Posted by DragonQ on October 30th, 2009 @ 3:52 p.m.
A thread at Blizzard's forums contains several people claiming to have gotten an email from Marcus Bishop telling them that they have been added to the beta invite database. However, there has been no official word on Blizzard's website or forums and the email's format doesn't seem to match normal Blizzard communications. Here's a screenshot of the email:
The thread can be seen here. Perhaps this type of email only applies to Twitter contest winners, perhaps it applies to all those accepted into the beta program, perhaps it is a joke. PaPaya, an AoMH Seraph, has also received such an e-mail. Have any of you?
Posted by DragonQ on October 27th, 2009 @ 5:59 p.m.
Gamasutra recently interviewed Dustin Browder regarding the design of StarCraft II. Topics covered include the complexity of the game, the difficulty of making it fresh and also true to the franchise, cutting units and inspiration from other games. Read the full three page interview here!
Posted by DragonQ on October 22nd, 2009 @ 09:45 a.m.
StarCraft II Battle Report 4 is out! Yeon-Ho Lee (Protoss) and David Kim (Terran) once again go at it, this time on the updated StarCraft map Lost Temple. You can watch it here:
Be sure to click the HD button and view in full screen to ensure you're watching in 720p High Definition.
If I learned only one thing from this fun encounter, it's that psi storms are awesome. Well, that and nukes seem overpowered... Post your thoughts here!
Posted by DragonQ on October 22nd, 2009 @ 08:24 a.m.
Q&A Batch 54 was released recently and in general it is more interesting than batch 53, thankfully. In particular the points about specific units (Infestor and Mothership) are intriguing. You can read it all below:
1. Does the Zergling vs. Zealot ratio remain at 4:1 or has it changed in the latest builds? One zealot can usually take out two, and sometimes three zerglings. However, the ratio is mainly based on positioning and micro-controlling. As the number of zealots grows, it will take more zerglings to win the fight since the zealots can clump up and reduce the attacking surface area. Smart use of terrain, such as a choke or backing up against a wall, will also help a protoss player reduce this attack area. Zerglings have to secure a good surround around the zealots to keep the ratio close.
2. In World of Warcraft pvp they found an issue over time that it was "very unsatisfying" to the player when they lost control of their character as it limited their ability to do their job or role. There is a noticeable increase in stuns and immobilization in Starcraft 2, which was barely present in Starcraft 1. From your experience in testing, do you feel abilities, which limit unit control, provide more dynamic game play so far or are you noticing more concern? First of all, there were actually some abilities in the original StarCraft that could cause players to lose control of units. These abilities include the ghost's lockdown, the corsair's disruption web, and the dark archon's mind control. It may be premature to suggest at this point that there's a "noticeable increase" in stuns and immobilization in StarCraft II. To address the comparison anyway, in World of Warcraft, you control a single character, unlike RTS games where you manage multiple units and bases. The difference in the World of Warcraft is when you lose control of your character you simply have to wait it out, assuming you don't have any control breaks. However in StarCraft, when units in your army are being controlled, you can still issue orders to the rest of your army, manage your base, build new units, etc. There are a lot of options and we happy with the diversity it brings to gameplay at this point.
3. What is the current status of the Mothership? What niche does it fill at this time, and if the unit were removed, would there be a reason to fill that niche with a different unit or would protoss still be fine? Currently the mothership has a passive cloaking field for nearby units and buildings, wormhole transit, temporal rift, and vortex as its abilities. We are happy with the state of the mothership at this time, and would like to hear feedback from the players once beta starts.
4. What is your overall goal for the Infestor? The units have had and removed so many abilities, are you trying to focus into a support role, or disruption and harassment, or just to have a wide variety of spells so it can be a quick response unit? It is intended to play more of the disruption/harassment role. They are meant to burrow and move up ahead of the swarm to soften up their opponent's forces.
5. Is EMP dodgeable, or there's some sort of indication that it's going to be launched? And does this cause a problem with Immortals? It's possible to dodge EMP, but it is difficult to do. Your options include anticipating your opponent will be casting an EMP by seeing the ghost or its shimmer and predicting it; being near the edge of the EMP range and moving out quickly; or using the stalker's blink ability.
6. Map/mod to site communication – Will there be support for map/mod makers to bridge a connection between their map/mod to their site? For example, if a person wanted their map/mod to submit scores/results to the site, and vice-versa the map/mod could pull the highest scores from the site and display it in the game. It is possible for players to make their own custom score screens but there are no specific plans to bridge map data to web sites via Battle.net.
