The first patch – of many to come, according to Chris Sigaty – has been released yesterday. Blizzard have been quick to assess the data and feedback gathered from the beta; the patch already introduces some balance changes among various bug fixes. Not only that, but some abilities have been completely removed from the game!

Here are the changes, followed by some clarification on their reasons.

TERRAN

Viking

The armor value for this unit in Fighter Mode has decreased from 1 to 0.
The damage done by this unit in Fighter Mode has changed from 6 (+8 armored) to 10 (+4 armored).

Reaper

The damage done from D-8 Charges has decreased from 40 to 30.
The delay between attacks for D-8 Charges has decreased from 2.5 to 1.8.

Orbital Command

The build time for this upgrade has decreased from 50 to 35.

PROTOSS

Observer

Gravitic Boosters: The cost of this research has decreased from 150 minerals and 150 vespene gas to 100 minerals and 100 vespene gas.

High Templar

Phase Shift: This ability has been removed from the game.
New ability: Feedback – Drains all energy from the target unit and causes damage equal to the amount of energy drained.

Colossus

The building pathing radius for this unit has decreased from .75 to .5625.

Mothership

Vortex: The energy cost of this ability has increased from 75 to 100.
Vortex: The target radius of this ability has decreased from 3.0 to 2.5.
Temporal Rift: This ability has been removed from the game.
Wormhole Transit: This ability has been removed from the game.
New ability: Mass Recall – Teleports all of the player’s units in the target area to the Mothership.

Nexus

Chrono Boost can no longer target allies.

Gateway

The build time of this building has increased from 50 to 65.

ZERG

Infestor

Fungal Growth: The damage done by this ability has decreased from 48 to 36.
Fungal Growth: This ability now prevents affected units from burrowing.
Neural Parasite: Functionality changed – The Infestor now channels this spell, which lasts 10 seconds or until the Infestor is destroyed. You can now target all units with this ability.

Terran Infestation: The ability’s energy cost has reduced from 50 to 25 and Infested Terrans now spawn 1 at a time.

BUG FIXES

Addressed an issue causing people to receive an “Internal Battle.net Error” message with their game client.

Muting your microphone will no longer cause your microphone to be turned off in the operating system once the program has exited.

Please note that the voice chat functionality has only partially been implemented. There are many known issues with voice chat that we expect to address in a future patch.

The “Medium” graphical settings were reconfigured to work better on appropriate machines. The video settings “auto-detect” functionality has been reset as a result.

Added a frame rate limiter to the game menus to prevent some graphics cards from running at higher frame rates than necessary.

The main change to the Terran has been the tweaking of the Reaper‘s attack, making it less effective in hit and run attacks against buildings. A common tactic with the Reapers is to quickly move around an enemy base, switching between harassing (and sometimes completely decimating) worker lines and taking down the occasional Pylon or Supply Depot. With the decrease in damage per attack, and despite the overall increase in damage per time, the Reapers will now have to stop and dedicate their attack to a building in order to efficiently destroy it.

The Viking‘s damage has been changed to allow the Terran to have a flying answer to the constant threat of the Zerg Mutalisk . Since they are light units, Mutalisks will now take 66% more damage from Vikings.

The only change to the Zerg was to the Infestor, the Zerg’s most advanced spell caster, and, unfortunately, quite an underwhelming unit according to feedback from all over the community. The new Fungal Growth ability might prove useful in Zerg mirror matches with its effect on burrowing, but the improved Neural Parasite spell will definitely come into use. Previously, this ability was limited to biological units, leaving out many of the potential threats to the Zerg unaffected. Now, and as seen in the third battle report, Neural Parasite will once more be able to take control of the super-dangerous, anti-swarm Colossus.

