Starcraft what is it

Skip to Main Content Skip to Footer. Overwatch League. Log In. Home Game Media News Community. Play Free Now. Game Media News Community. Consider pitting a micro-oriented player against a macro-oriented player both with the same amount of attention and APM.

Overall, the macro player will have a better economy and more units, and can usually overpower the micro player no matter how good his or her control is. Because of this, attention to macro is generally more valuable than attention to micro. Since focus on macro is the better choice, let us consider the case of two macro-oriented players with the same amount of attention. Both will amass a similarly-sized army and both will have similar economies, so who is victorious?

It comes down to unit positioning and the outcome of battles; essentially micro. Thus, players who want to win will practice both micro and macro in order to out-micro and out-produce their opponents. The marginal benefit of micro will be apparent if the macro abilities of the players are the same.

Good players will allocate the appropriate time for each to get the most benefit from their actions. It is a good idea to also take into consideration the cost to your opponent when deciding between micro and macro as well, and how well off you will be in relation to your opponent when you decide, for example, to spend time controlling Mutalisks to destroy SCVs. You may reduce your opponent's income but you may also forget to make more Drones at the right time.

If you switch to production, you may leave your Mutalisks vulnerable or simply unused. In this sense the game becomes a balancing act between micro and macro.

A player has to pick one of three races to play with, or choose Random. Each race has different Buildings and Units and consequently different ways of playing with then.

The races are:. General Recent changes Pending changes Random page. Betting Preferences. Now, Protoss society has risen to unparalleled greatness, but their rigid hierarchy inspires rebellion, as the young Executor Artanis, dispatched to find his missing predecessor on a Zerg-infested planet, will shortly discover. Read About Subject.

A noble High Templar, Tassadar has walked the Protoss planet of Aiur for centuries as both warrior and philosopher. Shortly before discovering Zerg activity in the Koprulu sector, Tassadar observed the movements of the Terran species; now, he wonders if they might have greater potential than to be unwitting victims of the Zerg or casualties of the Protoss armada. The Terrans are intrepid colonists, generations removed from Earth and governed by a failing Confederacy.

Among the dilapidated fringe worlds, Marshal Jim Raynor joins up with a no-nonsense psionic assassin named Sarah Kerrigan and a group of aspiring freedom fighters to survive the destructive first contact of Protoss and Zerg.

Soon, planets throughout the sector spiral into all-out war, and Raynor realizes he may have signed up for something much bigger than mere survival. After graduating from the cutthroat academy, she earned her canister rifle and light-refracting stealth suit, and served the Confederacy with distinction. Sarah has had many masters over her life. Her dedication and competence are clear, but her personal loyalties are hazy. It remains to be seen if her fellow soldiers can be truly loyal to her in turn.

After an age swarming on the fringes of the galaxy, the ravenous Zerg make their way to unfamiliar planets in a sparsely populated region of space called the Koprulu sector. They infest entire planets, consuming everything in their path.

Yet behind their animal cunning lurks a sinister intelligence, pushing the creatures against the constraints of their genetics—and towards evolution…. StarCraft makes significant improvements over Warcraft II. WC II , while advanced for its time, featured what many gamers believed to be a weakness in that, apart from a few minor but significant for balance, especially at higher skill levels differences in available spells and the cost of upgrades, the game's two races were exactly the same mechanically, with only graphical differences.

StarCraft improved upon this by adopting the technique introduced by Strategic Simulations' game War Wind of having sides with obvious asymmetries. The asymmetry was inspired, in part, by Magic: The Gathering. The game also includes multiplayer gaming on Blizzard's own Internet gaming service Battle. One can play against opponents free of any charge beyond the original purchase of the game and local Internet access fees.

Many fans enjoy playing in groups against the computer in skirmish games. While the AI is considered to be weak compared to a good player, decent early game performance can make it an enjoyable opponent for more casual players.

Fans are also able to create unfair maps that are advantageous to the computer and can be extremely hard to beat. A few years after the release of the game, Blizzard also released several free maps of a higher difficulty. Over time, the patches have also improved the AI. The expansion pack adds new units and continues the storyline in the form of a campaign structure similar to the original game.

Blizzard authorized two expansion packs in the same year— Insurrection , and Retribution. As of , Blizzard has not decided whether these are canon or not, but would be willing to incorporate certain material from the games.

In some cases these expansion packs have been removed from circulation and legal action taken. It would feature new visuals, audio, and online support, but the core gameplay is set to remain unchanged.

StarCraft improved upon its predecessor Warcraft II , which featured two very similar playable factions, by introducing asymmetry between the units and technologies available to its three races Protoss, Terran, and Zerg. The unit types available to each race define its racial identity. The Protoss can field powerful and expensive warriors and machinery, while the Zerg count on sheer numbers and speed to overwhelm their opponents.

The Terrans are the versatile and flexible alternative to both races, with an emphasis on specialization and combined arms. In many ways, the Terran can be considered the "in-between" race in that they tend to benefit from more moderate conditions, whereas the other two races tend to prefer one extreme or the other.

