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StarCraft, Nothing But StarCraft
Now that the news has been out for a few days and game journalists have had a chance to chat with the folks at Blizzard, there are a number of new stories detailing parts of the StarCraft II world. A massive press briefing about the game fills in a few more details on the game; only three factions, no new races, the game is built with competitive play in mind, and will run on both XP and Vista. For more nitty-gritty elements, the company held panel discussions on the art design and gameplay elements of the upcoming game. Video from the event is now widely available as well; check out the official trailer, some example gameplay, or the epic 22-minute long developer walkthrough.
>>I hope that Blizzard quits defining 'skill' as how fast a player can click, especially when we're using the mouse to play. [...] And while it is 'athletic' in one sense, I am not fond of risking carpal tunnel syndrome just so I can be good at a computer game.
People would certainly define skill similarly in first person shooters. Most competitive video games are much more about manual dexterity than actual strategy. That whole comment is pretty childish; it's like saying "I hope the Olympics quits defining 'speed' as how fast a person can run, because I'm not fond of risking muscle damage just so I can be good at an athletic sport." If you don't want to play it this way, you don't have to, but realize that skill is defined simply in terms of who can win.
The group limit is not really a hindrance to professional players. You're ignoring one of the most useful hotkeys; alt+click on a unit selects the last group it was in. That means you just have to box select sets of 12 and set them to move apart, then alt+click one zergling from each group and send them to attack-move. A good player can send fifty zerglings off to attack simultaneously in less than a second. You can do it much more slowly if you line up your groups and send them in reverse order of distance, so the back units catch up to the front ones as you send out the orders.
Many of the ideas you put forth encourage people to be bad at the game. For example, load balancing is a terrible idea because your barracks are often scattered across the map (and this is especially the case as Zerg). By your own admission you want to forget about the strategic placement of your barracks and just amalgamate them into one big rally point. That's the opposite of how you should play. This is why professional players set their buildings to control groups rather than masses of units so they can instantly train units at specific locations on the map. Similarly, free unit queues encourage players to queue up fifty marines and just wait indefinitely as they pour out, rather than paying attention to their resource usage and finding the right opportunity to spend them. Again, the opposite of how you should play.
Your whole post really just speaks of inexperience. I don't mean to offend, but you need to make better use of hotkeys, and you just need more practice at playing the game. I can understand if you don't want to have do these things, but don't ask the developers to dumb down the game so that you can compete with us. The reason we play Starcraft is because these are the nuances that differentiate skilled players from unskilled ones; this is what makes Starcraft a competitive game.
Did you understand what he was saying? Looks like it. Even if he had a usage error, he got an interesting point across. All I can get from your message is you're a dick.
Plus, you're wrong. Between is perfectly acceptable as he used it, and actually preferable to among.
Let me see if I get this straight: I'm a dick for correcting someone...but you aren't? Yep, sounds about right for this place. Besides, I'm not wrong. He used between correctly several times in the post. In that particular sentence, he was using the word to describe undesignated differences between races (note that I did not specifically state how many races, so my usage is correct). If anything, his usage MAY be allowable, but it is certainly not absolutely right. However, I will stick to my guns and say that his usage was incorrect. Now, go ahead and correct me again while telling me what a dick move it is to correct someone. You dick.
http://xkcd.com/386/
It's me again, posting logged in with karma bonus turned off to accomplish the same thing you do by posting anonymously... I know that when I used to use phrases incorrectly, I appreciated it when people corrected me. You'd rather just go around being wrong, I guess, and have people laugh at you behind your back but never tell you to your face? Well, not me. Besides, I was NOT wrong. The best word to use in that sentence is among. I don't care if between can be used in special cases to refer to more than two things. In the particular sentence in which it was used, it was not used correctly. Also, starting a sentence with 'and' is perfectly acceptable in most cases. So why would I care that you did it? Also, I don't take the 'dick' comment personally at all. How could I? You don't know me personally. I know many people take online things personally, I've just never understood why. Also, I *am* a dick. No shame in telling the truth, or pointing out the obvious.
http://xkcd.com/386/