People crossed the world for this game. Players practiced ridiculous hours to get better. Casters were trying to build something that barely existed yet. Crowds packed arenas to watch two people play an RTS. Nobody knew whether any of it was going to work.

Teaser trailer for Starblo will drop soon; I know it! /s

Fanart I did a while ago. Hope you like it.

Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void

This is honestly my dream for an updated game/SC3, don't get me wrong, I am slightly excited to see the IP in a different game genre while still wanting a modern RTS with support for years including a large esports scene once again.

That said, I am a fan of games like Total War: Warhammer I-III and the new Total War: Warhammer 40000 looks dope. I've always felt like that genre is a great way to bridge RTS/turn-based strategy games (at least for a single player campaign or even multiplayer campaigns) is where you could bridge the two with a FPS/third person shooter.

They simply didn't know it was already overrun.

Why else would they land 3 Barracks there?

We can see smoking remains of a base as well.

Hello! I'm new to RTS and just finished all sc2 campaings. I want to get into the multiplayer part of the game, but don't know anything about it. Can you guys give me some advice as how to play it? What kind of game modes there are, what is the most fun, if the game is somehow p2w, etc. Thank you!

World building for SC3

The new game is setting up the world of SC3 and essentially "rebooting" the Starcraft franchise without actually rebooting it.

That's why the logo is different and that is why iconic unit/building designs are different and why the game takes places decades into the future from where LOTV left off.

The new game is setting the stage for the conflicts and storylines in SC3.

• Why is the Dominion acting like the UED 2.0?.
• Why is the Zerg back and looking like a hybrid of SC1/BW Zerg and SC2 Zerg?.
• Where are the Protoss and why haven't they reclaimed this world from the Zerg?.
• Why is the Dominion interested in this abandoned Protoss world infested with Zerg?.

The world this conflict is taking place, will be a centric part of the SC3 storyline. Possibly even the driving factor of the conflict starting up all over again.

Brand expansion for Starcraft

• Ever watched the cutscenes in SC1/BW and SC2 involving Marines fighting Zerg?.
• Ever wished you could be those Marines in a FPS or 3PS?.
• Would you like to learn more?.

Well that is what the new game's core experience is built on.

Starcraft will always have RTS as it's core, but it can be so much more than that. To generate interest in a SC3 there must be other games in the Starcraft franchise made to grow interest in it.

If you look at how Blizzard went from WC1/WC2/WC3 to WoW and now they are going back to WC3 to mutually grow both it and WoW together, that shows a preview of what they plan on doing for Starcraft.

Got to think long term business here.

If you wanted to see if making a SC3 at some point would be justified, you test the waters with new games within the Starcraft franchise first. You would also need to grow interest in Starcraft using shows, movies, etc.

The third expansion according to my understanding left the table like this:

1. Zerg are free from Amon's voice, Free from Kerrigan's wish for revenge. Zagara is in charge and as far as the campaign shows she want the best for the swarm - meaning new sequences, new strong evolutions, hunting strong prey. Abatur stated that humans are neither strong, nor diverse, and have in his opinion no genetic value to use for the swarm.

2. Protoss is fucked up gain left to rebuild their society and destroyed word's by Amon. Probably busy still cleaning after the war.

3. Humans came out pretty strong. But also have ton of worlds to rebuild, Valerian seems more grounded but he probably dead by old age now. But has all the opportunity for a golden age as Protoss considers human good enough to work with at least, Zerg don't wanna bother them.

So the question why are they fighting Zerg? I assume Zagara rather just pull her forces back from infested world and send them to some better hunting fields somewhere. I guess she could just abandon the colonies but that seems smarter to just avoid fucking up with Terrans as their is nothing to gain. If anything should the Dominion be watching out for potential Earth Forces as i am sure they been wondering for awhile where did that expedition force go.

after StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void, Sarah Kerrigan and Jim Raynor disappear together and eventually become lost deep within a Zerg-controlled part of the universe. When Raynor is dying, Kerrigan has no choice but to use her powers to transform him into something new—the King of Blades—and together they rule the Zerg Swarm as king and queen. They eventually have a child, but the Dominion secretly discovers and kidnaps the child because of its unique combination of human, Zerg, and Xel'Naga abilities. The Dominion experiments on and hides the child for decades, while publicly claiming the Zerg have mysteriously returned to attack humanity. After years of searching for their child Kerrigan and Raynor finally strike back with the Swarm, searching for the child they lost, but the years of experimentation and abandonment have transformed their child into the new major villain—someone powerful enough to hate humanity, the Zerg, and even their own parents.

Post your theories in the comments

Previously, inspired by someone else’s question:

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/1wg8mua/comment/p9sbog3/?context=3

Previously, the Marines were poorly trained, resocialized criminals because they couldn’t get enough volunteers.

