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Zerg

Comparing to Protoss and Terran, the change of Zerg is quite significant. Around the 20ish PCs here playing SC2, two sentences are heard of most: "Zerg airforce is so fxxking powerful!" and "Terran really sucks!". Of course these noob opinions are of no value at all, for talking about balance or strategic possibility is quite nonsense.

Only six non-Advanced building (which means can be build during Hatchery period). The new Queen is a totally different unit, which walks on ground and can be morphed when you can morph Zerglings (both requires Spawning Pool), though one player can only own one Queen at a time. When you upgrade your Hatchery to Lair and then Hive, Queen can upgrade (using mineral and gas) herself, and get stronger, larger and able to cast more spells.

Basic Queen can build three structures, Creep Tumor which expands Creep (this is the only ability to expand Creep besides using Overlord, for the old Creep Colony has been removed), Sunken Cluster which fires at enemy, and Shrieker which detects invisible units and enlarges Sunken Cluster's range of firing. Queen can burrow. Upgraded Queen can use an ability to restore HP of Zerg units and buildings, 50 energy for about 100HP; also Deep Tunnel, which makes the Queen burrow and teleport to a Zerg building; Toxic Creep, which makes units on a certain area of Creep to suffer damage continuously. When you are at Hatchery stage, the Queen seems to be your only anti-air unit.

Zergling has not changed much. It can morph into Baneling, and deal a small amount of area damage in a small region.

Overlord loses its capability of transporting and detection, instead it gains two new abilities. One is Slime, Overlord can spit onto certain mineral deposit and engulf it with Slime, which stops workers from gathering mineral from it. This Slime can be attacked and is removed while killed. Overlord can also create an area of Creep under it, but it must remain still to channel this ability, and when the Overlord moves, the Creep it generated will dispear soon if no Zerg building is built on it.

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Overseer is morphed from Overlord; it lose the Slime and creating Creep abilities to become a detector, and moves faster; its radius of sight is increased when it remains still for a while.

Roach, which is talked about a lot recently, is described as a kind of "melee assault warrior", or to say "larger Zergling". Its only ability, regenerate HP very fast, made it quite tough.

After upgraded to Lair you will be able to build Hydralisk, and it still can morph to Lurker; Mutalisk still has bouncing attack and can still morph to Guardian, but no longer to Devourer: new ATA unit is the Corrupter, a technical unit which does not deal real damage but gains possession of the air unit it has "corrupted" enough; the corrupted unit cannot move, only has no or weak attack which looks like that of Corruptor's, and changes appearance. I myself did not build Corruptor.

Infestor is another unit which combined "sneak in" and "hack you". It can move while burrowed, and infest all kinds of Terran building, and produce infested Terran Marine after infestation is completed; these Infested Marines fights about the same as normal Marines, but move slower.

As Overlord quitted transportation affairs, Zerg has Nydus Worm as the new transporter. It has two forms; when it is build it looks like sandworm. It cannot move after deployed, and can swallow very large quantity of friendly units----I stuffed 24 zerglings, one Queen, several Hydralisks and Lurkers into it, and the yellow bar (which possibly is the capacity of its transpotation, but I am not that sure) under its HP bar only increases 1/10, so if I guess it right, it has nearly infinite capacity. The units in it can then get out from any Nydus Worm, or you can morph this one back to sandworm form, let it run to your destination and let it morph to Nydus form and vomit the units out. Whatever how many units it has swallowed, any of Nydus Worms killed will not get any of units they swallowed drop out. This seems to me that they are only entrances and exits instead of vessels, but here comes the question: where will the units they swallowed be, if my Nydus Worms are all dead?

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Then is the Ultralisk. It is strong and powerful as reported earlier. It does cleaving splash damage. All in all, its power matches its size, and its size matches its name.

Evolution

In this build, Zerg shows clearly a concept: Evolution. I noticed that nearly all Zerg units can evolve into new, more special or more specialized units, like Zergling, Overlord, Mutalisk, Hydralisk, Queen, etc. Zerg also has a very different upgrading system comparing to those of Protoss and Terran, which more deeply shows the concept of Evolution. Everybody knows that Protoss and Terran upgrade their units in ways like "infantry weaponry", "airforce armor", etc., and every upgrade affects many kinds of units; but Zerg is different, they evolve individually, usually one tech affects only one unit, besides Burrowing. For example, Zergling lv1 upgrade increases its movement speed, lv2 +2 to damage and +1 to defence, Lv3 +1 to damage and +2 defence. Overlord lv1 increases movement speed and defence, lv2 and 3 increases defence. Nearly all other Zerg upgrades increases attack and defence at the same time. This may save your expense on single type of units, but reduces tech relations between unit types a lot.

