SCII Questions - Aug Edition

[LordofAscension]

These questions still go to Blizz every month though it seems as though the batches has stopped. You have about a day and a half!

Cheers,

~LoA

[ArcherofAiur]

What is Dustin Browders personal take on the lack of decision making with some of the macro mechanics

For instance no decision making for where to cast MULEs, no decision making for where (and when) to cast Proton Charge.

[n00bonicPlague]

My first question:

WTF?

Some others:

1. There has been much discussion about Proton Charge. You can see an example of this from a macro thread in the SC:L forums that is just over one thousand posts long ( http://sclegacy.com/forums/showthread.php?t=777 ). Though we can't seem to agree on what should be done with the Obelisk and its Proton Charge ability, there is one thing we all agree on: something about Protoss macro needs to change. The question is: what are the developers doing about it? Are y'all waiting until beta? Are y'all planning to get the community more involved in the macro thought process? Are y'all spending long nights at work sleeping in office chairs and living off cold pizza and energy drinks? Urr y'all git'n' tyer'd ov mah south'rn' grammuh?

2. We know that Battle.net 2.0 has been found guilty for delaying the beta testing of Starcraft 2. But we need to know — how did the culprit pull it off and what is its sentence? Why isn't BNET2 done, and what is the BNET2 development team doing about it?

3. What could you tell us about the user-friendliness of the Galaxy Editor? I know it is more powerful than the WC3 Editor -- capable of doing everything it could and then some -- but often times the more powerful a program becomes the harder it is to understand and utilize for the average user. For instance, you mentioned during the SC2 Gameplay Panel at BlizzCon the existence of a "tool" that modders could use without having to know a bunch of raw code. Could you describe the capabilities of this tool and its ease of use?

4. We've heard that there are many features in the current build of SC2 that were not in the SC2 build at BlizzCon. Could you tell us what the differences were/are?

5. When will the videos for the Tournaments be uploaded to the BlizzCon website?
( http://www.blizzard.com/blizzcon/video/archive.xml )

6. Will we be getting a 53rd Q&A Batch and/or a 4th Battlereport anytime soon?

7. How was your BlizzCon experience?

[Kraziliak]

What changes are being done to zerg tier 2?

Will the roach be used mainly for harass?

Does it seem like zerg is too similar to broodwar? Zerg tier 3 is pure old units. In addition to that, the hydralisk and mutalisk are old units. There has been 10 years of muta harass/mass hydras already. Has there been any thoughts about scrapping units?

[ArcherofAiur]

2. We know that Battle.net 2.0 has been found guilty for delaying the beta testing of Starcraft 2. But we need to know — how did the culprit pull it off and what is its sentence? Why isn't BNET2 done, and what is the BNET2 development team doing about it?

I actually think Dustin said in a recent interview that there are other things that would have delayed it. It wasnt just Bnet.

[Hamshank]

What will make the hero units unique?

[Dsceptor]

Will the Galaxy editor have access to the "RPG" mode. The mode where Raynor can interact with other characters? If so, how flexible is the importing and exporting of models into a scenery and how much of it is editable?

Is the system map editable? Can we add our own planets and create our own systems?

Is there a limit on the size of maps made?

What are the current (blizzcon) system requirements to run SC2?

[Gifted]

1. Originally beta was to be released in summer, now it seems to be "2009". A lot of people still can hope that it's summer as it still resides in 2009. Can we have an official "not in summer" to alleviate the poor communication and rumoring going around?

2. What is the current status of battle.net's development? Is the infrastructure developed well enough for the estimated 20,000 beta testers yet or is it the feature set development that's currently holding it back from "beta ready"?

3. In the original Starcraft, there are many dynamic decisions where a single weapons upgrade would change battles significantly with certain unit match ups. (Example: zealots with +1 killing zerglings in 2 hits instead of 3) Are there any noticeable upgrade examples of this in Starcraft 2 that exist with the new units?

4. In World of Warcraft pvp they found an issue over time that it was "very unsatisfying" to the player when they lost control of their character as it limited their ability to do their job or role. There is a noticeable increase in stuns and immobilization in Starcraft 2 which was barely present in Starcraft 1. From your experience in testing, do you feel abilities which limit unit control provide more dynamic game play so far or are you noticing more concern?

5. What is the current status of the Mothership? What niche does it fill at this time, and if the unit were removed, would there be a reason to fill that niche with a different unit or would protoss still be fine?

6. In Battle.net 2.0, you've informed us that you need to play a number of preliminary games to be assigned to a league and division. What factors play into the games decision to place you? Is it just win/loss or does it dynamically look at all relevant statistics such as resource gathering, apm, unit production, unit kill/death ratios, etc?

7. In Battle.net 2.0, you are "rated against 100 of your peers in your division". How does the actual game searching engine work? Does it seek out people within the league in nearby divisions or does it seek people within the entire league as a whole?

8. Were all the images in the Battle.net BlizzCon panels actual footage or were any of them mock-ups and not developed yet?

9. Will there be text commands in games to speak to people in other games or will it all be from the point and click interface that's been featured?

10. Can we have elaboration on the planned technology in Battle.net that will reduce latency more so than previous iterations?

11. I can assume that the editor allows you to dynamically raise or lower the terrain. Is there functionality in the editor that relates unit height to terrain height in terms of line of sight? (This would be different than actual "Cliffs")

[SoFool]

No beef with Tricia who will be Kerrigan's voice in SCII, but I think it will be nice to know why Glynnis didn't make it. Thx.

[Blazur]

There's been a lot of general concern about the lack of strategic depth and tactical options available to Zerg players. What is the team's stance on how the Zerg are panning out? With the extra time alloted as a result of the pushback, are there considerations being made for the Zerg race or is the plan to keep them as they are up right up to beta?