StarCraft II Beta

[Ingmar]

Rushing is the "must have" start it seems. Either rush or get rushed.

Those noob maps with the big rocks that block your base off really shut early rushes down though.

[Vision]

Once you get past the novice games and get placed in a bracket, most of the rocks disappear i think.

[Aez]

Watched a couple of  live streamed games. I'm not sure I'm still interested.  Been there, done that.

[Ingmar]

What I saw of the single-player experience at BlizzCon was awesome , by the way, I wouldn't write off the game solely on the multiplayer (which is still fun even if it isn't really terribly different than SC1.)

[Astorax]

BTW, I'm droolin in the backround over here, if anyone HAPPENS to have an extra key they're not using, I would totally love to hop in there and play with you guys.

[Quinton]

Hell, if it was just SC1 reworked to use a modern gpu and display at modern resolutions instead of 800x600, that'd make me happy.

[naum]

Me get no beta yet.

I never even played SC1 and I haven't played a RTS since WC3 (tried AoE III but just did not like a lot of the changes in the series).

[Ingmar]

So far I've gotten into the beta 3 times  , the 2 extra keys were already clamored for by friends but if I get another one for some reason I'll pass it to Schild so we can do some kind of contest or giveaway or something.

[schild]

If I get any keys, I'll start a thread. So, sure you can mail keys. You can also bribe for them once they show up with donations.

[Ceryse]

I wish I was in the beta, even if it means I'd be losing almost all the time. Still, SC2 is interesting me, from what I've seen via live streams and replays and the like, far more than the original did. My experience with the original was largely single player after I spent a couple weeks getting beaten by people who could've won solo against myself and a few others at my skill level. The way the Leagues and such work, however... I foresee a lot more player retention on the lower skill end of things than in the original. The battle.net revamp just looks/seems.. fantastic.

The two-name shit is annoying, though. So is the prevalence of rushing. God I hated rushing something fierce. I think I'll love the newb maps.

[bhodi]

Blurgh, if any of you come across invites, I froth the froth of ages. Could use two though (one for a friend at work). Nothing wrong with being impatient.

Fin.

OH COME ON. Don't tell me you got one!

Yeah. I'm not in.  I do check b.net every few days. Hate!

[kildorn]

So far I've gotten into the beta 3 times  , the 2 extra keys were already clamored for by friends but if I get another one for some reason I'll pass it to Schild so we can do some kind of contest or giveaway or something.

Who the hell did you take out for drinks at blizzcon D:

[Thrawn]

So does the beta feel pretty finished?  Release this year?  I'm not one to care about getting into betas or pre-ordering games most of the time but SC2 will certainly be an exception for me.

[Fordel]

There's just a lot of balancing left to do with the various units and etc.

[Ingmar]

So does the beta feel pretty finished?  Release this year?  I'm not one to care about getting into betas or pre-ordering games most of the time but SC2 will certainly be an exception for me.

There's plenty of balancing to do, as Fordel says, but if we see any delay in release it is going to be down to the single player stuff rather than multiplayer I think, the single player stuff was quite elaborate and who knows where they are on it. Multiplayer seems pretty much done from a systems point of view.

[Vision]

Some strats in 2v2 come off as unbeatable unless matched with the same thing. Me and a partner won 7 games in a row just Zerg/Mutalisk rushing, and I'm absolutely horrible at SC2. But then again we are playing in the lowest bracket, so who knows.

[Goreschach]

Some strats in 2v2 come off as unbeatable unless matched with the same thing. Me and a partner won 7 games in a row just Zerg/Mutalisk rushing, and I'm absolutely horrible at SC2. But then again we are playing in the lowest bracket, so who knows.

Rushing has always been overpowered in SC team maps. A player can usually fend off a rush from another player by walling in or putting up early static defenses, but in 2v2 or more, if you and your parter defend like that, one guy can get easily overrun, and the other guy won't have forces or time to arrive and help out. One interesting thing I noticed in a commentary is special 2v2 maps where both teammates start in one area, sharing a single chokepoint. Maybe bliz added those maps to address this.

[Megrim]

Blurgh, if any of you come across invites, I froth the froth of ages. Could use two though (one for a friend at work). Nothing wrong with being impatient.

Fin.

OH COME ON. Don't tell me you got one!

Yeah. I'm not in.  I do check b.net every few days. Hate!

