The magnificent StarCraft 2 gameplay preview video and the released screenshots left behind a strong impression and numerous unanswered questions concerning the many aspects of StarCraft 2 that have been so briefly covered in Blizzard’s preview. Slowly but steadily, both speculative and official information has started surfacing around the net, and here is a brief coverage of the official responses to some of the questions :

Q) A recently released gameplay screenshot features a strange vehicle-resembling Terran unit. What is it ?

A) According to Karun, an official Blizzard poster on the Battle.net forums:

The unit seen is a building add-on, and well be revealing more on the Terran building upgrades in the future.

Well, now it’s official : both Terran Building Addons and Protoss Pylons are making a comeback, at least at this very early stage of development.

Q) During the final Nuke Launch sequence of the Gameplay preview video, the almost-unnoticeable dot of StarCraft was replaced by a clearly noticeable massive red animated crosshair, was it done in order to ease the spotting of launched Nukes ?

A) Quoting Karun’s clarifications as posted on Battle.net:

In the announcement gameplay video the incoming nuke marker was shown as if launched by the player. To other players it will still be shown as a smaller dot very similar to the classic StarCraft nuke.

This actually goes hand-in-hand with the gameplay preview- the player was notified by the “Nuclear missile ready” sound before missiles were launched, even though the player was controlling Protoss units prior to the Nuclear launch and the final battle sequence(notice how the control interface vanishes before it begins, around 17:28 into the video)

One of the preview video’s key sequences is the Protoss Mothership ability showcase, which has generated plenty of speculation about how such a unit fits into the fragile gameplay balance and what will be the final nature of it’s abilities. Here’s a brief clarification of the nature of the time distortion ability, caused by what was called the time bomb …

Q) What exactly does the Mothership time distortion ability protect against ?
A) Karun answers this questions in the same post:

The Mothership time-slowing ability is intended to deal with all types of incoming attacks, although only incoming missiles were shown prominently in the announcement gameplay video.

For more information, you are welcome to
visit the brand new Official StarCraft 2 FAQ.
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