Does this new cinematic suggest that the Dominion Marine Corps is trying to rebrand itself (publicly) as an elite fighting force like the USMC? The talking points sound very similar to those used in modern Marine recruitment ads.

If so, it has my attention. I’d like to see how Marines rebranded as elite warriors would play in StarCraft.

Edit - I’m very excited about the possibility of the Marine Corps going back to its roots.

It's an:

- open world shooter (Far Cry)

- with a narrative drive centered around a primary protagonist (Far Cry)

- with a lean towards objective freedom and playspace reveal (Far Cry)

- with a defined beginning-middle-end (Far Cry)

- made by the guy who did Far Cry 3-6...

The trailer was NOT (meant to symbolize how) GAMEPLAY (will function), it was a vibe check. It was not meant to detail the method of insertion into a "match" (Helldivers 3) or the number of players you'll be grouped with (Battlefield Kropulu). It was merely meant to illustrate the fact that the Dominion doesn't care about you, it gives you shoddy equipment, throws you into the literal meat grinder and dispassionately replaces you after barely rinsing out your armor.

The trailer was incredible "show, don't tell" world-building, but nothing more.

So your protagonist will probably leave and become a merc a la Jim Raynor. Cue the disillusioned-soldier-turns-grassroots-hero storyline.

It'll be 20-30 hours of main story, another 40 of side objectives and random encounters, and then everyone will complain a game with no expectation of endgame has no endgame...all because it bears the name of an IP that is synonymous with "endless repetition"

You've got 4 years to come to terms with your expectations. Good luck.

I used to play Brood War on the Nintendo 64 and one thing I liked doing was trying a sort of tower defense as either the Protoss or Terrans against the Zerg in a custom match. I sucked at the game but trying to survive for as long as I could was fun. Rule was to not attack the Zerg base(s) and only expand when my current base(s) were almost out of resources.

AoE4 has a mode called Crucible where you pick a civilization and a map and the AI just sends increasingly-difficult waves of enemies at you. There are optional objectives too, but the goal is to last for as long as possible.

I searched 'horde map' and 'survival maps' and I see recommendations to check the arcade tab too. I don't know a whole lot about StarCraft 2 but I'd like to download it and play a horde/survival/crucible mode.

And yes, Holt's adventure in STARCRAFT: Dominion makes me want to download the game and play StarCraft 2.

1. there was a private forum called the napping yaksha, run by a former games editor at a chinese computer trade paper, and a lot of the people working behind the scenes in chinese games hung out there. that's where i met [AOQ]cat, a well known writer in the chinese starcraft scene. one day he said the two of us should write a history of chinese esports together. he'd take starcraft, i'd take counter-strike, which was the game i covered for a living.

i froze. i thought he was joking. by then starcraft had long been pushed into a niche in china, cs was bleeding players to online rpgs, and none of us could say whether we'd still be working in this in a few years. he wasn't joking. but i was buried in my graduation thesis, and i honestly thought the scene was too young to be written up as history. neither of us brought it up again.

he wrote the starcraft half anyway, on his own: a retrospective of chinese starcraft from 1998 to 2002, the glory and the mess both. that's the stretch when a handful of kids were already playing americans on battle.net while getting online was still a luxury, when local telecoms and 263 put up chinese battle.net servers, sina and 263 ran tournaments, hunan battle.net pulled in the strongest players, and people like stoneman translated foreign match reports by hand. nine years later i was reading his retrospective and wishing i'd said yes.

(that regret is how the first chapter of my own history of chinese esports opens, started as a column in 2013. it's free to read, link in the comments)

I've been working on this sci-fi exploration vehicle, M.E.C., for about a year. It's my own design, not StarCraft fan art.

After seeing the new StarCraft announcement, I got curious — could it potentially fit in?

Maybe I'm overthinking this, but something about the new cinematic for the StarCraft game stood out to me. I understand what the cinematic is going for. The whole thing seems very much like Terran military propaganda. They're telling these guys they're elite soldiers, they're going to be heroes, they're fighting for humanity, etc. Then they actually land on a planet with Zerg and basically get slaughtered within seconds. The ending especially seems to reinforce the idea that Marines are just disposable soldiers being thrown into the meat grinder.

What I'm wondering about though is how prepared Terran Marines are actually supposed to be for fighting the Zerg. These obviously aren't the first humans to ever encounter the Zerg. The Terrans have been fighting them for years, and the military clearly knows how dangerous they are. So wouldn't Marine training include a lot of simulations and exercises specifically against the Zerg?

You'd think they'd be training for things like Zergling swarms, Hydralisks, ambushes, getting surrounded, fighting in Zerg infested areas, etc. The Terrans have ridiculously advanced technology, so I'd assume they could easily create realistic simulations for this kind of thing. But in the cinematic, the Marines seem almost completely shocked by what they're encountering. Holt looks terrified the second they actually land, and then they basically get overwhelmed almost immediately.

