Intermission: SC II irritation

Yes, StarCraft II is officially out. And yes, this god awful intermission that's been plagueing us will come to a close at some point in the not to distant future.
But not today.

It's a little complaint. My name on StarCraft II is simply 'Spectre', unfortunately missing what I've come to call my trademark '4802' stamp on the end of it.

You can't have numbers when your putting in your username for StarCraft II when you first sign up. Keep that in mind if you eventually get it.

I know a lot of New Zealand and Austrailia gamers are pissed off about being put into the SEA bracket, which impairs thair ability to play online or something. I don't keep up with the bicker about that, but it's stirring up quite a hornets nest.

Right now, I'm plowing through the campaign, and then I'm going to immerse myself in the Galaxy Editor, so online play is something I'm going to consider when I've had enough of either the campaign or the Editor for a while, and want to play with what i'd reservedly call 'people'.

Actually, that's a little unfair. I assume they're a certain breed of person who communicates through insults and the "word" lol. Someone who's mother had been messing around with the internet on a forum one too many times and ended up getting pregnant.

Either that, or the majority of the people who play multiplayer games like this (specifically on Battle.net) have the maturity of an eight year old.

Because, the StarCraft II beta wasn't the only place I've seen the kind of behaviour exhibited on Battle.net. I still sometimes go into Battle.net with Warcraft III, usually for an online tower defence game, and the people there can be charitably described as a bunch of complete dicks.

And let's not even go to online first person shooters, specifically the likes of Halo and Counter Strike. I mean, the whole screaming at your opponent was practically invented by John Romero of id fame when they came up with Doom multiplayer. (At least I think it was Doom multiplayer.)

The last thing that pisses me off about StarCraft II is the people who say "oh, it's just StarCraft v2.0, not 2 (or maybe it's just StarCraft with better graphics)" and "I regret getting my copy because of X (usually online problems)".

To the first group, get out. SC II has an awesome campaign (and a much better campaign experience), plenty of new units, even things like different music (certainly for the terrans, anyway) and a few changed mechanics (resources, for example, have been tweaked).

Blizzard set out to make it a new and interesting enough without making it feel completely different, and they made damn sure the game retained it's nostalgic feel when you played it.

But maybe we should give those people what they want. Maybe Blizzard should release a third expansion set, which it's simply names "StarCraft II, not 2.0", which has very little of the original units, factions, characters or 'details' (resources, environments, ect), and a story very loosly based on the previous one. That should make those people happy.

As for the second group, StarCraft II has been out for no less than 48 hours. You can't seriously expect me to believe that everything was going to be fine and dandy on release date, did you? In my eyes, July 27 was the start of the unofficial StarCraft II beta test.


P.S. Yes, I insist on calling it "StarCraft II".
P.P.S. If you're really that utterly desperate that you want to know what I think of the game right now, I'd give it a 8.5, probably a 9.