Blizzard has decided to add the Terran’s infamously unbalanced Warhound unit from the Heart of the Swarm beta back into Starcraft II… sort of.
Players who started a game after 12:00am today were greeted with an unusual surprise: all of the game’s worker units (including the Protoss and the Zerg’s) have been replaced with the Warhound, a unit which was originally planned to be added into the game with the Heart of the Swarm expansion, but was removed during beta testing after it became clear that it was almost useless in certain match-ups and insurmountably overpowered in others. While worker units now look and sound like Warhounds, they still have the same stats and abilities as regular workers, so despite their name, don’t try to take these Warhounds into battle (unless you’re really desperate.)
The in-game joke was accompanied by a new post on the official Starcraft II blog by Blizzard’s “Warhound Balance Designer” David Kim, who used the opportunity to poke fun at the community’s perception that Blizzard favors Terran players over their Zerg and Protoss counterparts. In his words: “The Warhound has been added for Terran because robots are cool and the art is amazing. The Warhound has been added for Zerg to remain competitive with Terran. The Warhound has been added for Protoss to keep Protoss players from whining about them on the forums.”
I’m assuming that the Warhound will only be around for April 1st, though I have to admit, as somebody who missed the chance to mess around with the unit during the beta, I kind of wish that Blizzard would add the Warhound back into the game for real, unbalanced or not. David Kim may have been joking when he said it on the SC2 blog, but robots are cool.
