Was it dead on arrival? Is is still playable? Do you miss it like I do?

Improving pathfinding and unit response doesn't necessarily make for a better game, you won't see any of these interesting micro tricks in games with near-perfect pathfinding.

I never said it made the game better i just mentioned things improved, all of which lead to less clicking required.

All the tricks of brood war required furious clicking.

Well, SC2 managed to kill the custom game scene from the start. Because they wanted to prevent another DotA from slipping from their grasp. No custom game = no reason to stay once you had your fill of the mediocre campaign

They also wanted all competition and multiplayer strictly under their thumb. Blizzard saw the immense success that KESPA earned for themselves with no support from Blizzard and decided they wanted to cash in on it.

Should I play sc1? Never played it.

Have you played WC3? SC1 is basically WC3 with faster gameplay and bigger armies so if you like one you'll probably like the other.

I dunno how well it holds up without nostalgiavision, but yes, you probably should give it a shot if you like rts.

Yes, the campaign and the story is absolutely worth it

I played CC:ZeroH . Will I like both games?

Went back and played it recently, it's still excellent
Early missions are a bit easy but for a new player it'd be great, cutscenes didn't hold up super well with notable exceptions
I would embed related but it's an amazing payoff and I'm not spoiling it
Intros/debriefs were better than I remembered, actually