Here at Blizzard, despite having no relation, we’ve been longtime fans of Blizzard Entertainment. I’ve been playing StarCraft since its release in ’98, when I was about 7 and a half years old, and was playing Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness and Beyond the Dark Portal before that. When I saw the previews for StarCraft back in ’97, I knew it was going to be awesome. I still play the expansion, Brood War, to this day.
When the original announcement trailer for StarCraft II started popping up on the internet one weekend back in May of 2007, I was giddy. I gathered up any information I could, which was limited at the time, and then spent the rest of the day playing StarCraft: Brood War in celebration.
I was never a big competitive player, mostly because I played with my brother and dad, and Battle.net didn’t work with multiple players on a single IP address, but after we played so much that the three of us were no longer challenged by five AI players, there was a stint during which we each had static IP addresses just so we could play on Battle.net and get a real challenge. This, as it turns out, is a fact that would later get me a spot at the launch of the StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty closed beta.
In September of 2009, I saw that Blizzard Entertainment was doing a contest through their StarCraft Twitter account: Tweet your reason that you are StarCraft’s biggest fan, and the 300 best answers would be selected to receive beta keys. So I, of course, tweeted that I loved StarCraft so much that we had static IP addresses so we could play together online.
Come October, I got a message that I had been selected. I’m sure I said the old “I’ve never won anything in my life!” bit. Of course, there was no word yet when the beta would actually open, but come February 17, 2010, it was upon us.
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty Closed Beta
The first thing I noticed as I jumped into my first game of StarCraft II was how much it felt like classic StarCraft while still being so new. I never got into Warcraft III simply because it was just so immensely different from previous installments in the Warcraft series, with its focus on smaller armies (even going so far as to penalize your income if you had too big an army) and “hero” units with RPG elements. This is certainly not the case with StarCraft II; while there was still plenty of new stuff to learn, I found it easy to draw on my experience in the first game to get me through.
Each of the three playable races has gotten an overhaul while still retaining the basic feelings that made them what they are. Units like the Terran Firebat and Protoss Reaver have been replaced entirely, while others like the Terran Ghost and Zerg Queen have gotten a complete makeover, making things fresh and interesting.
I’ve heard some remark that the game does nothing new, that it’s just “StarCraft with new graphics”, and that modern real-time strategy games like Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and Company of Heroes do so much to mix up the RTS format while StarCraft II is stuck in the past. Maybe StarCraft doesn’t do anything particularly innovative for the RTS industry, but there isn’t a game like it out now, and hasn’t been since, well, StarCraft: Brood War. There’s still plenty of room for the StarCraft format; just look at South Korea’s e-sports scene. Even so, StarCraft deserves a new coat of paint. The new graphics and particularly the new unit AI and pathfinding make the game much more comfortable to control. (Remember trying to fit Terran Goliaths or Protoss Dragoons up a ramp choke point?)
The beta version is limited to online multiplayer, as Blizzard Entertainment is remaining pretty secretive about details on the single player campaign until the full game is released. With the beta, you have the options to play unranked against random players, your friends, or computer AI (on the “very easy” difficulty setting only), or get into the ladder and play ranked 1v1 or 2v2 with people automatically matched to your skill level. 1v1 matchmaking seems to do a pretty good job, but 2v2 is almost always a tossup.
The StarCraft II beta is remarkably stable; moreso than many release titles these days. I get the occasional unexplainable performance drop that requires restarting the game to resolve, but I can count on one hand the number of times it has crashed, and that’s playing pretty much every day. My experience with PC games’ stability is less than stellar, such as the period when playing Team Fortress 2 that every time I equipped the Heavy’s primary weapon, the game crashed to the desktop, so when crashes and freezes are this rare, I can pretty much overlook it.
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is fun and addictive, and impressively polished, even since the start of the beta. Some retailers like GameStop and Amazon.com are offering beta codes with a preorder, so you can get in on the action right now, before the July 27 release date. My life for Aiur!
I remember the static IPs, I also remember when the 3 guys that worked for me back in 1998 couldn’t wait until closing time so we could play Starcraft on the LAN. Many late nights were spent on that game. None of us could beat Dit but he made us all better players.