7. Launcher support – Will maps/mods be able to have their own "launcher" (ala WoW's launcher), as in shortcut or start icon from the computer outside of StarCraft, and have their own screens, after a Battle.net authenticating screen (ala Twitter's, or Facebook's, application authentication). There are no plans to allow maps and mods to have their own launcher. However, making a loading screen or launch screen is still possible.
Posted by DragonQ on October 06th, 2009 @ 2:52 p.m.
You can check out the latest Q&A batch here! It covers topics such as postgame, pausing, voice actors and terrain types. As always, let us know what you think!
Posted by DragonQ on August 23rd, 2009 @ 4:35 p.m.
Some cool new stuff here folks. Let's try to break it down sensibly:
Blizzard's design chief Rob Pardo revealed the StarCraft II Marketplace - a place where members of the community can provide or sell content such as maps and mods. However, only "a portion of the revenue" from Premium maps would go to the creator. Also note that this will unlikely be available as soon as the game is released because they do not want this feature to delay the release date.
A new official FAQ has been released but it doesn't contain much new information.
The new Battle.NET will have a new ranking system according to Blizzard's executive vice president of game design, Rob Pardo:
One of the detriments of the old Battle.net was that matchmaking often pitted veteran gamers against those just learning to play. To alleviate this issue, Pardo introduced a new ranking structure that divided the player base into leagues. After between 10 and 12 games, players will be fitted into a league, where they are ranked against competitors of equal skill. Because of the new persistent profiles, players will also be prevented from gaming the system.
Also, multiplayer play will have modes for non-competitive play as well as competitive play. Each of the competitive play leagues mentioned above will contain 100-person divisions, allowing you to compete for the top of your division every season.
Like Age of Empires 3, only one online account will be allowed per product key.
A new chat system will allow players to communicate with those playing other Blizzard games as well as fellow StarCraft II players.
Another Rob Pardo quote regarding LAN play:
There's a few legitimate cases that we're going to try and address over time. Location-based tournaments, or let's say I'm in a dorm with a firewall or something like that, hopefully there's a way to determine that and maybe start a peer-to-peer game.
Again from Rob Pardo:
...the Starcraft II map editor will be more powerful than that which was available in Warcraft III.
Which leads on to...
Dustin Browder, the lead designer of StarCraft II, had some comments about StarCraft II's map editor. Apparently it's "the most powerful piece of software on the planet". Sounds impressive, obviously. It was shown that the editor allows first-person game creation, including the little but important things like custom UIs and inventory systems. Crazy.
An exclusive StarCraft II poker set has been announced here.
Posted by DragonQ on August 16th, 2009 @ 10:34 a.m.
Blizzard have announced their new official Twitter accounts for the StarCraft, WarCraft and Diablo franchises. These could be very interesting according to their preview notification:
...we plan to share news, run contests and events, and much more. We'll be starting things off with a bang by holding contests leading up to and through BlizzCon as well as will be twittering all through the show.
The first competition is for 500 StarCraft II Beta keys, going to their 500 biggest fans. Read the rules, enter the competition and let them know why you think you're their biggest fan!
Posted by DragonQ on August 05th, 2009 @ 6:48 p.m.
After a rather unsettling lack of news, the seemingly inevitable happened today. Blizzard has announced that StarCraft II will not be released this year. Here is the official press release:
Today we announced that StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty will not be ready for release by the end of 2009. Over the past couple of weeks, it has become clear that it will take longer than expected to prepare the new Battle.net for the launch of the game. The upgraded Battle.net is an integral part of the StarCraft II experience and will be an essential part of all of our games moving forward. This extra development time will be critical to help us realize our vision for the service.
Our mission is to develop games that deliver an epic entertainment experience. As part of that commitment, we will always take as much time as needed to ensure that our games and services meet the expectations of our players and the standard for quality that we set for ourselves as developers. As we work to make Battle.net the premier online gaming destination, we’ll also continue to polish and refine StarCraft II, and we look forward to delivering a real-time strategy gaming experience worthy of the series’ legacy in the first half of 2010.
I'm sure most people will agree that this new Battle.net will have to be pretty impressive if it's the main cause of this delay. It is rumoured to be similar to Xbox Live (although free as of now) - if this is true, do you think the wait will be worth it?
Blizzard has announced official mouse mats for SCII on their official website, the first of the inevitable bananza of official merchandise. Two limited edition mouse mats can be bought at steelseries.com, here and here. Previews of them can be seen below:
Considering I've never found a mouse mat that works properly with optical mice, I'm not sure how useful these will be but apparently they're designed for optical and laser mice. If you're a real SCII junkie and can't be bothered carrying around all that cash, maybe this is the purchase for you!
Ten new StarCraft II screenshots have been added to our Screenshot Gallery, showing off some more nice graphics! You can see them here. I think my favourite is Protoss Hit, what's yours?
