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The Zerg are the last of the three races in StarCraft II and Blizzard has finally put an end to most of the fans drooling all over themselves and has released the Swarm upon the world! The following is a complete preview of the Zerg race in SC2, including everything from their history and lore to specifics about their structures and units. Enjoy, and have a good weekend peeps!

The History:

The Zerg are completely unlike the Protoss or the Terran, they are a race made up of many other species that have been assimilated into the Zerg collective known as the Swarm. The Swarm is not unlike the Borg collective if you are familiar with Star Trek; their strength grows by acquiring new species with diverse abilities that can be used for destruction.

The Zerg do not make use of technological advances in armor or weaponry instead, they are biological race that evolve and adapt through different Zerg strains and mainly use vicious melee attacks and massive numbers to overwhelm and decimate their enemy. Even the Zerg buildings are organic, acting as the organs of the race, every building has to be constructed on the Creep, organic tissue with a purple hue that spreads across the ground like a plague.

At first the Zerg were controlled by one collective conscience, the Overmind. The Overmind controlled all of the thoughts and directions for the Zerg race, it would disseminate these orders to lower beings called Cerebrates who were in charge of controlling specific sections of the Zerg army.

During the Brood Wars the Overmind was compelled to assimilate everything in their path, most importantly the Protoss, which lead to the invasion of Aiur. However, the Overmind found Sarah Kerrigan, a psionic Terran ghost, particularly useful and fused her with the Zerg collective. What the Overmind did not know is that Kerrigan, now known as the Queen of Blades, would seek to control the Swarm herself. Upon the destruction of the Overmind during the battle for Aiur, Kerrigan used her persuasive psionic powers much like a Jedi uses his mind control and manipulated the dark templars of the Protoss to destroy the Cerebrates, thus leaving the Swarm with one formal ruler.

The Structures:

Hatchery: Serves as the central structure for the Zerg forces. It can be upgraded to a Lair and then a Hive. Upgrading the Hatchery allows the player to unlock new tech trees. The Hatchery also produces larva which can then evolve into other Zerg units like Drones, Zerglings, Hydralisks ect. Larva is the base for all Zerg units just like Drones are the base for all Zerg structures. In SC2, the Hatchery is also where the Queen can be constructed. I'll cover more about this new unit later in the preview.

Spawning Pool: This structure gives you the ability to build Zerglings and also upgrade the Zergling's abilities like movement speed.

Extractor: This is built on a Vespene gas deposit allowing drones to mine for the resource.

Evolution Chamber: This building allows for research upgrades such as the burrow ability, the Overlord's slime ability, as well as upgrades the Queen's creep tumors to shriekers.

Roach Den: Allows the player to spawn Roaches as well as upgrade the Roaches attack and armor capabilities.

Nest: Allows Zerglings to morph into Banelings. Also allows for Baneling weapon and armor upgrades.

Hydralisk Den: Allows spawning of Hydralisks as well as contains upgrades for the Hydralisk's armor and attack capabilities. The den can also allow the Hydralisk to mutate into a deep warren which gives the player the ability to upgrade to Lurkers.

Spire: Allows for spawning of Mutalisks and Corruptors as well as their respective armor/weapon upgrades. The structure can also be upgraded to a Greater Spire which allows the player to mutate Mutalisks into Swarm Guardians.

Nydus Warren: Allows the spawning of Nydus Worms and Infestors. Friendly units can use the Nydus Warren to travel to any other Nydus Warren or Nydus Canal owned by that player on the map.

Ultralisk Cavern: Allows for the spawning of Ultralisks as well as their respective armor/weapon upgrades.

The Units:

Larva: The basis for all other Zerg units. Larva spawn in groups of three from a Hatchery, Lair or Hive and morph into virtually every other unit the Zerg have at their disposal.

Drone: The Zerg builder and resource collector. In order to build a structure a drone must be sacrificed and morph into whatever building is being created.

Overlord: This Overlord controls the player's unit cap. The more Overlords a player has the more units he/she can build. The Overlord can also generate creep that will infest other mineral lines making them unusable to enemies. It can morph into an Overseer which gives it the ability to detect hidden and cloaked units and also gives it a longer range of sight.

Queen: The newest unit added to the Zerg army is versatile and responsible for all Zerg base defenses. It is built at the Hatcher/Lair/Hive and can be upgraded up to two times as you upgrade to a Lair and then a Hive; each upgrade gives it newer and stronger abilities. Players can only have one Queen at a time on the battlefield.

Her abilities include: The "creep tumor" which creates a creep generating node, a "swarm clutch" which lays eggs that spawn when the Hive is attacked, it also gains a range bonus from shriekers, the "deep tunnel" ability which allows the Queen to tunnel deep underground and surface at targeted Zerg buildings, "regeneration" ability targets Zerg buildings healing them, it can also be used to heal herself, "swarm infestation" makes a Zerg building launch attacks at the enemy in the form of glowing flies, the last ability is "toxic creep" which does damage over time to the affected area of the creep. It only has light armor but can burrow to anywhere on the map that has creep on it which is an enormous advantage.

Zergling: Tier 1 ground units that spawn two at a time. They are fast and weak but in large numbers they can devastate. They can morph into Banelings and they can burrow. Banelings are suicide bombers that roll into their enemies exploding, taking themselves out along with the enemy. Large groups of Banelings can be a cheap but devastating ground force.

