Hands-On With SixiS: First Look At Blizzard’s StarCraft 2 Beta

This piece was written by the beloved SixiS for you and me! So, let’s get down to it:

Hey guys SixiS here… so Nitrate is blackmailing me into writing a hands on for the new StarCraft 2 beta…

I guess…

Its fun.

Apparently that isn’t good enough, so here goes.

*NOTE* SC2 does not let me take screen shots, so apologies in advance for the lack of specialized eye candy. :( */NOTE*

Even though parts of the SC2 beta are very beta (the multitude of menus vandalized with “NOT AVAILABLE IN BETA”) it is still very fleshed out, so there is quite a lot to get through.

So we’ll start at the start! The new battle.net. In typical blizzard fashion it is incredibly shiny! (Editor’s Note: For the record, SixiS loves shiny. He’s like a magpie on fricken’ roids.)

The new Battle.Net: Essentially it’s a cross between the traditional Battle.Net, which we’ve all used, and the notorious Steam system from Valve. There are no longer any chat rooms, but there is however a friend chat similar to that of any chat program.

A really cool thing that I, unfortunately, have not yet been able to play around with, is the party feature (this is sad because I really love to party). The party system is similar to searching 2v2′s in the old Battle.Net system where you essentially choose who you would like to play with, and thereafter it will match you with your opponents. It does however differ in the sense that you create the party before searching for games. After this the party will consist throughout the game.

There is also voice chat between the people in your party. Can you say SC2 CYBERING :D!

Other parts of Blizzard’s new Battle.Net pertain to stats and ladders (no relation to the similar sounding board game). Everything you do in your games is recorded on Battle.Net and saved for later analysis. You’ll be able to see your wins / losses, ladder rank, racial stats, etc. You can even drill down into your games and have a look at the build orders of your opponents versus your own.

Once you’ve finished exploring all the facets of the new Battle.Net, and have chosen a fitting portrait — for Nitrate I picked the lady medic, it’s time to start playing!

As you begin it asks you to sorta rate yourself as Novice, Veteran or Expert (as far as I can remember). I chose Novice because I was scared… and ’cause I thought I could pwn some noobs this way.

Turns out I was right!

I had to play 5 practice matches before even being allowed to try the ladder. These matches were against some of the less talented players, to say the least, at a slower game speed and on novice maps where GIANT BOULDERS prevent rushes. Fun times in these matches as you pretty much just quick expand — no rushes remember. Mass a huge army of high-tech units and then A-click over the unsuspecting noobs base.

Once the 5 noobs had been dealt with, the game informed me that I now had to play 5 placement matches in order to get onto the ladder. I decided to play random here as I don’t really have a preference yet when it comes to race… guess I’m not racist.

I randomed Zerg in all 5 placement matches, and I’m pretty sure it’s my weakest race… Seems even though I’m not racist, the game is!

The first few games were easy none the less, but then again, I think the game realized I lied about having never played an RTS before as I got stomped by a much more talented Protoss player. I won the last game through some pretty sick roach micro in a Zerg vs Zerg match up (proud of myself) and so ended the placement matches 4-1.

This earned me a spot in the gold league!! Weeee, gooooollllddd! (Ed: Back to that shiny thing…)

Anyway, the new ladder system works on leagues. Instead of having one huge ladder like Warcraft 3, where you get placed 9345th out of 19934024 players, StarCraft 2 splits the ladder into divisions, namely Copper, Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum. This way you get to be ranked number 33 in Gold division number 4, where moving from number 33 to one is a much more of an achievable goal than trying to move from number 9345 to number one. On the impossible scale, that is.

Apart from the ladder, there are also unranked custom games. These work in a similar fashion to the old Battle.Net in that you select a game from a list and click join. However the games on the list also include game types hosted by Blizzard. For these hosted game types, you select one, click join and Battle.Net then finds you a game of that type with other players in — or it creates one for you.

The gameplay itself is fast paced and varied (mom joke), and although I haven’t had a huge amount of experience (self burn) it is really fun. The new macro mechanics (Queen for Zerg, Chrono Boost for Protoss and Orbital Command for Terran) add a new level of depth to the typical RTS game play, forcing players to macro as well as micro.. Or get left far behind, and ultimately in the ground. Dead.

The game is one of hard counters, where one unit will utterly crush a different one (e.g. immortals with +30dmg vs armoured crush the 125hp marauders) but includes so called muddy counters where units like marines or hydras are good against most. This makes picking the right strategy a must without turning the game a bland rock / paper / scissors knockoff. SC2 also makes balance really difficult, but from the games I have played, I have not yet felt complete dominance of one race over another.

StarCraft 2 gameplay, to me, seems like a mixture of Warcraft 3 and StarCraft 1. The added automation from Warcraft 3, such as being able to way point minerals allowing the workers automatically start mining, definitely makes it easier to focus on more important things like scouting and strategy — while the macro focus from StarCraft is still present.

There is a lot more strategic gameplay I could probably write about, but I think this should tide Nitrate over for the time being.

Thanks for reading if you got this far!
SixiS out :)