Quite a powerful start to wildcard round! Now let's see what the wildcard worst quote has in store.

A little reminder on wildcard rules:

Wildcard posts don't have a predetermined character. They're intended for quotes of any characters who didn't make it to the original chart. Any protoss character goes, including game units, book and other extended media characters, as well as characters that only briefly appear in any of the cinematics.

Just make sure to not post any quotes from the characters in the original chart!

(as a note, since Fenix quotes ended up with only the OG Fenix lines, I'm totally okay if people suggest Talandar quotes for wildcard!)

Terran episode results

Zerg episode results

Tassadar's best, worst, most iconic

Zeratul's best, worst, most iconic

Artanis's best, worst, most iconic

Fenix's best, worst, most iconic

Aldaris's best, worst, most iconic

Vorazun's best, worst, most iconic

Rohana's best, worst, most iconic

Alarak's best, worst, most iconic

Wildcard best

Really questionable balance aside, if we can put that aside.

Dustin Browder, the lead designer of SC2, had a seminar that's lost media now. He did the seminar after WoL released where the name of every section was "Why X hate me." Where X was each department on his team.

For the "Why my animators hate me" section, he talked about storm. Because storm is iconic and made of the always cool lightning, the animators wanted to make the animation for storm flashy and chaotic.

According to Browder, he had a long drawn out fight with his animators over that specific animation. In the end, he was able to get them to produce an animation that looked amazing, but also visually let both players understand perfectly where the area effected by the spell started and stopped. Even though it's made of literaly jumping light.

The patches mod however, took the careful labor done by these world class professional animators and one of the greatest minds in RTS game design, and threw that away.

Not only does the storm animation on Patches mod not have a clear boundary for where it starts and ends, the mod also added an additional animation that reaches upwards to "make it clearer when the storm is hitting air units."

Problem is, that completely breaks the convention set by all other spells in the game. Air units have an indicator where for where their units are relative to the ground. Spells that touch the floor under where the air unit is, effect that air unit.

That's the way it works for all spells, no spells on live have any animations designed to bridge the gap between air and ground in this fashion. Making it the only spell that does is confusing for new players and worse, it gives new players the incorrect convention for how to tell if a spell hits air.

Frankly, while I appreciate the effort for a community mod, the modders do not have the world class game designing skill set that SC2 was built on and they are wholly too willing to replace that design with their own conceptions of what would make the game better.

https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/article/24294065/know-before-you-go-blizzcon-2026-programming-schedule-viewership-guide-floor-map-and-more

The gap in the mainstage schedule is notable but more interesting is the two panels scheduled for the Blizzard Classic Cup stage: the Custodians of Legacy Games, and the Classic Games Deep Dive.

It sounds there might actually be some updates announced for SC2, HoTS, WC3R, and/or SCR but more importantly it looks like like Classic Games(and possibly Diablo Legacy and Warcraft RTS) will be openly speaking with the public. The only thing we've had since Classic Games was reorganized was a brief greeting from Warcraft RTS lead Brad Chan at the Warcraft anniversary event almost two years ago.

Hopefully this will open up a little more transparency and put the "Intern" label to rest for now. Soon we'll find out if this earns a little more trust from the RTS communities or if this just puts more fuel on the fire.

BeastyQT made this point a long time ago when he was still playing SC2, while discussing balance patches. It's more important for the game to be fun than to be perfectly balanced.

It's fun to use new abilities, it's fun to try new things. That's why the Patches mod is so popular, or the SC EVO.

In a way the current patch was an attempt to make the game more fun, and that's a laudable goal. The idea of reinventing Protoss had been discussed for a long time. Of course people push back against any form of change.

What I'd like to see is them go even further and make even more changes.

Have players lost so much in the official sc2 patch that they’d just rather play on custom patches now?

Apparently on SOME sc2 comps there’s interesting attention on other custom patches like Patches' Versus Mod.

