StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty Message Board older than one year ago

Smell that? That gentle, wafting scent in the breeze? That unique blend of concession-stand popcorn, USB and pwn? It's a specific, enticing fragrance that can only mean one thing: It's time for Major League Gaming finals, and you can watch it all live on Joystiq!

All day today, teams from around the globe will be competing for thousands of dollars in prizes across 4 games: Starcraft 2, Halo: Reach, Black Ops, and making its MLG debut, League of Legends. It's an exciting day for pro-gaming, so strap on your beer hat and big foam finger and head on through for the day's full schedule.

On July 27th, 2011 StarCraft II celebrated its first birthday; man oh man, how the time has flown...

Cody Conners is the Director of Operations for Sixjax Gaming, one of North America's premier Starcraft 2 teams, and a freelance writer for IGN.com. He has spent a lot of time around eSports and is a prominent member of the StarCraft II eSports community...

Blizzard have removed the Starcraft II demo from Battle.net, to replace it with a “Starter Edition” – a move which echoes World Of Warcraft’s free 20-level trial. The Starcraft II starter edition allows you try out a bunch of the single player game, and also the Terrans in custime games and single-player vs AI games. More details below.(more…)

The StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty demo has been replaced by StarCraft 2: Starter Edition. The new version allows players to play four levels of the campaign, the first two challenges, access the terran race in custom games and single-player vs. AI, and play four of the custom maps.

All campaign progress and achievements are saved to the player's Battle.net account, so they can pick up from right where they left off, if they decide to buy the full game. Already have a Battle.net account? You'll find the StarCraft 2: Starter Edition in Account Management under "Your Game Accounts." Who says drug dealers don't do house calls and make it easy to get hooked up anymore?

#starcraft Still on the fence about StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, Blizzard's spacey real-time strategy game? Maybe the StarCraft II: Starter Edition, the game's revamped demo, is for you. It's the bigger StarCraft II demo that's less restrictive. More »

Though it's been a while since we've heard anything definite about StarCraft II's mod marketplace, in which players would be able to sell custom games to each other for real money, a definite release date isn't yet in sight...

Strap on your beer-hats and huge foam fingers, e-sports fans, because Major League Gaming's Anaheim Championship Sunday is under way, and you can catch all the fragging, pylon-constructing action right here on Joystiq. Championship matches for Starcraft 2, Halo: Reach, and Call of Duty: Black Ops will take place all day long on 4 different streams, so make sure you've got enough overpriced concession-stand munchies to last you a while.

Head on through for the day's full schedule, and be sure to let us know how you feel about competitive gaming coverage on Joystiq, either in the comments or in the poll. This sort of post is a new jam for us, and if you like it, we'll do more!

Lots of people, watching StarCraft.

If you're the sort of person who's been looking to transition from "sort of casually interested in seeing highly skilled people play really difficult games for money" to "lying on your couch watching streamed matches of StarCraft II and/or Street Fighter IV for two days straight," this might well be the best weekend in the history of the world for you to take that momentous step.

I'm talking about the world of competitive gaming (or "e-sports," if you can stomach the term), and there's a staggering amount of it happening over the next two days.

For me the main event is MLG Anaheim (you know, California), where the folks at Major League Gaming are pulling together the best of the best to compete for cash and glory in live streams of Halo Reach, Call of Duty: Black Ops, and--count 'em--two separate feeds of StarCraft II filled with dozens of top Western players and a handful of the biggest names from the Korean scene, and commentated by some of the best casters on the Internet, including noted fancy gentleman Sean "Day[9]" Plott. You can watch the low-quality streams of all this stuff for free at MLG's site, or, hey, how about in this player right here.

