Starcraft II Catch-All

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/3250656#blog

Starcraft 2 Starter Edition (Free)

We’ve replaced the previously available StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty demo with the recently launched StarCraft II: Starter Edition. StarCraft II: Starter Edition allows anyone to play the following content for free (all you need is a Battle.net account and Internet connection):

The first four missions of the StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty single-player campaign, including Mar Sara 1-3 and the choice to embark on Tychus’s first mission or Dr. Hansen’s first mission.
The first two Challenges: Tactical Command and Covert Ops.
Access to the terran race in Custom Games and Single-Player vs. AI.
Access to the following custom maps (map selection may rotate over time):
Xel’Naga Caverns
Shattered Temple
Discord IV
High Orbit

NormanTheIntern wrote:

So I got destroyed in my placement matches the other night, really disheartening.

Then last night I tried a real ladder game and I won! (felt good)

I think that's ok, getting destroyed in the placement matches, especially if you're new. The system is still trying to figure out where you belong, and you'll likely get matched against some people who are more skilled than you.

The more you play, the more you'll be matched against fairly even opponents. Don't be too discouraged if you take some real beatdowns. In fact, you can learn something from those matches; watch the replay, see if you fell behind in production (buildings, workers, army), see if you fell behind in tech, see if there was a spot where you could have attacked and won, etc.

If the matchmaking does it's job, you should only win half your games anyway - it's trying to find fair fights. At least, I think that's how it works - someone with more experience can correct me if I'm wrong.

This game has the ability to rock my mood like few other games do. It also has an interesting ability to have me lose five games TERRIBLY in a row and then win five games convincingly in a row against all people who are supposedly "equal".

Matchmaking seems to work great most of the time, at least in 1v1s. I've taken breaks from playing a few times since the game came out and within only a few games of starting again the game quickly started putting me against people of about the same skill.

StarCraft 2 replaces demo with "Starter Edition"
Blizzard has replaced its traditional StarCraft 2 demo with a new bundle of content it's calling the StarCraft 2 "Starter Edition." Anyone with a Battle.net account can download and play it, although you will need to be online to play. Here's what you'll get to play with before you have to pay:

The first four missions of the StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty single-player campaign, including Mar Sara 1-3 and the choice to embark on Tychus’s first mission or Dr. Hansen’s first mission.
The first two Challenges: Tactical Command and Covert Ops.
Access to the terran race in Custom Games and Single-Player vs. AI.
Access to the following custom maps (map selection may rotate over time): Xel’Naga Caverns, Shattered Temple, Discord IV, and High Orbit

"Any campaign progress and achievements you earn while playing StarCraft II: Starter Edition are automatically saved to your Battle.net account, and will carry over should you ever upgrade from the Starter Edition to the full version of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty," Blizzard explained on the game's official page.

This is a big chunk of gameplay to give away, one that will give you a very good idea of all the different ways to play StarCraft 2. You'll even be able to play against friends who own the full version of the game, as long as they're fine playing on the maps available to you. The only downsides are the necessity of the Battle.net account and Internet connection.

If you have yet to play StarCraft 2, is this enough to get you interested?

Smart

Credits to Kuchera on Ars

I've been asking around to see if anyone has any interest in commentating on the SC2 tournament we're running for IGWJD. I'd like some people to live cast it during the event but we'll also post the matches if you want to record something over them.

I have a few takers but I was wondering if anyone else was interested. Please shoot me a PM.

Very well done. Found it through Reddit.

A SC character made a Halloween appearance on the Office last night. They also play the game, though it's not like you really see it. Interesting.

Sparhawk wrote:

Very well done. Found it through Reddit.

Holy hell, that was awesome work!

oMonarca wrote:
Sparhawk wrote:

Very well done. Found it through Reddit.

Holy hell, that was awesome work!

No kidding. That's amazing stuff.

wrong thread

IMAGE(http://s3.amazonaws.com/theoatmeal-img/comics/north_south_korea/north_korea.png)
IMAGE(http://s3.amazonaws.com/theoatmeal-img/comics/north_south_korea/south_korea.png)

Last campaign level is giving me such a headache. I've beaten every level on Hard but this damn level keeps kicking my ass.

Any tips? I destroyed the Nydus worms, so I get the swarms of mutalisks and overlords.

I don't want to play it on an easier difficulty if I can help it.

Nydus are FAR easier to deal with on harder difficulties than the Air Units.

I've personally found the air units to be darn near impossible to deal with on Insanity, or whatever that hardest difficulty was called.

You may want to go back to a pre-choice mission and do it again man.

Zerg Air = OP!

Haha, damn! I was worried that was the case.

I beat that mission on hard vs air by walling off with PF and building a metric ass-ton of turret, vikings, and marines. Some may prefer BCs but it hurts when Kerrigan attacks and AoE's a stack of your BC's to oblivion.

On Brutal I have yet to beat the level but I have a save that is pretty close. I wouldn't even think of trying to defeat the air version of the last mission on brutal. The ground version of the mission is much "easier" relatively speaking. Just make sure you saturate your minerals and make a ludicrous amount of production facilities. Hrm...I need to play the campaign to finish off about 10 achievements I have left. So close to getting them all but some of the brutal missions are confounding me.

