If I don't buy Heart of the Swarm, and I own Wings of Liberty, will I be able to play multiplayer-Heart of the Swarm?
According to the latest answers from Blizzard the answer is no. But your friends who have HotS would still be able to play games with you using WoL.
Obviously, you will not, otherwise there would be no point in buying HotS besides having the box ? regardless... my honest opinion... HotS looks f%^king terrible, the messed up the game by adding to many units with too many special abilities, its becoming a WoW RTS. fail but I'll give blizzard the benefit of the doubt as they only make good games.
@Chow, Have to disagree with you there, man. I was actually talking with Dustin about this briefly before one of the panels over the weekend: the natural resistance to a new adaptation or version of the game. There is always a resistance to something new, something that changes the status quo. The question here shouldn't be "are there too many new units and abilities?" but rather "are the abilities and units added too reactive to add to the design of the game?" And my answer there is "no." There are definitely some changes, including the Replicant, that are going to be balanced heavily, but they're still "good" additions to the game. There are clearly aspects of WoL that were missing in each race. More specifically in Zerg and Terran. And I think HotS is adding beneficial traits to those races to make the game more interesting and balanced. And on another note, there's no way StarCraft will ever have similar mechanics to WarCraft unless they add hero units. That's what broke that game
For sure, I agree me and a lot of people struggle with change, but small changes is what is needed, we don't want a completely different game. I find, this game has become more like Warcraft because, it requires less position, and more ability micro. The whole point of the game is strategy but with this new replicant unit is making Toss players lazy. For example: I go zealot sentry, Terran goes Marine tank Normally, I would have to out-position him to prevent him from pushing into my natural. Tech to robo and get immortals. Now all i have to do, is replicate Tanks, and boom i have countered his tanks, and he can no longer push. I am free to macro. They added more AOE to terrans, as if they didn't already have enough. Viper is a flying caster, which is super versatile which has a hook to pull any key units such as Colossi. Zergs used have to tech to corruptors, or out position the Protoss. Now Zergs can just A attack and cast on Colossi. Less strategy, Less micro.
But the balance team clearly isn't going to let that sort of thing happen. What you're pointing out are imbalances, not mechanic changes. I've been convinced from the progress of WoL that given time David Kim and Dustin can balance almost anything. Give it time and faith. I doubt either one of those things you just suggested will actually be possible upon release. And btw, if you had any idea just how easy it is to snipe the Viper you'd feel differently. You can't pull units across any sort of terrain or gap except open or down one cliff (i.e. you can't pull a colossus up and back down a blocking cliff). So what I think the dev team is attempting is to break up the Protoss "death ball" of Stalkers and Colossus and forcing you to buffer your Colossus which is, in effect, a slight buff to Zerg by forcing the Protoss to be more positional. And the TvP scenario... I mean at 200/200 (I think the cost needs to be upped and allow massive clones but you can't clone your own units) is just going to be too expensive to pull a stunt like that.
Actually MeisterX, im not talking about the imbalances, more the mechanics and strategy. It all has been simplified because of casters. I'm sure its balanced, just not well designed. What made me such a successful player despite my bad macro, is the fact I have good strategies and mechanics/micro. I know how to out position my opponent. Now its really head on A-attack and casting your moves, lame imo. How often do you have 200/200 battles in 1v1s? we are talking mid-game here bro. I'm really just afraid they are gonna turn this game like warcraft 3 with all the casting and such or like Command & Conquer where each "race" has their equivalent, no huge difference. I know at the beginning of HotS ideas, they wanted the viper to have Dark Swarm, the orange cloud from SC1. That would have been OP. We will see.