Haha yea. Well, for all my griping i do realise that we will all get into at least the open beta stage at some point, but i just find it curious that people can get multiple invites on an apparently arbitrary basis.

(insert hypocritical grumbling about stupid wow players)

[Ingmar]

2 of my invites I know what they're from (one because they just put me in all their betas now, one from a Blizzcon code from 2 years ago), the mysterious one is the one they sent me from SC2BetaGB (Great Britain) that included instructions to set up a battle.net account at EU.battle.net. I have *no idea* why I got that one.

[Xerapis]

~sigh~

Still no luck here. Not with American account, not with Korean account.

Seriously, y'all got no idea how much boy-pussy I could score with the line "Wanna go back to my place? I'm beta testing Starcraft 2"

[NiX]

 

[schild]

His use of boy is suspect.

[Xerapis]

boy - Informal. a grown man, esp. when referred to familiarly

[Rendakor]

I'm checking my email and b.net account daily, to no avail. In b.net, it will just show up under Manage Account like a WoW account would?

[Malakili]

I'm checking my email and b.net account daily, to no avail. In b.net, it will just show up under Manage Account like a WoW account would?

That is what happened for my friend.  I am still without any luck myself.  DoW2 is keeping me busy for now though.

[K9]

Any word on how this runs on different systems? Given Blizzard's track record I'm guessing it will have low requirements and still look great and run well.

[proudft]

My system is from 2006, and the beta autoset graphics option to Medium, where I have left it.  It runs perfectly fine at 1280x1024.  It's not silky-smooth, but it is fine, and I am generally pretty fussy about frameretes.   Probably 40-50 fps?

The system is a Pentium 4, 3.2 Ghz CPU, 3 gigs memory, and graphics card is a GeForce 8600.  So it's looking good for the older computers!

[Velorath]

So does the beta feel pretty finished?  Release this year?  I'm not one to care about getting into betas or pre-ordering games most of the time but SC2 will certainly be an exception for me.

From the most recent BlizzCast a couple of days ago, Production Director Chris Sigaty had this to say:

We were targeting three to five months for the beta, we're really at a three month period of time for the beta at this point. We are still targeting the first half of this year, so with that in mind, it really shortens the window of time with our major content patch coming out pretty close to the end whether it's even worth it putting out the map editor at that point.

[Vision]

I have a last gen Mac Book Pro, so a Core2Duo at 2.4, 2gigs of ram and an 8600M. I cranked up the resolution pretty high and it looks great. Most detail settings are on high (not ultra) and it runs really well. I was worried at first, but blizz pulled through as usual.

[Megrim]

Any word on how this runs on different systems? Given Blizzard's track record I'm guessing it will have low requirements and still look great and run well.

There is a thread on Team Liquid here which seems to be pretty comprehensive.

[Malakili]

I've been watching some videos of games recently, and feel really torn about the game.  On the one hand, it does look fun.  On the other hand, the videos I've seen remind me how bad I am at micro, and that I'm going to be massacred in online play.

[Goreschach]

I've been watching some videos of games recently, and feel really torn about the game.  On the one hand, it does look fun.  On the other hand, the videos I've seen remind me how bad I am at micro, and that I'm going to be massacred in online play.

Huh? A lot of complaints on TL and other SC forums are that SC2 lacks the kind of micro and soft balance of the original. Honestly, it's probably just because the game is new, and everyone is a noob, but the game currently is much more macro dominant.

[Vision]

I've watched replays of decent players who dont even ctrl-group their units. I would agree that Macro is more dominant atm.
But with my current impressions, I would say SC2 is less of a progressive step than what Blizz accomplished between WC2 and WC3.

[Trippy]

That's weird cause it seems like most units have special abilities now and watching the Blizzard guys go at it it looks like even more micro than SC1.

[Teleku]

I've watched replays of decent players who dont even ctrl-group their units. I would agree that Macro is more dominant atm.
But with my current impressions, I would say SC2 is less of a progressive step than what Blizz accomplished between WC2 and WC3.

Well, thats to be figured.  I could see that blizzard decided they had 2 RTS franchises, and they needed to differentiate them somehow game play wise.  The original plan was to make WC3 much more RPG hybrid, but they couldn't get it to be fun, so they went with the more moderate approach it turned into.  The hero's, creeps, magical items, lower unit totals overall, ect.  I figured that then, the Starcraft franchise would maintain the role of a more traditional RTS, so SC2 wouldn't be that much different (gameplay wise) than SC1.  Seems to be what they've done.