Tommorow (June 7th) is the last day of Beta until a week before the release which is June 27th... so no StarCraft 2 for 2 months. I wonder what I will do... haha
So now the beta is closed. I had a great time both playing and watching the pro scene battle it out, for being just a beta its incredible how many tournaments and prize money and most of all how many spectators were watching some matches I remember a game with +19K viewers watching live with me. I went from copper play to lower Plat. Its been fun to see the mod scene do so much in so little time.
I thouroughly enjoyed the beta. I did notice that the difficulty curve tended to get crazy difficult over time. It seemed like everyone was trying to game the system and intentionally get ranked low initially. Once everyone had had time to be readjusted to their actual skill level, the upper echelons of the game became punishingly difficult. I actually tried my hardest in the ranking matches, and got placed in gold and platinum. A week later I was getting absolutely demolished in every match, and fervently wishing that I could be dropped down to a lower tier. Hopefully with the retail release this readjustment period will be a bit faster.
The various changes that occured during the beta were quite welcome. I was seeing a steady upward trend in terms of quality and enjoyment. By the time the beta ended, I felt the game had improved markedly from its first rough stages.
Been a great run, totally blown away by the main game and this is a sure purchase. Custom games so far need some work but here's to hopin' people figure it out and there's some wortwhile custom games in the future! Lord knows the mod I'm working on has a ways to go
Abit iffy in the direction they're going, but I had a fun time durring the beta, and not thinking much about bnet. I'm prety much the "I don't mind" group. Which I now kinda feel hypicritial as I oppose UbiSoft's new drm policy.
Pretty much spot on. The new B.net is a stunted, pathetic thing whose only saving grace is shiny graphics. Pretty much everything about it is wrong, and the custom maps lobby is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. Blizzard took a tried and true formula in WC3's b.net interface and fucked it up for dubious reasons.
Before reading that article a while back I thought it was just uncharacteristic bad design and beta-ness, but Activision having a hand in it is no surprise.
Probably cost them my money, not that they care. They just better not fuck up Diablo III or some bitches are gonna get lynched.
Its funny how they hired the guy who designed the xbox ui and you can tell, yes its horrible, unecesary slow/annoying. Its also pretty confusing until you learn whats what. It looks good though...
Im not 100 about who did the ui (just what i read on the net) or who decided to make it slow and have achievements that pop up so you lose control until its finished its little cute animation...
Anyways im happy to hear they are getting a special edition so LAN tournaments can take place . I was not looking forward for the first game on TV where it would suddenly stop and then a huge pop up saying they cant connect to Blizzard servers.
I hope blizzard steps up and fixes
The game is truly great and really closely balanced from what i can tell from the Pro's opinions. Im looking forward for the next beta phase.
Anyways im happy to hear they are getting a special edition so LAN tournaments can take place .
That's actually not as great as it sounds. It's hand in hand with their apparent policy of stripping everything from the game in order to sell it back to you later for FULL price. If this was a modular concept where you buy the base client for $30, and then pay extra to add functionality like cross-region play or LAN capability then I think that would be an acceptable and visionary pricing scheme.
As it is they're just trying to see how many people they can inconvenience into buying more full copies of the game. I really hoped Activision would have the foresight to leave Blizzard to its own moneymaking devices, but that was naive of me. They'll run them into the ground.
Yeh I dont think this version will be availible for the public to buy but will be given to large tournament organizers. Well I only hope its well managed.
Yeah the game itself is fine, I quite enjoyed the beta. Battlenet 2.0 on the other hand is a friggin joke, and a very worrisome direction... I wish they could just ditch it all and put the War3 battle.net back in. =\
I wish there was Steam integration, since I played it through Steam anyway.
But even more so I'd want to be able to play with people from across the world. Regional locks suck ass.
I understand why Blizzard did it, people would get massive lag (I still got massive lag from people on the same continent, they seem to have forgotten that) and then complain on the forums about a lsot match due to disconnect but Blizzard could always make it a personal preference. Somewhere in the options have a checkbox for unlocking the regional lock, and when you enable it have a fuckton of warnings in really large letter saying that if yo lose it's your problem.
Yeah the region lock dosen't make sense, the world is getting smaller, and the broadband faster. Heck i've been playing 20 player l4d2 with people on the otherside of the world (Korea, Japan, Turkey???) and the pings have been fine or reasonable.
It's fully possible to redirect which battlenet realm to use via a config file at any time, but I agree that it would be nicer to have a better sollution to all that.
SC2 just updated itself to patch16, which I already had, and now it says bnet doesn't recognize my version...wth? I swear this game just keeps finding new ways to break on me.
Replies
What do you think about the beta?
The various changes that occured during the beta were quite welcome. I was seeing a steady upward trend in terms of quality and enjoyment. By the time the beta ended, I felt the game had improved markedly from its first rough stages.
http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=25170443053&pageNo=1&sid=5000#14
Better get your last couple games in!
and
http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=25170443332&sid=5000
Thanks!!
Beta Phase 2 will open a week or two before the Release in Beta. That still means at least a month and a half with no StarCraft 2. FML
And thus it ended.
http://www.the-ghetto.org/content/battle-net-2-0-the-antithesis-of-consumer-confidence?df
Pretty much spot on. The new B.net is a stunted, pathetic thing whose only saving grace is shiny graphics. Pretty much everything about it is wrong, and the custom maps lobby is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. Blizzard took a tried and true formula in WC3's b.net interface and fucked it up for dubious reasons.
Before reading that article a while back I thought it was just uncharacteristic bad design and beta-ness, but Activision having a hand in it is no surprise.
Probably cost them my money, not that they care. They just better not fuck up Diablo III or some bitches are gonna get lynched.
Im not 100 about who did the ui (just what i read on the net) or who decided to make it slow and have achievements that pop up so you lose control until its finished its little cute animation...
Anyways im happy to hear they are getting a special edition so LAN tournaments can take place
I hope blizzard steps up and fixes
The game is truly great and really closely balanced from what i can tell from the Pro's opinions. Im looking forward for the next beta phase.
That's actually not as great as it sounds. It's hand in hand with their apparent policy of stripping everything from the game in order to sell it back to you later for FULL price. If this was a modular concept where you buy the base client for $30, and then pay extra to add functionality like cross-region play or LAN capability then I think that would be an acceptable and visionary pricing scheme.
As it is they're just trying to see how many people they can inconvenience into buying more full copies of the game. I really hoped Activision would have the foresight to leave Blizzard to its own moneymaking devices, but that was naive of me. They'll run them into the ground.
not that blizzard is selling a special edition with lan gameplay added,
Lan with all its ping benefits is still in the game, it just requires you to be connected.
But even more so I'd want to be able to play with people from across the world. Regional locks suck ass.
I understand why Blizzard did it, people would get massive lag (I still got massive lag from people on the same continent, they seem to have forgotten that) and then complain on the forums about a lsot match due to disconnect but Blizzard could always make it a personal preference. Somewhere in the options have a checkbox for unlocking the regional lock, and when you enable it have a fuckton of warnings in really large letter saying that if yo lose it's your problem.
zerg ultras got a small buff aswell.
right now watching http://www.teamliquid.net/video/userstream.php?user=Trump duke it out on the American server.
I remember the time when the AI never used to expand or do anything but send one unit at a time lol.
Awsome for practice. But sucks that its not 1vs1
Face Exploded.