Leveling Down

The Starcraft 2 Beta Battle.net Quick Match Screen

Seems like not all of you can play the Starcraft 2 beta so I will share my impressions on it. I’ve only put in maybe an hour or so thus far, but as a Blizzard fan and veteran Starcraft player, it was enough time to formulate something to write about. This will most likely not be the only beta impressions I will share since I think my impressions on the game will change as I continue to learn it.

Today’s entry will discuss the Battle.net redesign, what the Starcraft II beta contains, and my impressions of each race after playing only against AIs.

Battle.net Redesign
The entire battle.net interface has changed. I was actually lost and still trying to figure out what is what when I logged in, but here are some of the things I noticed.

1. Login and accounts
Remember back in the older battle.net game days where you just created accounts and logged in with them on Starcraft and Warcraft III? If you got sick of an account name you could just create a new one, etc. or simply play with different accounts and logins. Now, everything tied to a particular login email. You can create several Starcraft II accounts under this email, and it is not unlike the World of Warcraft system where you login and then you pick which character you want to play as.

With the email address being the unique identifier for each battle.net user, we are now able to pick any names we want for our accounts, which is kind of cool. The only negative to this is that you must choose a secondary name so as to differentiate you from someone else that may also be using the same nickname. On the battle.net forums almost every user has the format of nickname.2ndnickname. Kind of strange, but it’s an interesting way of handling it and not exactly a bad approach. I’m thinking that hypothetically, if you aren’t playing in a match against someone with the same nickname as you, only your nickname is displayed and not your second nickname.

2. Friends list
The friends list is interesting as well. It allows you to add people that you can designate as either real life friends or just gaming friends. Real life friends are added through email address and see your full name and all your game character names whereas a gaming friend just allows the person to just see the status of whatever game character they added you on. This is pretty neat because I used to play Warcraft 3 with friends who would have several different account names and I would often have a tough time figuring out if they were online or not.

3. Other things
Looks like Microphone support also seems to be built into battle.net, as there’s a button for it so you can toggle it on and off. There are also Achievements that can be displayed prominently in your profile, as well as profile pics that you can unlock and use. It’s basically like Xbox live! I also think I read somewhere that there will be cross-game mssaging, so you can message friends playing other Blizzard games too.

4. Regions?
One thing I am wondering about is how the regions will work. Back in the Starcraft & Warcraft III days, you had to choose whether you logged into the East, West, EU, or Asia regions. There isn’t any of that in Starcraft II it seems. My concern with this is that there are rumblings that you would only get to play with players in your own region, and you would not be allowed to enter other regions. With one of my buddies on the West Coast and me on the East, does this mean we’ll never get to play together? I guess it remains to be seen.

What the Beta Contains
The 1.7 gig beta contains the ability to play 1v1, 2v2, 1v1AI on very easy, and 2v2AI on very easy. There’s only one AI difficulty setting, and it’s no challenge at all so you would only really play it to get accustomed to your units and stuff. There are about a dozen unique 1v1 and 2v2 maps to choose from, as well as “novice” variations of those. I would have loved the ability to play 3v3 or 4v4, but maybe Blizzard will open that up later in the beta. After all, they recently stated that the 3v3 & 4v4 gametypes were more suitable for newer players, and eventually as players put in more hours, they would move towards less players per team. Ultimately, they would be competiting 1v1 when they reached the “end game” of Starcraft II multiplayer.

The Beta is also still undergoing radical adjustments and balance changes through patches, as well as offline time. Just last night many players (including myself) were having trouble installing the latest update, and even after we finally got it installed, battle.net was offline. So, while it’s cool to have access to the beta to see the units and stuff, how effective they are now may not be what they ultimately end up in retail.

Trying the Races with the very easy AI
I’ve only been able to play a total of three games so far, and all of them against the AI just so I can see all the different races. Here’s how it went down and what I thought of each race.