A few months ago, MLG ran a Dallas event so disastrous, rife as it was with unstable video streams and in-game networking issues, that the group's CEO personally took the stage on the last day to issue a formal apology. After that performance, I wouldn't have endorsed another one of their events. But at its next show in Columbus, MLG thoroughly got its act together by fixing its network issues, bringing in top players and commentators from the Global StarCraft League in Korea, offering free high-quality streams to everyone, and even getting rid of its peer-to-peer video service due to audience demand. Based on that follow-up performance, I have no reservation about recommending the MLG feeds if you want a good, free way to see what competitive StarCraft II is all about.

Of course, Halo and Call of Duty will be going on as well, if you're into that. I just can't get into competitive first-person shooters in the same way as I have StarCraft, though.

Another genre I can appreciate on a competitive level is the fighting game, and I'll be darned if EVO 2011 doesn't have you covered there. That's going on in Vegas all weekend, and there are two live feeds over on the official site streaming high-level games of SF4 Arcade Edition, Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, Mortal Kombat, and more. Of course, if you want to get in on the seedy hotel-room cash games of Jackie Chan, you'll just have to make the trip to Vegas yourself.

Live broadcast by Ustream

Lastly, you could always skip straight to the gold standard of live competitive gaming events by watching the GSL's season finals, also going on this weekend. You can watch live streams of the finals for free if you feel like staying up till some ungodly hour on North American time; otherwise, a video-on-demand account will cost you a decent chunk of change. Those new to the game may want to stick with the more accessible MLG option for the moment, though I can tell you from experience that there's nothing quite like being in the middle of a couple thousand people screaming their heads off at an all-in zergling rush.

#esports Three huge events figure to make this weekend one of the biggest ever in competitive video gaming: the EVO World Championships, the GSL Finals and, underway right now, MLG Anaheim. More »

Cody Conners is the Director of Operations for Sixjax Gaming, one of North America's premier Starcraft 2 teams, and a freelance writer for IGN.com. He has spent a lot of time around eSports and is a prominent member of the StarCraft II eSports community...

Blizzard has shared the plan for two big e-sports events at BlizzCon in Anaheim, CA, and it looks like there's going to be a full plate of noobs, ownage and ggs yet again this year. Not only will the Global Battle.net Invitational showcase some of the best StarCraft 2 players from Blizzard's online multiplayer service, but the 2011 Global StarCraft League Final matches will be held at the same event, pitting the best of the best at the game against each other.

Those are just the two StarCraft 2 events -- Blizzard traditionally also holds contests and tournaments for World of Warcraft arena matches and the World of Warcraft TCG at BlizzCon, and though we haven't seen an official announcement yet, it's possible we'll see some Warcraft 3 or even Diablo 3 e-sports play as well. Outside of competitive play, Blizzard usually also offers new content for attendees to play through, so Diablo 3 specifically, plus any other unannounced games, may be playable, too.

Tickets for the October 21-22 event are sold out, but the tournament play will likely be streamed online through "virtual tickets" later on this year.

Most games you eventually get tired of at some point. Whether it doesn't have enough content to keep you interested or that it's just the same thing over and over. And after a while a game will lose the appeal it once had when you first played it. However Starcraft transcends this in a few key ways.

First of all is the evolution of the game. As people play Starcraft and hone their skills, new strategies are developed. New threats must be accounted for. Being able to determine what your opponent is planning to do is a skill in and of itself and is vital at higher levels of play as you may find yourself ill prepared for what your opponent has up their sleeve.

Secondly is the depth of the game. Over time you will learn the most efficient way to play as your race of choice and make the most use of it's respective strengths. Your perspective of Starcraft will change as you play it. Much like as in other games such as Team Fortress 2, you will start to notice new things as you improve. In Team Fortress 2 you will start to recognize amoungst the various sounds of battle when a spy has uncloaked near you, or you will see a weak point in the other team's defense and be able to exploit it with the appropriate class. In Starcraft it goes much deeper. When you first play the game you won't know what a certain composition of units means. You won't know where you are being hit when a nuclear launch is detected. However as you continue to play the game these things become obvious to you. You will start to see things as you never did before. Seeing a lot of static defense in the enemy's base will mean so much more to you than when you first started to play and it only looked difficult to attack. If you spot certain tells in time you will know what you need to in order to counter your opponent's strategy. In this way the game's entertainment value rises as you continue to play it.

