Heart of the Swarm Preview!

Stirlitz · Sep 11, 2010

By "Ideas" on Team Liquid forums.

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Ideas United States. April 01 2010 09:35. Posts 5253 Profile Blog #
Hey so a buddy of mine has a brother who works for PCGamer, and just the other day his brother (whose name I will not mention so as to not get him in trouble) and some other PCGamer guys were able to go to Blizzard for an exclusive preview of StarCraft 2’s first expansion, Heart of the Swarm! The Preview won’t be in the magazine until the June Issue (press embargo), but luckily for us my friend’s brother sent him a rough draft of the preview early, and I was able to get a hold of it (I hope he doesn't get mad, LOL). For a split second I thought about not posting this online, but I couldn’t do that to everyone. Sadly it's just the rough draft of the article so no pictures, but it's still really awesome. Here ya go!

Some might think that it’s a little early for Blizzard to already be hard at work on StarCraft 2’s first expansion pack Heart of Swarm (lovingly referred to as HotS by the developers), but Dustin Browder, lead designer of StarCraft 2 and its expansion, ensures us otherwise. “Many developers begin work on the expansion packs for their game before it (the original) is released. Right now we are at a point with Wings of Liberty where we are deep in the beta and the single player is all but complete. The beta is primarily just adjusting small things such as unit stats and build times at this point. Almost all of our primary designers are now hard at work on Heart of the Swarm.”

Although Blizzard is being quite hush about the single player campaign, they do promise that it will be vastly different from the previous game’s campaign, although they cannot go into details so as to not spoil Wings of Liberty’s campaign. Blizzard was however, very excited to show us a few of the new units that will be in the expansion. “As we promised before, each of the two new expansions will be adding new units to the multiplayer game, and we feel HotS will deliver in this respect in every way possible. The new units in HotS completely change the dynamics of the multiplayer and it is very exciting” Browder told us.

“The very first new unit we wanted to add was the Lurker for the Zerg. This unit was in Brood War and was a very interesting unit, and although it was originally in Wings of Liberty, we just couldn’t get it to work right so we took it out.” Luckily with the WoL beta going on, Blizzard was able to see holes in the Zerg’s arsenal and was able to place the Lurker properly in the tech tree. “It’s really exciting to see new strategies involving the lurker. It’s very dynamic and adds a whole new layer of tactics to the Zerg” Browder informed us. The Lurker morphs from a Hydralisk, and must be burrowed and stand still before it can attack. It currently is in the same spot in the tech tree as it was in Brood War, with it being a lair upgrade in the Hydralisk Den. “We’re still not sure if we like it there because none of our testers are using it very often, so we might try moving it around more, but the Lurker is a very exciting unit that we can’t wait to get into the hands of the users.”

Another new unit for the Zerg is a strong air-to-air attack unit called the Devour. It has a strong attack with a low attack speed, but what makes this unit so unique is how it’s attack has a trait called “acid spores” which stick to a unit for a while when hit with a devour attack. When a unit is covered with acid spores, it takes a certain amount more damage from each attack it takes thereafter, which we saw as being incredibly deadly in air to air engagements. What’s even more interesting about the Devour is how you create one. Once a Zerg player has a greater spire, you can morph a Corruptor into a Brood Lord, which can then be upgraded into a Devour. “We feel that the Devour finally gives Zerg a reliable late game Air-to-air weapon as the Corruptor just wasn’t cutting it.”

But the Zerg aren’t the only race getting new units in HotS. The Terran now have a new infantry Support unit in the Medic. It can heal any biological unit the Terran player has (such as Marines and Ghosts) but has no attack of its own. “Personally the medic is my favorite new unit in HotS. It allows early game infantry pushes to be so much stronger and allows Terran players to be much more aggressive with their infantry in the early game.” Browder says that Blizzard was tired of seeing Terran players in the Wings of Liberty Beta have to stay in their base until strong, high-tech support units such as the Medivac were reached before they chose to be aggressive. The other new Terran unit Blizzard is still being quiet on, but they did hint that it would be an air-to-air combat fighter with a large AoE attack “and it will be a perfect complement t o your Banshee army” Browder told us with a smile on his face.