The most disappointing and “safest” item on the patch notes list is the Protoss Mothership. This end-game unit, which turned out to be both fun and highly effective to use in competitive gameplay, has been hit with the nerf-hammer, and might as well be renamed “Motherbiter“. Having its “Town Portal” ability removed means the Mothership is quite vulnerable considering its extremely slow speed (think Overlord), and its most deadly spell, the black-hole generating “Vortex”, has had its effect dialed down and its cost increased. Granted, the old Mothership was quite the powerhouse, perhaps indeed an overpowered one – but it’s a shame to see it stripped down of its distinctive abilities and tuned to the exact same characteristics of the Arbiter: Cloaking field, Recall, and Vortex, which is essentially Stasis Field with a cooler effect.

We, among many others, have been testing the voice system integrated into Battle.net 2.0 and the game, but without great success. Communications have been choppy and unclear compared to modern stand-alone solutions, and it was clear that this is an unfinished feature. While it’s obvious that Blizzard will eventually get it right, this is perhaps the most immature aspect of the recently launched gaming platform.

One of the most important patch-related questions has finally been answered conclusively. Will replays from previous game versions remain viewable? Answer:

As has been mentioned before, different display aspect ratios provide slightly different gaming experiences, giving (and denying) a certain edge depending on one’s system setup. Check out this animated gif to get a clear idea about how StarCraft’s field of view adjusts to the gamers’ monitors.

While Blizzard has claimed that the difference will be minor, the above illustration makes it clear that it is not. If you have a 4:3 or 5:4 aspect ratio monitor and you intend to play StarCraft competitively, it’s probably time to move on.

Moving on, the thirteenth Blizzcast has been released, and it’s beta all the way. Very interesting comments from the senior people in charge of StarCraft 2, Dustin Browder and Chris Sigaty, which we will highlight here.

• Blizzard hopes to release a patch at least once a week, promising to react as much as on a daily basis.
• How radical can changes get? Dustin Browder: “As much as necessary”.
• Is it possible that units will be introduced or removed from the game? Dustin Browder: “Absolutely”.
• The planned period for the beta was 3-5 months, but Blizzard is currently targeting 3 months.
• The Galaxy editor will be release late in the beta with a “major content patch”. No information on what else this may include.
• The developers believe that the beta and feedback they get from the community is critical to the game’s success.

Some select quotes:

So community, you guys, will be doing a lot of interfacing directly and sort of bubbling up the big points to us.

… if we discover something that is a fundamental mistake, absolutely we will add or cut as necessary to make this game as good as we possibly can by the time it ships.

There’s definitely areas where we’ll be watching, areas where we’re nervous, we’re pretty convinced that we may have made a terrible mistake but we’re going to keep watching and see what happens. So far, things that I am convinced must be broken have not yet proven to be so. This is largely I think because other units are overshadowing them and preventing them from being that powerful, right. As the community plays, we’ll see what they find to be truly powerful and then we’ll see what really shakes out of it.

What we’re really trying to do is get players to have some additional strategy and choices when it comes to their base building and their economy, right. We really want to push that part of the game. We want players to be able to choose which type of player do they want to be. Do I want to be a player who can maximize my economy but maybe is not quite as good at commanding my forces on the battlefield or am I a player who is really good at commanding my troops out on the front line but maybe I don’t focus as much on my economy or do I want to try to balance both together.

… for sure the main central focus of the beta is balance for us.

As we continue to cover the beta, up to date news items, interesting tidbits, replays and videos will be posted on our Official Facebook page. Do come visit us there or check out the feed at the upper right corner of this page.

… A lot of the stuff people are seeing in-game right now, I know we’re showing a lot of material, I know people are looking at it saying, “If this looks really good, it must be close to final.” That’s certainly not how the art team feels about it right and they’ve been going over it and hitting individual units as we go forward, individual races, and the Zerg in terms of their buildings and even their units are still the furthest behind in that respect. There is still a lot more work to go into the Zerg , for instance the hatchery, the lair, the hive are all going to go under massive revisions here in the next couple of weeks as we really punch up the art to really represent these iconic, critical, central buildings to a Zerg base.  So there is still a lot of work to go into it …

It’s going to be a while before StarCraft 2 is widely available, unfortunately.