Third is the custom content created by the Starcraft community. Besides countless maps are varying game modes available to play. Be it tower defense, space battles, the ever popular Phantom Mode, or even Mafia, there is something for everyone. And new ones are always being developed. Take for example Phantom Mode. This is similar to the main game in it's mode of play, however it is much different gameplay wise. There are a few options to choose from at the start, but typically there are eight players total. Two paladins, four slayers, and two phantoms. The slayers are normal players allied with the paladins and they get a bounty for killing an enemy. Paladins get a regular income of resources that diminishes as slayers are killed. Phantoms get an income of resources that increases over time as well as extra supply over time as well. Supply is what limits the amount of units you can make. Nobody knows who anybody else is so the slayers and paladins must determine who the phantoms are before they grow too powerful for anybody to defeat. Deception is a large part of the game as a clever phantom will turn his enemies against eachother.

These are just a few aspects of the game that make it entertaining and keep it's players coming back for more.

Chris Loranger put down his headset, left his booth, and was greeted by twelve hundred people chanting "HuK, HuK, HuK!" He had but only a few seconds to wave and throw up his trademark peace-sign before his teammates Dario Wunsch, Tyler Wasieleski, Hayder Hussein, and Jang Min Chul hoisted him into the air to further revel in the moment. The celebration was well deserved; HuK had just beaten MooN, a South Korean, to win Dreamhack Summer 2011 after a very close best of five series...

Blizzard Dota, the Defense of the Ancients-style official mod that was shown off at last year's BlizzCon, is still a work in progress, according to lead producer Chris Sigaty. The other three mods shown last year were released a little while ago to the community, but the Dota mod, which pits all kinds of Blizzard franchise characters up against each other in a real-time battle, needed a little extra work, apparently.

"We basically put it back up in the shop and did some massive overhauls to some things, which I'm not going to go into specific detail about," Sigaty told Joystiq at a press event last week. "But yeah, we are working on Blizzard Dota, and we do intend to launch it at or around the time of Heart of the Swarm, but the official details will be online later."

Will the mod eventually require the upcoming Heart of the Swarm expansion to play? Sigaty's got nothing yet: "We're not even talking about the business level decision of it at this point." But rest assured that, somewhere on Blizzard's Irvine, CA campus, there are still developers fighting over who'd win in a fight, Thrall, Diablo, or Tychus Findlay.

My biggest question so far about StarCraft II's first expansion, Heart of the Swarm, is what sort of zerg-oriented metagame Blizzard will wrap around the add-on's new set of campaign missions. In the first game's terran campaign, you walked good ol' boy Jimmy Raynor around his flagship between missions, overseeing laboratory research and developing new vehicle modifications that subtly changed the abilities of your units in subsequent levels. But the zerg swarm has no labs or garages to work with, so how are you going to provide the player any sort of meaningful between-mission progression? What's going to make this campaign different?

Now that I've played a couple of missions from Heart of the Swarm and played around with the stuff you'll be doing between those missions, I'm at least tentatively equipped to answer that question, and also fill you in on where we're at in the storyline with this expansion. But hang on: it's impossible to talk about any of this stuff without directly referencing the pivotal event at the end of Wings of Liberty. If you haven't finished that game and care at all about being surprised by the end of it, stop reading.

We're not sure what the original distribution plan for the 45-second teaser for Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm was, but we're pretty sure it wasn't "Let it leak onto every video site on the Internet." Regardless, we're glad it's here -- and after watching it below, we wager you will be, too.

#watchthis It's only 45 seconds long, but you may still want to sit down. More »

NEW YORK - Major League Gaming (MLG), the world's largest competitive video game league and GOMTV's Global StarCraft II League (GSL), have announced a historic League Exchange Program that will send the best MLG players to compete in the GSL and allow top Korean talent to play LIVE for the first tim...

