Enjoying it quite a bit. I'm winning about half of my games, so I guess the new matchmaking system is working pretty well. I guess my understanding of the game is getting better but I'm always pretty bad at multitasking in RTS games. I often tend to get so caught up with one thing that I forget to pay attention to other stuff. I seem to have the hardest time playing against Protoss for some reason, espeically Protoss vs Protoss. I guess I just have a rather poor concept of what the stengths and weaknesses of various Protoss strategies are. I'm actually rank 1 in my bronze league division (of a little over 60 players), which doesn't really mean much, but it's still cool to see myself at the top. Champion of the scrubs, baby! :P (I'm really not sure what the point of the different divisions within each rank is either. Maybe it's just to give people a false sense of accomplishment when they make it to the top of a small list of players like I did. ;) It's interesting to note that I actually have slightly more losses than wins, and there are a few people below me on the list with a better win percentage. This is because it bases point gains and losses on the ranks of opponents. )
My point in all of this is that I don't consider myself particularly great at RTS games, but the matchmaking system is really good at pitting you against roughly evenly matched people, except of course for right after ladder resets when everyone's records are wiped (which is just due to it being the beta). It makes the game a lot more interesting when most games are not a foregone conclusion one way or the other right from the start. There's not a lot of stupidly easy wins and not a lot of just getting outright slaughtered and outmicromanaged either.
As far as the game itself, it's great of course. It looks and feels a lot like the original, but the strategies that need to be utilized tend to be considerably different. Low tier air units seem to be considerably more versatile across the board. Even a single early Voidray can be a real headache for a Zerg player if they committed to an early Zergling / Roach push, as many do. (I've even seen top level players lose to this sort of thing in replays, so it's not just because I'm playing against other noobs like myself.) Some of the abilities from the first game that I thought were kind of ridiculous like Spawn Broodling and especially Lockdown (against Protoss) are out. I'm not too sure how I feel about them leaving nuclear missiles in, even though they have yet to be a factor in any of the games I've played. (One was launched agaisnt me once, but I managed to kill the Ghost in time, mostly since I had already spotted him.) There seems to be a good bit of cheese involving the Sentry's Forcefield ability (which creates a temporary impenetrable barrier on the ground). I figure it will probably somehow get nerfed at some point, or maybe they will just increase the supply cost of Sentries. The ability to basically split an opponent's forces in half just seems stupidly good. That ability is probably my biggest gripe as far as balance goes. It seems to be especially devestating against Zerg when used properly.
It's kind of hard to really point out all of the little differences but for anyone who actually played more than a token amount of the first game, this one clearly has changed a lot of things up. It doesn't totally overhaul the game like they did with Warcraft III, but I think what they did is exactly the right treatment for Starcraft. The first game did a lot of thing right and stood the test of time, and there was really no reason to just throw that all out the window. Hell, if they'd have just given me that game again with updated graphics, the new matchmaking sytem, and the improved interface, I would have bought it, but despite what some people seem to think, they didn't just do that. While the races maintain their core identities and the method for generating income is basically exactly the same, this is definitely a whole different game.
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