The panel moved onto the escort map that we actually played here at BlizzCon 2009. The designers wanted to let players choose how to win the mission. You can simply escort the colonist to the base or you can create defensive units set up at specific locations on the route.

In terms of making the map in the editor, the tools allowed for new features such as alpha texture blending, terrain foliage and hard tiles such as paved roads.

The discussion then turned to maps made by fans. The map editor for Warcraft III allowed for fans to make games like Defense of the Ancients, tower defense games, Footman Frenzy, RPG-based maps and lots more. With the even more powerful StarCraft II map editor, the chance to make even cooler fan based mods (and via Battle.net, the chance to actually make money for those mods) will expand even more.

The panel then showed off three examples of StarCraft II based mods created by the development team. One of them showed a massive Zerg with spikes that extended out of its back attacking other units. That unit can also deform the action environment as an attack.

Yet another dev team created mod turned StarCraft II into . . StarCraft: Ghost. Yep, the map editor allows people to turn the game into a third person based shooter with Ghost as the playable character shooting Zerg units . The mod includes support for mouse look as well as going inside buildings to chat with other characters. Underground third person action was shown as well.

Finally the third mod turned the game into a Galaga style arcade shooter with the player fighting against Protoss enemies. It was emphasized that all these mods were made in a fairly quick manner by the dev team in their spare time which means that mod teams should have lots of time to make cool mods for themselves. In the Q&A part of the panel, the dev team said it was still unknown how much support there would be for custom designed artwork for the editor.

In response to another question, the dev team said Battle.net will allow people to let Blizzard know if a custom mod or map is offensive to them in some way. Blizzard will then take a look at the map and if they also feel it is offensive they will pull it from being available for download.

Finally Blzzard revealed that they are still working on the minimal system specs for the game, although they did say they are determined to have the game run on as many PCs as they can.