Gameplay Cont'd
Despite the change in the camera angles, Blizzard has managed to keep the focus on the squad as opposed to a massive army by rendering each individual unit much more valuable and difficult to construct. Also, many of the units can use special abilities or spells; in fact, the spell system is so intricate that each spell has its own specific spell to counteract the effects of the original. This encourages you to fully utilize and exploit the units you have already received, and to develop their talents. Special weapons and spells will form a large part of combat in the game, and thus the facility to micromanage an individual character is vital to accomplishing this task.
When I was actually able to play during the convention, it was a very rushed game. The only race I managed to play was the humans, and even though most of their special abilities were non-existent at the time, I was still very impressed by them. Other members of the press were nagging me to position the screen so that they could take some screen shots of my base. There were a vast variety of different warriors that I could choose to create, from human knights to paladins to Elvin archers. I expect that when the game finally goes gold, there will be quite a number more units to choose from. The character movement was nice and smooth, and once a very large melee combat began, I was impressed at how smooth gameplay and frame rates were. (Note I was probably playing on a machine that was no less then a PIII 700 with a GeForce 2 or a Voodoo 5)