Bought CE edition Heart of the Swarm, haven't opened it.
Something is wrong with me.
Nothing is wrong with you, it's an obsolete, overhyped and mediocre product. Sure it's polished and "competitive", but so is drinking shots till one man falls under the table, it's very competitive, but at the same time, it does not fascinate everyone.
The problem of the whole RTS genre is that there is a lot of "real time", some amount of tactics, and very little strategy. It's just memorize build orders, practice their execution, and try to counter enemy units in a simple rps manner. Seeing a lot of rocks on the battlefield? Better start building papers. Lastly, you must be able to manually click all the tactical abilities in time. There, you are done.
Why it's unattractive to me? Because a true general that formulates a strategic plan never tells an individual soldier to reload his gun, to take cover and where to shoot. In a RTS, you spend majority of time doing just that, and that's why there CANNOT be any significant portion of strategy in the game. The point of these games is to drown the player in mundane.
TA and Supreme Commander games took IMO the logical step from C&C clones like Starcraft - to automate the operational functions, making units more autonomous, thus freeing the player for tactics and strategy. They introduced automated builds, complex patrol routes, behaviorial parameters for units, auto repair, and more.
Guess what - the players did not like it. They prefer to click buttons like "Chain lightning" and watch the effects.
Look at chess - simple rules, no hitpoints, no resource, no healing, no special abilities. Tons and tons of strategy, brilliant tactical arsenal. Interesting balance (knight vs. bishop).
