starcraft 2 posts

We got a chance to check out Razer's line of StarCraft II-branded gaming PC peripherals at E3 last June and we really liked what we saw at the time. The Razer Spectre mouse (shown above), the Razer Marauder keyboard and the Razer Banshee headset were all supposed to be released this quarter, just a few weeks after the release of Blizzard's hit sci-fi RTS game.

Unfortunately it looks like we will be waiting a bit longer to get our hands on these cool devices. Big Download has learned via a Razer PR rep that the release of all of the above mentioned StarCraft II branded items have been delayed until sometime in the fourth quarter of 2010. The Razer PR rep told us that all three items will still be out sometime before the holidays so hopefully Santa will still be able to put these devices under the tree.

One of the highlights of any game by Blizzard are the cut-scenes, whether created by CGI or via the in-game engine as was the case with the recent sci-fi RTS game StarCraft II. But is Blizzard's parent company Activision Blizzard thinking about making a full-scale feature film using Blizzard's cut scene team that can then be released via online download? Maybe.

According to Gamasutra, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobbby Kotick hinted at such plans during remarks today at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch's Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference (say that three times fast). During the talk he speculated that if you took the cut-scenes out of StarCraft II " ... and we were to go to our audiences for whom we have their credit card information as well as a direct relationship and ask, 'Would you like to have the StarCraft movie?', my guess is that ... you'd have the biggest opening weekend of any film ever."

While that last statement about the "biggest opening weekend of any film ever" seems a bit farfetched to us the fact that Activision Blizzard's CEO is thinking about making CGI feature films based on its game franchises and selling them directly via online means is significant. Kotick stated, "Within the next five years, you are likely to see us do that. That may be in partnership with somebody, it may be alone." In fact Kotick claims that the company has done research that indicates "an extremely high percentage" of people who would purchase such a movie online "would then go to the theater then watch it again."

Publisher Blizzard in the past has simply announced to the public that it has banned or suspended a number of players from playing its games online due to the player's use of cheats or hacks. Today Blizzard took the unusual step of warning players in advance that it intends to suspend or ban players found using hacks or cheating in its sci-fi RTS game StarCraft II.

In a post on the game's official web site, Blizzard stated, "If a StarCraft II player is found to be cheating or using hacks or modifications in any form, then as outlined in our end user license agreement, that player can be permanently banned from the game." Blizzard says suspensions and bans of StarCraft II players caught cheating will begin "in the near future."

A few months before StarCraft II was released, a tie-in novel, StarCraft II Heaven's Devils, was released. Now it looks like yet another hardcover novel based on Blizzard' sci-fi RTS sequel might be released in 2011. Amazon.com has a pre-order listing on its site for a novel called StarCraft II: Devil's Due.

The listing shows the author's name to be Christie Golden who already has written a number of novels based on Blizzard's game properties including two previous StarCraft paperback novels. The listing shows a release date of April 12, 2011 for StarCraft II: Devil's Due. It also says the novel "reveals the exploits that shaped the game's heroes, Tychus Findlay and Jim Raynor." We have emailed Ms Golden to get a confirmation or denial on this listing.

It looks like some players of StarCraft II are reporting that they are having some issued with having to authenticate their copy of Blizzard's sci-fi RTS game every time to play the game offline. Players are supposed to be able to play the game offline for 30 days without having to re-authenticate their copy of the game via Battle.net.

Some players though there might be a chance in Blizzard's policy on this matter but according to what a Blizzard rep told GamePro that is not the case. The Blizzard rep is quoted as saying, "We're trying to address this problem in an upcoming patch." There's no word on when the patch will be released.

It's been over a month since the release of StarCraft II but now Blizzard's hit sci-fi RTS game has released the first of what is hoped to be a long series of new custom maps via Battle.net. The map itself is titled Burning Tide and as you can see from the above screenshot it's hot!.

The multiplayer map, designed for 3v3 matches, takes some elements from StarCraft II's single player map The Devil's Playground. In this map the ultimate goal is not to blow away your opponents but for your team to reach a specified total amount of resources. The map is now available on Battle.net in the custom games list.

One of the big features that's a part of Blizzard's hit sci-fi RTS sequel StarCraft II is the ability for people to create custom maps and share them with friends. However many of the game's players have complained that StarCraft II limited the number of custom maps for each player to just five slots. Also the total storage space for maps was placed at just 25 MB.

Blizzard has decided to make custom map making and publishing easier for StarCraft II players. On the game's official web site Blizzard has announced that it has doubled the number of custom map slots to 10. More importantly the amount of storage space for custom maps has also doubled to 50 MB. That should allow map makers the freedom to do things like import more custom art and sounds to their StarCraft II map creations.

StarCraft II continues to be a sales monster one month after the release of Blizzard's long awaited sci-fi RTS sequel. Blizzard has just announced that the game has now sold over 3 million copies worldwide in its first month of release. The game sold over 1 million copies in its first day and over 1.5 million copies in its first 48 hours.

Various financial analysts had previously predicted that the game will sell as many as 6 million copies by the end of Activision Blizzard's fiscal year that ends on March 31, 2011. The game is already halfway to that number and that's doesn't include sales of the game in StarCraft-crazy South Korea where it is still in an open beta stage and in China where the game has yet to be released in any form.

StarCraft II is one of the few games that came out at the same time for both the PC and the Mac platforms but now a company claims that it has come up with a way to play Blizzard's RTS game from even more Apple platforms; namely your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.

A web site has been set up to promote the upcoming release of the Starcraft 2 Gameboard, an app that will supposedly allow you to play the game via all of the above mentioned portable devices (ironically the app will only interface with the PC version of the game; there's no support for the Mac port). The web site claims the app will be released in mid-September for $2.99 and will let players have access to the game's hot keys and macros, along with unit stats and mini-map control.

While the site's FAQ page claims that this app doesn't modify StarCraft 2's game code and "works almost as another keyboard" for the game it's possible that Blizzard may not see it that way. We will email them to get a response for this app.

[Via Kotaku]

While Blizzard has issued a number of patches for its hit RTS game StarCraft II the patches have mostly been to fix one or two issues at a time. However, the game's official web site has announced plans for a major 1.1 patch that will have a number of gameplay additions, changes and bug fixes.

The 1.1 patch, due out sometime in mid-September, will have some mod and editor additions and improvements along with improvements for custom game features. It will also added the previously announced support for Nvidia's 3D Vision glasses and technology. There are quite a few unit balance changes coming as well for all three factions and those changes are detailed on the web site. One change in the 1.1 patch that will affect everyone is that friendly units won't provide vision on the map after they are killed.