For context : this is the Patches Versus mod which is actively been built by the community
https://docs.google.com/document/d/12_La5_Bb6nX9CxIQlLX0leGjqC4pLkjlx3vNAx6Zrzc/mobilebasic

Q: Is this official that the new patch has 0 support or little support amongst current players? There’s even a 5k prize money comp on this custom mod.

Side note: what do you make of the patches versus mod with nerfs to snipe damage and widow mines. Buffs to the warp prisms etc. Nerfs to queens.

StarCraft noob here, starting to get into the game and its lore thanks to the tabletop game that came out this year. I'm a Tyranid fanboy so naturally I gravitated towards the Zerg as my favorite faction, skipping the Terran campaign altogether when I tried StarCraft 1 for the first time. Go ahead and boo me now, I know it was insane and I have no regrets lol.

Part of what fascinated me about the Zerg was that- unlike the Tyranids- they had characters with names, desires, personalities etc. When I first heard that iconic speech from The Overmind, I was stoked at the opportunity to roleplay as a cosmic horror. But as I continued to watch video essays, read the wiki, and dive headfirst into the lore of the universe, I couldn't help but feel like Zerg is the odd-one-out among the three factions, uniquely built up to be an antagonist you don't need to feel bad about when nuking them into oblivion.

Maybe I'm too much of a moralist, maybe I'm unfairly inserting my own head-canons and ideas into the story (if this is true I'd like to know), but I feel less than stoked to play as the swarm when Protoss has absolute chads like Tassadar, Artanis, and Zeratul, and Terran has the epic space opera that is Wings of Liberty and the ever-lovable Jimmy Raynor. Compared to them, Zerg just kinda feels... unreasonable to root for. The only moral stakes there are "I didn't get to consume the galaxy, oh no".

Take SC1.

In Episode 1 you play as the magistrate, a faceless avatar of the player that makes it very easy to immerse yourself into the world, being human. Here the actual protagonist is Jim, who is a down-to-earth rebel hero that fights for the little guy. Terrans in general have a lot of great depth, with both good and bad characters and everything in between.

In Episode 3, you play as Artanis. You assist Zeratul and Tassadar in uniting the Protoss, and working together with the humans to destroy The Overmind and save Aiur. All feels very textbook "heroes journey to save the world" in a good way.

But in Episode 2... a nameless cerebrate that helps protect and advance the will of two major antagonists. Unlike the magistrate who did so unwittingly, the cerebrate just kinda... kills people. And protects Kerrigan, who goes on to kill a lot of people. At least with the Tyranids, everyone in the 40K universe is an irredeemable monster so keeping track of your warcrimes is less of a concern and more of a flex.

There's been a lot of controversy and debate into Kerrigan herself, generally my understanding is that she doesn't feel like a well-written character unless she's the super-mega-evil Queen of Blades. Hmm.

It's hard to root for a faction who's characters consist of Cardis the Destroyer, Gilson the Evil, and Devours Children. This is less of a "are we the baddies" and more of a "hear me out, I know this sounds bad..."

Kerrigan's quest for revenge is morally grey at best. The Overmind's story is tragic behind the curtain- being a slave to his own purpose built by Amon- but doesn't change the fact that the Zerg are just chaotic evil under his influence. Abathur and Dehaka are the only two Zerg characters that feel compelling to me. Their entire understanding of good and evil is shaped by their biology... Abathur is the penultimate progressive, seeking further perfection and chasing new and creative ideas, although he by design struggles to understand how others could feel violated by his arts-and-crafts approach to genetic manipulation. And Dehaka is deliciously simplistic in his worldview, seeking individual self-improvement despite everything else. Shame Abathur gets enslaved by Zagara post SC2 and the primal zerg just kinda do nothing.

In conclusion, lore experts of StarCraft: is there an alternate perspective to the Zerg that paints them in a more empathetic, tragic, or morally complex light? Do you think we even should seek that perspective? Do you like the Zerg being an obstacle for the other races? And is it worth neglecting my college assignments to go play Wings of Liberty?

