StarCraft II Beta, topic + release date= July 27th

[JC_Helios]

So anyone else here have it yet?

I just got done with my first game against a player and surprisingly I won.

1 vs 1 Steps of war

lasted 8 minutes. I built 10 probes, then a pylon and 2 gateways at the choke, as well as a forge which served no purpose in the end.

Around the time the first gateway finished a overlord wandered into my base, and sat there. I warped in 3 zealots and then had to make two more pylons because I was out of supply. and the last building I made was a cybernetic core, so i could get rid of that damn overlord spying on me

At around 4 minutes, just as my new pylons were finishing "Iloverice" sent in 8 zerglings marching them right past my zealots and going for my probes... for a about 10-30 seconds I micro'd my probes away from the zerglings but eventually just put them back to work, forcing the zerglings to move back towards my minerals where 3-4 zealots were already pursuing them. In no time there were three zerglings left, and then none.

As I started to march my 5 or so zealots for my counter attack the Stalkers I was warping finished and started killing the overlord which put 'Iloverice' under supply by the time my zealots reached him*.
From there my 5 zealots just laid waste to the base.. killed his queen, fought off the drones he set to attack my zealots, and destroyed any zerglings he spawned to try and stop me**, when my two stalkers got there he quit and I won.... I didn't even get the satisfaction of destroying a single building, but I guess I would have made Sun Tzu proud in that regard.

The only casualty for me was one zealot.

*He was building a hatchery at his natural expansion but I ignored that

**what's weird is he did finish a roach lair just as I got there I wander if he would have made it if he built roaches instead

[Xesum]

Is it just a rehash of Starcraft? Or does it contain enough original stuff to make it a good game?

[JC_Helios]

Is it just a rehash of Starcraft? Or does it contain enough original stuff to make it a good game?

There's plenty of new features, units, and cuts*. Overall it's similar, but different enough to keep it fresh.

From what I wrote is does sound pretty similar, but that's only because the match only lasted 8 minutes, and the three starter units are the same (zealot, zergling, marine)


*as in old units that are no longer in the main game, but they will be in the map editor.

EDIT: 2nd match!
This one was much more "epic", and made heavy use of a change to the zerg.. Overlords are no longer detectors, so cloaked units are now a much more threatening thing for the zerg.

In this match "Knacker" (or something like that) had 10 zerglings by 4 minutes, he didn't attack me so I decided to go for him with 3 zealots. he killed them, but my 4th zealot came in and finished off the lings... he died shortly after to About 6 lings.

There were plenty of times where he had a much bigger army than me and could have won if he made a try, but he didn't... by the time I made 4 more warpgates* and the buildings necessary for High Templar and Dark Templar it was too late.

Towards the end of the 20 minute game I decided to check the secondary expansions near his base to make sure he wasn't mining from 3 mineral fields. On my way I saw a overlord by a Xelnaga watchtower, I quickly killed it and decided to take it as a win and run back to my base before he responded**

Humiliated** he took all of his forces (25 zerglings, 19 hydralisks, and 10 roaches) and attacked my base. My 4 Dark Templars ripped them all to shreds as they gave minimal damage and casualties(only my 3 zealots) to the rest of my army.

I then ran towards his base, he spawned a few hydras when I first got there, and shortly after we exchanged a "gg", he stayed a little while longer and had the rest of his larva spawn like 18 zerglings. They killed my stalkers but my High and Dark Templars remained. As I sent 6 more Dark templars in he left.

In the end my victory force of 4 Dark templars had 15, 18, 18, and 21 kills between the 4 of them... what surprised me was it was fairly obvious that I was using DTs yet he never tried to morph any of his overlords into overseers, I guess it all happened so fast and by the time he figured it out it was too late.

*upgrade for gateways allows you to quickly build units on your pylon power, but it has a cool down period after every unit.

**Looking at the replay, he first thought of just walking down there and killing my forces, but decided not to do that. Instead he split up his forces and tried to box me in not realizing my forces had already ran back to base.

EDIT 2: Match 3

I'll keep this one shorter. This time I went 2 vs 2. My computer doesn't handle the game very well so I lagged a little, and froze up a few times. My ally was better than me, but fortunately he was just happy with me being the cannon/base defense one. I also tried my best to complement his army. He went mostly: zealots, high Templar and Colossus, while I went: 6+ Stalker,2 immortal,2-3 observers, 1 warp prism. When we were in the enemy base laying siege I used my warp prism to warp in 6 Dark templars too, and 6 more stalkers. Also sent in some void rays as back up towards the end.

My ally lost all of his troops in the assault of the main bases probably because the protoss player started attacking with DTs, lucky for me a observer I just haphazardly sent in before the assault was right by my attack force when the DTs went for me. I took them out and cleaned out the rest of the the main base. From there it was easy to mop up the Terran player's "escape base"

[Xesum]

Sounds fun, I shall have to buy it when it's released.

