starcraft-2-beta posts

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.

If you couldn't get a ticket to attend BlizzCon 2010 this coming weekend and don't want to shell out $40 to pay for the streaming video coverage of Blizzard's big fan event in Anaheim, California you will still be able to check out portions of BlizzCon for free.

Blizzard announced today that a "limited" amount of Friday morning's BlizzCon opening ceremony will be available for free internet streaming. Also parts of the pro gaming tournaments at BlizzCon will also be streamed for free. It's expected that we will get a big info dump on the status of Diablo III during this year's BlizzCon, which is likely to be Blizzard's next big game release after December's release of World of Warcraft Cataclysm.

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.

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.

Last week we reported that Valve has been thinking of making a Half-Life movie by themselves after dealing with crappy movie pitches from Hollywood. One developer that likely has the resources and talent to make its own movies is Blizzard. Their CGI unit makes perhaps the best cut scenes of any game developer.

However it looks like Blizzard is looking to Hollywood to make movies based on its game franchisese. It's already teamed up with Legendary Pictures for its long-in-development World of Warcraft movie. But what about another big game franchise, StarCraft? Blizzard VP Rob Pardo told MTV Multiplayer that's its all up to finding the right people who are excited about bring their game properties to movies. He stated, "I think if Jim Cameron came to us tomorrow and said, 'You want to make a 'StarCraft' movie?' we'd probably sign that." We certainly think that the director behind some of the best sci-fi films of all time (The Terminator, Aliens, and The Abyss) would be a perfect choice for a movie based on Blizzard's RTS series.

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]

We are less than two months away from Blizzard's annual BlizzCon fan gathering event. While the October 22-23 show in Anaheim, California is technically sold out, Blizzard is offering some special in-game items for two of its games for people who both attend the show itself and those who sign up for the DirecTV pay-per-view coverage as well as the streaming Internet coverage.

StarCraft II players will be able to get an exclusive Murloc Marine character portrait for their BlizzCon ticket along with some deep-sea decals that can be placed on the RTS game's units. Players of Blizzard's MMO World of Warcraft will also get a new in-game item: Deathy, a murloc in-game companion that's dressed up to look like the game's major villain Deathwing.

Last week Blizzard released its latest patch (1.0.3) for StarCraft II but the sci-fi RTS game has some players still experiencing a number of issues. Blizzard has updated its known issues list for StarCraft II in the game's official forums specifically for the issues that have popped up since the 1.0.3. patch.

Among the bugs and issues listed are problems getting all of the achievements in the game's campaign mode while some campaign meta-achievements are not working properly. Some players are still unable to play StarCraft II in offline mode, according to the issues list, and the 1366x768 video resolution is not available. Blizzard will almost certainly keep updating StarCraft II with new patches to resolve these and other problems.

Download StarCraft II v1.0.3 Patch [US] (97 MB)
Download StarCraft II v1.0.3 Mac Patch [US] (97 MB)

This week started out a little slow but ended with a ton of announcements and reveals. And with Gamescom coming up next week you can bet there will be lots more to read about in the near future:

• The Penny Arcade web site has started posting up the fictional story for the canceled third game episode for Penny Arcade Adventures.
• Bethesda Games Studios is still working on a game and no, you can't know what it is yet.
• There's an odd little secret in Plants Vs Zombies' achievement screen.
• All of Valve's Left 4 Dead merchandise is on sale on Valve's online store until August 17.
• Victoria 2 is now available on Steam and for the next week you can get Victoria 1 Complete for free if you purchase Victoria 2.
• The upcoming zombie themed tactical RTS game Trapped Dead now has an official web site.
• Check out this video of a StarCraft 2 third person "zombie shooter" map (and we use that term loosely)
• For some reason NBC is promoting the upcoming TV show The Event with a contest that will send five winners to BlizzCon 2010.

You really didn't think we would start the day without some kind of StarCraft II news, did you? Of course not. This week the t-shirt maker Jinx debuted its official line of clothing based on Blizzard's sci-fi RTS sequel. You can get both male and female t-shirts with the StarCraft II logo along with shirts showing the logos of the Terran, Zerg and Protoss factions.

In addition to the t-shirts, Jinx has some key chains, patches and stickers of the three faction logos. Jinx already sells t-shirts and other merchandise based on Blizzard's World of Warcraft game along with a Diablo III shirt.