Something good did happen this April 1st, though. The Terran Terra-Tron!

To create a truly comprehensive defense for high-priority, mineral-rich regions such as the volcanic uplands of Redstone, the terrans needed to devise an entirely new concept in battlefield strategy. Terran military engineers, led by Goraion Systems’ head of development Dr. Ron Volt, have been working day and night to design a new kind of base for the terran armies: the titanic Terra-tron.

The Terra-Tron, Blizzard’s April Fools’ unit for this year, is a true marvel. Composed out of the entire base, it’s equipped with enough armor and fire power to take down whole armies. While we won’t be seeing it in the normal version of the single- or multi-player game, Karune does confirm that just like last year’s April Fools’ unit, the Tron will make an appearance in the map editor. Make sure to watch the videos of it transforming and terrorizing the city.

Another StarCraft 2 related answer from the last BlizzCast deals with the game’s new air model. Here’s a summary of  Dustin’s comments:

• Zerg Mutalisks are still used for fast raiding operations
• In large groups, they are also useful for late-game direct assaults
• The Terran Banshees can power right through base defenses with their powerful anti-ground attack
• The Protoss Void Ray is similarly threatening
• Protoss Carriers have a much longer range than in StarCraft 1
• Dedicated anti air units, like the Zerg Corruptor and Protoss Phoenix, serve an important role to counter the aforementioned threats

Moving on, a new Terran Nighthawk ability has been revealed, along with some more news about the unit’s other ability. Here’s what we know about the Hunter-Seeker Missile:

• Costs 75 energy, has no cooldown
• Slowly moves towards a unit and detonates on impact, dealing 150 AoE damage
• Meant to deal with slow units, such as spell casters or stationary ones
• Requires the Fusion Core (prereq building for Battlecrusiers) to be researched
• Runs out of fuel and harmlessly falls to the ground after 15 seconds

On paper, this cooldown-less ability sounds extremely powerful. With an energy upgrade, the Nighthawk can release three Hunter-Seekers one after the other, devastating entire Tier-1 armies or taking out key units from mixed armies. All this assuming, of course, that the enemy doesn’t immediately retreat his targeted unit to safety. It’s likely that the targeted unit will be marked so that it can be moved out of harm’s way by the player, though this hasn’t been confirmed.

This ability overlaps somewhat with the Ghost’s Psi Round, another ability geared towards caster-hunting. It’s also interesting to note that all of the Nighthawk’s abilities have returned to being energy-dependent, with Auto-Turret only costing 50 minerals.

Finally, Karune answers a question about rallying troops into transports. Taking automation a step further, Karune confirms that units can be rallied directly into transports – a mechanism which will see plenty of use in the hands of a infantry drop-happy Terran. Karune also answers another question about what happens when an ally drops from the game:

1) Yup, you will be able to – and you can also rally straight into transport units like dropships as well.
2) Yes- though currently all the resources your ally makes after he leaves will go directly into your pool of resources. This is by no means final or balanced yet- there will be changes still.

With MBS and Dropship rally, a deadly infantry drop takes just a few clicks to prepare.

Karune met with Sam Didier, art director, and Dustin Browder, lead game designer. They discussed StarCraft 2′s state and fleshed out the process required for successful unit creation, from conception to implementation.

…..you know, does it start from a gamplay element like you guys have a specific unit in mind for a certain gameplay mechanic or does it actually start from the art side,….

Which later got quite an interesting response from Sam, providing a fine example of how a gameplay-based unit was introduced to StarCraft 2.

Sam Didier:
Yeah we did all drawn inspiration from some of the giant walking robots and tripods but if you notice our Colossus has four legs, not three. So our tripod is way better then everyone elses because we have one more leg. Take it!

