StarCraft Nuclearzone - Falcon-x Report

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Wizard's of the Coast Starcraft Premiere
December 4, 1997

Inside report by Falcon-x with Bonecrusher:

Well I was one of the lucky ones that went to the Starcraft premiere last night. It wasn't quite Hollywood but was done very well. We (Bonecrusher and me) pulled up to the front entrance with the redcarpet. We got our Starcraft passes and had to wait a bit. They wouldn't let anyone downstairs until the Blizzard folks arrived. They got there a little after seven and we all went down to the Wizard's of the Coast (WoC) warroom.

The warroom is laidout in two semi-circles lined with monitors. All had sometype of starcraft game running on them but we weren't allowed to touch them yet. So I looked them over and pumped the WoC folks for info. They have 32 systems in the warroom. Most of their systems were P166/MMX with 32 megs. A few were Pentium II's. We would not be playing against the computer but only the other folks at the premiere. WoC's LAN would connect us out to Blizzard's Battle.net. We would actually be on Battle.net but the Diablo folks couldn't see us and we couldn't see them.

Bill Roper got up and made a little speech that only lasted about four minutes and concluded with "Let's go play the game". Does Blizzard know what gamers want or what! With about 120 people there and only 32 terminals there was a polite little rush to go grab a terminal. I must apologize here. I took a note pad to take good notes. However once in front of the terminal with mouse in hand the notebook was mostly forgotten.

Please take this for the spirit of the night and not for the details. I had to create an account and log on to battle. I got the familiar battle.net chatroom screen. Not much was different from the Diablo screens I was used to. I joined a game and decided to start out with the Terrans. We seemed to be limited to four players in a game. Bonecrusher later heard this was reduced from the normal eight to promote more games at the premiere. This interface reminded me of the Warcraft 2 Kali interface.

The games creator is listed at the top and players can join and leave at will. Once a game is started no one can join. When the creator of the game was ready we got a five second countdown and the game started. The map was 228x228 and was on the planet. I was in the NW corner (we all seemed to start in a corner) with my Command Center(CC) and one SCV (peon). I set the SCV to gather minerals (crystals?). I had enough resources to get a second SCV and put him also on minerals. I had to get a supply depot built to build more SCV's. It acts like a farm in WC2. A few more SCV's and it was time for a barracks. Even with not having a manual the interface was intuitive. Hold the cursor over and item and a little message gets displayed that gives a clue about the item. Not really knowing what everything did I tried to build one of everything.

One problem was when I added a machine shop to my factory. I placed the machine shop and the factory lifted off and moved so it could connect to the machine shop. This boxed in one of my SCV's. When you place your terrain buildings be sure to allow for the add-ons.

I had about 5 marines and 3 firebats when I was attacked by 2 Mutalisks. Only the firebats seemed able to return fire to these air units. The marines and bunker never shot back. I think my barracks also returned fire. The firebots destroyed the Mutalisks but only after my barracks was gone. I got another barracks and researched the missile turret ASAP. With my defenses set I took some of my ground units and went looking for fun. I had built a vulture and sent it out but it didn't last long. The NE player was Zerg and not to strong so I went there. It's just like warcraft in that you can grab your units (upto 12) and then right click in the mini map and off they go.

Well almost. The units seem to still get hung-up on points and you have to go work them around it. It took about three minutes for my units to work their way over to the NE camp. I attacked and didn't have to much trouble. He had about four Zerglings and a Hydralisk. I had upgraded my units armor and weapon damage and this seemed to the difference. When all his military units were gone he dropped out of the game. Having only lost one marine I went to the SE corner where there was a big Zerg camp. I managed to destroy two "buildings" before all my units were gone. One must have been a fungal colony because the creep started to recede when it was destroyed. I needed more firepower so I went back and got a few more firebats, two Siege tanks, and a Battlecruiser. The Battlecruiser is very nice but slow.

It took about four minutes for the units to work their way down to my staging area. Then I just attacked and targeted anything that fired back. I lost a few firebats but the tanks and Battlecruiser were barely scratched. The SW player never really got started so the game was over. A hollow victory because we were all just guessing about what to do. The game lasted about fifty minutes. There were a lot of upgrades and things I didn't get a chance to try.

The EMP upgrade looked interesting. I really liked the way the resources were done. I don't play RTS's for the joy of gathering resources. The two types are minerals and gas. Minerals show up as iceblue crystals. The SCV's would go chisel away some minerals carry them back to the CC. The gas looks like a smoking geyser. You have to build a refinery over the top of it. The SCV then carries 55 gallon drums of gas back to the CC. In the start you need more minerals while later gas is needed. I started with my SCV's 4:1 on minerals while at the end they were 3:2 gas. I was getting short on gas and tried to get to geyser on top of a plateau next to my camp. But the SCV wouldn't go up the cliff. Had to get a dropship and put an SCV on top to build another CC and refinery. There seemed to be plenty of minerals scattered around the map. When I created a game later I don't recall a resource setting. This may have been set to high for the premiere.

