There have been quite a few Blizzard posters who have answered some questions about the upcoming StarCraft II. Here's a round-up of some of the more significant ones.
BlizzCast Coming in January
An official Blizzard Podcast is coming in January! Poster Sixen posted these details of the upcoming broadcast:
BlizzCast is a planned Official Podcast created by Blizzard starting with the New Year! The first episode will consist of the following:
# An interview with Sam Didier (Art Director SCII) about Concept Art for the StarCraft and Warcraft Franchises
# An interview with Jeff Kaplan (Lead Designer WoW) with highlights of Sunwell Plateau and Patch 2.4
# Sweepstakes/Giveaway and LOTS of SWAG
More information coming soon. Be prepared.
# An interview with Sam Didier (Art Director SCII) about Concept Art for the StarCraft and Warcraft Franchises
# An interview with Jeff Kaplan (Lead Designer WoW) with highlights of Sunwell Plateau and Patch 2.4
# Sweepstakes/Giveaway and LOTS of SWAG
More information coming soon. Be prepared.
And Karune confirmed that it was indeed happening, with a nice holiday message!
Yup, keep checking back in January. Hope everyone has a wonderful & safe holiday season!
GAME ON! :) but don't forget to spend some time with family/friends.
GAME ON! :) but don't forget to spend some time with family/friends.
What other abilities does the Nomad have, what Science Vessel abilities does it still have?
Cavez revealed some good details about the Nomad:
Yeah, we're still working on the specifics on this guy. For those of you who made it to BlizzCon you saw some of the ideas that are in the works but things have changed a bit since then.
The Science Vessel abilities are great but we are trying to provide new strategies as well. We'll have to see what happens with the specifics on the Nomad as we continue to test. The Nomad is starting to feel pretty different from the Sci-Vessel since his abilities are based around constructing things and those things can be destroyed.
EMP is in the current build of the game. Irradiate is not, nor is the old style D-Matrix.
The Science Vessel abilities are great but we are trying to provide new strategies as well. We'll have to see what happens with the specifics on the Nomad as we continue to test. The Nomad is starting to feel pretty different from the Sci-Vessel since his abilities are based around constructing things and those things can be destroyed.
EMP is in the current build of the game. Irradiate is not, nor is the old style D-Matrix.
Details about the Thor:
Cavez posted some details about the Thor and why it is that the Cobra is gone:
The Cobra is out, the Thor is in, but it's not a "replacement" in the ways you guys are thinking of it since the Cobra and the Thor do such very different things.
We are just testing this idea for the Thor. In general I prefer to shield you guys from whacky ideas like this because I know that some of our ideas will be bad, and then you guys will get very grumpy with us for pitching you bad ideas. =(
But here's what I can tell you about the Thor in the current build:
- He is big, but the art is smaller than what we showed in the last demo, so he takes up less space and he can path a little better.
- He turns fairly quickly. Turn speed is not a balance factor.
- He has a lot of health (400 right now).
- He's not super expensive (250/200 right now).
- He has a good bonus vs. armored units on the ground and he tends to waste a lot of damage on small units.
- His AA missiles are effective but not crushing. You can over-whelm him with enough air. His pathing size does limit his mobility when trying to chase fast moving air units.
- His shoulder guns are not currently in opperation. If we keep the current design the art will change.
- He does great against Stalkers, and several secret Terran and Zerg units. He also does well against most (but not all) air units.
- He is balanced so that if you kill him and then leave him disabled while he burns down you will do pretty well. If you fight both the Thor and the Disabled Thor then things tend to go pretty well for the Thor (for cost).
- The current Thor is countered by range, mobility or certain powerful anti-armor units.
Right now he's kind of fun. I don't know if he's fun enough for StarCraft 2 or not. That will take a few more weeks at least.
We are just testing this idea for the Thor. In general I prefer to shield you guys from whacky ideas like this because I know that some of our ideas will be bad, and then you guys will get very grumpy with us for pitching you bad ideas. =(
But here's what I can tell you about the Thor in the current build:
- He is big, but the art is smaller than what we showed in the last demo, so he takes up less space and he can path a little better.
- He turns fairly quickly. Turn speed is not a balance factor.
- He has a lot of health (400 right now).
- He's not super expensive (250/200 right now).
- He has a good bonus vs. armored units on the ground and he tends to waste a lot of damage on small units.
- His AA missiles are effective but not crushing. You can over-whelm him with enough air. His pathing size does limit his mobility when trying to chase fast moving air units.
- His shoulder guns are not currently in opperation. If we keep the current design the art will change.
- He does great against Stalkers, and several secret Terran and Zerg units. He also does well against most (but not all) air units.
- He is balanced so that if you kill him and then leave him disabled while he burns down you will do pretty well. If you fight both the Thor and the Disabled Thor then things tend to go pretty well for the Thor (for cost).
- The current Thor is countered by range, mobility or certain powerful anti-armor units.
Right now he's kind of fun. I don't know if he's fun enough for StarCraft 2 or not. That will take a few more weeks at least.
There was good content this week in the Official Forums, this next week will most likely be extremely slow with the holiday season, so this might have to tide us over for the next few weeks.
Links
StarCraft II Forums - Source #1
StarCraft II Forums - Source #2
StarCraft II Forums - Source #3
