I have been watching a few of my friends play a lot of multiplayer games, and have made the realisation.

* Rushing is the only possible strategy

* There are a variety of different units which, if you make nothing but them and a very low scale economy, you can rush

* These rush strategies each have a different counter

* Unless you are an idiot, the chance of your opponent determining what form of rush you are doing in time is statistically insignificant. If your opponent is Terran, it becomes significant, but still very low

* It is not possible to employ all of the rush counter strategies, unless you simply rush military production and use it for defence or counter attack

* A large percentage of the people that my friends have played against have bitched about having been rushed in the previous game, and then qq when my friends rush them.

This game seems vastly inferior to Starcraft 1 - the balance between rush and long term is fucked, and the small advantage that Terran had in SC1 has been expanded upon, now Terran are VERY OP.

The two main people I've been watching are someone who played obscene amount of Age of Empire 2, and DOTA and was tournament level good, and is now getting his arse handed to him as Protoss and not rushing. The other plays Terran and rushes, and has a very high win/loss ratio. He is an alright RTS player, but not great. The guy who has been playing Protoss is now playing Zerg vs A.I. to learn how to mount an effective rush with them.

I predict in about 2 months time, anyone who doesn't rush will either have given up on the game, or will have started rushing

Rushing is a part of the game. You need to scout and to understand when your oponent is going to rush. At the beggining you can send a probe to scout, then you can send an observer. I have problems with zerg roach rushes untill I learned to scout and prevent. So if you play toss vs zerg you need to have always 3 things in your mind:
1. lings rush - late gas, early pool, many lings - more zealots, put them in a place where lings can't outflank them.

2. roach rush - early gas, late pool, few lings, early  roach warren - go for quick Immortals

3. muta rush - quick Lair - check for spire if you see one do more anti air

You need not only to make counter units and to wait your opponent to come to you, but to attack him before he switched to other types. If you see that your opponent is making many roaches supported with a few ligs, go for a lot of stalkers with few immortals and attack him, before he put hydras around them.

WHOA, just stumbled on some possible patch notes,

http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/761331

# We're increasing roach range. This will allow roaches to be more effective in large groups, giving the zerg more options in the mid to end game.

#     Fungal Growth will now prevent Blink, which will give zerg a way to stop endlessly Blinking stalkers which can be very challenging to deal with in large numbers.

#     The Barracks are going to require a Supply Depot, which will impact a lot of early terran reaper pushes.

#     The reaper speed upgrade will require the Factory, which is meant to weaken a lot of the early terran reaper attacks that dominate so many matches, especially in team games.

#     We're making a number of increases to the health of zerg buildings, which will make the very vulnerable zerg technology structures more resistant to raids.  We don’t expect these hit point changes to have a super significant impact on the game, but the current numbers felt way too low.

These are big, the roach range will actually make them a strong, viable choice early game depending on how big of a difference it is. FG vs Stalkers was an issue, so it's nice to see that. The health, gooood, hope hatch/lair/hive gets a huge boost, marauder drops are crazy strong, 3 filled medivacs, and the hatch is down in like 5 seconds. It's more about spire sniping though.

But the other 2 are HUGE. Reapers are being nerfed into uselessness, just like Ultra. Well, at least, they won't be the harass unit they used to be, instead they might be like hydra, back-row dps. But needing a supply depot before you can build a rax? All Terran rushes are destroyed. I guess they realized that unscouted 2proxy rax marine rush was a little too strong. Scouted, no problem, but the window was tiny.

Man, if this is true (and it's an official post so it should be) 6rax and 8rax reaper rushes are gone. Also, I usually 10 depot 10 rax, so I won't be able to do that now, I'll have to wait for the depot to finish, meaning I'm down maybe 1 marine the entire game. Not really game-changing for normal Terran builds, but proxying is just destroyed with this patch. Heck, sometimes I 10 rax 10 depot 10 gas, 12 orbital, 13 rax. That's gone after this patch =P

WHOA, just stumbled on some possible patch notes,

http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/761331

# We're increasing roach range. This will allow roaches to be more effective in large groups, giving the zerg more options in the mid to end game.

#     Fungal Growth will now prevent Blink, which will give zerg a way to stop endlessly Blinking stalkers which can be very challenging to deal with in large numbers.

#     The Barracks are going to require a Supply Depot, which will impact a lot of early terran reaper pushes.

#     The reaper speed upgrade will require the Factory, which is meant to weaken a lot of the early terran reaper attacks that dominate so many matches, especially in team games.

#     We're making a number of increases to the health of zerg buildings, which will make the very vulnerable zerg technology structures more resistant to raids.  We don’t expect these hit point changes to have a super significant impact on the game, but the current numbers felt way too low.

These are big, the roach range will actually make them a strong, viable choice early game depending on how big of a difference it is. FG vs Stalkers was an issue, so it's nice to see that. The health, gooood, hope hatch/lair/hive gets a huge boost, marauder drops are crazy strong, 3 filled medivacs, and the hatch is down in like 5 seconds. It's more about spire sniping though.

But the other 2 are HUGE. Reapers are being nerfed into uselessness, just like Ultra. Well, at least, they won't be the harass unit they used to be, instead they might be like hydra, back-row dps. But needing a supply depot before you can build a rax? All Terran rushes are destroyed. I guess they realized that unscouted 2proxy rax marine rush was a little too strong. Scouted, no problem, but the window was tiny.

Man, if this is true (and it's an official post so it should be) 6rax and 8rax reaper rushes are gone. Also, I usually 10 depot 10 rax, so I won't be able to do that now, I'll have to wait for the depot to finish, meaning I'm down maybe 1 marine the entire game. Not really game-changing for normal Terran builds, but proxying is just destroyed with this patch. Heck, sometimes I 10 rax 10 depot 10 gas, 12 orbital, 13 rax. That's gone after this patch =P

I have no idea what you are talking about ...

Yesterday I played 4 2v2s (with a bronze lvl player, I'm a silver lvl player) and won 3 of them, although we were rushed in every single game. My partner was crushed in every game and I single handedly won 3 of them, because I go for economy builds and hence I am far far far stronger than rushing players in mid game.

It's good that rush plays are possible, but in no way they are too strong in SC2, they are just easier to execute for very low lvl players, because to build an economy you need quite a bit apm (mine is at ~50-55apm per game, which is still pretty low, but with 30-40apm there is pretty much no way to handle an econ build).