STARCRAFT 2 BETA
 

STARCRAFT 2 BETA

IT'S FUCKING STARCRAFT, DO YOU ACTUALLY WANT MORE? GET THE FUCK OUT AND OPT-INTO THAT SHIT AND PRAY FOR AN INVITE. PRAY TO YOUR SCIENCE, YOU GODLESS SONS OF BITCHES, AND LAMENT YOUR FAILURE TO OBTAIN A GUARANTEED KEY THROUGH OVERPRICED CON TICKETS OR WEAK ASS COMIC CONTESTS SERIOUSLY LOOK AT THE KIND OF SHIT THAT COULDA WON YOU A KEY YOU LAZY ASS. YOU ARE LAMENTING THE SHIT OUT OF NOT BEATING THAT.

This isn't as cool as DFM's Mass Effect 2 thread :( I think the lack of pictures hinders the excitement for me a bit

You need pictures to get excited for STARCRAFT?

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST HOW DID I MISS THIS?

TELL ME HOW THE FUCK DO I SIGN UP FOR THIS AWESOME BETA, I WANNA KNOW RIGHT THIS FUCKING SECOND!

You could opt-in through your b.net account. Requires ownership of another Blizz game, though.

It adds to the whole feel of it ya know. Now it just looks like him shouting about stuff with no drool worthy material to get help get sucked into at the moment. Plus the lack of real quality FPS over christmas time has depressed me on this subject matter. Plus it's just a beta.

DO YOU THINK YOU HAVE THE CAPSLOCK?
 

YOU THINK YOU CAN RIP OFF DFM BETTER I WOULD LIKE TO SEE YOU FUCKING TRY.
WWW.BATTLE.NET AND LOG INTO THAT SHIT. THERE IS A SMALL SC2 ICON ON THE TOP AND YOU CLICK THAT. THERE WILL BE DIRECTIONS BUT THEY ARE INCOMPLETE BECAUSE THEY DON'T TELL YOU TO PRAY.

I WILL FUCKING PRAY TO TASSADAR MAN.

I wonder if I can increase my chances through some mindless act of devout fandom.


Like making a hundred zergling costumes, getting a bunch of people to put them on, and then running through the local countryside stealing livestock.

If you did that I would figure out a way to buy you into the Beta!

I would totally do that, but I don't have the money and skills to make those costumes.

So instead we're going to play a game where you suggest retarded things for me to do to prove my love for starcraft to blizzard, and assuming they're not too disfiguring or impractical, I'll try them out!

There is no way to increase the excitement for Starcraft 2. If you are not pumped about it, you need mental help.

Meh, I think the first Starcraft was overrated. And I could totally see Starcraft II pulling a Duke Nukem.

What, never actually releasing? Nah, that'll be Diablo III. :p

Dude, that's not how you respond to trolling. Gawd.

EDIT: Seriosly, I try to spite you guys over a game and you just respond normally to me? This forum is such a repressive environment.

What about not being excited about the BETA because you know if you play it, it will drive you insane till the actual game comes out?

Haha Osterbaum, you're so funny! Want some cookies I made?

I don't take cookies that are offered to me by strange people.

GOD FUCKING DAMNIT! I chose a brilliant day to give up video games for 40 fugging days. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKK!

On the contrary, atleast I now know its going to be released probably within a year of today.

Dammit!!! This makes me wish I had a real computer instead of a laptop.

Because I'm certain that I won't be able to play this otherwise.

God will forgive you.

Ehhhh.

Screw the beta, I want the map editor!
Okay, fine, I'm praying to Thor.

I LOST 3 TIMES BEFORE THAT BUT SHUSH.
 

HOLY CRAP I GOT MY KEY. JUST WON MY FIRST GAME IT WAS AWESOME EVEN THOUGH I WAS TOTALLY FLOATING CRAZY MINERALS. I WAS JUST SHITTING OUT DUDES FROM 9 WARP GATES AND RUSHING THE ENEMY BASE I HAD SO MANY GODDAMN MINERALS.

HYDRALISKS WILL SHIV YOU IF YOU GET UP IN THEIR GRILL. NO LIE.

YOU SONUVABITCH!

Pretty much nobody expected it to turn out the way it did.
 

I totally got trolled in a random 2v2 earlier.

