ATOMCROMS

Bllizzard está a punto de cerrar sus puertas hasta el próximo año y, desde los foros de Battle.net, Karune nos desea felices fiestas a todos, además de avisar que en el 2008 habrá anuncios importantes.

A principios del próximo año van a presentar el primer capítulo del BlizzCast, un podcast que en su primera entrega contendrá:

Entrevista con Sam Didier (Director artístico de SCII)
Entrevista con Jeff Kaplan (Diseñador jefe de WoW)
Sweepstakes/Giveaway: Lots of SWAG

También se va a celebrar el StarCraft Fansite Tournament, una competición de StarCraft entre fansites patrocinada por Blizzard.

Otra de las novedades anunciadas es la creción de una una nueva sección en los Q&A.

Mientrastanto, a falta de un Q&A oficial Karune contesta a dos preguntas hechas desde blizzplanet.com:

1) Can the Nomad's auto-turrets attack air units?
No, the auto-turrets
currently only attack ground. Nonetheless, with their rapid fire rate, they are
excellent for worker raids and supporting an engaging battle.

2) Will the Nomad build other mechanisms besides the auto-turrets?
Yes,
the Nomad will be able to build multiple stationary defenses. We are currently
testing a few of these, to see which will fit the best for the Nomad.

Anteriormente a la felicitación de Karune, Cavez había intervenido en los foros para hablar sobre el recientemente presentado Nomad:

Yeah, we're still working on the specifics on this guy. For those of you who
made it to BlizzCon you saw some of the ideas that are in the works but things
have changed a bit since then.

The Science Vessel abilities are great
but we are trying to provide new strategies as well. We'll have to see what
happens with the specifics on the Nomad as we continue to test. The Nomad is
starting to feel pretty different from the Sci-Vessel since his abilities are
based around constructing things and those things can be destroyed.

EMP
is in the current build of the game. Irradiate is not, nor is the old style
D-Matrix.

Y también habló sobre la cobra, una unidad que ha desaparecido del juego, y el Thor, que de momento se queda:

The Cobra is out, the Thor is in, but it's not a "replacement" in the ways you
guys are thinking of it since the Cobra and the Thor do such very different
things.

We are just testing this idea for the Thor. In general I prefer
to shield you guys from whacky ideas like this because I know that some of our
ideas will be bad, and then you guys will get very grumpy with us for pitching
you bad ideas. =(

But here's what I can tell you about the Thor in the
current build:
- He is big, but the art is smaller than what we showed in
the last demo, so he takes up less space and he can path a little better.
-
He turns fairly quickly. Turn speed is not a balance factor.
- He has a lot
of health (400 right now).
- He's not super expensive (250/200 right now).
- He has a good bonus vs. armored units on the ground and he tends to waste
a lot of damage on small units.
- His AA missiles are effective but not
crushing. You can over-whelm him with enough air. His pathing size does limit
his mobility when trying to chase fast moving air units.
- His shoulder guns
are not currently in opperation. If we keep the current design the art will
change.
- He does great against Stalkers, and several secret Terran and Zerg
units. He also does well against most (but not all) air units.
- He is
balanced so that if you kill him and then leave him disabled while he burns down
you will do pretty well. If you fight both the Thor and the Disabled Thor then
things tend to go pretty well for the Thor (for cost).
- The current Thor is
countered by range, mobility or certain powerful anti-armor units.

Right
now he's kind of fun. I don't know if he's fun enough for StarCraft 2 or not.
That will take a few more weeks at least.

Enlace: Happy Holidays from Blizzard!, Nomad question, Keeping the thor as THE THOR!, StarCraft Fansite Tournament