[NGTM-1R]

That was mildly irritating, the terran army seems to have shifted geared from heavy armor with infantry support to "Hey!  I've got 30 Marines and 6 medics, let's go kill the enemy base!"

The sad thing is this makes a lot of SC1 and Brood War's occurances and cutscenes utterly incomprehensible.

On the other hand, it absolutely vindicates the Amerigo cutscene from SC1 where the Marines were able to hold off Hydralisks at two-to-one.

[mxlm]

So the game pairs me with another bronze guy for once and he spends the entire game sending marines, and nothing but marines, at me. Which I actually had slight diffiuclty with. Or rather, I had some difficulty mowing them down while, uh, setting up three expansions. Once those were up and running...actually, once they were up and running he picked up all his buildings and flew them into my base. I asked him if he knew about the surrender button, and he told me he didn't roll like that.

[General Battuta]

So the game pairs me with another bronze guy for once and he spends the entire game sending marines, and nothing but marines, at me. Which I actually had slight diffiuclty with. Or rather, I had some difficulty mowing them down while, uh, setting up three expansions. Once those were up and running...actually, once they were up and running he picked up all his buildings and flew them into my base. I asked him if he knew about the surrender button, and he told me he didn't roll like that.

That's awesome.

Terrifyingly I got placed into Gold, division Tabrenus Yankee - probably a relic of lots of college LAN play in SC1. It's really intense, but I'm doing well so far. I've moved up to 25th in my division and I'm breaking a little better than even on my win/loss record.

[Dark RevenantX]

Melee multi at least is quite interesting.  One of my 3v3 placements was just sad; the enemy team (PPZ) successfully rushed me and destroyed my nexus and some of my pylons, but not my probes.  One of my teammates (we were PPT) was simultaneously being attacked constantly with zerglings, soon by void rays and stalkers.  My third teammate was holding out and helping both of us with his bio ball of death, though.
After I got the enemy out of my base, I received enough minerals from my allies to rebuild my nexus and make a single pylon.  That pylon, incidentally, powered up all of my intact buildings, including a forge, cybernetics core, and 3 early-game warp gates.  I received more money so I could pump out stalkers and survive against further attacks.  All the while, the teammate being hit by zerglings and stalkers is spamming "We're ****ed."  While I'm wondering how we haven't managed to lose yet (these opponents appeared to be good, considering their effective early rush).  I eventually get 7 warp gates and some ground upgrades, then push out to my enemy-occupied natural expansion, and take it.  At the same time, void rays are raping my protoss ally hard, so i send my large mob of stalkers out to help him.  Eventually, his base is rage-stomped by a built up force of zerg and protoss and we're left with me (now recovered fully from the rush) and my terran ally with his M3 bio ball of death.  At some point I build up 57 stalkers and send them against the enemy high-yield expansion, but I get hit hard with a coordinated roach, void ray, and hydralisk strike.  However, I softened the enemy well enough that the M3 bio ball was able to mop the floor with the whole 3-player enemy force.  I took that rich mineral expo, built up a crapload of stalkers as our enemies stupidly pumped out void rays and carriers (they should have gone with mutalisks for my stalkers and a force of zealots, colossi, and a handful of phoenixes to handle the Marine-Marauder-Medivac force.  We attacked them on two sides, raped all of their expos, and then proceeded to systematically wipe out all of their bases.
This was mainly done 2 vs 3 throughout the whole game, as I was punched out early in the game but made a recovery.  By the time I was back in full force, one of my allies up and died, so we were always undermanned.  I still don't know why the enemy managed to lose despite all that.  Maybe M3 is really just that good.  Also, I somehow managed to get the highest score at the end, to my surprise.

In previous games, my protoss ally always cheesed the game with a surprisingly effective cannon rush.  One time, he actually managed to create a wall of cannons, pylons, and warp gates about 12 tiles deep.
Also, it's always nice to get the 5-win-streak achievement on your first five games (not counting the beta).

[General Battuta]

Sounds like an epic game.

M3 really is that good, it's wtfamazing.

Protoss cannon rush cheese is also super effective against people who suck at scouting.

I got the 5streak achievement in 1v1 last night, was a good time.

[newman]

Didn't want to come into this thread until I finished the Wings of Liberty campaign. Although overall I enjoyed the game, I have to say I agree with a lot of Battuta's sentiments about the writing. There were good moments but some of the humor, particularly the UNN broadcasts, was pretty infantile. The plot was very predictable and I dislike some of the choices they made, especially towards the end.