Blizzard Entertainment launched the latest StarCraft II patch (patch 1.3.3) yesterday, addressing some balance issues as well as fixing some minor bugs. Of particular note, the early-game Protoss "4-gate" strategy has received a nerf, making the ability to warp units into an enemy base a little less...

#watchthis David Zhou noticed the resemblance between the open titles of HBO's Game of Thrones and the maps of an RTS. And what do you know? A StarCraft 2 movie (created by Zhou) set to the GoT intro music looks pretty great. More »

Reader and filmmaker Luke Pierson has made a short documentary feature about competitive Starcraft 2, and I’ve posted it below for you to take a look at. The film is a freshman year documentary project for the film school at Columbia College Chicago, and was shot at (presumably the Starcraft 2 club of) University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Pierson explains: “I really wanted to create something that would make it easier for competitive starcraft players to explain to their friends and family (gaming and otherwise) what it’s all about.” And he’s not done a bad job.

Any other gamer-filmmakers out there?(more…)

#readytorollout It's cruel that LEGO restricts its video game tie-ins to family franchises. A StarCraft collaboration, for example, could see everyone get their hands on a toy this amazing, not just the guy who created it. More »

San Francisco, CA - IGN Entertainment, the leading Internet media and services provider focused on the video game and entertainment enthusiasts markets, today announced that it will host a professional gaming tournament featuring the runaway hit Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty from Activision's Bliz...

The StarCraft II community is unrivaled in enthusiasm. This community alone is enough to keep StarCraft II around for a long time -- especially when you consider members of the community that compete in StarCraft tournaments professionally. After IGN launched its eSports pro league, I had the chance to sit down with several pro StarCraft II players and watch them play a match, live...

Blizzard has finally released three of the four official StarCraft 2 mods it announced at BlizzCon last year -- though, the one that didn't make the cut might surprise you. Players can now download Aiur Chef, which might possibly be the world's first cooking/RTS title; Starjeweled, a gem-swapping puzzler with a few light strategy elements thrown in for good measure; and Left 2 Die, in which players build up their base and train units to defend it when hordes of infected Terran come to play at night.

That leaves poor little Blizzard Dota standing alone out in the cold, with no indication of when it might get an official release. Don't worry, little guy -- we don't think the multiplayer online battle arena genre's gonna get stale anytime soon.

One of these days, we must take a long, hard look at ourselves. And also at the StarCraft II modding scene, to see how well it’s living up to the promise that the modkit could turn the game to whole new genres.

Blizzard themselves have now made good on that promise, releasing the final, public versions of three long-promised cheeky nods to other games… (more…)

Tweaking the balance in a competitive real-time strategy game with a fanatical fanbase is never easy. Even the most minor changes can send shock waves through the entire experience, upsetting the existing balance, rendering reliable strategies useless, and potentially causing new issues. Don't forget the changes also open up new opportunities. In a post on the StarCraft II official site, Blizzard explains the decision process behind some of the changes in the recent 1.3 patch...

Just as we experienced here in the United States, mainland China is about to undergo a beta testing period for StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty. Ever since striking a deal back in 2008, Blizzard and NetEase have been working to bring the game to the country -- on March 29, that deal will come to fruition.

Anxious gamers in the region can pre-load the beta client -- provided they have a Battle.net account or at least a willingness to register -- which will grant access to all of StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty's multiplayer modes. Upon the conclusion of the unspecified beta period, Blizzard and NetEase will launch the game commercially, allowing players to buy 30-day access passes to the game for a suggested price of RMB 20 ($3.04). It's in line with a pricing structure that Blizzard outlined a year ago.

To pre-load the Chinese beta client, head on over to Blizzard's site.

StarCraft II is, as IGN Producer Craig Beridon says, "the bomb track." For those of you that live under some sort of rock that blocks out reality, StarCraft II is a real-time strategy game from Blizzard Entertainment. It's the most fun I've ever had with online multiplayer, and I'm not even that g...