In all honesty I was never really a big fan of competitvely playing any RTS (real time strategy game). I mostly stuck with enjoying it as creating or macroing a large elite force. Playing more laid back especially considering the RTS games I had experienced before were Age of Mythology, Age of Empires 2 & 3, Lord of the Rings Battle for Middle Earth 1&2,Warcraft 3, Dawn of War (2 I am not sure), and Medieval Total War 2. Now yes I played starcraft: broodwar and many others but never for more than a few games. Its only until I played Starcraft 2 due to a friends convincing that I really understood why the series is the best selling and most beloved of the genre. The other series/games I had played were primarely micro based. Now you may argue AoM, AoE (look at game titles), and WC3, etc had important key macro requirements like limited resources (not in all cases) which requires a conclusion of a fight and map control however while I love these other games but they were not as mathematically complex or require such fine tunning as to timings as Starcraft 2. This is not disbaring the remarkable systems of each of these games but none of them have the constant evolvement (likely due to fan basis) and variables that starcraft does.

Starcraft as a game appears as any other a game with counters units, mathematically sound economics, and good graphics. But it takes it to a common secondary level of play (more common now) a game that has maps requiring different strategy base on the design of the map and different landscape exploits for the player and constant scrutiny of the balance between each race (balance) (regardless of positive or negative). This is only covering gameplay mechanics too if you haven't caught on though the campaign was excellant. This next or tertarary level of gameplay is where Starcraft takes off... while WC3 and posiible others (can't remember) had significant, definining it as not manners in which you have advantages in certain aspects of play but fundementalin play depending on which races and general play and timing in what you do due to the multipler of attacks, attack speed, movement speed, method of attack, range, and placement are important in every battle.. this creates unit synergy indirectly and due to the low health base and speed at which the game is played a higher aspect on all categories making Starcraft unqiue just slightly to all competition.

Now as for my thoughts formed with my old teamates/friends influence: I believe the game is only ever been since the first 2 patches slightly imbalanced and much imbalance is exageratted... its only highlighted by the complexity of the game if the game was slower we'd see patches from now many years later like in WC3 they released a patch this year 2011 many years after its release. The balance complants were more to the uselessness of certain units during multiple race match-ups and understanding other races general mechanic advantages. These advantages I have hypothesized to be for my main Terran:

The ability to "contain" an enemyin the mid to late game... this is due to the power of terran support units the fact they can heal the fastest given repair or medicvac, exception is roaches or morphing a unit.Additionally their units are all ranged allowing for obviously with different ranges thus best quick damage to enemies within the multitude of terran unit ranges in particular the best light unit ranged light unit destroyers. That existing that they simply are the best light unit destroyers without "spells" means terran can also be the most potent raiders since terran units aren't very limited in options of covert missions (drops) and are explosively powerful with stim and other abilities hitting quickly with some of the highest dps. And now you maybe thinking see terran are overpowered because they have excellant damage and ability to withstand a beating with support. But here is where people who understand terran excell in playing as or defeating terran. Terran are the least mobile race the total speed of the terran army without stim and thank you blizzard for making movable Battlecruisers is lesser than any otherrace's army meaning terran are very dependent on setting up a foward command or contain when attacking the reason being terrans don't have the highest armored (defense) and hearty units and the more spread out they are the more useless in combat they become. Earlier I stated terran have the strongest support which makes the strongest denfense however this is only as good as the defenses ability to cover an enagement. Thus terrans who are countlessly harassed by raids often end up spread too thin during a major enagement. This exposes the second and third weakness of terran (major weakness only will be covered) terran have the slowest production and deployment unlike zerg we don't automatically get the ability to produce 5-6or 2-3 or whatever larva surplus is hadwith a 650 mineral investment plus whatever tech structure meaning losing entire forces is pretty much complete loss and protoss can warp in a little less than half of all their availible units at any pylon source proxy or base side thus instant deployment. Terran's production is given a plus in the same sense though... due to add-ons terran can mass produce light units that serve various purposes from anti-light air, anti-light units, anti-heavy air,or support biological but generally considered the all-purpose infantry of a training facility or higher tech or reseached units to exploit enemyweakness in a specific catagory within seconds of lifting facilities after a tech lab or reactor has been completedallowing the quickest tech changes to your opponents knowledge. Now on to more difficulties with terran macro while the mule allows terran to mine at greater efficiency than all other resources it also depletes a secure supply of minerals quicker, itcausesless terran scoutingandwindowsexploitationfor clocked units needing detectionsince terran have the most expensive and highest tech for mobile detectors. At the same time it points out a flaw in terran's ability to contend continuously with enemies. What do I mean? Terran need mules as we all know since the macro tools are less spefic and not automatically availible. Any equal based building of workers leaves the terran in a starting deficit the reason being we can't speed up production as protoss (dependent I guess) nor just have more starting worker production ability as zerg. Plus workers for terran have to be delayed in mining for build time unlike protoss and while zerg must sacrifice a drone their ability to replenish it far exceeds that of any other race. Terran thus are dependent and its statisitically noted need mules for early game mineral income equality and are most devastated by the loss and reproduction of workers in time of replenishinig them. Now the versititilty or the macro abilties for terran is least afterwards scan is only for viewing an area/ detection, mules are really just limited time super svcs without gas mining or building, and supply drop well just drops supply whereas chrono boost .... Later Finsih anothertime