Starcraft 2 - worth buying?

[Archon_Wing]

[quote='Archon_Wing' pid='178524' dateline='1281118067']I can't even begin to say how big of a deal it is for me that the random matches I play are against people that have a shot of beating me, and I have a shot of beating them. Smashing my head against 25 smurfs in a row in WC3 nearly cost me a computer.

I've not played any rated vs. matches in SCII yet but if the ratings in Starcraft actually work to place you against players that are evenly matched I'll be pleased. Every time I've heard Blizzard talk about their ideals for matchmaking that you should win about 50% of your matches and lose 50% I thought "Yeah well I won about 50% of my WC3 matches as well and I doubt I ever had more than about 5 matches that were actually fun." They were all blowouts. 50% I destroyed them, 50% they destroyed me.

So far I'm not a fan of how the "Beginner" maps are designed. The rocks that block the paths end up just giving Protoss a huge advantage. I know they needed a way to slow down rushes for people that are learning but Protoss with blinking Stalkers can just circumvent them leaving Terran or Zerg players stuck behind the rocks and the Protoss rushing straight to blinking into the back of another players base.

The ladder system is pretty good at finding you a good match for the most part. The beginner's maps don't really help very much because the rocks make it a completely different game, (strong terran bias typically) You'd probably benefit more by playing vs the computer which is actually a bit challenging on hard/very hard mode for a beginner and might be stronger than some players you'll come across.

Also, I would check out the single player challenges, very useful in teaching new players too. Those will help out new players much more than the practice league as it'll show them situations that will happen in your typical game.