StarCraft 2 Articles
WWI 2008 StarCraft RTS Fansite Event Part 1
1st Jul 2008 07:49 PM GMT | Leord | 0 comments
Coverage WWI 2008 >> WWI 2008 StarCraft RTS Fansite Event Part 1 >> Part 2
WWI 2008 StarCraft RTS Fansite Event Part 1
During the stay at WWI, you have probably either seen some of the streamed content that was available, videos from panels or transcripts from interviews, but one thing you probably won't find on many other places is the exclusive StarCraft 2 discussion we had with Kevin Yu (Karune). Of course, we have had discussions with him before as well, but this week was a lot more informative, as we were more sure on how to ask, and more direct at what we wanted to know.
It is a given fact that Karune is not Dustin Browder, so everything Karune knows could possibly be a day or two old, but as he have more contact with
Browder than most (including Rob Pardo), he is still a very reliable source!
In this first part we will discuss:
- The Queen Changes
- Vespene Gas Changes
- Single Player - Graphics & Story
- The Mothership's Uniqueness
- Ponderings on the Nullifier
- Broadcasted StarCraft
- Corruptors
- StarCraft 2 Complexity
- Spectres - Units from the Novels
- Infestors' Infestations
- "Call to Arms" in StarCraft 2
- The 6 Starting Probes
- Community Responses to Changes
In the second part of the discussion goes on towards release date, beta, unit changes and artwork, so read on if you are interested in StarCraft II!
The Questions
Why Did you Change the Queen?
Karune answered that the biggest reason for the current changes to the Hive Queen was that the developers thought the game had too little macro involved compared to micro, and if the Queen died, it caused significant problems for the Zerg player. A dead Queen would mean that it would take a lot of resources as well as time before that player would be able to efficiently build stationary defences against his/her opponents again. This made it a bit unbalanced, and not as "fun" to play. The egglaying has been removed, and instead the Queen is "buffed" with range attacks, and over-all higher durability.
Another new skill of the Queen is the making of Larva into Mutant Larva (also known as the Morphalisk), so it's still a very interesting unit, as it gives more flexibility to your army. If you have a lot of minerals/gas, they can be used to near instantly transform huge armies of Zerg breeds. Read more about the Mutant Larva here.
Vespene Gas Changes
While Freelancer goes into detail with this here, the main things Karune said was that this last change to "only" add 400 Gas for paying 100 Minerals (plus 45 second of aborted gas extraction) came quite recently, and just two weeks ago, it was more of a buff to productivity on a timer (like described here). Over all the gas costs have been adjusted to be higher, and two Vespene geysers have been added, to keep a steady flow of gas in, as long as it isn't depleted.
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