Occasionally a suspicious or aggressive question would emerge, made more blankly hostile by the translation. In short, I witnessed the birth of a nerd-fury.
You see, Korean gamers love StarCraft - it's part of their regular TV scheduling for god's sake - and they've had nearly ten years to imagine how they'd change it if they were king. Now the sequel is real, this nascent reality is fighting against a decade of fantasy. The atmosphere at the event was equal parts excitement, nervousness and resentment - it was like The Phantom Menace all over again.
So, let's ask the questions the Koreans are asking, because their demands are going to have a huge impact on what Blizzard ends up providing. Will the adherence to Korean expectations stifle the innovation - the "big new feature" that we fickle Westerners demand? Will Korean gamers reject the sequel as a reinvention of chess, or will it eventually displace the original game, and cause the gaming TV channels to suddenly look like they're in the right decade?
Fourth Race?
This came up again and again; the Koreans definitely want another race. There was much speculation about the Protoss/Zerg hybrid race mentioned in the first game, but no - playable races will remain limited to the Protoss, Zerg and Terrans. The emphasis will instead be on making the three races even more distinct, to make each set of tactics more varied.
How about radical changes to the gameplay then? Again, no. There's still no naval combat. There's still the simple "minerals and gas" resource management, and the 50/50 division between resources and combat. Blizzardis going out ofits way to distance itself from the "big new feature" kind of showmanship, instead focusing on developing the features that made the first game so strong.
That said, small tweaks with larger ramifications abound. There's no longer a limit on the amount of selectable items, for example, and the fog of war applies to higher ground - but it's still identifiably and defiantly StarCraft.