Protoss & Terran

Much of news below may sounds a bit old, for I was out of fashion of SC2 for a long time.

Spells of High Templar has swapped back to Hallucination and Psi Storm. Nullifier is trained in Gateway and of low tech level, its Anti-Gravity throws building into air for 15 secs, and Stasis Force Field (not sure about the name) can establish a impassable barricade for 15sec and the size is about a supply depot.

Dark Templar still kills marine in one swing. AI do not know to detect invisibility in this build, thus two DT and press A means victory.

Archon can still be found by any two Templars. Archon has a buff called "Power Overwhelming", I asked the Blizzard guy there, and the answer is "it adds 20 splash damage to its attack; this buff exists from Templars are merged, and seems cannot be dispelled.

After Gateway has been upgraded to Warpway, you can deploy any infantry within your Pylon's radius, but one Warpway can only deploy one infantry at a time under your choice. After the unit begins to deploy, all units the Warpway can build will come into a cooldown which has the same length as the building time of the infantry you deployed. Tech required for Gateway to Warpway is not researched in Gateway. You can upgrade Gateway to Warpway in 3 secs and costs no resource, and change Warpway back to Gateway for free and also 3 secs casting time.

Phase Prism and Observer seem have their own speed upgrading tech. Colossus can upgrade "Heavy Shield"(not sure about the name) which reduces the damage it suffers, a bit like the tech Mountain Giant has in War3.

And at last I finally got my Mothership. This thingy is not very tough, as I remember its HP is about 400. It can drain all energy from a unit to herself with no cost and 1:1 convert ratio, but I am not sure whether I can drain it from enemy units or not. Black Hole does 10 damage per second to friendly units. It seems not only affect air units; I remembered that it also sucks ground units in.

As for Terran, Ghost has a buff called Power Radar, but the effect is unknown.

Battlecruiser has two ways of specification, one is Yamato Cannon, one is Plasma Torpedo, and differently upgraded BCs count as different units (double click on one cannot include another into the group).

Nomad's spells to put down Auto-Turret and the mine-deploying machine (forgot the name) now cost only gas, and the latter requires researching the tech to use.

Viking has same damage under both forms, but when in air form it fire with double weapons.

Thor is now 300HP, and becomes paralyzed when knocked to 150HP. Using 100mineral+75gas it can "reload" in 8 secs with almost full health (it is said to double its HP, but this is not proved); it cannot move or attack when paralyzed, and repairing of SCV does not help.

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Miscellaneous

I feel that SC2 has much less anti-invisible units and methods.

This build players can choose all three races, but AI can only choose Terran, and it plays bad.

Four maps in this build: Burning Rift, a duel volcanic map; Scrap Yard, a duel space station map; Kulas Ravine, a jungle 4 man map, many Xel'naga Observation Station to occupy; Quicksand, 6 man dessert map(160*160). Two of maps has yellow mineral deposits, which yields 150% while gathering, with hard-to-defend position. Somewhere on the map has 2000HP stone barricades which can knock to 0Hp and pass, this also brings some variety on terms of strategy. On the standing-by screen, everybody can talk by TS-like build-in interface; I don't know whether it can also be used during game, for we didn't try to cooperate and beat AI. Frank said he also don't know about this, and Blizzard was always experimenting voice communication but still not sure whether to put it into game; though I think this system is at least technically ok.

Thor is quite fragile, I should say. EMP Shockwave is alive and on Ghost.

Mothership can drain MP, Black Hole, Time Stop which is now a selectable small area effect which reduces damage done (possibly to friendy units only) for 15secs, and the so-called monsoon (don't remember the exact name). Monsoon I am speaking is the ability shown in the earliest movies with lightings coming down.

There are two ways of showing statics after game, the old numerical one and the new graphic one, but the latter does not work properly now :/ . The ending screen is still the old Marines Back-to Back one, and seems of low res.

The engine seems not refined totally, and there are always guys crying "it lags". Ok, it normally does not lag or stuck, but when some special effects are out the FPS drops significantly.

On tooltips of all units, there are building time and where abilities to be researched stated.