The Thor has been pushed all around the tactical spectrum – from a long range, mobile sieger to an AA Flak station. It is discussed lengthily as the unit with the most incarnations, one which has changed significantly throughout the development process.
Sam Didier elaborated on the problems of applying gameplay functionality to a well designed unit with very explicit features:

The problem with it we had in the concept is we had these giant guns on his shoulders.  ‘Real cool!  Yeah that looks awesome!’  Well anytime we have something cool in the art like that we have to justify it in gameplay.  So it had these giant guns, what’s it do? Well we already have a siege tank that rains death upon the battlefield so what do these big guns do?  Rain bigger death?  That makes the siege tank obsolete.  So we couldn’t do that. So one of the problems with this unit is we went with the art first and because it had the big cool guns now were trying to figure out what to do with it design wise.

And a small teaser of the much anticipated single player campaign:

Sam Didier: All you guys out there listening, you should have seen how big it was before uh . . . we had to make it playable.
Dustin Browder: (laughs) They’ll see that version in solo play I’m sure.

But more importantly, Dustin describes the eventual Thor as the front-line damage sponge and a great AA support unit.

So the Thor does two things for the Terrans: It gives them a sort of tip of the sword kind of unit, something you can push up front that can take a lot of damage from enemy fire.  It’s very survivable, very tough, very hard to kill.  And you can use that sort of push past an artillery barrage or push directly into an enemy base to sort of lead your smaller lighter marines into battle.  And it’s also got these huge cannons on its back that can strike against air targets so you can use the Thor to defend your forces from enemy air threats and it’s a very powerful weapon in both of these roles.

While discussing the portrait animations found in StarCraft 2, the Marauder is mentioned as having one of the better portraits, and Blizzard were even kind enough to provide an example – watch the following video for several portraits which were revealed in detail during the BlizzCast. (courtsey of SCLegacy)

The rest of the StarCraft 2 portion deals with generic development decisions, providing insight into the workflow and development enviroment key Blizzard game designers enjoy.

This episode of BlizzCast features one item of interest for StarCraft 2 fans – the Community Q&A session, providing very thorough answers to interesting questions. The Q&A is also accompanied by two new, action heavy screenshots.

Answers are provided by Mike Heiberg, senior game designer, and David Kim, associate game balance designer.

First, they are asked about the reason for the decreased mineral collection rate by workers. This was previously reported to be 5, but is currently at 6 units per trip, down from 8 in StarCraft 1.

The rate of collection for StarCraft 2 was planned to be similar to that of StarCraft 1, with the reduction in per-trip numbers originating from the increased unit pathing efficiency. To counterbalance that somewhat, SCVs will now have to spend less time on the mineral patch to acquire a full load.

However, both David and Mike comment that mineral collection feels faster now. The maximum rate of collection is achieved when 3 SCVs are used for each mineral patch, and it’s easier to see when this limit is reached in StarCraft 2 compared to 1.

The next topic is about the improved unit pathing. As an example, David and Mike describe how Zerglings easily surround Zealots from all sides, packing closely next to each other so more Zeglings can get a piece of the action. This creates a situation where smart players will push their Zealots against the wall or put them on choke points to minimize the amount of Zeglings they have to deal with simultaneously.

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David Kim:  Yeah and the wrap around itself is a little easier to pull off I guess because the A.I. takes care of some of that for you but you do still need the micro if you want to get the maximum out of your melee units.

Another important change is to deceleration. In StarCraft 1, this was less precise, and units could sometimes slow down in a way that put them before or after the location they were ordered to go to. In StarCraft 2, this mechanism is much more precise, and units know when to start decelerating to reach the specific location.

Mike Heiberg:  Right, a lot of times you’d be floating your guardians in to take out some spore colony or something and they’d float a little too close and you’d be like “Whoa!” and you’d have to back a couple of them out. They’re a little more intelligent now about not floating directly into danger when they don’t have to.

