Shacknews.com released an interview with Blizzard representative Bob Colayco. In it, they address some of the new units (soul hunter, tempest, phase cannon) and talk about some of the game mechanics and community concerns. Some excerpts:

On Soul Hunters:

“What’s interesting is that every time he scores a killing blow, his weapon gets more powerful,” Colayco says to the sounds Protoss Soul Hunters beating up on a Terran base. As the hovering hunters fire away at a barracks, their yellow-green beams begin to thicken noticably, until the building explodes with a shower of particles. “There’s not going to be an infinite progression of power; there will be a cap to it.”

On the Tempest:

“What’s different about the Tempest is that as of now, it’s a little bit cheaper to build [than the Carrier], less minerals and gas,” Colayco notes. “And also, the undercarriage shield is very thick against ground attacks, so you can see it can absorb quite a few missiles before it gets through the shield. This makes it good for assaulting bases, but more vulnerable against aircraft.”

On Campaign and Continuation of the “Hybrid” storyline:

“We haven’t talked about anything like that yet. As far as multiplayer, there are three races. But that was talked about in the story, and definitely the story will pick up where Brood War left off.”

“There are definitely some ambitious plans in place to do something different with the story mode campaign. Add some elements of replayability to it and give you a chance to really do something different. We’ll probably have more to say about that later, but right now, it’s not going to be–I’ll just say, it’s not going to be one mission at a time. There’ll be some new stuff in there.”

On Competitive Starcraft:

“I would say that’s a very big concern. We tend for this game to be very competitive and very popular within the competitive RTS realm, and so we want to make the game very fast-paced and very responsive, and also just give a lot of opportunities for players to show off their skill level. For example, you’ve got the Stalker, let’s say you’re up on a cliff against Zealots–you can shoot the Zealots as they come up around, and then as soon as the Zealots come up to the top, you can just blink down to the bottom and then keep shooting as they come back around, so you can keep kiting them back and forth that way.”

On Battle.net:

“There will definitely be big upgrades to Battle.net. We haven’t talked about what those features might be, but definitely that will be a concern. To make sure that the game stays popular, we want to make it easy to record playback demos, and easy to distribute those things, because that’s a big part of the community–not only for a professional match, but for your own enjoyment. You record a game that you play on Battle.net when get your butt kicked, and it’s like, ‘Why did that happen?’ You can go back to the tape and try to evaluate what did happen.

“I’m not sure if the legacy games (StarCraft, WarCraft III, and Diablo II, etc) are going to be on the revamped version of Battle.net–if those are going to be all put together, or how that’s going to work. Those types of things we’ll be able to figure out once it’s all built.”

On Concerns About Game Speed:

“This is running at normal speed. When you’re actually playing, most games are going to be on fastest, so things are going to be more bang-bang than what you’re seeing right here.”

On Excluding Starcraft 1 Units:

“That’s something that’s being evaluated all the time. So you’ve got Stalkers that can shoot ground and air, but they don’t have as many hit points. They’re fast; Dragoons weren’t. Then there’s the Immortal, which is almost kind of like a siege version of a Dragoon. It can’t shoot air, but it’s got this powerful shield, so it can just charge siege tanks. So Dragoons are not in there. The Tempest is similar to a Carrier, but no Carriers. Scouts aren’t in there.”

Visit ShackNews.com for the full article.

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