Machina is in the UK, I think. One or two others are around I think. I'll start adding people in a second. Gnizmo.gnomercy is my handle still.

Sweet, I'll add some of you guys when I play a bit later this evening. Mine is Vagabond.houser from the US of A.

Son of a...just learned a very important thing about zerg. OVERLORDS DON'T HAVE DETECTION ANYMORE. I mean what the fuck? Learned that the hard way. Playing a game against a grade A turtler, a toss with five hundred cannon on top of his ramp and teched to collosi with thermal lance just to make sure nothing could walk up there. I was breaking him, took one of his massive turtle expos with a nydus worm and a bajillion hydras and roaches, and one expo without a choke with mass hydras. Then he DTs my main and my natural. I kept moving my overlord around thinking why the hell are they still invisible? WTF??? What zerg unit detects?? And then desperately trying to throw down something to detect with. I took out a fleet of carriers backed by a mothership and void rays, had him against the ropes and lost to four Dark temps.

Lesson, don't take past knowledge as a given in Starcraft 2. I would've won easily in time simply on my economy if I didn't just assume overlords still had detection.

Yep, I've got owned by not knowing that too, but in my case it was Banshee rush. Damn these overseers...

Well live and learn. That was only my second 1v1 with zerg, had been using toss prior to that. I was playing a mess anyway due to my ignorance of the tech tree, but the guy I was playing against wasn't very good, so I was still coming out on top. He was like an old BGH player except on a real map. I was kind of all over the place and panicking a bit because I knew zerg didn't have gaurdians anymore, so I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing to get through this massive turtle, and I'm not normally a zerg player to begin with. It was a mess of a game, but I would've won had I known about the detection thing. Gotten a couple of overseers or something. Oh well, live and learn. It was a fun and informative match anyway.

Speaking of BGH I hear the new patch allowing edited maps to be released soon, how long do you think it will be before the custom games tab is flooded with "BGH no rush 20 minutes!!!!!" games?

Okay some first impression about the beta:

I really like this game, the kept the Starcraft feel intact all the while changing so much stuff that I'm such a noob right now.

Been playing with the Terrans mostly and I really miss my Vultures. I feel helpless without them against the Protoss. The fact that you have two vespene geysers, really screws me up... I always forget about the second one and end up with not enough gas.

So far I've been loosing steadily but that's to be expected since I don't know much about other races right now and even on the Terran side I'm still testing things out.

I'm actually starting to get dissapointed by the game :( and I'm not alone.

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=122984

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=121769&currentpage=67

These things needs to be fixed for the release.

That micro thread is useless at this point. The micro is still there, people just don't use it. Just because things are a little easier to operate with, doesn't mean that there is no room for a real micro.

The only micro left is basic stuff like target firing and running units away and ability usage. It's not as APM intensive and it's not as exciting to perform or watch.

   That's what's bothering me. There will be no pro mathces where you go "WOW, how does he do that?" Adding moving shot to some air units and to the hellion would be infinately beneficial to the game. It's aleady been proven that it is possible with the editor. It would not make the game harder to play for beginners, but it would add a new layer of depth. It's a perfect suggestion.

I'm not too worried about it kungkras, this sort of thing in a mod heavy community has a way of self correcting. The engine allows for all of the minutia that some of the "l33t" players at liquidnet are complaining about right now. When the next patch comes out allowing for custom maps to be played, then the pros can screw around with deceleration, animation times, and all that jazz to their hearts content. If it turns out that all the pros play with a specific rule set that is different from the way that blizzard has balanced it now, then blizzard can patch it as such for ladder matches before the games release. Or they won't and the competitive community will still thrive on their pro-maps. Mod tools as extensive as these allow for the democratization of the games balance....or really a republic where the pros get to feel out what is balanced.

Either way, it's a non concern for me in this beta phase of the game. Things have been changing so much from week to week, who knows how the game will play by the time this beta ends at the end of this month, or how it will play upon release, or hell, how it will play six months after it's release.

The game is sound, the engine is sound, it's just a matter of tweaking the dials until it makes the pros happy in their gosuness and still lets it feel comfortable for all the coppers out there. It's a process.