I really loved Warcraft 3 but have the same complaint - it's largely about reflexes. Units, other than the heroes, are mostly ephemera that die quickly.

Starcraft 2 is a great game but is essentially the same iteration of the past 15 years. No unit advancement, no change in appearance of units upgraded, etc. And the game suffers from cheese and some unscrupulous players. I love the game but it is mostly a reverberation of 12 years ago. I am really hoping that after the 2 planned expansions Blizzard comes out with another expansion that adds a new race or 2 or some new maps with interesting challenges.

So isnt Sins, and i like Sins pretty much.

For sure. I meant that the 'strategy' of Starcraft is not primarily in how you maneuver your army during any particular battle, but how you arrived at that battle in the first place.

SC2 is a fast game, but there is plenty of strategy involved. For a noob, the fast play is basically learning the hard way how to play the game. If you don't understand the possible strategies that can be used within the first few minutes of the game with each race you will be susceptible to early rushes (the few than 10 units complaint the writer has) or cheeses the game has. But lets be realistic here, although even pros get cheesed from time to time it's not that easy to cheese someone who understands the timings involved in the game. Timing and scouting, these are the keys to surviving the first few minutes of the game and possibly even winning in the mid to long game.

Like TorinReborn, I watch many SC2 replays on youtube; I watch some of the best players in the world duke it out and let me tell you that in rare occasions do their winning strategies involve anything less than 30 units when going in for the kill and the average game last at least 20 minutes. Most COD games last 30 on average. Their strategies involve everything from scouting their opponent trying to guess what their strategy may be and then attempt to counter while at the same time trying to implement your own strategy and adjust it as you gain more scouting information. The point of the game is to win and if you have the advantage of taking the opponent out in the first few minutes because he made a tactical error then you need to exploit it because that's the point of the game.

But I have to admit that there is nothing better than a macroed up game. Watching 2 opponents get as many units (of what ever combination of units they choose) as they can and see who has the better army and better microing skills when pitting them against each other is what makes these casting videos worth subscribing to.

I can only hope to be good enough to move at least 2 levels higher than Bronze some day.

Interesting take. I normally play games on the normal setting the first time then go to the hardest. yea, the hardest level usually does seem almost impossible to beat but I don't necessarily see it like a rush fest. more like trying to figure out in what order to do things in order to beat the mission.

Unfortunately, I don't have SC2 because it would be a waste of money until I get a computer that can handle it, but I do have SC and play it a lot in skirmish verse AI since human players on battle.net in both US West and East seem to rarely play the official maps. I don't build so many barracks, factories, starports, and the equivalent production facilities for the other factions, and do pretty well against the AI. I never did understand the necessity of building so many production facilities, when in most other strategy games known to man, that isn't generally necessary.

Starcraft 2 is awesome for it's own kind !

Warcraft 3 really failed to my opinion because it was too much of a copy of SC.

SC 2 fail for me because of the units they did not include and especially for the zergs

The main scenario is awesomely made and entertaining, the multi is especially great for the custom maps...

It's fast paced, sometimes too fast though ! It's a rush towards ressource points and having a lot of units !

Though there's some nice strategies if you look deeper that will allow you to avoid using tons of powerful costy units to win and that's the awesome part.

Don't play in league though because poeple are just crazy ! SC is all about competition ! That ruins it a bit if you're not really into it !

But I think the next addon might be really interesting ! We'll see !

I was about to create a very similar thread yesterday or today but you beat me to it.

To understand that I was a bit more fanatical about StarCraft II than your average joe, check my posting history and you'll see me defending Blizzard and creating threads about one of the Battlereports that Blizzard created.

In 1997, I joined this club of gamers, boardgamers, magicplayers and such. There I played WarCraft II. Thought it was awesome.

One day, a guy I got to know wanted me to play a game called 'StarCraft'. I was like: "Ooooh no I don't want to play some boring turnbased game!" since I had no idea what StarCraft were.

Fate must have been involved that day, since WarCraft II didn't start....so I started StarCraft instead. I noticed that both were made by Blizzard but didn't think about it.

I started the tutorial and realized it was the same type of game (RTS) as WarCraft II but this game was sci-fi instead of fantasy. "Ok, cool I thought". I explored with a marine and noticed how the black shroud moved away FLUIDLY as opposed to immedietly in WarCraft II. I realized that this game was the next generation over WarCraft II and I now had a hard time going back to WarCraft II.