My first Starcraft 2 game ever was a Terran vs AI Terran (on very easy of course). Things were off to a normal start when I had built some supply depots, a barracks, an engineering bay, and factory. Marines and siege tanks were what I started building, as they were what I knew from the first game. What’s interesting about the Terran in Starcraft 2 is that each of the unit producing buildings (barracks, factory, and starport) now have two possible attachments each. The barracks, for example, has one attachment that allows you to create higher level barracks infantry units, while the other attachment allows you to pump out two marines at once. You can only choose one attachment per building, and just because you have an attachment on one building to allow it to produce more advanced units doesn’t mean the other building can produce as well. With Terran, I had a tough time figuring out what to do, and what all the new infantry units were about. I was actually a bit overwhelmed and worried that if I ended up playing a real opponent, I would get demolished. I thought to myself, “Hmm, maybe this game isn’t as awesome as I thought it would be.” I believe the returning units I tried out were the marine and siege tank. I believe there’s battlecruisers too, but I didn’t go up that tree. I’m sad though that there aren’t medics anymore as the stimpack + medic was good stuff.

The next day, I tried Protoss in 2v2 with an AI partner against 2 AI. All were on the brain-dead very easy difficulty, but I was fine with it since I just wanted to check the Protoss out. In stark contrast to the Terran, I was very comfortable playing the Protoss. The buildings and everything were nearly identical to the first game. Here I was warping in Pylons, Gateways, a Cybernetics Core, Templar Archives, Starport, etc. I wasn’t overwhelmed with the units like I was with Terran, as I happily pumped out Zealots and a few of the new ranged units that replaced the Dragoons. Photon cannons were the same as before, and I was playing on Lost Temple, so everything was familiar enough to me that I was able to enjoy my time. I was even able to create a Carrier and a new Protoss unit called the Colossus, who was pretty cool. There was this new interesting upgrade that you could research as well. I forgot the name, but what happens is when you upgrade it, you can warp in your Gateway units to any pylon on the map. With the Protoss, the Zealots, Templars, Dark Templars, Observers, and Carriers make a return. While I miss the Dragoons, I’m more than happy with the returning units for the Protoss and am interested in learning the new units.

Finally, I was able to get in a quick 1v1AI round as Zerg. My wife was already going to bed, so I wasn’t able to go as far down into the Zerg upgrades as I wanted since I hurried through the match. Unlike the Protoss, the Zerg buildings were changed enough that I had to really try to figure out what new units and what buildings did what. The basics were still good to go – spawn larvae into drones and build hatcheries, but it looks like the Hydralisk was moved to the Tier 2 Lair level, while Tier 1 gets a couple new units that I hadn’t really tried out. I ended up massing zerglings and hydralisks like old times and rushed the AI before hopping into bed last night. I didn’t get to try out zerg as much as I’d like, so I will check them out again this weekend.

But my initial impressions after such limited playtime with the three races is that I’m finding Protoss the easiest to pickup and learn. Whether the Terran or Zerg are more difficult is still up in the air.

Parting Thoughts for 1st round of Beta Impressions
What’s pretty neat is that Starcraft 2 keeps a lot of what the original game had, but also manages to add a lot of new and different stuff as well. This is actually both good and bad, because I’m pretty used to how Starcraft played as well as its hotkeys, so to start playing the sequel and now seeing new units mixed in with the old units and old buildings almost has me lost. In a way, perhaps being so used to the original Starcraft can potentially be a negative, since I may end up wanting to fall back on massing zerglings and hydralisks like the good old days and stay close minded in terms of actually learning what this new game is all about.

My impressions from playing the beta are still positive for the game, but to be honest, they aren’t as high as I expected them to be prior to playing the beta. Part of the reason why I’m not falling over myself to play the beta every waking hour is because I’ve come to the realization that the game is hardcore and I don’t know if I have what it takes to be competitive. That’s not to say that the game isn’t excellent – it is. I don’t see how a Starcraft fan wouldn’t enjoy this sequel. But the question I am now asking myself is if I’m still as big of a Starcraft fan as I was 12 years ago, pre-Warcraft III and pre-Call of Duty.

Modern Warfare 2 can still be quite enjoyable if you’re not that good, but I can’t see Starcraft 2 being the same way. It’s a cut-throat game where your only goal is to build an army to crush your opponent. In a way, I miss Warcraft III’s hero leveling and creeping. At least that gave the game a little bit of a RPGish feel and forced you to spend time doing other stuff besides killing your opponent. I think part of me is starting to feel a little old and worried that I won’t be able to hold a candle to the kids these days when I play the game. Of course, these may all be doubts and concerns I have as I go through the learning process of how to play this game. Maybe in a couple weeks when I’ve learned it I may think it’s the best game ever. Stay tuned!

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