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Answering the StarCraft II Beta QQ

The forums, my email, hell even my voice-mail is full of QQ. “This is too hard! This is bullshit!This is imbalanced!”

Now to a certain degree I can understand balancing issues and the fact that Blizzard’s matchmaking system needs a few tweaks and a much bigger player base to pull opponents from because as it stands now you have about as much a chance to face an equal enemy player as you do somebody ranked infinitely higher than yourself. But the game is far from broken and with a few minor tweaks, you can find yourself on the delivering end of the ass beating.

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Getting up to Speed with Starcraft 2

There’s way too much to cover in one shot so consider this the first in a possible series of posts. I’ll do my best to tack on more information later on but please consider the massive expanse that is the Starcraft universe. Let’s just cover the fallout of the events in Starcraft: Brood War and lead up to Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty.

I’m writing this under the assumption readers have played through the original Starcraft and Starcraft Brood War expansion pack’s single player campaigns. There also might be major spoilers involved as a lot of this information was gleamed by me during Blizzcon 2009.

We begin with the Zerg. What’s become of the zerg and more importantly, Kerrigan. All of her enemies lay beaten and broken beneath her feet, the zerg Queen of Blades was the undisputed ruler of the Korpulu Sector.

The Queen of Blades did not become complacent in the wake of her victory. She kept watch over the Swarm from her core hive on Char. The Brood War left her the dominant force in Koprulu sector. The initial explosive expansion of the zerg has been replaced with a foreboding silence for four years, but no scouting expeditions to Swarm-controlled worlds have lived to tell what they saw there.

Thus, outsiders can only speculate about what she has been doing–or what she has been seeking–these past four years. Many believe that the zerg are building their strength and engineering new organisms before going on the offensive again. Some contend that Kerrigan is staying her hand due to some small shred of humanity buried deep inside the creature she has become. Those who have encountered her savage fury know this to be merely wishful thinking.

The zerg has pretty much not invaded anything recently. You don’t see them unless you go looking for them is the status quo and those few folk that do encounter the zerg don’t live long enough to lift the shroud Kerrigan has so totally secured. Kerrigan is essentially looking for Xel’naga temples and other artifacts because within them she hopes to harness power unimaginable.

Mengsk and his forces have regrouped on Korhal IV. His first order of business was to rebuild the Terran Dominion. In Kerrigan he had found a new target for revenge, and he’d always been happier with a goal to work toward anyway. The Dominion has since become the most powerful force among the terran factions, having taken over many of the original Confederate worlds.

The Kel-Morian Combine and the Umojan Protectorate have been preparing for the inevitable war with either the zerg or Mengsk. The UED task force was almost completely destroyed in Brood War; only a few isolated pockets of survivors remain hidden in the Koprulu sector.

Jim Raynor has led a resistance movement against the Dominion, but that has been a losing battle. Arcturus Mengsk has used his greatest weapons–the media and propaganda–to marginalize Jim’s efforts. Raynor seems to be losing faith, drinking heavily and haunted by the ghosts of his past. He has never forgiven himself for letting Kerrigan be taken by the zerg.

So the Terrans. Well, Mengsk pretty much owns everything, his own son included who isn’t very fond of dear old dad as is knowing full well the depth of Arcturus’ psychosis. On the flipside is Raynor, god I love Raynor but the poor bastard really is in a bad way these days. He too is eventually going to start hunting down the Protoss artifacts for resale or other more honorable purposes. The deaths of Fenix, Tassadar, the destruction of Auir, the betrayal and subsequent madness of Mengsk, and of course the loss and corruption of Kerrigan would be enough to drive any man to suicide at the brink of the void. Luckily Raynor isn’t just any man. At the start of Starcraft 2 Raynor’s ultimate goal is to free the sector of Mengsk’s grasp.

At last we observe the Protoss who have had the very core of their society torn more than a few times during the events leading to Starcraft 2.

The protoss evacuees from Aiur have been struggling to recover from the loss of their home planet while finding ways to mesh their society with that of the dark templar who call Shakuras home. The transition has been difficult for both sides, and the name of Raszagal has been invoked more than once to keep the peace.

The old Conclave has been swept away, and in its absence many protoss have begun looking to their ancient tribal affiliations for leadership and a sense of identity. With the protoss people working together as they did in ancient times and studying the xel’naga technology on Shakuras, the protoss have made many technological developments for continuing the war with the zerg.

Memories of Raszagal have plagued Zeratul, who was further disturbed by his encounter with Samir Duran and the zerg-protoss hybrid Duran had apparently been creating. Shortly after bidding Raynor farewell on Shakuras, Zeratul departed the planet, and he has not been heard from in years. To this day he seeks to understand what Duran and the hybrid he was creating might portend. Lately he has uncovered something that may be related to the xel’naga, creators of both protoss and zerg, and he seeks new clues to unravel the mystery

I’ll give you the story right here and now, the big secret, the big mystery that Zeratul was given. Here it is as detailed in the Dark Templar Saga trilogy written by the amazing Christie Golden. I won’t get into the deeper details of the Protoss and believe me when i say they are very relevant but this post can easily turn into a book in itself if I start. Here’s the deal with the Xel’naga. They created the zerg and the protoss for a very important reason as both races are connected to each other. The Xel’naga are not immortal heavenly beings like gods, and they do have a life cycle. The Xel’naga set out to create 2 races; one pure of form (protoss) and the other pure of essence (zerg). The Xel’naga would eventually return and merge the two races together into a single species and then inhabit/implant their souls/minds into them and thus being “reborn” only to begin the cycle again. This is as normal to them as breathing is to a terran or absorbing nutrients is to a protoss.

The Xel’naga are coming back and life as we know it in Starcraft will never be the same.

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Starcraft 2 New Media Blowout!

Blizzard has officially updated the Starcraft 2 homepage and they have some very nice content over there. They’ve added a bunch of new videos, stories, pictures, features, all in preparation for the Beta I reckon.

• New Artwork
• New Screenshots
• New Hero – Tychus Findlay
• Hero – Zeratul (Redone)
• Hero – Jim Raynor (Redone)
• Legacy of War – Multiplayer Preview
• The new Zerg Changeling Story
• Wings of Liberty Single Player Story Telling

As well there’s a brand new splash screen on the homepage (which I copied over to this post) that seems to look more like a movie poster than a game logo. I’m really liking the direction this is going since I always appreciated the Starcraft universe’s storyline more than any other (including WoW and Diablo which is saying a lot – what can I say I really dig space operas). Here though, is the new Zerg Changeling in action sine the official site has a very tiny window.

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