Starcraft II - Heart of the Swarm

[SoBe Clock]

There's a lot of anti-blizzard around here lately, with good reason. Blizzard is actually doing really well with Starcraft though, despite all the fuck-ups they've done with Warcraft and Diablo.

The core game of Starcraft 2 has always been great, it was the battle.net service surrounding it that was garbage. They revamped Starcraft's battle.net interface for HotS and it's what I, and a lot of others, always wanted out of SC2.
Wings of Liberty was basically "go ranked or go home." There was no unranked matchmaking and the arcade system was garbage.

The reworked battle.net added the following things:
-Unranked Matchmaking
-An open lobby based arcade system (goodbye horrible popularity matchmaking)
-Better chat
-Clan support
-No more region locking
-Watch replays with friends
-Resume game from replay with friends
-New ladder unlockables like portraits, unit skins and such
-Awesome new training mode

While it needs to be said this is what Starcraft 2 should have had from the get-go, it's at least really good that it has all these features now. The resume from replay feature is really cool, it allows you to pick up and continue the game you're watching from any point in the replay, as long as you have someone to fill in for the other player(s).

The revamped battle.net has been applied to Wings of Liberty and since Heart of the Swarm will use the same game client, it obviously uses all this too.

I don't know if there are any other Starcraft fans in the cc anymore but I'm buying HotS on release week.

[TropicanaClock]

I got wings of liberty back when it came out, I thought it was great but my computer ran it like shit.
Just got done with a major upgrade, so ill probably reinstall and update.

Honestly WoW aside I dont think people have too much room to complain about blizzard. Everyones expectations are asine and unrealistic.
 
plyons.

There's a lot of anti-blizzard around here lately, with good reason. Blizzard is actually doing really well with Starcraft though, despite all the fuck-ups they've done with Warcraft and Diablo.

The core game of Starcraft 2 has always been great, it was the battle.net service surrounding it that was garbage. They revamped Starcraft's battle.net interface for HotS and it's what I, and a lot of others, always wanted out of SC2.
Wings of Liberty was basically "go ranked or go home." There was no unranked matchmaking and the arcade system was garbage.

The reworked battle.net added the following things:
-Unranked Matchmaking
-An open lobby based arcade system (goodbye horrible popularity matchmaking)
-Better chat
-Clan support
-No more region locking
-Watch replays with friends
-Resume game from replay with friends
-New ladder unlockables like portraits, unit skins and such
-Awesome new training mode

While it needs to be said this is what Starcraft 2 should have had from the get-go, it's at least really good that it has all these features now. The resume from replay feature is really cool, it allows you to pick up and continue the game you're watching from any point in the replay, as long as you have someone to fill in for the other player(s).

The revamped battle.net has been applied to Wings of Liberty and since Heart of the Swarm will use the same game client, it obviously uses all this too.

I don't know if there are any other Starcraft fans in the cc anymore but I'm buying HotS on release week. I'm playing Protoss for this expansion.

[NintendoClock]

I might get back into it eventually. I just haven't had the itch for strategy as of late. Been playing a lot of Dreamcast games and for some reason I felt the need to replay Mass Effect 1.

At any rate, I'll probably get HotS. Blizzard may have disappointed me a bit with Diablo 3, but SCII is at least decent. Now if they would just fix the custom game system

[SoBe Clock]

I might get back into it eventually. I just haven't had the itch for strategy as of late. Been playing a lot of Dreamcast games and for some reason I felt the need to replay Mass Effect 1.

At any rate, I'll probably get HotS. Blizzard may have disappointed me a bit with Diablo 3, but SCII is at least decent. Now if they would just fix the custom game system

They've improved it quite a lot. I actually posted that ITT.

The arcade is for custom maps and it actually uses an open lobby system now instead of the popularity matchmaking. It's still not perfect, but it's way better than what it was before.

If you click "custom games" on the main menu, its for arranging a lobby for a custom game of starcraft like if you want to battle a specific friend or whatever. The Arcade is for things made with the map editor.

[NintendoClock]

They've improved it quite a lot. I actually posted that ITT.

The arcade is for custom maps and it actually uses an open lobby system now instead of the popularity matchmaking. It's still not perfect, but it's way better than what it was before.

If you click "custom games" on the main menu, its for arranging a lobby for a custom game of starcraft like if you want to battle a specific friend or whatever. The Arcade is for things made with the map editor.

Until its like WC3, I probably won't be satisfied. We'll see though.

Edit:They definitely did a nice overhaul to everything. I'm glad I can play unranked now, much less stressful of an experience. Unless you get a win, in which case you're left wishing it was ranked but whatever.

This looks much more like the original battle.net and thank god for that.

[SoBe Clock]

Until its like WC3, I probably won't be satisfied. We'll see though.

Edit:They definitely did a nice overhaul to everything. I'm glad I can play unranked now, much less stressful of an experience. Unless you get a win, in which case you're left wishing it was ranked but whatever.

This looks much more like the original battle.net and thank god for that.

Yeah man it's pretty great now.

Also it turns out I still can't play Protoss so I'm going to stick with Zerg.

[PirateClock]

Im looking forward to this, currently replaying the Wings of Liberty campaign.

[SoBe Clock]

[U2]vCsGTP3-Jlw[/U2]

[NintendoClock]

Been playing a lot recently. The new update managed to pull me back in so that's cool.

Practicing protoss, been getting rather decent I think.

If anybody wants to play, feel free to send me a PM.

[SoBe Clock]

I started playing ranked last week and I surrendered my 5 placement matches to get placed at the bottom of bronze. I just hit diamond tonight and got up to rank 11 in my division. Masters league here I come!

Protoss is definitely my race in HotS. Is anyone here playing this besides me?

[Lump Clock]

I play it from time to time, me and the guys (the guys being my brother and best friend) are trying to get back into it. It is not going so well.

[SoBe Clock]

StarCraft 2 now has spawning, similar to old Blizzard games.

[U2]suSNRTCkDbQ[/U2]

TL;DW - Whether you have the free SC2 starter edition, or Wings of Liberty, if you party up with someone who owns a higher edition of the game, you get "spawned" up to their level. While in that party with the person, you have access to all the multiplayer modes they have access to. This essentially allows players to play Heart of the Swarm even if they don't own it, as long as you're playing with someone who does. Starter edition players could be spawned up to Wings of Liberty too. The only catch is that Starter Edition players can still only play as Terran even when spawned up. Spawning does not give access to higher edition single player content.

I don't know of any other paid game that does something like this, so I think it's pretty awesome. It's clearly an attempt by Blizzard to better compete with free to play games, but that's a good thing.

[buttplug]

I got like 2/3rds of the way through the campaign and stopped, I don't really have a desire to finish it. Also I realized they basically took out Lieutenant Duran who was my favorite character which sucks.