposed to be more RPG like, as you “level up” Kerrigan, getting access to different abilities. I havent played it yet, but I think in the missions Kerrigan functions like heroes in Warcraft 3.
Kerrigan does function more like a hero but with a twist. She can’t properly die in most missions. If her health falls to 0, she’ll respawn from a hatchery.
I did some multiplayer last night, and it was fun (translation: lots of wins). I don’t expect that to last, since a lot of it was built on experience from the beta that many players don’t have yet. It’s fairly different from WoL. It’s now much more tempting and possible to take earlier expansions and power your economy for macro style games.
I also did some 3v3s and 4v4s with some friends last night, and you get a 25% friend XP bonus if you party up. It’s far from balanced but the team games allow for some interesting synergies to develop between the new units from different races.
XP bonus? What’s XP in this game?
There’s an experience and level system for multiplayer. The single player campaign isn’t a part of the levelling system.
There are 30 levels for each race, and your overall level is the sum. Base experience is a function of how many resources you collect and how many enemies you kill.
You get various rewards/bonuses for hitting certain level marks. It doesn’t affect gameplay, but you unlock race specific decals, user portraits, unit skins, and unit dance animation. It’s a nice bonus if you care about things like that, but you can ignore it entirely with no consequences.
Blizzard has been playing with bonus experience in different ways. Your first win of the day for each race gives an experience bonus. There’s also a time bonus for winning fast. And apparently a 25% bonus for playing with people in your friend’s list.
I’ll probably try multiplayer, but as a complete noob I’ll probably wait for the metagame to stabilize a little. I know that it puts me at a slight disadvantage since I’ll have less practice, but I’ll suck either way and I think I’d do better if I can read about standard builds and strategies first which isn’t as feasible when the game is this unstable. Either way I’ll probably play unranked for a long time so I guess it really doesn’t matter, does it?
Actually, this sounds a bit like StarCraft - League of Legends Edition
What new units are being introduced? I hear there’s a new Protoss defensive air unit for instance.
I wonder how they’ll handle this for multiplayer? If I’m playing without the expansion and someone else does have it will we be able to play each other?
Single player will have units unplayable in the multiplayer.
Just for the multiplayer, here are the new units.
Protoss:
Oracle: a flying magic caster unit. Has an attack spell that has bonus against ‘light’ units. Can melt gatherers and marines. Made of paper and goes down fast. Also has a 30s detection spell and a separate spell similar to scanner sweep (w/o detection).
Tempest: a flying siege unit. Low damage output overall. But gets bonus against massive air - like carriers, battlecruisers, and brood lords. Primarily an anti-capital ship unit.
Mothership core: flying unit built from Nexus. Can be used defensively or offensively. Recall ability takes it and any friendly nearby units to one of your nexii. Time warp bubble slows down enemy units by 50% (useful for defense or to harass mineral lines). Photon overcharge spell turns a nexus into a giant photon cannon with huge range. Can be converted to a standard mothership after you get a fleet beacon.
Other protoss changes:
Void ray: no longer ‘charges up’ automatically. Has an instant-on ability to do bonus damage against ‘armored’ units. Lasts 20s with an additional 60s cooldown.
Mothership: lost the vortex ability.
Dark Shrine: Cost is reduced to build it.
Terran:
Widow mines - built from factories. It burrows and can send out a missile every 40 seconds if an enemy is in range. Can 1-shot low level units, like zerglings, stalkers, marines and deals splash damage.
Hellbat - a transformed, upright version of hellions. Slower than hellions and attacks at melee range. Think upgraded version of firebats. Absolutely melts light units, like marines, zealots, and gatherers. You need an armory to build them at all, and you can choose to build hellions or hellbats. But you need a research upgrade to transform between them. Hellions gain health and armor bonuses after transforming. Hellbats also carry the biological tag, so they can be healed by medivacs.
Other Terran changes to existing units:
Raven - Seeker missile has been changed (needs research and speed has changed).
Siege tanks - siege mode is available without research
Thors - Can transform into a high-impact anti-air mode (mostly anti-brood lord)
Zerg:
Swarm hosts: A burrowed unit that periodically releases locusts, which can be controlled and sent out to attack. Locusts die automatically after a period of time. Deadly in sufficient numbers and if enemy has no detection. The locusts can eliminate armies or bases in a matter of seconds.
Viper: A flying spellcaster unit (doesn’t require spire, though). Blinding cloud reduces attack range to 1. Abduct spell yanks a unit towards the viper (can yank siege tanks inside your lines, breaking up enemy lines)
Other changes:
Ultralisks: Massive increase to damage.
Hydalisks: researchable speed upgrade when off creep
Burrow and overlord movement speed researchable at hatchery, not lair/hive.
Mutalisks: health regeneration rate massively increased.
It’s like SC1 and Brood War. You can choose to play either, but there’s no mixing and matching in multiplayer. The interface is better this time around though.
I believe the vast majority of players switched to Brood War after it came out, and I don’t doubt that will happen here. There will likely be a sizable base of WoL players for quite a while though.
I actually preferred the original Starcraft to Brood War. I didn’t really like most of the new units.
They really made some quality of life improvements. For instance, each nexus/command center/hatchery just flat out tells you with a bubble over it how many gatherers you have out of the optimal for the nearby mineral patch.
I really liked Dark Templar and Medics (granted DT were only new in that you could build them, they existed albeit with their shield and life swapped in the original campaign). Lurkers were cool too. The rest were meh, though.
You get this change whether or not you buy the expansion, though. You also get the “select all my fightin’ units at once” button. These changes alone make the experience much better in my opinion. I do love some widow mines, though. Won’t be going back to plain WoL after I got a taste of widow mines. Which probably means they’ll get nerfed in the next balance patch.
I have to admit I’m still not clear on the utility of this button. It potentially frees up, what, one control group? And even so, it seems like a bad idea to rely on it too much because late game a lot of times you see players rolling their ball around while dropping smaller raids into minerals patches or something, reducing the utility of selecting EVERYTHING.
Ideally, you won’t usally use the F2 key to select your entire army. But sometimes things happen.
It’s more of a panic button especially in early game. If your units are spread out and you get rushed, it’s useful to be able to recall most, if not all, your units.
If you also happen to be a micro-management wizard, you can use it in combination with the Tab button to quickly select all units of a specific type across your army, i.e. only tanks, or only colossi, or only vipers, etc.
Granted, it’s less useful in late game when you might want more distinct groupings of mixed units.
It just occurred to me, has any pro game deadlocked/stalemated long enough that the map got mined out and it all came down to the remaining units? Because that would be pretty funny. I know it’s unlikely, but it’s possible, dammit.
I’ll try to find some replays, but yes, it’s happened. Losing all your buildings is a loss, though, so you need to have one on the map and defend it. Usually there are some minerals left, but no gatherers left to get them. It’s exceedingly rare to completely mine out a map (though I know it’s happened at least once at the pro level).
It’ll usually be a base trade where opposing armies wipe out opposing economies and it comes down to whoever can take out the other’s buildings. To avoid too many stalemates, if your last nexus/command center/hatchery goes down, all your structures are revealed to everybody on the minimap. You need to put up a new nexus/CC/hatchery to hide your buildings again.
The stalemate detection is as follows. 3 game minutes with no income (a unit getting gas/mineral without returning doesn’t count), no unit production, no upgrade research, no new building, and no destruction of an enemy building will produce a stalemate. The detection is for all players. So, if your opponent is still mining or building, there’s no stalemate.
i tried multiplayer and it’s not like riding a bike…