;)

;)

Exhibit 182

Miss Fortune [07:12]: report thresh no support Thresh [07:25]: click the lantern noob Miss Fortune [07:42]: dont report thresh

(Thanks to cyanogene for the quote!)

Exhibit 173

Graves [56:53]: were down like thirty kills. only one chance, yi go bd while we defend Master Yi [57:10]: Understood, my friend. Time to Yi. If I do not return, tell Rengar… I love him. Rengar [57:24]: fuk u Master Yi [57:29]: As ever, love is cruel. I am off!

(Thanks to votoms for the quote!)

Exhibit 167

Soraka [40:24]: why on earth did you buy an eleisas miracle? Lee Sin [40:36]: we’re gonna need a miracle if we’re gonna win this

(Thanks to THE BEATLES SUCK for the quote!)

Apartment building by Andreas Fuhrimann Gabrielle Hächler

The Verdict

I'm on spring break, so rejoice!  Content will happen this week. My concern for Starcraft 2 was that the game would change so radically that it wouldn't be recognizable as playing starcraft.  I was afraid there would be wonky hero units that would dominate my play experience as in Warcraft 3 or that the units that were lost and those that have arrived would detract from the game in some way.

I'm glad to say that that hasn't been the experience.  The units that have been removed, while near and dear to my heart nostalgically, aren't really anything that I tactically miss.  How often can I claim to have build Reavers and Arbiters in numbers enough to make a difference?  Pretty much never in any competitive game.  They're a cool tactical tool, but I never really got any use out of them.  The new armies in SC2 still require you to make building choices, but once you've made those choices everything synergizes together really well, nothing feels terribly patchwork, and that reduces the amount of force micro you have to do.

Micro in general has been reduced.  The command of resource gatherers has been simplified significantly and you have an idle worker button to keep those slaves busy.  Building behavior and other aspects of base building follow the rules you expect from a modern title: combat units move out of the way so your probe can lay a structure and so on.

The AIs now surrender as well, making the end game far less about deploying a fleet of carriers to sweep the map in a grid pattern.  It's satisfying to get the option to choose to let them surrender or force them to watch you hunt down every last one of them.

What's most important however is that the game remains the same in all the right ways.  Turtle behind ion cannons and zealots (while less efficient without the Shield Battery, I do miss that structure) is still a valid strategy while you focus on economy micro to rush carriers, and then the AI is largely at a loss for how to cope.