I was protoss, my ally terran, against zerg/terran. The moment the game starts my ally sends all his workers at one of the enemy positions - the zerg position, as it turns out - and lifts off the CC to follow them. After the drones had beat the scvs (superior numbers) a guy on the other team asks "That's your plan?"
As the CC floated into view, he says, "No, THIS IS."

I figured all I could do was send a probe after them and proxy my first pylon and 2 gateways, hoping to rush out the zerg player and reduce the match to 1v1. And that's exactly what happened! The whole time I was dreading that the terran player would come in and save, or attack my base and crush my economy. He did neither. So I build a forge, a proxy pylon a ways away from his cliff (outside of siege tank range, I think) and guarded it with cannons. I also expanded into the beaten Zerg player's natural.

I saw marauders and tanks, so I went for zealots and immortals with warp prisms to get past the wall. Shortly before I cracked the wall, I noticed I was low on minerals. Then my ally says, "Why do I have to click on each enemy probe to kill them?"

He was killing my probes! I sent them to mine my expansion and when the scvs followed I had to have them fight back. Meanwhile, I'd broken the terran player's base and he lifted off to try and set up on the island expansion.

Of course, I already had warp prisms so it was a simple matter of carrying a single immortal to that base in order to forestall landing and warp in stalkers to attack buildings in the air.

Then the system reset in order to apply a patch, rendering the whole game moot and preventing me from getting a replay!

I honestly don't even mind not getting the win, but I really wish I had that replay.

I got a beta key 3 days ago.


And I've never played Starcraft 1 before.


So, only multiplayer is available, no tutorials or anything... this'll be painful.

Yeah, I think those Korean guys have tentacles just for you, Ocelot. Have fun.

There's a cracked AI out already. Not great, but good for learning the units.

The game is fuuuuuun, even without multiplayer.

Useless post, but I amuse myself.
 

Arranged Team Ahoy
 

Play a game with AI - you can start a custom match and put an AI in the slot with you, the AI is super dumb. Then load the replay and select the help menu, it's got the full tech tree and unit list.

Also arrlaari.oldss <- friend invite that


And don't worry about Koreans, they have their own servers and no way to get at ours.

If you have the replay of your troll match, do share.

Just got my invite today yesterday, wow I've been playing a while, and I'm very pleased with what I see.

The Terrans feel like a big step forward. The add-on system has been streamlined, which makes it easy to save space if necessary, and I absolutely love the Orbital Command. Drop in Mules for more money! Double your supply depot output! Scan the enemy once in a while! It's great. And the reactors allow me to churn out thousands of basic units whenever I want. Terrans are probably my favourite faction right now.

Protoss are a close second, almost entirely because of their warp gates. I'm still used to Command and Conquer, so the truth is that the de-centralized approach to building Warp Gated units appeals to me a lot. Plus, it's just priceless setting up a Warp Prism inside the enemy base only to drop in 12 Dark Templar.

Zerg... ugh, I don't like what's been done with them. They're too unfamiliar. I was never a fan of Zerg in the first place, but it feels now like there's too much micromanagement, too much to think about. Creep colonies are gone, and with them my usual "standard" defense plan. The defensive structures are still there, but they definitely feel stripped-down compared to the old ones, and they are no longer integral to the base's functionality. And it almost feels criminal that it costs 200mins + drone for the Spawning Pool, which the Zerg literally require to do anything but build Drones and Overlords.

Add me, I'm Kerensky.paradox. I plan to play this a great deal more - it's just plain addicting.

Unable to add either of you two using those IDs - they probably keep US and EU separate just like WoW (I'm filthy and English). Could try your battle.net email addresses though.

12 pool = ov at 8 supply, spawning pool at 12 supply.
 

The thing is, creep colonies have been replaced by creep tumors, which A. cost queen energy and B. Can spawn a single additional creep colony once over their lifespan. C. are cloaked once constructed.

The upshot is that you can eventually cover the map off 25 queen energy. I generally skip my second spawn since resources are kind of tight at that point.

It takes forever for an uprooted crawler to dig in - it's not at all comparable to siege tanks, which is too bad because I used to dream of proxy hatch into crawler push.