Next, the developers discuss resource consumption and its effect on the strategies available to each race. They state that there are more options to choose from in StarCraft 2, which also makes scouting more important.

The last question deals with Infestation, Corruption, and Mind Control. Both Infestation and Corruption are time limited, and the inquiry was about a more permanent ownership changing spell, like the StarCraft 1 Dark Archon Mind Control ability.

Mike sums it up nicely:

Well when we were doing the classic Starcraft mind control we were finding that it actually resulted in some pretty big swings in balance where basically you mind control a large unit, say a Battlecruiser, and now the difference in power from the two different armies is like two Battlecruisers because he lost one and you gained one. So seeing as in Starcraft II we have a few more of those high impact units, we have Colossi, we have Motherships, and Queens, that’s a very scary type of spell to be still bringing into the game, I mean we have more opportunities for those large swings in balance.

A powerful spell like Mind Control would have to be restricted to specific units and leave some of them out, and Blizzard does not like implementing such artificial constraints.

Further, the devs discuss Infestation and its limited effect on StarCraft 1, which resulted from the difficulty in pulling it off.

Mike Heiberg:  Right, in classic Starcraft infesting someone’s command center was really more of an insult.

The StarCraft 2 infestation will be even higher on the tech tree, requiring both the tier 3 Infestor Pit and Infestation research, but will be easier to manage. Since Infestation is going to be easier and the Infested Marines free, the effect will only be temporary.

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As for Corruptors, the developers mention that introducing this mechanism instead of using simple mind control creates new gameplay decisions:

Mike Heiberg: Right we want to allow those types of little micro decisions where in the middle of the battle: “Should I focus on his guys, his Corrupters? Should I focus on my own corrupted units because I’m not getting them back?  Or should I back off and make those basically invalid because there’s nobody nearby for them to be messing with?”.

Here are the highlights of the talk, of which there are many:

* Dustin reiterates many times that the Zerg is the least mature race, lacking many gameplay elements and a good “feel”. He thinks the Protoss are complete for the most part, with the Terran not far behind. “They feel the crispest, the sharpest, and feel the meanest in a lot of ways, and have the best counters, and the most interesting new strategies.“

* Dustin describes the feel of the StarCraft 1 Zerg, which they are now trying to recapture in StarCraft 2: “The Zerg were very fast, very aggressive, very mean, very flexible, and strategically able to rapidly change their technologies on the fly.”

* StarCraft 2 will also bring to the foreground a few of the neglected Zerg elements from StarCraft 1 – namely, infestation and a more convincing Queen unit.

* Dustin describes the Queen as a “mobile buff“. Previously, it had an even bigger role, laying eggs and creating specialist units, but the development team decided to reduce the dependence on her, which was too hard to balance and ended up not being fun.

* The Ultralisk hasn’t gotten a lot of play-testing time, being at the end of the tech tree. Currently, it has trouble actually engaging enemy forces (being a huge melee unit), but Dustin says it’s fun to use – especially since it can now burrow like all other Zerg units.

* The development team is trying to balance the interface so that it includes many of the new RTS features modern players have been accustomed to with the more “old school” control scheme that requires a lot of attention and speed. One of the attempts to increase the level of macromanagement needed for competitive play was Warp-In, which, when used proficiently, provides a boost to unit production time.

* Dustin assures us that the UI, micro- and macro-management requirements have not been finalized in any way, and that the team is still trying to come up with ideas. Even rolling back to the antiquated StarCraft 1 control scheme is an option, Dustin says. Of course, the team would prefer to implement as many new interface improvements as possible – as long as they’re satisfied with their impact on the game.

* The Zerg can now expand even more easily. Not only that, their creep-spreading capabilities coupled with the new mobility granted to their defenses make the Zerg play more aggressively. “It feels like sometimes their base is invading your base, which is very Zerg and feels very, very cool.“

* Dustin mentions the increased mobility as a means to handle these new expansionist strategies. “Between Reapers, Vikings, Stalkers, and Nydus Worms – these races are more mobile than they have ever been.”

