SC2 Beta

I don't have access to the beta, but I've been keeping an eye on two youtube channels that have been posting up at least one game every day since the beta has started: Husky Starcraft and HDStarcraft.

Husky's preferred race is the Protoss and the majority of his videos showcase him playing as them. He does have a couple videos of him as other races. He also has three "introductory" videos where he goes through all three races and looks at each building and then details each unit. Most of his video's do not have any commentary though, and the highest resolution option is 720.

HDStarcraft says his preferred race is the Zerg, but most of his videos have him playing as the Protoss or the Terran. He's supposed to start putting up more video's of him playing as Zerg in the near future. His video's are usually fully commentated on, and it's helpful to hear what is going on and what he was thinking when he did certain things. I prefer his video's both because of the commentary, and because they can be watched in 1020.

About the beta in its current state. There is no access to the single player campaign, only the multiplayer is available. The touted ranking system is in place, and I've only heard positive feedback on it so far. All three races in the multiplayer are fully accessible, all units all buildings all upgrades. This being a beta of course, most likely there have already been some tweaks done to the units in order to further balance them that the players haven't gotten their hands on yet. HDStarcraft enjoys pointing out how OP the Terran Reaper unit is against buildings for example. Only 1v1 and 2v2 options are currently available, there is no 3v3 or 4v4 access at the moment. I'm not sure if the maps are only 1v1 and 2v2, or if the maps currently available to play on can't support 3v3 or 4v4.

Both HDStarcraft and Husky are using the in game playback feature to make their youtube videos. The playback feature looks really well done, and it looks like it's going to be an important tactical piece for helping newer players learn what's going on.

Some Zerg attacking a Terran Base. Screen shot taken from the Blizzard Starcraft 2 website.

I originally wasn't looking forward to SC2 at all, because I don't play RTS's. But after having seen a few of these two guys videos, I kind of want to go and buy it now. The single player campaign was always awesome in SC, and I expect nothing less in SC2. If I do ever play multiplayer in this game, I'm thinking I'd focus on the zerg. With so many units, there hopefully isn't a ton of necessity for micro'ing troops. Protoss for example, in my mind and maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, require the most micro. Namely because half of their health can be regenerated only through their shields, unlike the Terran who can be healed or SVC fixed, or the Zerg which... I'm assuming regain health if they idle around on some Creep, but I have no clue if that's actually in the game or not.

There are some problems I have with the game though. The inability to zoom the camera any further out than the normal position is way to focused for me. I have a hard time reacting to much when the camera's so focused. The other problem I have is the typical speed that most players wish to play at in multi player. In SC1 everyone only ever wanted to play at Fastest speed, and they would quit the game if you didn't bump it up higher. I had the same problems with oh... every single other RTS I've ever played. Playing at the fastest speed makes it really hard to learn about what's going on. Hopefully the playback feature will help alleviate the problem that I have when trying to figure out what's going on.