Is the HotS campaign longer than in WoL?

Brad cited someone from Blizzard a few times on the Bombcast saying that the Heart of the Swarm campaign was supposed to be shorter than the Wings of Liberty one, but I just finished it and the final count is 27 missions compared to the 25 of Wings of Liberty. Was the campaign actually longer or am I missing something, like Protoss missions not being counted in WoL or something?

I felt like I got through this campaign much faster than WoL, but I played WoL way back at launch so I'm not entirely sure.

The 27 in HotS counts the 7 evolution missions.

I've heard it was a bit shorter, but I haven't played it yet.

@zornack said:

Ah, that explains it then. Because those missions are very small in scale and essentially play themselves, then there would only be 20 main missions in HotS.

What's the quickest way I can complete the WOL campaign? It says I've done like 17 missions (all the Protoss ones are done, I know), and I just want to get it out the way because HOTS looks far more interesting.

Are there certain planets I should mainline to get to the end? (Bearing in mind I just did the Odin TV broadcast mission.)

@fluxwavez: WoL actually had 29 missions (24 Terran, 4 Protoss, 1 secret).

@chavtheworld said:

The missions where you go and find more pieces of the Xel'Naga artifacts are the only "main" mission arc. Every other mission arc is technically a "side" mission arc, as you don't have to complete all of them to finish the game (though that's poorly designed, because the Protoss arc and the steal-Odin-smear-Arcturus-Mengsk arc should be mandatory, due to their plot significance).

However, the next artifact mission only unlocks when you've done a certain total number of missions. So prioritise the artifact missions, then just keep doing side missions until the next artifact mission unlocks. I think once you get the last artifact piece, you can then start the Char mission arc immediately if you choose, which is the final arc. Starting Char is the point of no return.

You're probably quite close at this point. The game still sorta forces you to do most of the missions, but if you really just want to get to the end, I think you'll have Char unlocked with 1-2 side mission arcs still unresolved.

@bisonhero: Ah thanks! I will see if I have any more Mengsk missions and do those, or just mainline the Xel'Naga pieces.

@chavtheworld: The Odin TV broadcast is the last Mengsk mission, so you've seen all of it. It was kind of anticlimactic; you play that recording, then he yells "No more questions!" and that's basically it. Presumably, in some Starcraft novels or in HotS, there is more Mengsk stuff related to the aftermath of that.

You must still have some missions in the help-the-colonists arc, or in the Tosh arc. But yeah, as for getting to Char and finishing the game the fastest (especially if you're going for that achievement for finishing the whole campaign in under 8 hours), the Xel'Naga artifact ones are actually what is bringing you closer to Char.

@bisonhero: I've done very few of the Tosh ones (maybe like 2), and I do remember having a colonist mission available right now. Might be the first one, not sure. I'll see if any of the later Xel'Naga missions catch my attention, thanks!

It's shorter but not by a huge amount; the biggest thing that will cut into your time is only spending a small amount of time on the Leviathan compared to the Hyperion; much fewer and much shorter conversation opportunities (not to mention less interesting characters); also choices were permanent and they didn't give you a thorough look on why whichever one would be more useful than the other so you might have spent time contemplating.

If you play on Hard to start with I could see HotS taking longer than WoL since Hard is actually relatively challenging this time around. Brutal is roughly the same except you can't win the last mission by spamming siege tanks/MC towers or vikings and the first 5 minutes are likely unwinnable for 95% of players (whereas the last 2 minutes of All In was unwinnable for 90% of players or so).

Dunno. I thought wings was much harder. I just a moved ultras in the last mission on this with no real planning. All in was a lot more fun and difficult in my opinion.

You finished it already? Fuck I'm so slow.

@haffy: Difficulty level? WoL isn't a super hard campaign; maybe top 5 or 6 all time (keeping in mind there aren't very many RTS's, Forged Alliance and Warcraft 3 on hard are the top 2); HoTS is slightly harder but has one ridiculous mission and the hardest hero mission so that gives it some arbitrary edges. All In is just brute force tuning; how much crap can we send at you to force you to spam one or two units; even on brutal you can diversify your approach in the last mission of HoTS (though you will most likely have to use hydras in some form); it's a great sandbox for experimentation.

@fredchuckdave: Played through on brutal. Had to restart a mission at least once. Might of been more, but the only one I remember restarting was the baneling mission. Other than that I didn't use saves at any point, and did everything first time. I really thought WoL was much harder. I even played through some missions before release and had more trouble on them even though I knew what to expect in every mission. In Hots I kind of just had an invincible army after making drones for the first 5 minutes.

I havn't played the other two games you mentioned, so can't really comment on the,

I didn't find the hero mission too hard either, and I usually have problems on those kind of missions. But hearing other people having trouble on it, I might of just got lucky. Because my Kerrigan could solo every pack leader and the end boss.

@haffy: There is more micro required for Terran since everything isn't centralized into a hub spawner and you don't have a convenient catch-all rally point; but in general the game compensates with enough troops to make it more difficult. You can also not use twin drones and instant overlords if you want to make certain missions much more difficult. Finally you can actually edit the levels themselves as far as I know; giving Mengsk detectors or nukes would do wonders for making the last level nigh impossible.

The way I did the last level was to take the expansion within 2 minutes of the start; which I gather made it much more difficult as it might have activated the AI for most of the spawners much earlier and I was pounded with relentless hero units from start to finish; tons of fun but might have made it seem disproportionately more difficult.

Zerg is distinct enough from Terran that it's entirely possible that you're simply better with Zerg or vice versa and thus have less challenge with one or the other.

The last part of Supreme is somewhat random depending on how many times the big guy decides to spawn an ultra/2 acid spitters, he could spawn 3 or 4 in 40 seconds or focus on doing his don't stand in fire move over and over (thus opening him for attacking); regardless it's fun to do in 12 minutes on Hard.

I'm playing on Hard for my first playthrough and while I have found the game marginally easier than WoL (that may also be due to the fact that I just finished the WoL campaign for a second time prior to playing HoTS) I find the achievements harder to get on Hard. Having played through the levels I probably could get them a second time but unless playing the Hero levels I've been struggling to get all achievements on a level on my first run.