Finally the Protoss have received a brand new spellcaster in the Dark Archon. You can create a Dark Archon on the battlefield by morphing two Dark Templars together, similar to how you can create an Archon by morphing two High Templars together (we were informed that this is now how it works compared to WoL where 2 of any Templar created an Archon). The Dark Archon has no attack but has several strong spells, including Maelstrom (which freezes biological units in the area and leaves them open for attack), and Mind Control, which permanently turns a targeted enemy until into your own unit. Browder tells us the reasoning behind the Dark Archon: “We felt that the Protoss were really lacking another Spellcaster, and so the Dark Archon is just what we think will fit the bill. Infestors seem to be really strong vs. Protoss right now who have no strong counter to it, and well let’s just say that in HotS there is nothing more satisfying than Mind Controlling an Infestor and then using your new Infestor to Neural Parasite an enemy unit.” Another interesting tactic we heard of was using Maelstrom on a large Zerg army clump and then using a Mind Controlled Infestor to cast Fungal Growth on the army as it is immobilized.

A big change for the Protoss is the way that Motherships function now. In HotS, a Protoss player can now make multiple Motherships instead of just one. “What we found through the Wings of Liberty beta was that since the Mothership was so slow it was not being used offensively at all, even though it had very strong offensive spells” Browder told us. To fix this, after many hours of in-house testing Blizzard increased the speed of the Mothership, reduced its size and health, and slightly nerfed its two spells. “The Mothership is a great support unit now, and really fills the hole in the Protoss armada.” One strategy we saw used that looks very devastating is flying a Mothership into an enemies base when his army is somewhere else and using the “Recall” spell to teleport a portion of your army into his base and do tons of damage it.

When asked if the Corsair (a strong Protoss air-to-air attack ship in Brood War) will ever make a return to the Protoss Army, Browder told us that they could not find a place for it to fit in HotS, but they there is always the second expansion (Legacy of the Void) for such a unit. “We’ll see what how players use these new units first before adding any more in, but we are always looking for ways to bring back old favorites” he told us.
Needless to say, we here at PCGamer are extremely excited about Heart of the Swarm, and we cannot wait to play it. Heart of the Swarm is still far away from a release date, with Blizzard aiming for a December 2010 release date with a small beta starting in November 2010, but as always Blizzard has informed us that “it’s done when it’s done” and they will not release the game prematurely. Browder left us on a high note about the game, “One thing is for sure, when HotS comes out it will make Wings of Liberty completely obsolete.”
Click to expand...

I quite enjoyed it

Hodl pu · Sep 11, 2010

Nice nice, I love the date when the original post was posted
LOL

Kaaraa · Sep 11, 2010

Was expecting another Rickroll. I am disappoint.

Mako · Sep 11, 2010

The entire thing screamed fake to me without even looking at the date.

Stirlitz · Sep 11, 2010

It actually is an official blizzard post
The units described are the units implemented on the original SC when brood war was launched but were cutt off sc2. Blizz do get to do such silly jokes on april's fool's

Nova1021 · Sep 11, 2010

Oh phew. I didn't notice the date and was thinking "really? this is exciting?" I mean, sure it would be cool to see the brood war units in SC2 outside the campaign, but I really hope they come up with some original ones too.

Shellshock · Sep 13, 2010

This units are like the brood war,lurkers,dark archons,devorer...so the new expansion is the older expansion for the starcraft 1.Same units with new graphics.

ArchAngely · Sep 13, 2010

Funny. But the mind control should NEVER EVER be brought back in SC. It was the greatest mistake they ever made. It's nearly imposible to balance the game with such a skill. Only posibility is making the drones/scvs unable to build after they get converted or imune to the skill.
April fools FTW

Stirlitz · Sep 13, 2010

Oh well, if you managed to steal a worker and tech with him in a regular map(no big-game-hunter-style cash maps) you'd gimp your economy so much you'd either lose big time or the opponent would suck so much you'd have won easily anyway

But yeah, the skill was imba, especially doing stuff like MCing the only detector and attack with DTs or MC an arbiter, stasis on the army below it and recall your own army on them, or other funny stuff.

Though yeah, now I think of it, you could MC a worker going for an expo and turn it into a fortified expo of the enemy race for yourself. with good defence some combos you could work would be deadly. AW! Forgot about the unshared supply cap! You could have a 400/200 army that way, no?

ArchAngely · Sep 14, 2010

even 600/200 (capture a scv and a drone). incredibly imba

Stirlitz · Sep 14, 2010

I started recently playing SC:BW again with a friend. We're ALWAYS playing big game hunters doing lenghty games focused on huge battles(You know, watching an army of 20 battlecruisers +30 marines march is freaking awsome!). Since we don't harass at all and generally slack a lot, I'm thinking of rushing him with a dark archon drop, steal a worker and recall him instantly to an unoccupied expo and then lead an assault of carriers cruisers and valkyries on him... Hmmm... I'll work on that

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