Also, With 12 pool I find that I can consistently defend a fast expand against Terran. I suspect 2gate with chrono could break that before roaches come out, or at least force the hatch to cancel.

Well lookit you, Mr Big Shot SC2 player using the big made-up words! Thinks he can talk the talk just because he had 2 flawless victories against me, we'll just wait and see next game won't we!

Also, sorry about that last game we played. My internet flatlined for a good hour or two. To be fair though, I felt like I MAYBE could've fought off that last attack of yours... also, since playing you I have developed a 5-game win streak with Terrans, so ha. I'm just not good with Protoss.

Onto gameplay talk: I LOVE Banshees. I once ended a game that had gone on far too long by sending like 20 behind the enemy's sole remaining expansion (I only had one left as well... they were the last 2 on the map), waiting until he was on the move, and then killing his hatchery. I had also brought along like 3 Vikings to kill off any nearby Overlords (to avoid detection), so when his army inevitably returned, it was at the mercy of my then-cloaked Banshee horde.

Of course, if he had brought along even a single Overlord with his army my plan would've failed. But what the hey, it was fun!

Seriously Nydus is so much better
 

You were even safer than you imagined: overlords no longer detect. Zerg must upgrade overlords to overseers in order to get detection: they also get a move speed boost and the ability to spawn changelings, but lose the ability to drop creep and transport units (as if anyone uses ventral sacs anymore).

But hey how about those point defense drones?

Seriously everyone who has this must open a replay and read the unit lists after your very first game. I am sick of reading people whine about Thor vs. Battlecruisers/carriers/any armored air unit.

My very first game was a ZvZ, where i got 'ling rushed, which I took out with a Queen and some 'lings that were spawning at that point. Beat off two more small groups, then just sent in about 16 'lings to take out his base xP

Sorry, Ocelot.
 

Arghblbblblble.

Really? couldn't they make a all region server group?

Meh. Well anyway, I tried out Terran at first since they seemed to have the most familiar mechanics... needless to say, I got sent straight to rank 99/99 in a Copper League division, ~200 points below #98.

Now I'm actually winning a few games as Protoss, and clawed my way up to rank 56 or so. Nobody expects chrono'd 2 gates zealot rush. Well, they frequently do, but I wreck their defenses in the process and then the followup zealots have some workers for breakfast.


Just don't talk to me about Roaches.

That's actually the same way I beat Numsie tonight in the one game where he didn't curbstomp me. And yeah, he started building Roaches too. Turns out a fair mix of Stalkers and Immortals will ruin any Roach spammer's day.

I just wish they'd buff the Phoenix already, though. A dedicated air-to-air fighter that only barely wins out against a cheaper unit that can also attack ground (Viking) and loses 1v1 against a unit from the spammy faction (Corruptor)? And don't get me started on Mutalisks. I'm pretty sure Sentries are the ONLY thing that can beat Mutalisks, and that's if you micro them really well.

Playing mostly 2v2 atm, as zerg, I'm fond of Hydra/Ultra drops in enemy bases. Ultras clean up buildings pretty fast =)

In general defensive abilities are underestimated.
 

Micro them really well = activate guardian shield.

So I heard that Blizzard is sending another wave of codes to everyone who's in the beta.

I'm not going to beat around the bush here and get straight down to business. Anyone here want to be my most favorite person in the world and toss me one of these codes instead of giving it to some fleshy real-world "friend"? Please :)?

I'm sorry, but I think that my poor father who was sent by the evil military against his will to fight a war in Afghanistan that he doesn't believe in deserves this code more than you do for his free time.

And if he doesn't want it, then fuck you anyway, I'm selling it on eBay.

Testing = fully upgraded ultralisk with GS takes no damage from sentries.
 

Seriously guardian shield is awesome. Someone did testing and found out that unlike armor, the guardian shield effect can reduce damage to 0.

All Protoss ground combat units have 1 armor even before upgrades. So normally, a mutalisk does 8-2-1 (down from base 9-3-1) per attack. Activate guardian shield, and that's 6-0-0.

Did.... did you just quote yourself? Selfish bugger.

But seriously, wow, that's pretty awesome. I'm gonna go ahead and assume the effect doesn't stack because if it did, you'd have a gamebreaker right there. I've been playing pure Terran for the last few games, but I might have to switch to Protoss just to try out the Guardian Shield effect.

