March 10, 2008 - After spending a large portion of the day at Blizzard checking out the Zerg faction for StarCraft II, we can say one thing for sure: the Zerg are still extremely strange to play as. Now that we’ve been able to test out all three races, we can certainly say each feels distinct, though it’s difficult to say much about the overall design because, quite simply, the game isn’t finished yet. Blizzard says most of what we’ve seen so far, units or features, could be dropped or added to, so there’s no telling really how the final product will wind up playing.

Right now the game is in its alpha stages, with a beta phase to occur likely sometime later on in the year. We’d love to give you more specific details, but currently they’re not available. According to producer Chris Sigaty, the beta will likely be closed. Considering the whole of the Blizzard staff hasn’t yet had a chance to test out the game, a step Sigaty says the company always takes with its games, don’t expect to hear anything about this for a while.

Instead of focusing on the Protoss and Terran, who have been reworked to a degree since we saw them at Blizzcon 2007, we’ll talk about the newly revealed Zerg. These chitin-covered insect-like abominations start out like the other races, with a central hatchery near mineral outcroppings and a vespene gas deposit. With the handful of Drones you’re given at the start, you assign some to gather minerals, another to drop an extractor on the gas to enable collection, and start saving resources for a spawning pool. Once the pool is up, Zerglings become available at the hatchery, and you can build a Queen, one of the more peculiar aspects of the Zerg’s new arsenal.

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