C gaming giant Blizzard Entertainment invited Game Informer’s Adam Biessener to attend the unveiling of the Zerg race for StarCraft II and to get a look at the company’s shiny new headquarters in Irvine, California. Read on for 15 things that Adam learned during the trip, and don’t miss the full preview of StarCraft II in an upcoming issue of Game Informer!

1) Zealots shouting, “My life for Aiur!” as they enter the fray still send shivers down my spine. That may say more about me than the game, though. The sound in the build I played was far from final, but what was there definitely maintained the StarCraft vibe. The original 1997 low-sample-rate MIDI is better remembered than re-experienced, that’s for sure.

2) Hydralisks are still a pain to counter when they come rolling in en masse. The Zerg’s bread-and-butter unit is nearly unchanged from its original incarnation, but these versatile spine-splitters don’t need any fancy special abilities to reduce opponents to rubble in short order.

3) Speaking of masses of Hydralisks, the breakpoint between good players and excellent players is still all in the micro. Knowing how to read the game’s momentum and act accordingly using little more micro than “attack-move” commands will get you far. Being able to simultaneously drop Dark Swarms and Diseases while kiting a few Ultralisks and switch-teching to air for the next assault is what gets you sponsorships.

4) Even the pros will take a while to figure out how best to employ the new abilities in competitive games. The unit list hasn’t expanded dramatically, but all the subtle changes and minor tweaks add up to an entirely different balancing act and a whole new way to look at countering. Normal gamers with merely human reflexes will likely be figuring out new combos and strategies for years after release.

5) I really want to know what the “Final Metamorphosis” that Kerrigan is leading the Zerg to is. Blizzard won’t say anything about the story – of course – but that doesn’t stop my brain from using every idle moment speculating on where Bliz loremaster Chris Metzen is taking the plot. And what the heck are the Xel’Naga anyway?

6) The map editor will be awesome. The developers at Blizzard just recently dropped late-night Defense of the Ancients (an immensely popular Warcraft III mod, for those of you who need a remedial PC-gaming lesson) in favor of pre-alpha StarCraft II. You can bet that the mod tools will support DOTA here. I put the over/under of the first DOTA map going online at two weeks after release, provided some DOTA fanatic on the dev team doesn’t get the modders hooked up with early editing tools.