[Jaedar]

Evil man, why must you taunt me so?

[Jetsetlemming]

I've been trying to get into the beta (even though it's multiplayer only and I rarely actually go on bnet with blizzard games) but I've never gotten an invite. Too unlucky, I guess.

[JC_Helios]

Lost my 4th match. Terran player, started attacking me with marauders and tanks first.. then went marauders and thor, and finally went marauder+thor+viking when I got air. My forces usually consisted of 8+ stalkers, a few Dark Temps, 2 void rays, 2-3 carriers, and a mothership at one point.

He kept constant pressure on my expansion so I couldn't expand or scout much, and even if I did kill his attack force my counter-attack would just be met with more units. At the end he had 3 more mineral fields on me and I had no chance at all.

[JC_Helios]

I played three more matches a couple nights ago at 3am and lost all of them... serves me right, no noobs or average players are on that late.

1st: beat by cheapness. the guy built a pylon and cannons just outside my base and slowly inched more cannons into my base. Zealots were instantly shredded by the cannons, and I tried to tech up to stalkers but by then the cannons were already almost to my Nexus

2nd: Marines, marauders, and thors again... I think it was even the same guy.

3rd:Mass marines and marauders with 3 or 4 medivacs backing them up.

In more positive news

The editor has been released! Finally I can enjoy Starcraft without having to be all... competitive about it! I downloaded one map that someone on the beta forums posted and I notice 39 are currently available here (edit: Oh, just realized most are only in "planning" )

And for those of you without beta invites (ie: All of you?) The availability of them seems to have sky-rocketed now. Certain places like Gamestop are giving them away with pre-orders and such... you can probably even cancel the pre-order after you get the key...

EDIT 2: The map I mentioned above was pretty simple: go a straight line while killing 500+ zerg to face a boss at the end. You play as a marine with 5000 shield & health, and your weapon fires rapid fire siege tank rounds that do 5000 damage. The boss was a giant Ultralisk with 100,000 shield & health.

[JC_Helios]

So I just got an "invite a friend" email from SC2betaUS. So Jaedar? Jetsetlemming? Anyone want it?

Maybe a "shared account" for all the Off Topic Production regulars?... though that's probably not allowed, or at least frowned upon.

[Trestkon]

I'd call dibs, but I'm afraid I'd just waste it. Renovating a house leaves sad little time for Starcraft

*unleashes Zerglings on his ugly bathroom*

I'll definitely pick up the game when it's out so we can have some epic OTP games, though \o/

[Jetsetlemming]

I'll try it, Helios.

I'm definitely sure you can't just share a key, because it's tied to your b.net account. Whether you can share a bnet account is another story, one that I wouldn't try testing either.

[Jaedar]

I already got one from my preorder place. Got it just yesterday, and haven't played yet(download is 90%). Too bad you can't play across the atlantic or we could have an Offtopic tournament of awesome.
You could always create a new bnet account called Offtopic_sharingiscaring and give the betakey to that and then spread the pw to the people interested.

Then again, I'm sure you can circumvent that with mods/hamachi or similar things.

[JC_Helios]

I already got one from my preorder place. Got it just yesterday, and haven't played yet(download is 90%). Too bad you can't play across the atlantic or we could have an Offtopic tournament of awesome.
You could always create a new bnet account called Offtopic_sharingiscaring and give the betakey to that and then spread the pw to the people interested.

Then again, I'm sure you can circumvent that with mods/hamachi or similar things.

I was thinking of doing that at first, but with the added paranoia of giving the key to someone who hates Blizzard games, have him create the account, and then distribute the keys to whoever wants it here (Though,obviously not noobies that might stumble on this topic and join the forum just to try and get a hold of the account.) That way if Blizzard does crack down on this kind of stuff hopefully only the the person who doesn't care about Blizzard games would get banned... does Blizzard even IP ban people?

Most likely I'll just give it to Jetsetlemming... I'll decide sometime tomorrow

[Jaedar]

I've played two games now. I lost both. One horribly, one was pretty even.

I would have won the even one; if only I had been capable of defending my probes. I had the stronger army, but he had more bases so he wiped me first . I also wish the game featured a more competent AI to train against, the current one is completely pathetic. Still, the game is fun even when you lose.

I also need to get better at picking a tech and sticking to it, I've played to much DoW2, where it was completely viable to spend a lot of the game just hoarding resources and spending them once you learn what you need to counter. Probably gonna go for a Zealot/Stalker blob next game.

[JC_Helios]

Sent the key to Jetset, hope it works.

I've mostly been playing custom games recently. That link I posted earlier is now up to 203 custom maps, most of the onesI played were decent if a bit wonky(usually more so when the map has third person camera and WASD controls), and it seems like mappers are still trying to find theright balance between difficulty and fun. (some are too easy some are too hard)

My current favorite is probably E-VAC... I'll get around to playing more normal matches later.