StarCraft II Hands-On Preview

IncGamers’ Gunnar Petzall has crossed the pond, braved the Atlantic, Un-united the States to get to Blizzard to get his hands on StarCraft II, and this is what he found:

StarCraft is all about multiplayer and, even though it’s been 11 years since it was launched, is still played by tens of thousands of players world wide today. The heaviest population of active players is in Asia, Koreans especially, but the old classic has started to regain popular interest in the West as well, showing up on NPD’s top-ten sales chart as well as entering into the pan-American college league for eSport. The regained interest can largely be attributed to the announcement of the sequel in May 2007 that is expected to ship later this year.

The StarCraft II development team at Blizzard has done their utmost to retain the look and feel of the original title while tweaking it for the modern gamer and their PCs. The focus is once again on multiplayer, but Blizzard has also dedicated a lot of resources into the single player campaign with a new “Story Mode”, which is intended as a stand-alone title within the game.

IncGamers was invited to Blizzard’s HQ in Irvine, California, to take a sneak peek of the multiplayer aspects of StarCraft II.  We were shown three exclusive live matches “shoutcasted” (meaning “commentated” for us in an eSport kind of way) by lead designer Dustin Browder. The spectator mode of StarCraft II is amazing compared to the original, with a plethora of different statistical options to view such as viewing your army, resources, income, production and APM (Actions Per Minute – another eSport term), which are all accessible in a dropdown menu, or through hotkeys for observers of the game.

We were not allowed to take any pictures of the new Battle.net interface or of the statistical pages as Blizzard will be giving them great overhauls in the next few days and the developers would rather wait until it’s all done before showing it off. This seemed a little strange as the interface looks very polished already, and on par with the state most games are in when they ship.  It left us thinking Blizzard may be changing the whole look, which would be interesting.

The matches shown were between two of Blizzard’s eSport team members and got Browder quite excitable, so much so that fighting talk didn’t take long to rear its head.  Shouting at one player saying they’d dealt “terrible terrible damage” to the other in a feat of unit control, you could tell Browder was really getting into it. Listening to the emotional commantry, watching smooth 3D combat, explosions, fire and gore on a cinema-size projector, I found myself really enjoying just the viewing experience, presumably the reason it’s so popular as live TV programmes in places in Korea.  I’ve never been interested in watching other StarCraft matches in the past, but the combination of action and impressive unit control is actually quite intriguing and entertaining.

When the first match was over, we were shown the new score board system with both tabs from the original as well as several new features. Most of the features were presented in nice timeline graphs showing the course of the game from various statistical perspectives. Browder explained that many new players focus on gathering resources, but don’t realise these resources need to be spent as soon as possible to be of use in the actual game. And to place emphasis on this, there are other incentives to gathering and spending resources. A lost game can still be partly successful if the player manages to gather resources better, build faster or the like.

The scoreboard also shows the build order of the players, which new players might find especially interesting: when and what units or building was made by which player. It’s then easy to compare your strategy with the opponent’s, or just comparing your own choices between games, finding ways to improve.

Game Design and Balance

We’ve played StarCraft II pre-alpha, alpha and pre-beta versions of StarCraft II, and the game does indeed feel like a worthy sequel to StarCraft. It’s quite different for anyone used to the original, but manages to keep the same core unique feeling. The game has evolved since the announcement in Korea 2007, and Blizzard has given the game a very unique style and gameplay.

Blizzard elected to stay with three races, and not to introduce a fourth, specifically to make the three races as different as possible. Browder explained it as three small games in one, since each race matchup will play out completely different. This “one giant feature” is what he likes best about the game he later revealed in an interview with us.
Dustin also told us the development team feel the game’s relatively low unit count for each race give the game a better gameplay experience, and it’s a very calculated decision. It doesn’t take long to get a good grasp of all the units, “you’d do it within three weeks,” but it “will still take a lifetime to master all strategies with all races.” More units make it harder to anticipate the opponent, leaving more choices to random chance which the development team dislike. “We want everything in the game be that someone did something to you,” Browder said. “If you lost, you LOST!”

The team dislikes any outside factor influencing the player’s control. Any features such as weather effects, random bonuses for units and similar game mechanics would be the “worst idea ever,” according to Browder, emphasising “it’s a terrible idea.” Since each unit is carefully balanced by speed, damage and durability, a change in movement, for instance, would severely affect how that unit and that entire race is played.

The original StarCraft is really quite hardcore, and while Blizzard don’t want to disappoint their hardcore fans, the team has made several changes to the game to make it more accessible to new players as well. Sigaty said the team were anticipating a lot of people who play WoW will want to try the new game. The hardcore fans have hotly debated these changes that can seem natural to a regular gamer, and they’re strongly opposed to being able to select many buildings at once, unlimited unit selection and the easy command queue system.