* “The whole board has now become a very threatening place as everyone has additional mobility and you really never know where you will encounter an enemy and you can’t rely on the map alone to wall off and protect you.”

* “I would say if you pick the single unit that has been the biggest pain to deal with would have to be the Queen. We have worked on the Queen for probably two years straight, trying variations from one to the other. I don’t want to say we’re even done yet, because I don’t think we necessarily are but she has probably been the single most challenging unit, much is something like the Mothership was probably and remains one of the most challenging units to work on for the Protoss.”

Next up is the community Q&A section:

The first question is: Can the Zerg unit, the Queen, build on enemy Zerg player’s creep? And what strategies would this allow?

 

Well creep is creep, we’re trying not to have player owned creep in the game we really want to have just regular creep and anywhere creep is that’s just where creep is. So yeah, anything that you can do on creep you can do on enemy creep because there isn’t really such a thing, it’s all just the same stuff. So the Queen can potentially get to an enemy base and create some base defenses there. In all practicality we have slowed the Queen down a lot when she’s not on creep, certainly since the play tests that went out a few weeks ago and the people were playing, it’s really changed a lot already. So the unit is much much slower when she’s not moving around on creep and she’s, as a result, a lot more vulnerable. So we’re really not seeing a lot of Queen rushing, in our opening game in Zerg versus Zerg, in fact currently we’re not seeing any right now. That’s not to say that players won’t ultimately do that and we won’t need to ultimately address that potential issue but we think we have the tools to limit it, making it a rare possibility, something kind of exciting that players can do if they catch the enemy off guard but most of the time it’s not really practical.

Offensive Queen usage, which, according to Karune, ruled Zerg 1v1 matches, is no longer a prevalent strategy now that Queens are less mobile when not traveling on creep.

With the ability to do Multiple Building Selection, it will be easy for a Zerg player to build a huge group of reinforcements over a small period of time once you have the Hatcheries setup. Are you increasing macro for the Zerg player to balance this out?

 

Well we’re trying to figure out how to do that, so we haven’t decided exactly what we are going to do or even exactly what our approach is going to be. It is a very real issue and it is something we have been working on for quite some time and we will keep working on until we get it pounded out but I do not have an answer for you today as to what specifically we are going to do but it is definitely real and we are totally aware of it.

That’s it from Dustin Browder, who provided some great insight into the stage of development StarCraft 2 is in right now. Dustin mentions the beta a few times, hinting that many things in StarCraft 2 will not change until feedback from the beta arrives. Of course, he also makes it clear that there are many things to change and improve – especially when it comes to the Zerg.

Check out the rest of the Cast, which deals mainly with the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King WoW expansion, here.

As with the last BlizzCast, we will focus on the StarCraft universe portion of the interviews.

First up, an interview with Chris Metzen, Vice President of Creative Development and creator of the original WarCraft, StarCraft, and Diablo storylines. Chris talks about his work – juggling three different stories simultaneously, coming up with new ideas and integrating them into the core of his stories, and the how working at Blizzard is like compared to other companies. Here are some interesting excerpts:

… about StarCraft in particular, how did that particular story-line get started with you?

 

We had done Warcraft II and now we’re interested in trying to do the next RTS outing in science-fiction. And early ideas like ‘well, let’s blend them together man, we can do this kind of space-vampire-clan-thing and real-time-strategy.’ … the group response is like ‘well, let’s simplify this, right. People, they understand space-ships. They understand creepy, spidery aliens. They understand psychic brain aliens, right? So let’s just cut down to the core motifs that are really classic in science-fiction. That’s where we should start.’

 

It wasn’t the story-line, specifically, the linear flow of events, the overthrow of the Confederacy, Kerrigan, Raynor, the Protoss, the destruction of their homeworld. A lot of that stuff wasn’t clear from the get-go. We were just making the broadest science-fiction universe we could and trying to make sure it really resonated with people.

