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There has been many StarCraft II "blue" posts in the past week. This had led to a bit of a saturation of information, not all of which was useful.
Blizzard Entertainment introduces the public to StarCraft II to the buzz of hype and microanalysis. Days, or weeks, after something is announced, the product changes in some (small) way. This is why, for example, you saw one build in the Korean Zerg Announcement (March), another in the Irvine Press Event (three days later) and the China StarCraft II Announcement (two days later). Different public test builds were used at each event, in the span of a week. Blizzard did this to gauge the public reaction to different ideas, but the reality is that the community covered each event exaustively. The month afterwards was spent clarifying information, which is time consuming for both fansites and the Community Management team.
The development team changes the build weekly. There's only so much you can say about a something changing over and over. There has been a thousand "Bring back the Reaver!" posts. There have been a thousand discussion topics and polls about nothing. There has been a thousand assurances that everything will be okay. This shows that the community is beginning to burn out on this kind of release pattern and the rapidity of changes that occur. However, were there not these updates, the majority of the community would complain that they were not being given enough attention or information from the developers - and life would get extremely boring for us fansites.
On that note, we bring you the most interesting of the latest slew of Karune and Cydra's replies to the fans. In response to a user asking how Mutalisks will be countered without Irradiate:
Thors and Marines (with stimpack and the additional hp upgrade) are quite effective against mass Mutalisks. Additionally as mentioned already in this thread, BCs are also very effective, especially with its new missile barrage ability (but of course this is at a later tech).
There is one other counter, which is not mentioned in this thread, which is the Ghost! The Ghost is awesome at taking out Mutalisks as well, since they get a bonus to light armor, and have a very long range. Add that to snipe, cloak, or a bunker and it is quite a formidable counter as well.
It's somewhat ironic that Marines, Dropships (M&M > M) and Ghosts are the counter to Mutalisks (and Mutalisk harrassment) in StarCraft II. Ghosts occupy a unique position in the game and this is an evolution of their neigh-uselessness in current professional StarCraft and in the game in general. It will be interesting also to see how M&M now fairs in this situation when the "Medics" cannot heal each other.
Cydra (Assistant Community Manager) posted a poll regarding the mothership:
If Zerg has the Queen and Terran has the Thor, Protoss has the Mothership!
Currently, Mothership has three abilities - Cloaking Field, Time Bomb and Vortex.
Cloaking Field passively cloaks the player's nearby ground units and structures.
Time Bomb creates a distortion field around the Mothership that lasts 30 seconds. Air units within this field cannot move and take no damage from ranged attacks. Time Bomb costs 100 energy and cooldown takes 90 seconds.
Vortex creates a gravity vortex for 30 seconds that incapacitates units that are sucked into it. units under the effect of the vortex cannot be hit with weapons. Vortex does not give any damage to units sucked into it. Vortex costs 150 energy and cooldown takes 3 seconds.
Development goes full circle and we are back to the WWI 2007 build of the Mothership (with a cloaking field instead of a planet buster). Very much a caster/support unit in this form, it will be interesting to see what the unit eventually evolves into.
Also in this blue update, there is a quote that is very interesting, and very positive:
StarCraft has always been a game that is easy to learn and hard to master, as how good games should be. StarCraft II will be following that motto as well.
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