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StarCraft II is now officially invading the many cyber cafes in China. The sci-fi RTS game from developer Blizzard and its Chinese publisher NetEase has now entered into open beta testing in that country and that it will get its official launch just a few days later on April 6.

The game will be sold in 30 day increments for the Chinese market which gives players access to both the multiplayer modes and the single player campaign for the equivalent of $3. The Chinese launch comes several months after StarCraft II was released in much of the world in late July 2010.

[Via VG247.com]

For those that prefer not to use the auto-updater, this stand alone patch for StarCraft II updates the game to v1.3. The patch includes a list of gameplay and balance changes, UI enhancements and bug fixes. A detailed list of all changes can be found on the official website.

Download the StarCraft II 1.3.0 Patch [PC] (339 MB)
Download the StarCraft II 1.3.0 Patch [Mac] (293 MB)

StarCraft II's latest major patch update is now officially live on the game's auto-update servers. This 1.3.0 patch for Blizzard's hit sci-fi RTS game has a bunch of new features along with a long list of bug fixes, game balance changes and map editor changes and improvements.

The big new feature for multiplayer gamers is the addition of the game's Grandmaster League which will invite the top 200 players in each of the game's global regions. In addition some players will receive new league icons that will show the top 8, 25 and 50 players in each division. There's also been a number of improvements to StarCraft II's custom game interface.

Many people have assumed that the next MMO game from Blizzard (the one code-named Project Titan) will be the one MMO that will finally take away players from Blizzard's hit MMO World of Warcraft. But according to Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce it could be another upcoming game from the developer that could pull World of Warcraft players away.

Talking to Gamasutra he states, "I think even a shorter-term concern is whether or not we might see cannibalization of WoW players from Diablo III when we launch it, because it's a similar type of experience. Not exactly similar, but it's that RPG feel." Pearce doesn't have an issue with this happening, saying, " ... because if we cannibalize them ourselves, they're still a Blizzard customer." Now all we need for Blizzard to do is give Diablo III a release date.

Several months after its release in most other parts of the world, StarCraft II is finally available to play openly in China. Blizzard announced this week that multiplayer open beta testing of the Chinese version of its hit sci-fi RTS sequel has begun in that country.

As they do with World of Warcraft, the China version of StarCraft II is being supported by NetEase. When the game officially launches in that country, it will be sold in 30 day increments to allow for both multiplayer and single player access. The official launch date for StarCraft II in China has not yet been announced.

Blizzard's next major game announcement will likely be the reveal of its next MMO title. But the developer behind the biggest subscriber-based MMO game of all time, World of Warcraft, is still keeping details about the game close to the vest. However a new chat with Blizzard's COO Paul Sams at Gamasutra does give a couple of very general hints.

Sams admits that its next MMO game is " ... the most ambitious thing we've ever attempted." He added, "We're playing it already. It is a total ball to play. We think that the reach of that product is greater than anything that we've done before." However he also believes that World of Warcraft will still have a long life after the new MMO is released, saying, "I see World of Warcraft as having many more years in front of it."

Blizzard Entertainment has already launched a web site that aims to celebrate the developer's 20th anniversary. Today that site posted up a nearly 50 minute video that looks back at the origins of the company all the way to the present via chats with many Blizzard executives and team members

The video goes over how the founders of Blizzard got together in 1991, how one of them got $15,000 from his grandmother to help fund the company and why the founders picked the company's original name Silicon and Synapse. It goes over the early games made by Blizzard (Rock N' Roll Racing, anyone?) and how times were pretty lean in terms of money for the first few years. It also discusses the company's various other names before finally settling on Blizzard.

The video goes over the many games that Blizzard made, from the Warcraft series to StarCraft, the Diablo series and of course World of Warcraft. Blizzard team members also look ahead and make some pretty general statements about the future of the company.

StarCraft II players have been waiting patiently for developer Blizzard to give out more info on StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, the Zerg themed second game in the planned trilogy of titles for the sci-fi RTS sequel. At GDC 2011, during a panel on the future of the strategy genre, GameSpot reports that Blizzard's Dustin Browder gave a little more info on when Heart of the Swarm might be coming out.

Browder stated that he expects Heart of the Swarm to be released in the "next six months to a year." That would suggest that the game could in fact be out by the end of 2011. It's perhaps more likely, however, that the second StarCraft II game will be released in 2012.

As most of you may know, the original StarCraft became a massive hit with pro gamers worldwide, especially in South Korea. However the sci-fi RTS game from Blizzard wasn't designed with e-sports in mind. That wasn't the case for the sequel StarCraft II, according to what Blizzard's Dustin Browder told a panel at GDC 2011 today.

According to Gamasutra's coverage of the panel, Browder said that the team looked at other RTS games such as Supreme Commander and Dawn of War. They discovered that for StarCraft II, less could in fact be more. The team wanted multiplayer matches to be fun to watch and as a result they kept the number of units down to just 45 rather than flood the game with different units.

The e-sport mandate also appled to the game's rules (keep it simple but make it hard to master) and even in the art where they strived to make each unit look different from each other. While the e-sports theme was hard to put into StarCraft II Browder states, "This is a way for players to experience the game in ways we've never had before."

StarCraft II is prepping up another major patch and is letting the general public try it out before it's officially released. Developer Blizzard has announced that the 1.3 patch for the hit sci-fi RTS game is now available to download via the game's public test server.

The 1.3 patch adds a new Grandmaster League for 1v1 ladder matches. This league consists of the top 200 StarCraft II players in each of the game's global regions. In addition there have been some changes and improvements to the Join Custom Game feature, some unit balance changes, a ton of improvements to the game's editing tools, general bug fixes for both the gane and the editor and more.