Curious to hear everyone's thoughts on the matter.

Tile?

Hey guys, yesterday I was on Gamescom and watched 2 games from the new tabletopgame from poland. It seems promising. I loved the details. But there are some missing units in each races. Sadly.

I find myself wanting to go back to that 2011-2014 period and starting to binge watch content from back then. Hard to see incontrol and total biscuit but it’s worth remembering them.

Anyone else like this? What do you miss the most? What is your fondest memory?

TIL there's a starcraft table top game. I guess I shouldn't have taken a few months off off from the scene? How many of you all got this?

How would you expect a unit to path given:

1. In fog of war, there's a wall blocking your path (unrevealed)
2. you click beyond the wall

Do you expect it to

1. go to the wall first then try to go around
2. just go around even if wall is unrevealed (what sc2 does)

we're developing a sc2 clone (same but different).

Are there pathing gripes you think are worth mentioning?

Painted up my first Zealot from the miniature game. Been wanting these minis for over a decade, and as an avid fan of tabletop games I’m extremely happy to see an actual StarCraft release of some kind. What’s it been, 10 years? Also I’m old now and my APM sucks so it’s nice to a play a turn based version.

Title. I hear some discourse on this sub about Protoss being the weakest class... What is driving this notion?

EDIT- I'm talking about Broodwar.

We're nearly done, people. Just one last bit before the Grand Finale. With predetermined characters out of the way, we're ready for Protoss Wildcard. Karax enjoyers, your hour is now!

A little reminder on wildcard rules:

Wildcard posts don't have a predetermined character. They're intended for quotes of any characters who didn't make it to the original chart. Any protoss character goes, including game units, book and other extended media characters, as well as characters that only briefly appear in any of the cinematics.

Just make sure to not post any quotes from the characters in the original chart!

(as a note, since Fenix quotes ended up with only the OG Fenix lines, I'm totally okay if people suggest Talandar quotes for wildcard!)

And most importantly, have fun!

Terran episode results

Zerg episode results

Tassadar's best, worst, most iconic

Zeratul's best, worst, most iconic

Artanis's best, worst, most iconic

Fenix's best, worst, most iconic

Aldaris's best, worst, most iconic

Vorazun's best, worst, most iconic

Rohana's best, worst, most iconic

Alarak's best, worst, most iconic

in 2001 ma tianyuan was 20 and one of exactly two salaried players on =A.G= in beijing, which was very likely the first fully professional esports team china had. 2000 yuan a month, seven people sharing a one-bedroom apartment, seventeen or eighteen hours a day on asiagame's battle.net server. that server ran licensed german FSGS tech and could hold over 2000 players online at once, which was a lot for china then. no ladder, no matchmaking. you found games by calling for opponents in a chat channel.

he beat everyone on that server and kept losing at actual events. people started calling him the uncrowned king. at the WCG china final that year the top three got sent to korea. he finished fourth. then the guy in third couldn't get his visa cleared, and ma tianyuan went instead.

nobody in the chinese delegation knew there was a starcraft 2v2 event until they landed. hong zhefu, who was leading the delegation, signed ma tianyuan up with a player called DEEP on the spot, mostly because they were on the same club and had queued together before. no practice as a pair. the final against germany went to 2-2 with about a thousand people in the room, and ma tianyuan says his memory just stops there. next thing he remembers is standing on the podium holding a flag. his share of the 6000 usd prize was 3000, around 25000 yuan, real money for a 20 year old in 2001. plenty of people who went into chinese esports afterwards will tell you that podium photo is the first thing they ever saw of it. the same year, the server he had trained on switched to 18 yuan a month, in a country where almost nobody had a convenient way to buy a prepaid card.

(from a book i wrote in 2015 about how chinese esports actually got built - this chapter is free, link in the comments)

I've been grinding for max achievements on my main account for ages, but i've still got 700 team game wins as protoss & random alone. If theres any Masters or GM's that are keen to hang and smash some of these games out with me it'd be much appreciated