Spoiler:

I don't like the fact that the final scene is Raynor taking the rescued Kerrigan into the sunset. That prophecy mentioned earlier hinted that the Xel'Naga or some whatchyacallit ancient evil is returning to wipe out all civilization and, since commander Shepard isn't native to this universe and neither is Chuck Norris, The Queen of Blades - infested Kerrigan - would somehow be the key to stopping it all.
So hearing that I was hoping to get more interesting plot twists near the end, for instance what if Kerrigan needed to stay infested to play her part in saving the galaxy? She'd still remain evil, twisted, and cause millions of deaths but some action on her part would prevent all civilization from being destroyed in the future. Raynor could then be faced with a choice of de-infesting her to get her back and thus preventing the Zerg from killing a lot of people on short term, but on long term this would condemn all civilized life?
I'd also have preferred to see her scheming a lot more. Use Raynor and Mengsk against each other for her own ends. Learning of her part in the prophecy and using that to guarantee her safety while pulling off otherwise too risky stunts. Things like that..  Also, Tychus being in league with Mengsk was way too obvious and just putting a bullet in his head at the end was much too simple an ending for this character.

[General Battuta]

+10'd

[newman]

One other thing I didn't like.

Spoiler:

I have to question blizzard's decision to make the final mission a "defend your base for an x amount of time" one. I find these boring, would have been nice to have ended it with a well designed offense mission. Not sure why Blizzard loves these defend the base missions so much but they pulled the same thing for Warcraft 3's last mission and I didn't much like it there, either.

[Ghostavo]

One other thing I didn't like.

Spoiler:

I have to question blizzard's decision to make the final mission a "defend your base for an x amount of time" one. I find these boring, would have been nice to have ended it with a well designed offense mission. Not sure why Blizzard loves these defend the base missions so much but they pulled the same thing for Warcraft 3's last mission and I didn't much like it there, either.

It's a taste thing.

Spoiler:

I on the other hand love "defend your base for x amount of time" missions  . The original only had IIRC a single one of these. This one has 3. If this trend continues by 2015 every Blizzard RTS will have only these types of mission.  

Oh and got placed on Gold division. Now I'm terrified to play. 

[General Battuta]

Gold isn't that bad, just remember to scout!

[Spoon]

"Didn't want to come into this thread until I finished the Wings of Liberty campaign." Same, but here I am. Finished the campaign today. First: What Ghostavo said. I like those kind of missions. Love em actually.
Second: What Battuta said.
I can't really say I put too much reading into the Starcraft story and its been a long long time since I played SC1 so I could only remember the major plot points but not the details. I agree with him though, the story and the way its presented just failed to draw me in. Half way through the campaign I started playing multi and had to remind myself to finish up the campaign first...

I absolutely loved the Odin though. Hell yeah glorious super mech

[NGTM-1R]

Meh, stuck before the second Char mission with problems that turns the 3D marines in the mainhall thingie (Including Tychus and General Warfield.) into hideous graphics glitched white and black balls. Which is sort of awesome, but crashes the mission.

[Mongoose]

It's kind of funny...I mentioned to my friend the reaction to his full-fledged enjoyment of the game, and how the primary complaints were about the dialogue and characters.  His response?  "Well yeah, the dialogue sucks...but who gives a **** about that? " It's obvious Battuta and others in here do, and I've seen the same complaints raised by Tycho of Penny-Arcade among others, but it's obvious from something like this that many people seem to be enjoying the **** out of the game just for the gameplay's sake.  It's kind of weird to be sitting on the sidelines of a game like this, since I sort of feel like I'd have my own strong opinions about it if I had ever played the original.

[General Battuta]

It's kind of funny...I mentioned to my friend the reaction to his full-fledged enjoyment of the game, and how the primary complaints were about the dialogue and characters.  His response?  "Well yeah, the dialogue sucks...but who gives a **** about that? " It's obvious Battuta and others in here do, and I've seen the same complaints raised by Tycho of Penny-Arcade among others, but it's obvious from something like this that many people seem to be enjoying the **** out of the game just for the gameplay's sake.  It's kind of weird to be sitting on the sidelines of a game like this, since I sort of feel like I'd have my own strong opinions about it if I had ever played the original.

It's not just the dialogue that's awful but the story. It feels like Starcraft 1 fanfiction. Almost literally.

