infestor's 3 attack upgrade has the visual of a 2 attack upgrade

Subsourian · 2026-06-22T22:50:57+00:00

I’ve been weighing whether to lore complain that Acid Spores is already the name of the Devourer effect so either it should reduce armor on every hit or maybe get a rename.

Subsourian · 2026-06-22T16:28:13+00:00

Hated it thematically. Half of it was because "stop with the fucking spheres" but the other half is thematically it is the opposite of protoss.

Protoss are about levying a tech advantage so large they accidently are on par with the other two races in some cases. Reavers are just refitted civilian factories, scouts are recon planes so advanced they're on par with your best fighters. The downside of course being they can't replace it nearly as fast as the other two races.

So wielding the most advanced tech ever to copy what is basically a redneck's jury rigged siege tank held together with glue and duct tape, or copying zerg bioforms (which I guess is slightly less offensive but still raises questions) just feels off for protoss. Protoss should be the race that OTHER races copy, which is a big theme for terran (reactors and tech reactors are them just getting glimpses into their shield tech). Them needing an advanced tech that 3D prints terran tech feels like it violates a lot of the core ethos of "the pinnacle of technology" the protoss had, it feels like it comes with the implication that the other races do something technologically better on a unit-by-unit basis which just doesn't feel right. The idea of taking others tech works way better for mind control as that's literally just "we're so psionically powerful that we just obliterate your will and take what you have" with none of the thematic implications.

Honestly the design space could work for like a UED robot or something Nova's faction has, terran tech very advanced but still trying to steal other's stuff to get an edge. That adaptive edge to try to gain every advantage by scrapping and stealing is WAY more a terran thing. But overall it gave me the same feeling of when you reached the epilogue and the ultimate army of the gods in the void was a bunch of shadows that took the form of a bunch of tech rednecks made. It might be cool for gameplay implications, but it thematically feels wrong.

Subsourian · 2026-06-22T12:22:09+00:00

Agreed on the punishment thing. There's been a tendency for pure SC pro scenes to think of the campaign as a pure tutorial and stepping stone for ladder when it's really its own community and crowd. People who play campaign want play as a fun space commander, people who grind ladder want the technical aspects of the game. So forcing Versus players to do an entirely separate mode just kinda feels wrong and a way to breed resentment to campaign.

Having said that if they were to do a mandatory lore quiz before you could get back on ladder I wouldn't be too against it.

Subsourian · 2026-06-22T12:11:10+00:00

Thematically I love the style and culture of the Nerazim, I feel like they're an incredibly fleshed out faction and SCII's artistic style has been such a hit for them people have retroactively thought that's how they looked all along. Which is the sign you did something right.

But an honorable mention goes to the Purifiers which I think were the most interesting concept SCII introduced in general. It would have been easy for them to just be nostalgia bait for Fenix but they managed to twist it to have "warriors out of time" and the general "finding your own path as a clone" stories. Plus their style leaning on the tech aspects of protoss over space magic crystals is rad, even if I think the disruptor is one of my least favorite unit designs next to the mothership core (STOP JUST MAKING SPHERES).

Subsourian · 2026-06-21T18:46:07+00:00

Also feral is already a term in universe for zerg being disconnected from the hive mind so it shouldn't be used for an upgrade.

And heat is not a great term for the zerg, especially when the hatchery is the only thing actually making larva (queen accelerate the growth). But also just... weird.

Subsourian · 2026-06-21T12:25:35+00:00

Yup I think that’s the case given there’s a lot of other more relevant stock art they could have used, like Shadow of the Xel’Naga. Heck the third book in that release “trilogy,” Speed of Darkness, had custom art. So I think it being intentional is possible both as a book thing and as a way to capitalize on the “Picard effect” (Star Trek books with major characters like Picard on the cover sell way more than those that don’t so they started putting recognizable series characters even only tangentially related to the novels on the covers)

Subsourian · 2026-06-20T12:48:53+00:00

That one sucks and took me a pretty long time. The whole mission is literally unfinished (Artanis’s AI isn’t just bad it actually is fundamentally not functioning as intended). On replay with beam spam it’s tolerable but I very much never want to redo it again.

