Sorry I'm late, hadn't thought to check this before it got to 6 pages. For starters, Laz's complaints were somewhat justified, but after following his whiny tirades on an SC2 map making site in beta, it relly sounds to me like he's bitter about having to work a bit to be seen these days, instead of the vast majority of players pointing at him and drooling because "MEDIAN XL OMG." :|
... Anyway.
Yeah, if you don't like RTS's, you won't like this game. If you don't like Blizzard, you won't like this game. If you're still legitimately curious, this is what I can tell so far:
No LAN.
No public chatrooms (yet, depending on whatever system they try to use instead)
You have to login to b.net to play single player. Yep.
Generic RealID rage.
They didn't do anything stupid like rewriting the core of a game that's been ridiculously popular for more than a decade. If you're really shocked, I don't know what to say about it, you can't please everyone all the time. I'm not saying this is inherently good or bad... but of course they're going to try to stick to a formula that's had 12 years of success....
Custom games aren't filtered by game name anymore. Yes, this causes some problems with game settings. Yes, this can also be fixed easily in-game with little fuss.
All of those are generic hassle that exist outside the actual gameplay. Now the positive list in my opinion... most of which DOES concern gameplay.
Matchmaking system seemed pretty reliable. I'm fine playing in lower leagues because I'm not deluded enough to think that e-sport means I'm some kind of athlete.
Balance is pretty good, there's no kill-all unit or strategy. If units can't take it out, it's because you were too slow with scouting and let them outmacro you.
And... macro is greater than micro now. People will stomp and bluster about APM, but if you can manage your economy and intelligence better than them, you will still win because you made your actions count instead of spam clicking your workers for the opening.
Dismissing the entire mechanic overhaul as a graphics upgrade is superficial and shortsighted. New Movement mechanics like glide/cliffwalking, movement mode alterations on the fly, attachable turrets and fire while move fundamentally change the game.
As for the map editor... those example vids were terrible. Are there improvements over WC3? Definitely. Do mapmakers have a full grasp of it yet? no. Will there be DotA? yes. Will it come out in fully polished form tomorrow? no.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAvZlonNTDghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy6eMCBOhQshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIkPcMbR5HEAnd there's the option to save encrypted data locally... so... RPG maps can now be made as part of a series and characters loaded in from outside. So... openRPG projects and the like.
The game isn't flawless. If you liked the first one, there's more goodness here slightly refined. From a money standpoint, $60 is about what you'd pay to see 4 movies. If you spend more than 4 movies' worth of time playing SC2, then it would be a good investment. Your mileage may vary.