To make up for this “softcore” approach, the team has added more subtle features that will still let vetran players show off their skills, and the developer is confident this will make most gamers happy with the game. Since StarCraft II is nearing beta, Sigaty also said the team is still prepared to make huge changes to the game, if player feedback indicates a need for it.
{PAGE TITLE=StarCraft 2 page 2}
Single Player

StarCraft II single player story line is split into three campaigns, the first of which will be included when the game ships. The second and third chapter of the game will be released as expansions, each expansion as big as the complete campaign of the original game. The reason for this split is that the story became too big for each main character to be contained in one game, so Blizzard decided to split them up in order to give each of the main characters a sufficient space to tell their tale. The “Story Mode” of the sequel also demands the use of many maps to allow the player to pick their own way through the campaign, which made it absolutely impossible to release the game with three campaigns without causing massive delays to the development.

About 30 missions will be included when StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is released but the with Story Mode choices, you can expect each player to find their own way to the end, and not necessarily completing all 30 missions . Rob Pardo told us there would be about 30-60 hours worth of gameplay if the player is a “completionist”, and perhaps 20 hours gameplay for someone with “world speed”. Each mission will take about 30-60 minutes to complete.  

Single player is not a tutorial for the purpose of teaching you the game mechanics.  The game will instead ship with pre-recorded tutorials for players to watch according to Sigaty. A new feature called “Challenges” will also be added; small missions training a player for certain tasks like efficient resource gathering, smarter build orders and similar aspects of the game important for multiplayer games.

Battle.net

Both multiplayer and single player aspects of the game will feature Achievements according to senior vice president of game design, Pardo, but in order to receive them in single player, the game must be connected to Battle.net. The connection will have other advantages too, like easy access to your friends regardless of what sort of game you’re playing. The entire user interface of the game will be made to make login to Battle.net more natural than the original, but an internet connection will not be a requirement to play the game.

For the first time Pardo has also revealed that the development team “don’t have any plans to support LAN” (Local Area Networking), and clarified saying “we will not support it.” Blizzard wants the fans to enjoy multiplayer – on Battle.net. This is an interesting statement, since the easy LAN functionality of the original game is one of the reasons it became so big in the first place. Current communities like iCCup, using StarCraft mods to host games are considered “pirate servers” by Blizzard, and Pardo wants to see those services shut down.

But Blizzard is making sure 90% of fans will be able to play the game online, making internet connection requirements “as low as we can make it,” said to Pardo and claiming players would “certainly not going to require broadband”.

You see, Battle.net 2.0 is just nickname given to Blizzard’s updated Battle.net by the fans, but is still a good description of the project. Blizzard has a dedicated development team working on Battle.net, aiming to revolutionise online gaming with technical solutions as well as community features.

Most features have not been revealed, but the new network will be more user-friendly and community-focused than the original. Personal avatars, friends lists with added functionality, clan-making, replay database and other ideas are on the table, but exactly what features will be available at release and what will be added later through expansions has yet to be announced.

Gaming networks like Steam and Rupture, as well as general social networking websites like MySpace, Facebook, and “plenty of others” have helped shape Battle.net according to lead producer Chris Sigaty. Sigaty clarified that Blizzard is “very aware of technology” around them, implying it’s on top of the latest social networking as well as gaming-related networks. Much of the content from the Battle.net web page will also be available directly from the game client.

Battle.net will be free to use for anyone buying StarCraft II or other titles using Battle.net, but further plans for how to implement service charges to keep the service running has not been made. Blizzard recently signed a big ad deal with Microsoft, but Browder said that the current mock-up of Battle.net doesn’t even have a place for ads in it. Pardo mentioned that we might see micro-transactions for added value services similar to WoW might be implemented. In WoW a player can pay for a server transfer, gender change of character and similar things. He didn’t give any examples of what a Battle.net value added service could include.

Closing Words

The overall experience I got from seeing the “shoutcasts”, talking to the developers and actually playing the game was that StarCraft II has been ready for beta for a long time now. It’s polished, feels great, and only needs a little bit more tweaking in terms of balance. Blizzard is known for great quality, but the game is not even in the closed beta stage yet and still better than most other developers’ finished products. We’ll likely see more of both Battle.net and single player before the beta finally starts; some time this summer, so make sure to come back here for all the latest.

If you are interested in StarCraft II, also check out our developer interview, videos, screenshots/art and head over to IncGamers’ StarCraft channel for more detailed information and further reports from Blizzard.