[mxlm]

Well, the matchmaking is now doing a great job of pairing me with other bronzes. Only it's quite apparent to me that the system now thinks I'm worse than I am; I won the past, oh, six matches straight and none of them presented a significant challenge. One poor bastard...I scouted him, and he had nothing. No gateway, no assimilator, no nothing. This made me nervous; after all, he was favored. Oh ****, I'm being cannon rushed! No, no I'm not. Okay, then maybe he's fast expanding? No, no he's not. Okay, maybe he's building his gateways next to me? No, no he's not. So anyway, I build a mass of stalkers and zealots (a dozen each, maybe? Or two dozen stalkers, I dunno) and keep scouting him and...nothing. So I go attack. He had no units at all. He built maybe four photon cannons, and when I showed up at his expansion with my army he tried to rush another dozen, but, well, that didn't work. I felt guilty.

Oh, and I totally curb stomped a guy who is bronze in 1v1 but gold in 3v3 and has like 200 games. I built masses and masses of stalkers and some immortals. He tried--I emphasize tried--to build battlecruisers. Yeah, no, try again. My favorite part of that match was my observer watching him float a command center over to an expansion slot near me. I greeted its landing with my boys.

Promote me to silver already.

[Spoon]

Meh, stuck before the second Char mission with problems that turns the 3D marines in the mainhall thingie (Including Tychus and General Warfield.) into hideous graphics glitched white and black balls. Which is sort of awesome, but crashes the mission.

I've had a few graphical glitches myself. Skins of Helions becoming a wierd plastic red and this example of shiny (Which I personally kinda like tbh)

[Ghostavo]

Regarding the story, I feel it's more a question of scope.

Spoiler:

Regardless of the quality of their presentation, SC1's story was a saga of 3 species, or at least very influencial groups in them, as they, as a species, battled for freedom/control/salvation of the cosmos (you had the Tarsonis incident, the full evacuation of Mar Sara, the invasion of Aiur and the slaying of the Overmind among others, all extremely large operations), while SC2's story seems to be extremelly focused on Raynor and his merry men (you have him going around picking pieces of an artifact, mining a planet, basically doing more personal missions). The only mission remotely similar to SC1's ones is "In Utter Darkness", which basically represents the final stand of the entire Protoss race (and is basically awesome).

[NGTM-1R]

It's not just the dialogue that's awful but the story. It feels like Starcraft 1 fanfiction. Almost literally.

Bite your tounge. SC1 fanfiction could be and frequently was better than this.

It's not a scope problem, not really. It's an on-topic problem. 26 missions that took place on smaller maps (don't look at me like that dammit, the Antigua Prime map in SC1 was huge compared to the maps in SC2. Nevermind New Gettysburg or the like.) crafted rather poorly wasn't enough time and space to develop the three seperate storylines they gave you. Characters like Selendis (anybody else know that was you from the Protoss Brood War missions? Anyone?) and Matt's wife appear and disappear over the course of a single cutscene. (That you can do them out of order or pick and choose doesn't help.) SC1, after all, had its own fairly small-scope missions like the Amerigo or Jacobs Installation infiltrations. There are good missions, such as the second Odin mission, and working with Nova to bring down Tosh, but good in this case means "feels like an SC1 mission".  That should not have been how you described good for this game. At the minimum, good should have meant "feels like an SC1 mission but better".

[mxlm]

But...that's how they did feel. YMMV

ETA: 1v1, took out a silver and then a gold. I feel so manly.

The gold guy pretty well convinced me that my impulse to not use cybernetic cores as walls is a good one, as his was pretty much the first thing I blew up when I attacked him, which meant he was stuck hurling zealots at me. That match also illustrated the importance of scouting; my observer got into his base and revealed that he had three operational warp gates and four more warping in but not much of an army. So I attacked! And I won! Actually, it was a pretty protracted battle for his base and must have lasted a good five or ten minutes as my stalkers slowly fought their way through the buildings and endless waves of zealots. He conceded when he was down to two gates and my three newly minted void rays arrived at his expansion (I actually had six rays. I totally missed it when the first three were built, so they spent the whole game at the rally point doing nothing. Oops).

[Droid803]

We should share character IDs so we can add each other as character friends!
Maybe we could get some practice games or team games together
Add me @ Droid.488~ (not that I can see you if you add me unless you give me your code too!)