One thing that's been gnawing at me throughout these discussions of strategy and unit capabilities is that SC2 doesn't seem like it will have the degree of very impressive abilities that WC3 did. Primarily, this is due to the fact that WC3 had those heroes in it, all of whom had special spells. The point of that game was to obtain new spells and higher levels of them to bring into battle. In SC2, the abilities are going to go in another dimension--cliff jumping cliff walking, etc. (although the Blink ability has carried over without so much as a name change). The blink ability is now being used as a mass unit ability, however, which in general is where most all of the spells are at. You won't have any single unit that has a very special ability like the heroes of WC3--even specialized spellcasters such as the Mothership will be available by the half dozen or more. So, my thought is that the Zerg, with their redesign, might have some spells that are more specialized and rare available to them. Story-wise, it would mesh well with the way the Zerg are: very alien and essentially biological fantasy monsters, whereas the Terrans are all about technology and the Protoss are a combination of technology and fantasy energy schtuff whose spells nonetheless are mostly technological rather than fantasy-style spells. Could the Zerg buildings become highly specialized spellcasters to form a large portion of Zerg base defense? What if the Zerg Hives could create some really spectacular-looking AOE spells, or modify the creep around them so as essentially to have "auras"? Will the Zerg possibly have some units of which you are only allowed one per game? Sorry, this post may seem a bit random...
The important difference to highlight in your mind is a separation of words between SC and WC. Starcraft = ABILITIES Warcraft = Spells Units in StarCraft are designed to have strengths and weaknesses that compliment their race's strength rather than as a singularly useful "spell" that could technically be transferred between races. For instance, probably not a good idea for a Terran player to use Dark Swarm, because they don't have a large number of melee attackers.
A good point. In Warcraft, most of the spells could in fact transfer nicely between the races, save for a few of the things that Orcs did to reinforce their massive melee capabilities (but, even Spirit Link would have transferred well). Hmm... spirit link for Protoss shields?