Getting my own computer

When I got my own computer the next year, StarCraft was the first game I installed. Battle.Net, here I COME!!

Had some fun years at Battle.Net. Found Tower Defense, RPG maps and lots of others (some which I never completed....)

BroodWar arrives

When BroodWar arrived I played the campaign and was blown away by it. BEST EVER!   In StarCraft it's the stereotype "humans get attacked by unknown alien bugs with ancient superrace laying the hurt on the bugs" though that is WAY too simple an explanation of the storyline.

In BroodWar however, it started out with evacuating the Protoss and eradicating the Zerg from their new homeplanet of Shakuras. The Terrans were 2nd and here it is when it became REALLY interesting.

You were a captain in a fleet from earth called the United Earth Directorate (UED) under command by Admiral DuGalle, sent to enslave the new Overmind and ultimately take control of the Koprulu sector (which is where everybodys fighting).

You begin with fighting "Emperor" Mengsk and obliterating his empire. In the very beginning, you get aided by a Lietenant Duran who proves to be very useful. He knows alot about the Zerg and has some disturbingly exact knowledge. It's not questioned though since it's likely he has been fighting for a long time and thus has been able to gather that intelligence. Aaaand then you enslave the Overmind. Now Duran appears again, showing his true colors of being Kerrigans servant. DuGalle becomes angry at Durans treachery and Kerrigan and Duran leave.

Lastly, You play as Kerrigans cerebrate to get her back to power in the sector. Duran is at her side from the beginning. Here she goes into an alliance with Mengsh, Raynor and Fenix to be able to destroy the UED AND their puppet Overmind since it's formed by renegade Zerg which has no alligiance to Kerrigan. First objective is to destroy the Psi Disrupter which negates Kerrigan control of the Zerg.

Halfway through her campaign, she backstabs her allies, killing Fenix and Admiral Duke (that was very good mission!) and thereby ending the alliance.

Now she goes to Shakuras to kidnap the Matriarch (leader of the Protoss) to force Zeratul to kill the new Overmind so ALL Zerg obeys Kerrigan and no one else.

After the Overmind is dead and Kerrigan has full control of the Zerg, Zeratul and some Protoss survivors try to escape. Kerrigan sends all of ther brood to hunt them and they are stopped. Zeratul kills the Matriarch since she was mindcontrolled by Kerrigan from the start!   She become free and with her dying breath tells Zeratul to watch over her people. Kerrigan lets Zeratul go since living with heavy guilt is worse for him than dying.

If you completed the mission in under 25min you got to play a secret mission called 'Dark Origin'. That mission is VERY IMPORTANT to fully understand Samir Duran and his goals. I got two saves of that mission.

The last mission is about pure revenge. Mengsk, DuGalle, and Artanis arrives with one army each to kill Kerrigan. This mission briefing has to be the best in the game. I especially like DuGalles last words 'Then SO be it' after he offer Kerrigan to surrender to the sovereign might of the UED.

This mission is HAAAAARRRDDD!!!      Took me several tries to win and I did it without a guide!   A few months ago I played through the campaigns again and read a guide on how to do it (who to attack first and so on)

 I never liked competetive BroodWar as I never could properly deal with Dark Templars. They were too exploitable. I considered and still consider the Protoss to be overpowered to very overpowered. In StarCraft II it's the same.

In 2002 when I started to play StarCraft again I felt it to be old. Wasn't exciting anymore. In 2004 when Dawn of War arrived I only played StarCraft for its campaigns. Dawn of War heralded a new ERA and I played it alot in SP.

I only tried out Company of Heroes in the tutorial....I thought all WWII games were hypegames and sucked....MAN was I wrong!

Time went on and strangely, all I wanted was StarCraft II. In 2007 it was announced and I was happy. Fastforward to january this year and I feel....

The campaign is the best ever. No competition. The skirmish however....no......nooooooooo!!   I can't have waited 7 years for THIS?!?!

Talk about epic disappointment!   A whole match is nonstop producing and activating abilities and keeping track of your troops ALL the time!   Then you add these RIDICOULOUS "macro" features and it's too stressful and tedious. It's not fun....It was fun 12 years ago (I N-E-V-E-R thought I'd say this....It's like I some day would say that computergaming isn't fun anymore!!!) but today it feels outdated with it's goddamn peonmanagement and "macro" features.

I bought Company of Heroes on Steams christmas sale and I want to play that much more.