The graphics are pretty good but not earth shaking. I asked if I could zoom in but I couldn't. I did have trouble finding SCV's behind a building they had just completed. I had to do a box grab to find them. I let Bonecrusher have a chance and went to see how everyone else was doing. There seemed to be a mixed gaming crowd. WoC had given out invitations to winners of their tournaments over the past week. I sensed the Warcraft 2 winners were kicking booty while others were being told why you have to have buildings. Everything was going well and a terminal didn't set vacant for more than a few seconds. I went over to a terminal where Bill Roper was telling about a game he had played as the Zerg. He had burrowed a large Zerg army under another players town. He then brought them to the surface. He didn't know who he was playing but assumed it was the guy across the hall who let out a very loud aaahhhhh! as the Zerg army appeared in the middle of his town.

Back to see how Bonecrusher was doing. He was playing the Protoss in a two player game and was moving in for the kill. I got here just in time to see my visual highlight for the evening. He had his carrier launch an attack on a Zerg town.

The fighters were really fun to watch. They make a strafing run and then turn around for another run. Kind of like bee's buzzing. Every so often then went back to the carrier to reload or something. We talked later and figured if you destroyed the carrier the fighters would soon run out of gas. He had destroyed all the military units so it was just a mop up job. He pulled his units back so he could see what his "Reaver" unit would do. This is the long beetle unit you may have seen. It has to be the slowest unit in the game. It seems to be like a WC2 catapult. A third as fast but four times the firepower. It was destroying the Zerg buildings with two or three shots. A very powerful unit but you wouldn't want to build only reavers. In fact that was becoming clear. You need a variety of units. Bonecrusher said the the Zerg player attacked several times with only air units. If he had brought along some ground units to take out the missile towers he might have won. He also noticed that he couldn't repair his buildings. That option was greyed out for his Probe units. Sounds like a little play balancing here.

Well my turn with two races down and one to go. Before we got started and later I asked two of the Blizzard reps and three of the WoC folks(who got to play earlier in the day) what their favorite race was. All five said Zerg.
The Zerg may be fun but will take me some practice to get good at. My main problem was I tried to play them the same way I played the Terrans. That doesn't work. One thing was when a building was done I kept trying to find the Drone who built it so he could build something else. But he's now the building. Zerg lesson #1. When you tell a Drone to evolve into a building go get another Drone. I also had trouble trying to figure out what the Zerg buildings did. These early mistakes doomed me. I had some Zerglings, Hydralisk, and three Queens but had only upgraded the Zerglings (speed & frenzy) when the Protoss player attacked.

My units went down fast. He had Dragoons who must have been cloaked. I could sort of see them when they fired but I could never target them back. There was also something beyond my line of sight. All I could see was the incoming shells. I wished I had done more homework on the Zerg. Most folks seemed to be playing the Zerg but only a few were winning with them. I was wondering how the creep would work. It was easy to handle. It's just a foundation for your town.
It was 10:45 now and the party was breaking up. Bonecrusher and I had a great time. I wanted to give you more info on all the units and stuff. But once I got playing I couldn't help myself. Before the premiere we had agreed to keep a count of crashes and ops. As in ops it wasn't supposed to do that. We never saw or heard of any. The game played perfectly for us. It played very smooth on battle.net but than it should have with WoC's setup.

Misc & Overheards:
The Beta may be dropped if it delays the release. Blizzard is concentrating on the game, not the Beta.
The current limit for number of units is 1200. That could be increased but would be to unwieldy.
One tip in team games was to assign players to tasks. One build, one control air units and one ground units. That way three players aren't grabbing an SCV to do something different.

Summary:
Starcraft has to be one of the most hyped games of alltime. To me it lives up to the hype. I was trying to explain it to friends at work but couldn't. It's a real-time strategy game. Oh like Civ2? No, not even close. Only the folks who have Warcraft2 could even get an idea of what's it like. But it's no where close to "Orcs in Space". Trying to explain the Zerg was impossible.

There were many units and upgrades I never got a chance to use. Starcraft is 50% more intense that WC2 and three times as complex. Three truly different races are going to make this game playable for a long time. The Terrans seem like fun. The Protoss are interesting. The Zerg? I just keep shaking my head when I think about the Zerg.
I haven't bought any of the other RTS games because I was waiting for Starcraft. I will continue to wait. I can tell Starcraft will be my "Game of the Year". Now the question is which year? I asked two Blizzard reps "The game looks done to me. When is it coming out?" Both said they were very close. Play balance seems to be all that's left. Bonecrusher noticed that the Blizzard reps were very interested in the big battles. They wanted to see how outsiders were doing things. One rep hinted that one problem was play balance on teams. If the Protoss can't repair buildings but they can team up with a terrain who can that may unbalance things. IMHO the game is done. Blizzard seems to be trying to make it perfect.

The waiting has gotten worse for me. I keep thinking "I should have done this" or "I'll try that next time". I also know I'm going to see a few sunrises when Starcraft does come.
All I want for Christmas .....

Falcon-X
December 5, 1997