I know Sentries are supposed to be good for their forcefield effect and hallucinations as well, but I've never been able to use them effectively. And.... ugh, the SHORTCUTS IN THIS GAME. They're absolutely terrible. This is of course after RA3, which has the best shortcuts in existence (translation: you can set them yourself, and there's only 1 button for special abilities) but I really wish that they could have at the very least put in a grid-based system.

I mean, the buttons are 3x5, right? So you have shortcuts set as
QWERT
ASDFG
ZXCVB

Want to build 3 Zealots? Q,Q,Q. 2 Zealots, a Stalker and a Sentry? Q,Q,E,W. It's intuitive. I still wish I could use WASD for the camera, but I could also handle it if you could drag-scroll with the right mouse button. Who the hell clicks the mouse wheel, seriously?

You want me to quote people who aren't me? FINE.
 

http://forums.battle.net/thread.html...00&pageNo=2#21

Thanks, that was really informative in general. Looking forward to that grid-based layout, even though I'm already getting used to their absolutely random hotkeys...

In other news, I'm 95% certain now that the Protoss Advisor has the same voice actor as Colonel Campbell. "SNAKE! YOU MUST CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS!" "Our probes are under attack! GET IN THERE!"

So I had to reinstall the beta after my computer got funky, and instead of the normal menu theme I was greeted with this.

Why did nobody tell me about this?

will this game ever ever make it to the streets?

"you require more minerals..." pwnsers

For those of you still looking for beta keys, Team Liquid is going to be doing all kinds of things with the 500 keys Blizzard sent them recently: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/view...opic_id=120346

In addition, Blizzard occasionally just puts beta key codes up on their Facebook page as a first-come-first-serve sort of thing. Who knows, become a fan and you might just get lucky: http://www.facebook.com/pages/StarCraft/9115004683

I admit that I find it odd how Blizzard is doing all these contests when there's a crapton of people who have been waiting patiently for their invite after opting in months ago... but hey, hype's hype, and if you didn't opt in then you've still got a chance.

Has anyone else had problems with those goddamned terran Firebike things? They move so fast that even if I have a fair defense prepared, they run past rather than fighting because they move so quick, then they get to my drones and kill them all in like 2 seconds with their stupid fire AOE death thing. Its like a zerg rush but its cheaper and doesn't outright kill the enemy, just cripples their economy. The problem Im having with it is that defending against it has less to do with what units I have at that time and more to do with whether or not I have placed physical barriers in the way to stop them from entering my base to lollerroaster my drones.

You know you can use units as a physical barrier too, right? Roaches are good for this vs Hellions (firebikes).

NOW TELL ME YOUR IDENTIFIER SO I CAN ADD YOU I AM STILL KERENSKY.PARADOX NICE TO MEET YOU LET US GAME

And they don't have very high HP, do they? They're fairly cheap, but in terms of combat strength, they're tier 1.5 at most. They'll murder Zerglings, but a few well-placed hydras or roaches can really spoil their day. Also, they need an upgrade to deal really good splash damage against light units, so once your opponent commits to them, if you do manage to counter them, you've set him back quite a bit.

Hellions have 80HP, which is pretty terrible. Their uses are fairly limited:
-Econ harassment, thanks to their MASSIVE damage vs light when upgraded
-Mass numbers supported by Thors or Siege Tanks (lots of units dealing splash damage, great fun)

For econ harass it's a matter of preventing them from reaching your mineral line or defending your mineral line. Early on you might not have put a lot of thought into defense, but at some point it's important to throw down a spine crawler and a few spore crawlers near your main hatchery. The spine crawler is for general defense and the spore crawlers are for fighting off Banshee cheese.

Anyway, I stand by my previous statement. A wall of units, possibly supported by a defensive turret and possibly set to ambush (burrow, then set unburrow to autocast) will work wonders against a bunch of quick Hellions, depending on the terrain.

In case anyone's interested, the world editor is now in as well. Anyone looked into that already?

No campaign units :(

Just started playing the beta myself a few days ago. So far 4-0 on my placement, TvT and TvZ; no TvP yet, but I've done a bit of that in unranked with my friends and I'm decent at it. My problem is that I'm absolutely terrible at late game :S