He’s like a Marine, but with more Street Cred‘. Plus, he likes iMacs.
If you’re a Mac owner, yes.
Rejoice, for within the next week, the MacBeta is coming – possibly to a computer near you.
According to Shacknews.com a few tidbits of Starcraft-related news were dropped from the clutching hands of Blizzard this week. First up is, of course, the MacBeta.
The funny thing about Macs is that they’re used almost universally to design games, but then have to suffer through long waits as the retail versions of games are ported to PC and then back to being Mac-capable.
Truthfully, Macs are better at running most things, but despite recent surges in iEverything technology, the vast majority of computer users are metaphorically married to their PC.
In Arkansas, there may be several users actually married to their PC, but we’ll leave them alone – to make a joke at their expense simply wouldn’t be “pc”. (A pun on politically correct, you say? But of course!)
So despite their prevalence in game design and technology, Macs typically get the shaft, and are sometimes left out of retail game options altogether. Fortunately, Blizzard seems to be smarter than that, and are getting the MacBeta up and running ASAP.
Next on the list of worthy SCII news is that the Galaxy Map Editor is supposed to ship out to Beta users with the next patch. This will let all of the little Cartesians out there get to work on their own special SCII map masterpiece, or, as is the more likely scenario, get to work building “THE MOST FASTEST MAP FOR SERIOUS OMG”, which will surely win scores of awards for both originality and “best sounding title”.
But regardless of the level of sophistication contained in the user-created content, getting it out there to be used is a good idea. The editor, just like the game itself, needs to be stress tested and broken, and if there’s one group of people who you can always count on to break things, it’s nerds. Go us.
Players won’t be able to upload their maps to the Battle.Net “cloud”, and it’s unclear if what they create will be usable after the game is released, but it will be fun to tinker around with it.
For us, tinker will mean making an utterly ludicrous map entirely covered in Vespene gas and then giggling to ourselves, followed by us never opening the editor again. We’ll gladly play user-created maps, but we don’t have the patience or discipline to create them ourselves.
As well, Blizzard is planning another server reset, which is really no surprise. We’re hoping a second round of friend invites will follow, but time will tell.
Last but not least, Shacknews reports that Blizz forum posts indicate that the Marauder unit will be slightly “un-nerfed” in next week’s patch, likely by having its own build time and the build time of its concussive shells upgrade decreased.
This continual dance around the Marauders’ effectiveness is putting Blizzard in a tough spot at the moment, as getting the balance of the first few tiers of units just right is essential in creating the ideal Starcraft successor.
If they’re not careful, this is a spot they could get stuck in with Roaches and Stalkers as well, one that could be very hard to fix with just a few minor tweaks here and there. The need to get this right, and get it right fast.
Out, damn spot! Out, we say!
