Good stuff. Definitely looking forward to SC2. The original was a great game. Fun as a multiplayer game, but it was even a good game in singleplayer mode (which isn't always the case, I find).

Can't wait!

Any tentative release date yet?

Damn, Tempest. I'd hoped you were opening this thread with a release date. Though it's Blizzard, so we'd know that any date they gave us would be a filthy, stinking lie.

It's not dark enough! Too many colors!

Too much animation on the Seige Tank transformation! This stinks.!

Be careful guys, someone might just start a petition for a darker sprite based starcraft II!

Some people just need to learn that things change for a reason. Blizzard isn't stupid and they don't adjust things for the hell of it. I don't understand all these fabois.

Last I heard, they got rid of the Medic and replaced her with a Medi-Vac Dropship.

I just don't want heroes like in WC3. They ruined the game for me.

I agree there was to much micromanaging with the heroes. I'd much rather control a huge army than worry about my hero.

Fourthed

I don't think they "realized" anything that you are implying considering that Warcaft III sold very well and they continued on that path to make World of Warcaft. Many people like to put down WC III b/c they didn't like the inclusion of heroes. I have had some of the best ebb and flow matches out of any RTS with the game on battlenet.

However they would never do this to Starcraft because of the money maker it is in South Korea. I'm a little scared that this sequel will be too close to the original b/c they will fear the backlash of any major interface changes. Having said this, not much will stop me from buying a copy of this on day one.... OK maybe two copies

Agreed, unit caps suck. I'm not fond of the Company of Heroes unit cap implementation either. The more your loosing => the less units you can build.

Easy there. I loved War3, I enjoyed the hero concept greatly, and I'm not implying what you think I'm implying. I couldn't find the interview in a few minutes of searching, but in one of the postmortem talks, one of the designers/devs (can't remember which) did acknowledge that the focus on heroes and the low unit caps really lessened the effectiveness of doing sneaky things to their base while your main armies fought.

That was all well and good for War3, but seeing as a big part of Starcraft is doing sneaky things with small groups of powerful units, I think it's fair to say that they realize heroes don't fit the game.

Yeah, the unit cap reduced the ability to have a secondary sneak attack army but by no means was it reduced to "big army vs. big army and may the best xp farmer and micro expert win.". I don't think heroes would fit Starcraft either and I'm glad they aren't putting them in. This way we get the best of both worlds. Two divergent RTS games is much better then the same one with a different skin. To add to that variety, we get Dawn of War II and a probable Company of Heroes expansion. 2009 is shaping up to be pretty awesome.

I'm wondering if Blizzard is going to hold back a shocker announcement with SC II. Didn't they wait to announce the undead until right before WC III released?

That's odd. I thought WC3's Heroes evolved from Starcraft's named units that couldn't die as a VC. I seem to remember reading in a developer interview that they wanted to get the named units more involved in WC3, since many players would just direct Jim Raynor or Tassadar to the back of the base and go on about their business. As a result, they came up with the resurrectable Hero unit. At least that's how I remember it. I could be totally off.