For me one of the most interesting and informative sections of the trip to Blizzard HQ, was the fan site Q&A with Dustin Browder. The man is one of the friendliest developers I have ever met. Not only did he take the time to come talk with us, he also had a lot to say about StarCraft 2, and was open to answer any questions we had for him.

Even when arguments about the game broke out, Browder would chuckle with a smile, and give his two cents, all while keeping the situation calm and under control. He answered each question as though he was talking to buddies at a bar. Even his canned responses seemed candid and sincere. There wasn't even a hint of Oh this question again... when Nocturne boldly asked "so when is beta coming out?"

First of all, our Browder Q&A took place in the middle of a fan site StarCraft 2 tournament. So when he first came into the room he waited for a few people to finish up their games. Browder walked around the room watching, while giving advice and asking players what they liked and didn't like about the game.

The Q&A started like a conversation between gamers "Man I am having so many problems with carriers." Browder's response (in a joking tone): "Why are you letting him get carriers?" From then on we knew we are dealing with a gamer at heart here. Browder moved on to tell us the hard counters for Terran first "It should be hard countered by Ghosts and Thors, but there is a mobility issue with that."

Another fan site attendee brought up the fact that the gas cost should come in to play at some point in the balance of this situation. Browder went on to talk about the concept of balance between mobility over cost. He gave the example that stalkers can counter mutas without much effort per cost, but the harassing element that is given to the Zerg player does effect the gameplay and thus effects the way the units should be balanced.

He went on to say that the zerg's best counter for the carrier senerio without losing mobility would be corruptors with a couple of mutas thrown in there. "With the added speed to hydras on creep they could even keep up with muta speed almost" Browder added "but there is that mobility again."

Browder went on to talk about the new creep mechanic where each Zerg unit on walking on creep gains a speed bonus. One thing that Browder wanted to see more of was the use of creep across the map. In Blizzard's internal testing not many people do that. "It is practically free other than a few extra clicks..." Dustin told us. From there Browder let us know that the internal testing really can't do everything; he went on to say "I don't know if creep is too strong, if it isn't strong enough, or if people are just not using it."

We then got him on a nice little tangent on the Beta and gave us an example of why they need to go to beta...

Browder really seemed to be sincere that they want to move forward with beta. He wouldn't mention what exactly the hold up was, but I really got the impression that he wanted to get the beta out and test some of these things that they think there is a problem, but they didn't have enough data to make a judgment on.

There is a lot more to this interview with Dustin Browder, but I am going to break it off here for now. We are going to be posting more on this interview and a lot more from our trip to Blizzard the rest of the week, so keep checking with us in the coming days we have a lot in store for you.

JoeOrange