SC2: Game panel and Q&A session at WWI

A game panel about SC2 was just finished at WWI, without giving so much new information as we had hoped.

Rob Pardo walked through all the units and their abilities. Much of it has already been announced but we wrote up a transcript of everything and you can get an update.

Zerg Overlord

Overlords can add creep and place Nydus Wurms that work as channels and lets in a lot of units. It looks like an overlord drop, but a major Zerg invasion because people can keep coming.

We're being showed a Protoss base where two overlords go to the Nexus, adding creep on the ground, and two other overlords from the other direction. Both are placing Nydus wurms. The Protoss player decides to cover one of those attacks, and the Zerg player can apparently chose that the Nydus Wurm release the Zerglings at the first place, where no Zealots are defending at this point.

Zerg Crawlers

Buildings: Spine Crawlers and Spore Crawlers. These buildings can get up and move around, and they can only move around on creep and plant on creep. They become very useful base defends, and you want to add creep everywhere on the map. These are similar to Spore and Sunken colony of SC1, but with a twist.

Zerg Queen

She's a base defender. You get one only. It's a powerful part of your base defense. Lots of abilities but they require creep.

One ability lets you heal buildings. The other is deep teleport, lets you teleport to any zerg ability. Swarm Infestation is a ability that lets you turn a building into a Zerg unit.

Zerg Corruptor

Blizzard want to use the units easy to use, but with an ability to make it cool and use it very skillful. Corruptor is an anti-air unit but can infest unit that attacks. "Corruptor is a very powerful anti-air unit."

Zerg Baneling

Destructs itself upon reaching.

Protoss

Less units but more powerful units. Going to show the psionics.

Protoss Nullifier

Early game casting unit. He has a 'force field' and 'anti-grav'. A little spellcaster.

Force field is a tactical spell that lets you control a battle with it depending on how you use it. Force field is like a static object placed upon the map, like a supply depot you place temporarily at any place. Easy to understand, has great potential to use skillfully.

The Mothership

It's currently about being a mobile command and support unit. Currently it has three abilities:

Summon
Time bomb
Slow

Summon looks just like the arbiter's recall, but with one unit at a time. The time bomb is similar to what we've seen before.

Terran

The theme for Terran is guns, guns and bigger guns.

Terran Jackal

It's a powerful unit as well, but you want to position it carefully. It's like a mix of a firebat and a vulture since it has a flame thrower (it is even using the firebat sounds from SC1 in this current build).

Thor

Two abilities:
Anti-Air Flak Cannons
Self-Repair

If the Thor dies, the wreck remains on the battlefield, but the controlling player may choose to rebuild it directly at the spot.

In the future

What's being worked on internally now:

- Micro vs Macro.
The units should be simple and not as complex as that of WC3. Macro should have automated functions but not lose the depth or ratio versus micro.

- Upgrade systems
- Special abilities
- Battle.net - Battle.net should be a major improvement, like the Battle.net improvement from SC to WC3.

- Story campaign - A third of the campaign is playable. Been working a lot of the cinematics and the characters and the story. In the end of the year, they hope to tell more about that in the end of the year.

Last video was a major fight between Zerg and Protoss. Looks interesting, if nothing else a little blurry. Looks like the Psi Storm still looks like an energy field rather than a lightning storm.

Q&A session

The campaigns of each race is very different. Terran will be about gaining economy and spending that on upgrades but that won't be featured in the other races.

What about heroes?
We have made WC3 more about the heroes. That said, there will be some missions were you can play but it will not impact game play in a serious way, it won't be as large.

How is the storyline kept intact if you can pick missions individually?
There is a static storyline as its outlined. If we play the same campaign, though, we might have different experiences. There are several subplots that can open during the campaigns and while we will have the same ending, we may reach that ending differently, and solve the challenges differently.

Zerg infestation is going to work on the Protoss?
Yes, you are correct.

Due to the complexity of the game, with SC2 will you continue to develop both for Mac and PC at the same time?
Yes, we remain and continue big supporters of the Mac. It's something we're committed to. The Macs are getting much more powerful these days. You can expect that for the foreseeable future that all our PC games will also be on Macs.

Will Terran have a unique unit like Mothership and the Queen?
No.

Actually the mothership can be built more than once.

Is the black hole still planned for the Protoss?

We hope that the ability comes up it ends up somewhere, but right now there just isn't a place for it.

The Merc Haven. Tell us about is.

We never really came up with a design for that building that we love yet, so it will continue to change until we find out a way to use it.

-- A correction, the Protoss buildings can't be infested --

Ghost?
We're experimenting a lot with Ghost recently. We have been inspired by the manga etc, and you'll definitely see some cool abilities but I don't know which ones right now.

Can the single player be played in co-operation?

Unfortunately not. You are the main character in the campaign, and there's really no room for someone else to play a role in the single player.

That concludes the Q&A for this time. I do apologize if I didn't type out all the questions so thoroughly as I did with the Diablo 3 Q&A, I'm getting a little tired and it was difficult to hear. Nonetheless, not so much new from SC2 at WWI in Paris during this game panel. We'll be back after we had some more time to actually play the game a bit more.