Fansite Q & A With Dustin Browder

Zerg Coverage >> Fansite Q & A With Dustin Browder

System Requirements

There is no information yet on what hardware will be needed to run StarCraft II (except for the rumoured StarCraft 2 System Requirements). Dustin said that their plan is to make it as widely accessible as possible (much like all other games by Blizzard). They will optimize the engine as far as it's possible, and then see how they can make it work on the widest possible variety of PCs. As a 3D game, it will of course come with different graphics settings, but it will still be a balance of what your minimum required level of graphics is needed to be truly fun to play (indicating ugly graphics might not be as fun).

The Thor

The changes to the Thor since BlizzCon, making it slightly more mobile and perhaps less daunting (as well as the fact it's now built from the Factory), was welcomed with a positive response from the the pro gamer standing next to me. Dustin joked a bit about the previous incarnation, when it was perhaps a bit unbalanced in favour of micro-ing that you could easily take out this big, expensive unit with one that was made with a fraction of time and resource investment. I found this extra funny, with memories of Dustin, himself announcing this as a big and interesting feature for the Thor at BlizzCon!

Still, there is the issue of mobility for the Thor, and the StarCraft II team is looking in to the possibility for Dropships to possibly be able to lift Thors around, as they can be quite useless if built on an island. Dustin was a bit unsure on the matter, as it seems kind of odd with the Thor being several times larger than the Dropship, but on the other hand, you could fit in Ultralisks in the transports of the original StarCraft.

Transport Tunnels and Nydus Worms

Zerg has their own new transport system with the Nydus Worms, and the interesting mechanics surrounding them. Dustin realises that it might be too powerful with the fact that it's instant movement, and tells us about one match he had, where the opponent had put three worms inside his base, and poured out units. The description was slightly incoherent, but the basic thing was that it is really hard to stop the invasion in this manner, as you need to kill all of the nydus worms in order to stop the pouring of units. As Dustin said, that this was a completely new way to use the unit, and needs to be taken into consideration.

A question I didn't think of asking at the time was if you would be able to empty the Nydus Canal faster with three worms than one. Perhaps a balance can be struck with a global cooldown on emptying the canal? Either way, they wanted to have something really different, making the transportation of units work in different ways for each of the three races. This goes very much hand in hand of what Browder said in the interview with me the day before, that they really wanted to differentiate the three races rather than making a fourth race. If you want more info on the fourth race, you can read the articles I made from BlizzCon, where Rob Pardo (VP of Game Design) did give out a few (very few) details on what they did with those thoughts.

As for the Nydus Worm, it is still unsure if it will make the game. It could potentially be gone next week according to Dustin. The fansites and pro gamers in the room all agreed that it was a very interesting mechanic, and actually made the whole Zerg race more fun to play, or to play against. Especially if the Overlords have lost their ability to transport units permanently, it makes these worms a must for the Zerg player.

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