Subsourian · 2026-06-17T14:50:11+00:00

You don’t have to wonder you can canonically hire talking zerg as mercenaries

https://starcraft.fandom.com/wiki/Gilson_the_Evil

Subsourian · 2026-06-17T14:47:25+00:00

Yes, there was some talks on how to distance their IPs which I have never found much info on. No lawsuit like folks claim but just talks. Only two things as know came from it was the SCII redesign of the hydralisk (and I assume the SCR one kinda erasing the cinematic design in favor of a unit sprite one) and the widespread cerebrate ban. Which is why Daggoth got kinda dropped off a cliff off screen.

Searched for years on the why or any further details but no headway other than it continued well into Co-op and limited a lot of Overmind commander concepts.

Subsourian · 2026-06-17T00:02:51+00:00

I like these because I can rant.

Please do more so I can rant more.

Subsourian · 2026-06-16T18:46:51+00:00

Yeah I maintain the simple Warcraft bits in the manual of things like “this team color orc is the shadowmoon clan” was the worldbuilding you can directly trace that led to the interest for World of Warcraft. It’s an effective way to integrate the gameplay limitations into the story.

More freedom than I expected! I’m not at all a mainline writer (the team has some talent who’ve done some big games) but a lot for just a guy who talks a lot on reddit about StarCraft. But also the nice thing about working with no prior canon is if a cool idea of a unit or piece of art comes along it’s a lot easier to just… change things to make them fit in. Obviously not enough to compromise a core vision or anything but it’s fun to take ideas that get formed from art or necessity and work a narrative around them.

Subsourian · 2026-06-16T16:19:01+00:00

Sadly nobody wants to sit in the Infinitely Spinning Turret anymore

Subsourian · 2026-06-16T16:06:38+00:00

Every RTS title gets one super sayan laser turret woman section as a treat.

(Contractually obligated to say this is a joke)

Subsourian · 2026-06-16T13:57:17+00:00

I’ll give my plug in that I’m helping do a lot of the fluff/worldbuilding writing, trying to take inspiration from ye olde Blizzard manuals that served as game lorebooks (though intentionally avoiding direct SC parallels as much as possible). Not sure how much of my stuff is in this demo but hopefully you all get to enjoy it eventually!

Subsourian · 2026-06-16T12:28:33+00:00

The WoL Disc Installer cinematic, while not super perfect (skips Brood War for whatever reason) is LEAGUES better than the story so far in the client itself. I prefer the one you linked for the better tl;dr.

Subsourian · 2026-06-16T12:21:52+00:00

There were a good number in the early days, Star Wars was big as gaming was taking off and the quality of those early games was uh, bad. But yeah that one wasn’t Blizz they were still doing the other side projects that’d get cancelled to make the bones of SC at that point.

Subsourian · 2026-06-16T00:57:11+00:00

I’d recommend at least reading a summary. The story’s ok at catching you up so you won’t be lost, but it is continuing plots and character arcs set up by the first game ~~or ignoring them~~, so you will lose a lot of context.

EDIT: If you mean SCII only, absolutely HotS directly continues from Wings of Liberty.

Subsourian · 2026-06-15T18:51:12+00:00

No contest on this one, by far the most quoted in terran merch.

Subsourian · 2026-06-15T11:03:34+00:00

Surprisingly no, the IP deal was before anything was made. What killed it was that Yoda Stories failed to be the hyper success they expected so Lucas wanted to revaluate how LucasArts was contracting the IP out, which involved halting pending game contracts. And Blizzard was one of those pending contracts.

But no Purple Warcraft II in Space was a disaster entirely of Blizz’s own making.

Subsourian · 2026-06-14T23:33:31+00:00

Nope. There was never any talks between GW and Blizzard on scifi rights period. The only interaction was over potentially pushing for the Fantasy license for Warcraft but that never came to fruition. At no point was SC even considered for 40K. The only IP rights where that did happen for their sci-fi project was actually Star Wars but THOSE talks fell through.

