StarCraft 2 midnight launch event pictures and thoughts

It started at 11pm, when I realized that StarCraft 2 was being released tonight and not tomorrow night. With this newfound knowledge and my trusty photographer/little brother Eric in the passenger seat, I speedily drove to the nearby Broadway Mall. It turns out there was no reason to be in any sort of rush, as the scene was a bit underwhelming. There were about a dozen or so gamers waiting patiently outside the mostly closed Mall. I remember when Super Smash Brothers Brawl came out. The midnight release line was out the door and they held a crazy tournament that I placed second in. But the StarCraft 2 midnight release was no Brawl party.

I started talking to the gamers that are pictured below along with me in the yellow shirt. They were highly enthusiastic, and one told me that he had all been six years old when Brood War was released in 1998 and that he’s been anticipating the game ever since. Another gamer thought that Jim Raynor’s edgy alcoholism and his new hair growth was a bit silly. He was disappointed that Jim Raynor is no longer a Southern marshal on the edge who doesn’t play by the rules. A third gamer had beta tested the game, and told me by the end of the last beta test that Terran seemed a bit broken. He told me that Terran must’ve had about sixteen or seventeen units, while the Zerg and Protoss had substantially less variety.

Personally, I’ve always been a Protoss kind of guy, especially during lunch matches in High School where my Korean friend Chris installed copies of the game on every computer in the library. The only time we ever beat him is when the whole group of us ganged up on him, and even then it was close. My love of StarCraft continued when I started my own clan, Clan Haven, where I lorded over six or seven other people that mostly enjoyed playing Helms Deep on Used Map Settings. Clan Haven, a name I made up arbitrarily, is where I later got the inspiration for my XBOX Live and Steam gamertag, HavenDan.

After about twenty minutes of talking, we were let inside by disgruntled looking GameStop employees that looked like they didn’t really want to be in the store at this time of night. They were nice enough, but as GameStop employees were legally obligated to not comment on anything about the release of StarCraft 2 or any other big release. People really just picked up their pre-ordered game and left. Maybe it wasn’t advertised well enough, but I got the impression that Blizzard really didn’t do a good job of getting the word out there about a midnight release. I was expecting tournaments, t-shirts, and a resurrected Tassadar all in one. Regardless, it was still an enjoyable midnight release, albeit a pretty forgettable one.