In order to give you a closer look at the fast-paced, intense, and exciting-to-watch multiplayer matches of StarCraft II, we’re creating a series of videos for the official website. In the first of our StarCraft II Battle Reports, you'll see two of Blizzard Entertainment's best players go head-to-head as the protoss and terrans while our commentators, StarCraft II lead designer Dustin Browder and eSports team member Robert Simpson, dissect and analyze the on-screen action for you.

Check out Battle Report 1 now!

http://www.starcraft2.com/features/battlereports/1.xml

Enjoy! ;)

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Q u o t e:
This was a great content update, thank you.

But just throwing this out there, I really dislike over-game comments unless they are well-written. I can barely stand it in football where the whole thing is fairly well rehearsed and the commentators are professionals. When it's just a couple of guys (haha sorry Dustin) giving play-by-play, or worse, 'teaching,' its off-putting, and kind of makes me want to turn the sound off.

Less is more, and make sure that the commentary is offering insight, not just information.

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No worries dude, I'm a game designer, not a game commentator. There are lots of professional commentators all over the world, but I am one of the few people in the world right now that knows the game really well. I'm afraid you're stuck with me until we go Beta. Then the professionals can take over and I can just watch.=)

I saw some concerns that this game wasn't "real." It is in fact a real game. We looked through a big list of games (two dozen or so) that had already been played (real games with 2 players trying to kill each other) and we picked the best ones. We showed some of these at Blizzcon and now we have this one up for everyone to see. By the very nature of how we capture the video for the game we had to watch it several times before we did the audio so it wasn't my first time seeing it (which is why sometimes I get ahead of myself), but it was a live game with real players when it was being played.

Yes, Zealot charge really did finish training at that crucial moment. =)

I don't know when the next one is coming. We have some things I want to get in and make look somewhat presentable before we fire up the next one, but I hope it's soon.

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Q u o t e:


The vast majority of those "95%" do not play online at all. So this feature caters specifically to those casual players who DO play online, and there aren't that much more of them than competitive players. So, please, stop manipulating the facts (and making up statistics). ;]


Dustin, could you explain why the level of play of the Protoss player was so low (even in comparison to the Terran) if you supposedly "picked the best ones"?

/rant

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I certainly hope we see a very large community of players, casual and otherwise. Our game is (I think) loads of fun to play online. I hope that some of that 95% you site will play online and that these types of features will encourage them to give it a try. So we make the video for the "I don't play online" folks as well as you guys.

Our criteria for picking which game to show is not based on micro or macro. Instead it is based on:
1) Game length (about 20 minutes max).
2) A good spread of units are shown.
3) Good tension between the players, the game has some back-and-forth.

Also remember that the game changes in balance or design about once a week. This means it's VERY easy to forget to do something in the middle of a heated game. So our games are just not going to be as fierce as current Broodwar games until sometime during (or even after) Beta when everything settles down a bit.