They were last in the original I think, but first In brood war if memory serves. Gameplay wise, even apart from the no-healing aspect, I wasn't nuts about the Protoss. I seem to recall finding Protoss missions the most difficult overall. But I think also I was just horrible at playing them. Things did start to get easier once you managed to get a few carriers out, and some of those giant worm artillery things.
But anyway, Terran all the way for me. I always like the badass human faction the most. Humans in Warcraft 3, and Space Marines in Dawn of War.

In Warcraft 3 I liked the Night Elves the most, just because of their Ents. You could use your guard towers to stage a "last march of the Ents" of your own! Ok, maybe it wasn't the most viable tactic, but it looked awesome.

You have to keep in mind, I was never very good at RTS games, and figuring out strategies for various factions. I just kinda did my bet and tried to scrape to victory somehow :P I liked Warcraft always more for the setting and just being able to fight that Lord of the Rings like fantasy war then for the gameplay. That's why I liked the much less known [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings:_War_of_the_Ring]War of the Ring[/url] so very much.

Yeah, what happened to that game?

Yeah, same. Actually, I bought the game pretty early on; played it for, like, a few hours; then never played it again. I am now deeply interested in it, though, so I’d like to buy it again to support them but it’s not possible any more. :(

The developer is a perfectionist, so he will often redo things from scratch if they’re not to his liking. Also, the community response to the alleged abandon was (still is) pretty toxic, even though the game’s quality was pretty great, so that didn’t help.

I did, and I liked it a lot too. Not the best movies game (TRON 2.0 is and I think will foerev remain unequalled in that regard), but it was a lot of fun, sometimes a little ridiculous (have Gandalf survive Moria, save Boromir) but maybe all the more fun because of it. And it was nice to see a different spin on the RTS genre with some new ideas.

War of the Ring on the other hand was a very classic RTS, pretty much just a clone of Warcraft, but a very, very good one, and it was fun to see a different version of Middle Earth than the Peter Jackson one. Even more so as the graphics were really nice for the time. I hope it comes to GOG one day so you can check it out.

Yes, Defiler was pretty mean with its plague ability...just imagine if someone does that against a group of super-expensive carriers :-) (even more extreme would be a 2vs2 with a Terran ally who would use the science vessel's EMP wave...in theory you could reduce Protoss units to 1 HP just by those special abilities). Though when I played multiplayer, it rarely got to that stage.
I can't really recall if HotS had any missions where you control Terran or Protoss units (though Raynor's raiders do play a part in the story iirc). LotV has a set of three missions right at the end where you control Protoss, Terrans and Zerg respectively.
I liked the Protoss a lot, their expensive but powerful units appealed to me, and there was a tragic sense of a doomed civilization, threatened by extermination and riven by fratricidal strife, in their story in SC/Brood war that was really great (unfortunately that was mostly lost in LotV which is just dreadfully boring).
Terrans always seemed to be the most difficult race to me because they've always involved a lot of micromanagement. They did have some really cool abilities though that could be devastating in the hands of a skilled player (like siege tank drops on cliffs in that Lost Temple map...or the science vessel and its irradiate ability).

That was great too. I remember being very impressed with the intro.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't at least a bit captivated by the Protoss story in the original and Broodwar. In fact, I think that overall I cared more for the Protoss story than any of the others. Though I did love Raynor and Kerrigan's characters in the Terran campaign as well. Come to think of it, there were a lot more fascinating characters for me in the original. WoL contained several 'meh' characters. Except Nova of course. Damn, I really want a game just with her one day. Tomb Raider / splinter cell in space or something.

There's actually a mission pack focused on Nova:
[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCraft_II:_Nova_Covert_Ops]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCraft_II:_Nova_Covert_Ops[/url]
Don't know if it's any good, after LotV I felt disinclined to buy it.
I also wasn't a fan of the characters in WoL...some of it had potential (like Raynor's relationship with Tychus), but felt poorly executed.
I also really liked the Protoss characters in SC/Brood war, even the minor ones like Aldaris were great. Tassadar of course was the noble tragic hero.

SPOILER for SC2

So I really was excited when Zeratul spoke to Tassadar's spirit in WoL. But LotV ruined even that scene...turns out it wasn't Tassadar's spirit at all, but some Xel'Naga (iirc, at some point I didn't pay attention to the nonsensical story anymore) who just took Tassadar's form. Sad :-(((((

Cool stuff, I'll definitely try it out some day.

Barkley 2 (aka The Magical Realms of Tír na nÓg: Escape from Necron 7 - Revenge of Cuchulainn: The Official Game of the Movie - Chapter 2 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa): https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/talesofgames/barkley-2-an-rpg-sequel-to-barkley-shut-up-and-jam/posts/1799648

Rain World: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3PVDKNupbI

Waiting for this one as well.

Also for Sui Generis, which will probably never be completed.

And for Basement which should have been out two years ago.

Me too. This is the only project I've backed on Kickstarter that I don't expect to see. But, this is also the only one I backed that I figured might not see the light of day either.