starCraft-ii posts

Blizzard has never been shy about announcing when it has banned groups of players from its games. Today the official StarCraft II web site has announced that it has made the decision to either suspend or ban a new group of players from accessing the multiplayer portion of the 2010 released sci-fi RTS games.

As it usually does with these announcements, Blizzard didn't reveal how many player accounts were affected by this latest round of suspensions and bans, saying only that those players, " ... were in violation of the Battle.net Terms of Use for cheating and/or using hack programs while playing. "

Rumors with a little bit of evidence have hit the internet that seem to indicate that gaming media company IGN may be planning to launch its own professional gaming league, with Blizzard's sci-fi RTS game StarCraft II at the center of it.

Starcraft-themed web site TeamLiquid.net reports via Korean-based web sites that IGN will launch such a league with a prize pool of between $150,000 to $200,000. In addition there is a IGN Pro League web site already set up that seems to be counting down towards a launch around midnight Eastern time on Tuesday.

If true this would be the latest attempt to launch a US-based pro gaming league. At the moment only Major League Gaming has been successful at staying afloat with other ventures like the Cyberathlete Professional League, the Championship Gaming Series and the World Series of Video Games all closing up shop in the past few years.

So we know that Blizzard is at least thinking about making games for consoles again but this newly released April Fool's Day 2011 video shows that the company is further along than we might have thought. Yes, StarCraft II is coming to consoles and yes it has Kinect motion sensing support.

Seriously this video shows how people who play games with this motion controller look, well, rather silly. It goes to the extreme in this parody video where ... well that would spoil the final surprise. Let's just say that playing with a motion sensing controller can cause some physical issues.

Just a few days after releasing its big 1.3 patch for StarCraft II, developer Blizzard has gone ahead and released yet another, smaller patch for the hit sci-fi RTS game. This 1.3.1. patch, available via the game's auto updater, fixes a few smaller bugs that have popped up after the big 1.3 patch was released.

The patch notes have more info on the those bug fixes which include dealing with an issue where some players were not notified if they got a game achievement. Another bug that was stomped fixed an issue where the new 1.3 patch added observer UI features would not function correctly on custom maps for the game.

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]

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.

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.

Next month StarCraft II fans will be able to read the next hardcover novel based on Blizzard's sci-fi RTS sequel. The novel, StarCraft II: Devil's Due, is written by Christie Golden and is due for release on April 12.

While the novel was first revealed a while ago, Amazon.com now has the book's cover image along with a short excerpt from the book. The books, like the first StarCraft II novel Heaven's Devils, tells another previously unrevealed tale of the game's two human heroes Jim Raynor and Tychus Findlay. Golden has previously written novels set in the StarCraft universe along with several World of Warcraft prose novels.

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."