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Gaidin wrote:I don't think they were pulling for evil zerg. Or even noble zerg. At least not until Kerrigan came along. The zerg are basically wild animals. Animals whose nature is to basically assimilate everything. This vastly different from the borg commentary earlier as they don't strike me as a fundamental nature so much as a choice they made to shift how they function millenia ago. The zerg evolved, and their methods were their fundamental nature.

They didn't evolve that way, they were set on this path artificially by the Xel'naga through uplifiting (so they can't really be called "wild animals" anymore), but it was the Overmind who made the conscious decision to consume and assimilate everything in the galaxy, including his creators to preserve/spread the "purity of essence".

That's totally like the Borg, only they call the latter "perfection".

Like many naturally wild predators(at least conceptually as might be expected from a story), the Overmind didn't want something controlling it. Enter the assimilation of Kerrigan. This is where the evil comes in. She's a human who basically had the predatory nature of the zerg, combined with its sheer lack of human morality and ethics, imprinted on her brain, but she still had her human thoughts, at least as a personality. She is where the evilness of the zerg comes in I think. Largely until she took over, there actions were all about assimilating the next useful organism into the Hive. She took over, and it became about a cross between revenge and ruling the universe(until she disappeared for half a decade after Brood War).

Revenge never seemed to be much of a priority for Kerrigan, if it was she wouldn't have allowed Mengsk to rebuild his League. No, her goal was to become "Queen Bitch of the Universe" by pwning everyone all at once.

according to a press release hots takes place two years after wings of liberty concludes. So...how does this affect things. And genetic diversity is actually the best thing if you seek evolution

The Zerg lessen overall genetic diversity through their assimilation process by removing every aspect from captured species but the one they want to acquire. They also spread their own glaring weakness this way which is to become hostile and run amok upon the removal of whatever intellect is guiding them, to the point of it being impossible to reintegrate them into the larger swarm as can be seen when Zasz is slain and his brood has to be exterminated.

The Zerg are a self-destructive construct. Their only objective is to assimilate more biomass and to gear evey single aspect of their being towards this goal. This is coupled with relative creative sterility which means they're hard-pressed to deal with any new hurdle that comes their way if there isn't a species in reach that contains the key to the problem. Space, for example, was barred from them until a species capable of independent space-flight came too near to their planet and they could it take from them. Another one is psychic abilities which prompted them to seek out humanity in the first place.

So what happens when they have consumed all biomass in reach? They either all starve to death or eat themselves and then the survivors starve to death.

Were the zerg ever considered a successful experiment by the Xel'Naga?

They were considered successful as far as their whole "Purity of Essence" fetish went. Then the Zerg came and ate them (or did they?).

So the evolutionary flaws really only say something about the Xel'Naga assessment, not the Zerg themselves. The Zerg have their nature. Evolutionarily flawed, in a sense, but that's more because they haven't hit a situation that would force them to evolve in a pure sense. They're sort of the great white shark of the universe.

They are more of a macroscopic malignant tumor of the universe. Great Whites do not aim to spread all over the place at the cost of everything else.

I felt that their ultimate goal was to merge with the protoss in a way that both factions were fully submerged (like in ghost in the shell when Kusanagi and the puppet master fuse at the end). The dark voice redirected it to suit his goals of destruction and the over mind tried to break the dark one's hold by making kerrigan his successor and then engineering his destruction. The press release talked about how Kerrigan wants to combat the limited nature of the zerg revolution

Metahive wrote:They are more of a macroscopic malignant tumor of the universe. Great Whites do not aim to spread all over the place at the cost of everything else.

Oh please. Don't get too carried away with the analogy and think I'm pushing for equivalency here. I'm making a point about their (lack of) evolution, not their nature.