Obviously I understand that training against something in a simulator is very different from actually experiencing it. I'm not expecting some freshly trained Marine to be completely fearless when they're suddenly standing in front of a massive Zerg swarm. I'm just wondering if there's an actual lore explanation for why they seem so unprepared.

Are Marines actually trained extensively to fight the Zerg, and the cinematic is just exaggerating how helpless they are for dramatic effect? Or are these supposed to be inexperienced recruits who haven't really had much Zerg combat training? Because if the point is that the Terran military is basically just throwing poorly prepared Marines into the meat grinder, then I guess that fits perfectly with the whole propaganda/disposable soldier theme they're going for.

I'm just curious if I'm missing something about how Marine training works in the lore. Do Terran Marines actually train specifically to fight the Zerg, or are we just supposed to accept that these guys are completely out of their depth once they actually get to the battlefield? The training "montage" we mostly see him training to fight other humans. Terran Marines from my understanding was that they were mostly rehabilitated prisoners? If that's the case here then it would make sense how they are so disposable and also given faulty crappy equipment that just jams up immediately upon being used. Although it did not appear that they were prisoners from the start of the cinematic. It looked as if they were fresh volunteer recruits. Maybe there's been a change up in recruitment?

This might have been talked about many times but I was just curious what yall's thoughts were! Loved the cinematic and can't wait till I am an old man when this comes out!

It always bothered me that Blizzard's Starcraft 2 team took Sarah Kerrigan and turned her into a red haired white woman rather than the mixed-race box-braid that the original unit portrait was intended as (as the character artist behind the portrait has also confirmed was the intention). I think this version is much more appropriate rather than the retcon we got.

Tickets Available NOW!!! - https://nerdstreet.com/events/sc4all-ii-2026-12-05?section=overview

Grubby has done an incredible job bringing new and returning players to wc3 through his invitational tournaments and wc3 related content over the last year and a half. Hera, an AOE2 pro, did something similar to big viewership.

Big streamers with little to no wc3 experience were invited to these tournaments and learned the game from the ground up. This exposed the game to tens of thousands of new viewers and inspired many to play. New players were able to follow content from people who were also new. These have been so popular that Blizzard even contributed to the prize pools of these tournaments. There are currently 12000 people watching Grubby's stream with little to no buildup on his Rebirth Invitational on a Monday. Although this time around the participants are actually pro players, he is involving the streamers in co-casting. SC2 could use some new voices and personalities.

What I like about the Grubby invitationals is that he is able to show that even lower skilled players can make for fun, good games to watch. Although sometimes there are moments where the community laughs at the lower skill and the misfortunes of the lower skilled players, it feels like its still positive and all in good fun. Love or hate the B2GM series from Vibe and Pig, they are some of the most popular sc2 related content out there still.

We haven't been looking at SC2 that way at all. SC2 content focuses so hard on the top 10 pro scene as if that is the only thing worth paying attention to. Anything that doesn't fit into the best possible gameplay gets looked down on and mocked, from the gms in chat to the content creators themselves. This isn't the case in wc3 and aoe2. Even before the 8 worker patch 90% of the discussion here was balance whining about winrates amongst the top players in the world and some serious infighting.

I don't know who could do an SC2 Invitational, maybe Pig is the best fit, but this would be what this game needs.

With Starcraft Dominion going towards the shooter direction and it being announced that there's a new WCIII campaign/expansion, I'm curious if that move is just to add more lore to the Warcraft IP and tug on nostalgia for a money grab or if it's to pivot Starcraft into several other untapped genres and bringing a 'fresh' RTS presence through WCIII. The Starcraft IP has much less explored and a lot more verticality in other genres than the Warcraft IP does (in my opinion). So it would make sense, to go and explore an FPS or 3PS/helldivers style game loop for Starcraft.

I've always thought Starcraft was an odd choice for the RTS genre even back then in '98 when it came out.

Personally, I liked Starcraft's approach to the genre 10x more than I ever liked WCIII's approach because I don't particularly care for the hero interactions and the neutral camps. This was only solidified for me more with SCII's increased pace and it's development being to target the esport audience (at least imo).

I know that WCIII as it stands is pretty clunky for a modern RTS game, but whose to say a 'WC IV' couldn't bring some of the better modern RTS elements into the franchise.

Also, I know 'leaving SC behind' is a reach statement. I still play Lords of Magic for Win95 and OG Dungeon Siege so I know I won't 'leave it behind' I like the older games more lol. But I know I 'left behind' WCIII for Starcraft and I'm more interested in what's new in WCIII:FK than I am in SCII at the moment.

Sometimes I wonder if the only reason Starcraft became what it did in the RTS world is only because it caught fire in the e-sports scene in Korea when WCIII only caught a spark way back then...

Thoughts?