The Penny Arcade Expo for 2008 has concluded. While there isn't a great deal of information, some sites do have interesting articles.
StarCraft 2 Source has an interesting interview Frank Pearce and Bob Colayco:
One of the features we are definitely working on improving and in integrating much better is the replay-functionality which is naturally important for the e-sports-community. We are working at better support for tournaments and leagues on battle.net so that there is a lot more facility in that regard. We are talking about things like cameraman-functionality which we already have in World of Warcraft as well.
Frank Pearce does another interview with GamesIndustry.biz, discussing battle.net 2.0 among other things:
We'd definitely like to be able to bring the entire Blizzard community together online. Battle.net would certainly be a good tool to make that happen. The WoW community is massive, the StarCraft community is large as well.
We'll have to see - we probably won't be able to implement all the plans that we have in mind when StarCraft II launches, but with Battle.net being an online destination, we can add features as we go.
Perhaps the most jarring change to the original game's build hierarchy is that of the Hydralisk. The infamous multi-purpose workhorses are now buried in the advanced build menu, unable to be spawned until after an upgrade of the Hive. Now the Roach fulfills its ground duties, the Hydra being more useful in anti-air scenarios--though it can of course still be morphed into the powerful Lurker.
ShackNews also interviewed Karune about StarCraft II and MBS:
In the build that you'll see at BlizzCon it's more of a compromise. Clicking on each of the barracks--let's say you have three barracks. It won't be like you press "M" once and you'll have three marines pop out. You're actually going to have to press "M" three times, which is a little more controlled over what comes out. Because let's say you have a tech lab on one, and on another you have a reactor, so they build different units and such. You can actually have a little more control over that now.
A few new gameplay videos have emerged from PAX 2008. The first few videos by Gametrailers show us some Terran gameplay and the Colossus's new attack:
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Another video by CrunchGear is a basic Zerg vs. Protoss gameplay video:
However, SC:L points your attention to the frame rate loss seen in this video. Assuming that the machines at PAX 2008 met at least mid-range gaming requirements, how does this bode for the lower-end players? Is StarCraft II really as scalable as it's being made out to be?