If you're doing it on Insanity, assuming you're not doing it in 'Loco' mode, just control 2-3 squads of a few cloaked banshees, and just play wack a mole with the nydus.

Three ways to go about Planetary. One is to ignore completely in favor of siege spam (Kerirgans' lift ability will eat that up), Second is to build them all around the objective, before the final push comes, Three is to build them as part of your defence from relatively early on. They do decent damage and take longer to get killed than tanks that Kerrigan has a tendency to poop on.

The biggest thing if I recall correctly on top of placing PFs and controlling nydus hit squad banshees was.... the timing of that big 'temp-nuke' thing. I completely forget the timing on that.

PF is a big one though, it helps a ton. Placing them in the correct, and the most efficient spots as early as you can without sacrificing the early tank count is key. Starting to use PFs made this mission go from 'nearly impossible' to 'pfftt close but easy'.

Either way, you can train tons of ghosts and spam snipe on the Lady. Helps that bad dream go away that much quicker.

The Nyduses in your base can be dealt with pretty easily by having a handful siege tanks sprinkled around the base. A roving banshee hit squad is great for the rest. They are definitely much easier than the air (fought the air guys on hard and nyduses on brutal).

When I did the vs. Air version on hard my general strategy was to have two patrolling groups of Vikings, one for each side of the base. When I saw a group of Zerg air on the way I'd queue up that side's Viking group to hit all of the targets and then return to the safety of the base. Made it a lot easier to multitask on all of the other things that needed to get done.

The multitasking is my trouble. I had to drop down to Normal to win it. Ah well. For some reason, I got the "All 25 on Hard" achievement anyway. Maybe because I did both of mission #24.

HotS Multiplayer Unit Update

A HotS game casted by Day[9] and Rob Simpson to show off new features.

Nice!

Protoss: It looks like the Tempest is officially a replacement for the carrier. A less interesting replacement, but one that will surely be much easier to balance. The unit itself looks pretty rad. The Oracle already seemed strong with the mineral harass. Now it has the Mothership's old cloaking field? I foresee some complaining about that one.

Terran: Warhounds are at least slightly more than mini-Thors now with those missles. Shredder out, spi...er, widow mines in! Good change. That should really make Terran a lot more interesting to watch.

Zerg: Did they change anything? Those all look the same to me. Still good changes mostly, but I didn't notice anything new. That ultralisk charge looks awesome, and it looks like it might be an AOE burst damage ability in addition to a gap closer, since those marines all died on the initial hit.

This is all based on that first video, haven't watched the commentary yet.

Just some thoughts from the 2nd video:

Mothership Core: built on Nexus like an orbital or planetery is built on a Command center, can turn into a Mothership, can restore energy on sentries early game for additional forcefields, can turn into a temporary Canon, has mass recall but costs almost all available energy to use, can only have one Mothership core at a time but can warp to a different Nexus at the cost of energy. Seems strong as a total package.

Tempest: 22 range upgrade available...was this a joke? Nope, not a joke. To balance this, it looks like they have an extremely slow firing rate, but still, almost double the range of a siege tank from the air.

Swarm host: locusts have 2 or 3 range now and can shoot air units, no longer melee. Locusts have a long cooldown, but they allow the zerg to attack in waves with more units than they would otherwise have. Can't quite tell for sure, but it looks like there is no actual attack range. The only limiting factor is the lifespan of the locusts. You could sit them really far away from an enemy base and have constant harassment. Looks like they could end up being powerful as siege or defense units.

Hydralisks: new speed upgrade makes them fast off creep. Like roach or stalker fast. That should be huge.

Viper: Abduct looks just about as dumb as it sounds.

I haven't been keeping up with this...did they get rid of the protoss unit that can turn into any unit you have teched to?

Eh... I dunno. That abduct ability, in addition to looking kind of dumb, seems super overpowered. The game hasnt changed THAT much that protoss doesnt still need to keep its power units back from the swarm to survive.

I've said this before but I think mass recall on nexus is a really bad idea. Protoss doing a heavy push on the third happens very often in ZvP, and zerg players have the opportunity to kill the army if they lose the third. With recall, this isn't the case anymore. Also, it just makes counter attacks much harder. It will probably make it so it's super difficult to win a base trade too, given the much faster attack speed of a deathball over a slow lumbering brood lord army.

Warriorpoet897 wrote:

I haven't been keeping up with this...did they get rid of the protoss unit that can turn into any unit you have teched to?

Yes, it's gone from the game. I had a chance to play the beta a couple of times at MLG and it most certainly wasn't in the build and was listed as being cut.

silentsod wrote:
Warriorpoet897 wrote:

I haven't been keeping up with this...did they get rid of the protoss unit that can turn into any unit you have teched to?

Yes, it's gone from the game. I had a chance to play the beta a couple of times at MLG and it most certainly wasn't in the build and was listed as being cut.

Here's the reasoning behind the replicant being cut, if anyone was interested:

Dustin Browder wrote:

It was causing enemy players to not build certain unit types and was actually removing diversity from the game instead of adding diversity.

There's a new PvT Battle Report out from Heart of the Swarm. Some interesting moments and little clues to some minor interface updates in there.

Bought this last weekend, and a handful of missions into the campaign. Liking it a lot & subscribing.