Hello hello!
I know I’ve not done a cast in quite some time, I’m laying low either until I have more free time after my exams at the start of May or until there are less casters for Starcraft 2, I’m not sure which at the moment.
Anyway the changes in the 1.3 PTR intrigued me and I had to check ‘em out, so here we have a short video preview of all the changes I could find. As an added bonus you get to see banelings and my awful play style!

I had this idea that we’d try out casting to add suspense to casts, that would involve the user seeing less of the “overwhelming” information overload that people have been mentioning — all leading to less enjoyable casts as those that are good at the game know exactly who’s going to win from the first event, be it major or minor.

Take this for example. There’s a runby of Zergligs while a Protoss vs Zerg battle takes place in the center of the map on whatever, Xel’naga Caverns. A runby is where Zerglings (not part of the main army) will slip into the mineral line (how your player gets income to make units) and literally wreaks bloody devastation in that area.

A professional or even a caster could then say (assuming the outcome of the main battle wasn’t too one-sided) that the winner is now the Zerg player as he has a huge mineral advantage.

Not consider if you will, for a moment, what if you didn’t know that this had happened? What if all you saw was an encounter in the middle of the map trying to establish map control. Well then you’re not going to have the “that player’s won, might as well turn off the cast” feeling and instead you’ll have the “Hmm this is still fairly balanced, I wonder if the Protoss player will tech up and beat the Zerg’s main force next time.

You might be wondering why Protoss doesn’t leave after his minerals are torn to shreds, well attacking a base is a lot harder than defending your own base, so the Protoss may be able to rebuild his losses even when leading to the inevitable defeat.

This is my experiment, I could see the mini-map, you can not. I also elected not to use any of the tabs that are generally shown throughout the match by standard casters (non-shit ones, ironically).

Feedback is appreciated!

Look! Proof!

So after the worst morning of my life you might enjoy this as a fun-cast.

A Naypam Funday Monday.