Roach: Is a ground unit that attacks both air and ground and can regenerate hit points very quickly making them very deadly because of the difficulty killing them. Some units simply don't do enough damage to kill a Roach on its own. The Roach is the perfect unit to strike an enemy on its own or to act as a support with Zerglings and Banelings. It can also burrow.

Hydralisk: The favorite unit of most Zerg players, the Hydralisk is a tier 2 ground unit with ranged attack that can hit both air and ground. It, like most Zerg units, can also burrow. With an upgrade the Hydralisk can morph into the deadly Lurker.

Lurker: Excellent ground support unit that must be burrowed to attack. Once burrowed the Lurker sends a massive strip of spikes up out of the ground that rips opposing ground forces to shreds. In groups Lurkers can be as devastating as Crucio Siege Tanks. Lurkers are outstanding defensive units as well.

Nydus Worm: An armored unit that acts as transport. Once upgraded to a Nydus Canal, units can be loaded into them via any other canal or Nydus Warren and be transported to wherever the canal ends on another part of the map. This will make the Zerg quicker and deadlier with sneak attacks then ever before. It can be morphed back from a Canal into a worm.

Infestor: This unit uses more spell-like abilities to hurt the enemy and takes the place of the Defiler from the original games. The Infestor can use dark swarm which generates a smoke screen that prevents units under its protection from taking ranged damage, it can also use disease which does damage equal to 95% of a total unit's health within 10 seconds and spreads between units which can devastate a large army of infantry if coupled with a direct attack. The Infestor also has an ability called infestation that takes over an enemy structure, causing it to spawn infested Terran units for 20 seconds. In addition to all of that the unit can burrow and also travel underground while it is burrowed.

Mutalisk: The Zerg's all-purpose air unit that attacks both air-to-air and air-to-ground. It is fast moving and its projectiles bounce from one unit to another dealing greater damage to larger groups of enemies. It can morph into the Swarm Guardian.

Swarm Guardian: Heavy long-ranged air-to-ground bombardier. This unit fires some sort of explosive spores from very long distances that deal huge damage especially to enemy structures.

Ultralisk: The Ultralisk returns in SC2 and is deadlier than ever. Its massive blades (larger than elephants tusks) deal area of effect damage now which makes the Ultralisk even deadlier than before. It also has a new attack specific to when it attacks structures; the Ultralisk now head-butts the building doing more damage than it would with it blades.

Corruptor: This is a new Zerg air unit that doesn't attack and destroy an enemy, instead it shoots infesting spores that latch onto enemy ships and then consume and assimilate the ship into a Zerg vessel effectively turning the ship against its previous owner. A great new weapon in the Zerg arsenal that is certain to annoy the hell out of Protoss and Terran players.

My Thoughts:

The Zerg are certainly a force to be reckoned with in SC2, perhaps even more so than in the first. From everything I've read about the Zerg I was lead to believe that they played the same as in the first game however, from everything I've seen I'd have to disagree. It seems to me that with new units like the Infestor and the Corruptor the Zerg have focused more on assimilating their enemies rather than just ripping them to shreds. Assimilating enemy units only strengthens their overall strategy which remains unchanged, strength in superior numbers.

The Queen unit has certainly also changed the dynamics of the Zerg defense. Instead of building sunken colonies, the Queen is responsible for spawning defensive structures as well as casting defensive abilities. The Zerg were never about micromanaging in the originals, they were about having huge numbers and overwhelming your enemy with the right combination of units, it was very difficult to micromanage. In SC2 it seems like the Queen is going to change that dynamic by making the player micromanage far more. When you're being attack at an outpost you'll have to send your Queen there to help defend, whether it be by stabbing enemies one-by-one with her claws or by casting defensive spells.

I do like the fact that almost every unit can burrow now, even the Ultralisk can burrow. The Zerg were always about hidden tricks and plenty of surprise attacks, this only adds to that strength&good job Blizzard!

The Zerg in the original games were definitely the hardest race to grasp, they don't build, they spawn and morph and evolve, it was that unconventional gameplay that made the learning curve longer than the other two races. SC2 seems no different and if anything it seems like the Zerg will be even more difficult to play as. For all of you die hard Zerglings I'm sure you're up to the challenge. When push comes to shove I'll probably stick with the Terran for online play.

Wrap it up already!

I don't think I've ever seen a community wait so patiently in a puddle of their own drool like this StarCraft 2 community has. Months and months went by with literally thousands of fans throwing their unit concepts and ideas at the Blizzard developers, but, the wait was worth it. So now you have it! All three races have been released, oh, what's that? When is it coming out you ask? Yeah your guess is as good as mine at this point. I guess we all have to sit in a bigger puddle of our own drool now until this thing comes out.

Feel free to check out all the other videos we have listed in the multimedia section of the site, there's plenty more Zerg gameplay footage, trailers and interviews with developers, producers and artists. The Zerg frenzy may be over for the time being but remember there will be plenty of other updates in the coming weeks. Blizzard says nothing about this game is set in stone, they change units and abilities every day and the game hasn't even reached the balance phase yet, once it does we're sure to see a lot of other changes to the game.

Don't take this as fact, but I read on a few forums that Best Buy had listed a release date so I checked it out myself and they list the game for release on 12/3/2008. Take it for what it's worth.

-Thanks to www.sc2armory.com for the unit and structure graphics

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