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I’m Making the Leap: Starcraft 2

Quick, someone tell me what vespane is!

Fun Fact: disabling P2P in the SC2 downloader can increase your download speeds more than 4x!

And with that, I come to terms with the fact that I just spent $65 on an RTS. That’s a big leap from the previous $0 I’d ever spent on the genre beforehand. But, the internet has spoken, and I have listened: Starcraft 2 is the game to be playing at the moment and I would be remiss not to join the fun.

I’m not a total newb at Starcraft, just mostly. I played a bit during the beta and my brother-in-law was nice enough to send me one of his 7-hour guest passes. During my tinkerings, I’ve stuck exclusively to the multiplayer. That’s where the longevity is and what it seems most people spend their time doing. It’s the same approach I take to multiplayer shooters: trial by fire. The problem comes with the fact that Starcraft isn’t a shooter. Also, I’ve about as new to RTS’s as they come having played less than an hour of the whole genre. Until beta, anyways. Now I’m up to maybe five.

So, I lost a lot. And badly. But, like I said, trial by fire.

Except, I’ve come to the conclusion that plowing in with my head lowered might just be a stupid idea. Couple that with Ferrel’s enthusiasm for the single-player campaign in this week’s Multiverse (incoming early next week), and you have the seedling of an idea that refused to stop itching at my brain since late last night: I should be playing the campaign.

I have a bad habit when it comes to idea-seeds. While the responsible part of me says “that’s an awful lot of money on a game you may not even like,” the other part of me brays something about watching as many YouTube videos as I can to prove how truly awesome and cash-worthy the game actually is. Seeing game journalists squee over how cool the campaign plays out is an added bonus. I do this often and it makes saying no trickier than before that seedling got planted.

So, fast forward to today. I bought the game. It’s downloading, albeit abysmally slow at first. Seriously, on a 10Mb/s connection, it was saying 15 hours. On a whim, I shut off the P2P and the timers dropped to two hours. Anyhow, this time I don’t plan on touching multiplayer until I get a good grasp of everything the Terran forces and dish out.

Not only that, I’m pretty excited to finally see how Blizzard does single-player. I played a tiny amount of Diablo, but it’s safe to say I’m pretty much a Blizzard virgin for this kind of thing. I’m very interested to see how Blizzard puts their expert polish on a whole different kind of game than what I’m used to.

Anyways, I should be in and playing tonight. I’d love to hear your thoughts on tips, tricks, etc. for getting into the game. I’ll admit, after seeing videos talking about Actions Per Minutes and showing jacked up Korean kids control the Zerg like it was their own personal zit army, I’m feeling exceptionally wet behind the ears.

Any info for the Starcraft bumpkin or thoughts on the campaign experience? Please share because I’m eager to hear.

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