Chris reveals the process which led to the birth of one of StarCraft’s most important characters: Kerrigan.

… the whole character of Kerrigan didn’t really exist until the middle of our construction of that first campaign. We knew we had Ghosts and the joke was – I don’t know if this is common knowledge but I think it was Command and Conquer that had a character named Tanya, back in the day. She was kind of like an assassin, a badass. And we just had this conversation one day using a Ghost character on a map, like ‘ha ha, how funny’, the whole ice-skater debacle was going on with Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan. ‘Haha, how funny, we’ll make our super assassin named Kerrigan on this one map.’ And it was a total throw-away character but as we started discussing it and really getting in to this character, we kept coming back to her; she had a lot of gravity. It really created a cool, kind of triangle of tension between Mensk and Raynor and this emergent Kerrigan character.

 

Ultimately, it was pretty late in the game when we decided that she would be betrayed and become the Queen of Blades. The Queen of Blades was never an original concept; it really came about just at that, kind of in the final stretch of that campaign.

Andy Chambers, StarCraft 2′s lead writer, reveals the mystery of the planet featured on the bottom of StarCraft2.com:

The question we have for you today is a bit of a two-parter. What planet is seen at the bottom of the page at starcraft2.com and what is happening at the planet’s surface at the red dot? People are referring to it as ‘the explosion.’

 

Well, as befits a two-part question, I’ve got a two-part answer for you. The first one is the lore answer to it all. The planet itself is Bel’shir one of the moons of the Mackan system which has not previously been seen in StarCraft I. It’s a Protoss ex-shrine world that was invaded by the Zerg and much of the Protoss have now been pushed out of the area. It keys in with the sort of jungle tile-set that you may have seen in some of our previous videos for StarCraft II. Now, the little explosion as people call it, is actually a vent for an artificial volcano the Zerg have pierced through the surface of Bel’shir to produce a heat-source for their nests full of hot magma –because it saves them having to knit little cozies for their eggs and things like that – so, that’s the lore reason.

The actual reason there’s a little dot there goes back even further. Goes back to our career announcement. The world that you’re actually seeing there is the same sort of brown ringed world that we saw in the announcement behind the space platform. As part of a test during that, some of our artists wanted to do plasma bombardments, little explosions going off all over the world all the time. So, when the guys in the Community Team got hold of this piece of art, they reshaded it into the green world you now see. But as part of that process, one of the little explosions carried over into the new image that you now see.

 

So, as ever, lore must be responsive to art as art must be responsive to lore, so I’ve incorporated that into the back-story for Bel’shir and it’s actually added this little unexpected bonus of like ‘oh, cool, artificial volcano. I like it!’

Check out the rest of the cast, which deals mainly with WoW, here:
[Transcript | Audio]

We’ll focus on the StarCraft relevant information.

Highlights:

* Sam describes StarCraft as more serious, grittier and darker than the WarCraft universe. He says StarCraft is a more focused universe while WarCraft is freer and less constrained (the Panda hero, the Brewmaster, is a good example).

* The StarCraft 1 Dark Templars were all based on the prototypic “secret-agent-type-ninja guy” that Zeratul was designed to be. In StarCraft 2, more variation was planned for the different Dark Templar units and a more hardened look was given to the Dark Templar unit itself – Zerg bones and other trophies were added to them.

* About the Zerglings: “It’s StarCraft II, baby, you know. We don’t want to be doing something we did ten years ago and just doing a 3D version of it.”

* Samwise recommends taking courses in Max or Maya if you’re looking to get into the gaming industry as an artist. He says people with multiple skills, such as texturing and modeling, are more highly valued.

The rest of the cast deals with World of WarCraft. You can read the transcript of both interviews in the episode 1 page.

For more Samwise Didier, check out these video interviews from the Leipzig Games Convention.