This can make it difficult to create maps that are fair for all races. The plot of the original StarCraft game revolves around the arrival of the zerg in the Koprulu sector and their later invasion of the protoss home world Aiur. After they have destroyed the Confederate colony on Chau Sara , the zerg are used by the rebel organization Sons of Korhal , which lures them to a number Confederate worlds using psi-emitters to further their own goals.

After the Confederacy's fall, the Sons of Korhal's leader, Arcturus Mengsk , establishes the Terran Dominion , crowning himself emperor. The Zerg Swarm is, however, closely followed by a protoss fleet which burns down all worlds the zerg infest. The leader of the Protoss task force, High Templar Tassadar , later discovers that he can disrupt the Overmind 's control over the Swarm by eliminating his cerebrate servants with the help of the Dark Templar.

The involvement of the fallen Dark Templar will prove to be fateful; indeed, while slaying the Cerebrate Zasz, the Dark Templar Zeratul briefly comes in psychic contact with the zerg Overmind , who is then informed of Aiur's location and directs his Swarm towards the protoss world. The protoss high authority, the Conclave , is defeated by the Swarm, along with a large proportion of all protoss.

In a desperate attempt to put an end to the zerg's destruction, Tassadar, Zeratul, and the remaining protoss unite their strengths with human Jim Raynor and attack the Overmind itself. They succeed in destroying it because Tassadar sacrifices himself to destroy it using Dark Templar energy. StarCraft has achieved a cult-like status in the computer gaming world. Due to the complexity and depth of the strategic possibilities, StarCraft , especially in its online multiplayer form, remains very popular, even years after its original release.

The game's popularity in South Korea has been unexpectedly high, with nationally recognized tournaments, and intense training groups sprouting up across the country. The top StarCraft players enjoy mild celebrity status. Even as of , StarCraft is still one of the most popular online games in the world.

Operation CWAL formed in , as a writers group, in the StarCraft Suggestions Forum in an attempt to "liberate" a final copy of StarCraft , which appeared obviously completed despite numerous delays on the part of Blizzard Entertainment. Blizzard Entertainment has gone as far as to give special thanks to this group in the manual for StarCraft , as well as including their name as a cheat code in the game typing "operation cwal" during a single player game will dramatically decrease the time required to build units.

In the early s, the game became extremely popular among South Korean online gamers, to the point of being exaggeratedly referred to as the national sport of South Korea by avid gamers, and the majority of StarCraft players now come from that country. The origin of this unusually high level of popularity is likely a combination of StarCraft s suitability for competitive multiplayer and the fact that it was released during the beginning of the boom in popularity of " PC baangs " in Seoul, resulting in a perfect opportunity for the game to catch on.

A selected few have made substantial monetary gains through this. Some players can earn a decent to good living from TV-contracts and sponsoring and tournament prizes. However, the lower-echelon pro players tend to subsist on relatively small wages.

Many pro gamers playing StarCraft use every minute of their spare time to play, in order to maintain preparation for the highly competitive leagues. Less than average skilled players are often called hasu. Professional gaming in South Korea is an example of how e-sports can attain a social status similar to physical sports. StarCraft enables the player to record a game and save it as a replay , which can then be viewed with any other copy of StarCraft, displaying the entire course of the game.

As of , there are many websites that host replays of players with different skill levels, though pro-level replays are relatively rarely released, for reasons of team secrecy and pro-league policy. The RWAtools are a set of freeware tools, that create valid replay files, additionally containing an Ogg audio stream. They allow gamers to comment their own games while they play them and comment replays of other players.

During replay the commentary is kept in sync with the game. This can be particularly interesting for people new to the game, who can learn from more experienced players pointing out things about a replay they would not have seen on their own, or simply for entertainment.

BWChart is a program used to analyze a player's actions in order to teach the viewer how a given player plays. Lasgo's Observer Pack contains, beside other things, a tool that allows you to see the results of the recorded player's actions as if you played yourself except the mouse pointer and the selection boxes. VODs from "Video On Demand" are videos that show the screen of a commentator or sometimes player during a usually pro-level game.

They are legally or not available from a variety of websites, and are ripped from Korean television or Internet streams. Because they are compressed with an MPEG-4 codec and the file size needs to be small, there is a significant quality loss in comparison to watching a replay. VODs are usually accompanied by enthusiastic announcing from the Korean commentators, and the occasional crowd shot.

StarEdit has many features, including a trigger system that allows one to make radical changes to the way that map works, readily giving gamers the ability to create custom map scenarios also called MOD's. Hundreds of custom scenarios are created everyday, giving the game a refreshing variety. The StarCraft map-making community has also constructed additional editors or functionalities that grant the user even more power to modify the game. Scenarios are created with entirely different sets of rules, objectives, and units.

There is another type of map circulating in the online communities: StarCraft Diplomacy.