So there you have it. A hopeless StarCraft diehard has been converted to Dawn of War & Company of Heroes.

Sounds like you need to spend some time learning about how the game is played in the multiplayer setting. There is a TON of strategy in this game there's just a learning curve to executing it. You need to learn to use hotkeys, scout, execute build orders properly as well as transition out of opening builds, micro and macro manage at the same time and counter various unit compositions and strategies. It might sound like a lot but once you learn some of the basics and start having fun with it you'll get much better quickly.

Read up on the teamliquid.net forums as well as "liquipedia" for build orders and strategies and watch "Day[9] Daily" #252 #257 #261 <-- These dailys and a handful of build orders are what has gotten me to Gold League.

I hope you take the time to give it more of a chance, it sounds a bit like you're giving up kind of early. Here is my character name and number, add me to your friends if you want to practice a bit im more than willing to help you get started or just play some games for practice and fun. Hope this helps, Craig.

ID: Lucid

Character Code: 725

No offense, but you were a SC diehard who played the campaign and "skirmish" mode but didn't care for multiplayer and couldn't counter DT's? It sounds like you're disliking elements of SCII that were also very present in SCBW as far as "peon management" and "macro features" go. Perhaps you're just not a fan of multiplayer Starcraft?

No, I played the campaigns, skirmish and ALOT of multiplayer. If accounts don't disappear after 90 days in StarCraft then check up my StarCraft account with the same name I use here.

Back in 1998 - 2004 I played soo many 3v3 Hunters with my old internetfriends that it became standard for me.

Unfortunately, my internetfriends were not interested in 1v1 (one in particular) so didn't get to test my skill that much in MP.

We also played an insane amount of custom maps.

The above was about StarCraft.

There were also no good maps out by then so Protoss was the obvious choice (Terran need small chokes and Zerg usually got completely annihilated when up against Protoss).

Me and my internetfriends didn't like BroodWar. I don't remember why THEY didn't like it but I consider the Protoss overpowered and I dislike mirrormatchups.

Also joined the Swedish PC Gamers forumclan of StarCraft and we played the original. We tried BroodWar one time. It was an internal 3v3 (all they ever wanted to play. At one point one of the clanleaders BANNED 1v1 because the players in a 1v1 started flaming eachother) where I got contained by Lurkers as Terran on The Hunters and we quitted. I know how to counter it today but I wasn't that good back then.

But most importantly it's just god damn frustrating fighting invisible units that takes more effort to counter than to use. And I don't have 300APM like Stork. It also just doesn't look fun to play when you're as fast as he is.

I must mention though that in PC Gamers forumclan I WANTED to play 1v1 but the clanfounder who banned 1v1 said that a clan should stand united (perhaps he believed that himself....?) so it was just a bunch of lame 3v3s all the time.

To add insult to injury, today in Company of Heroes the people I usually play with (reallifefriends this time ) only want to play 2v2 or 3v3 or perhaps a 4v4....    I got ONE guy on my list who say he prefers 1v1s but we haven't played yet eventhough he installed the game like a month ago....looks bad....

I understand the part about the need spending money, it works this way in other games too, you dont need money on the account, you need units on the battlefield. However in every other normal RTS you would  do exactly that - i mean build those units,  but not in SC2. 

In StarCraft you have to spend those money on more and more production facilities, so you can pump those few units in time if needed. This leads to situation, where you have 10 gateways, but only 7 troop units, cause you cant build more anyway, as the unit cap is incredibly small (obviously you can build more troops, but you want to build few air units and those walkers  as  well, so there goes the unit cap). I simply cant comprehend reasoning behind this design choice, it would make sense with unlimited unit cap (i mean more barracks = more units produced overall -> steamroll the enemy with superior numbers), or SupCommanderesque unit cap, but here?

What do you mean there goes the unit cap? You realize the max supply is 200/200 right? If you find yourself with more unit producing structures than you're able to constantly produce from it means you adding them too fast. Its typically only good to have a lot of gateways or barracks if you're on two bases. Most standard expands or one base timing pushes involve 3-4 barracks/gateways but its not uncommon to have like 6-10 when on two or three bases. Build PYLONS and PROBES or SCVS and SUPPLY DEPOTS the entire match so that your income and supply cap are constantly rising along with your number of structures and size of your army.

You said you were not one for playing campaigns earlier in this thread. Play the campaign. Now. All of it. Learn little grasshopper.