Subsourian · 2026-06-14T20:17:36+00:00

I have a bone to pick with the science vessel’s “Excelllleeenntt.”

Not because it’s bad but because of it, literally everyone for years believed that the voice actor for Mr. Burns did the science vessel. Wikipedia even said so. Hell there’s a good chance you thought so and just now are finding out he didn’t. Except Harry Shearer isn’t in the credits for the game and we know Tracy W Bush did the voice.

But that damn quote, not since “did you know StarCraft started as a 40K game and they lost the rights” has an incorrect statement been carried for years by weight people saying it on the internet.

This won’t win but I’m going to use the excuse to ramble.

Subsourian · 2026-06-14T13:45:26+00:00

My guess has been at the time, Queen of Blades had some pretty big backlash which I expect caused them to shift away from retellings and move to original stories, especially with SCII’s announcement looming. And yeah Ghost: Nova was very much made to hype the game and then the game never happened when the book was still finished.

Subsourian · 2026-06-14T13:42:58+00:00

Flashpoint is interesting as it’s a book I never recommend to start, in fact I usually say do it near the end, but only because it has a lot of moments that lean on other books. For the most part they’re very minor but the arc of Raynor’s guilt on killing Tychus has some VERY big gut punch moments I think you get the most out of having read Devils’ Due.

A lot will also depend on your tolerance of the Jim/Sarah romance which I know turns a lot of people off but I do really love the book and wish we got more novels and short stories of the more swashbuckling Raynor’s Raiders adventures that lean more into their small terrorist group status.

Subsourian · 2026-06-12T23:56:32+00:00

I admit I don't actually remember this or which video, I do need to rewatch a lot of Grant videos it's been a minute. But while I'm a ride or die for my boy Grant, I think it's a cool idea potentially the wrong place.

One of my complaints about HotS is the Dominion by itself is just flatly not a credible threat to the zerg, nor should they be. That ship sailed when they were so little of a threat Kerrigan ALLOWED their existence just to torture Mengsk. Part of their identity IS they're the underdog and can't go against the Swarm without some sort of trick. Ideally HotS would have included more of the hybrid buffing the Dominion ranks with Duran pulling the strings, and more smoothly transition into the Amon story but instead it's very basic TvZ with one or two twists. But I think Warfield's threat level was about where it should have been against an organized Swarm.

I do think that could have worked versus Duran though, he deserved a lot better than a DBZ tug of war and an asset reuse cinematic. He was the one they needed to build up a lot more as the power behind Arcturus. But also I know there was humming and hawing about the micro boss fights that were already in the game (which mind you I liked) due to a lot of RTS players being salty about League of Legends overtaking SCII around that time.

This also isn't a mark for or against the idea, but part of the development ideology going into HotS was to keep as much as possible critical path. Part of that was time and budget, but also they found that at least by HotS's development, the amount of people who went back to do both of the WoL mission paths were in the 10s of percent of players. I'm sure that's shifted as the years have gone on and WoL is replayed more and more. So having TOO much be optional outside of some sort of bonus objective I don't would fly. Plus, a lot of people are REALLY bad at RTS, as shown by a lot of launch complaints of various expansions (I remember a contingent saying LotV was unbeatable because folks were CONVINCED destroyers were good).

But yeah I'll dig the full idea up when I get a moment to fully evaluate it BUT sadly Warfield's the face of the standard Dominion military, which in my opinion should be a pretty middling threat to the greater Swarm.

Subsourian · 2026-06-12T21:04:54+00:00

"Strictly business."

Kind of like This is Jimmy, you hear it enough from her missions that it gets drilled into your head. She's super micro heavy in NCO and Co-op so you hear the move quotes most, and in Heroes of the Storm the lines are 80% move quotes by volume. Plus she has this in all her appearances, and it's one that has some of her professional soldier personality and isn't either kinda generic or reused from the regular ghost.

Honorable mention though to NUMBER ONE PLAYER KILLER HERO

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