starcraft-ii-wings-of-liberty posts

There was a bit of a controversy earlier this month when some people complained that Blizzard banned them from playing the sci-fi RTS gameStarCraft II because those players used single player "trainer" programs. Blizzard sent out a response that said "players who opt to use any type of 3rd party hacks do so at their own risk."

However, it looks like Blizzard could go after some players that use cheats and hacks for other StarCraft II-related features in the future. In a interview with Shacknews conducted during BlizzCon 2010 this weekend, Blizzard's lead producer Chris Sigaty stated, " ... it is possible that we can identify people that use some cheat to get 100 achievements in a matter of seconds. We have the ability to go and look at that data and say that person is going to be banned or we'll take away all of their achievements." He added that players should beware of using any trainer program, saying, "The people releasing these hacks might be including keyloggers and other sorts of hacks on your system."

August wasn't a good month for new console software and hardware sales. The NPD Group's monthly sales charts, as reported by our sister site Joystiq, state that overall console game sales were down 10 percent compared to August of 2009. But that's not the case for the PC software sales thanks in part to a little known game called StarCraft II.

Blizzard's sci-fi RTS sequel managed to sell 300,000 retail copies in the US after selling 721,000 copies when it was first released in July, according to NPD (that figure does not include sales of downloadable copies). Those numbers made the game the second best selling title in the US, console or PC, for the month of August. The sports juggernaut Madden NFL 11 sold over 1.8 million copies between its various console versions in August. Overall NPD said that retail sales of PC games went up 35 percent from the same period a year ago.

A while back the consumer sales rating company the NPD Group stopped sending out US sales of PC games in its reports. However the monthly July sales reports, as reported by Industry Games, has a big coda in the numbers. Officially the number one best selling game was NCAA Football 11 which had 368,000 copies sold for the Xbox 360 and 298,800 copies for the PS3 version.

However the July 27 release of Blizzard's PC exclusive RTS game StarCraft II beat out the combined sales of NCAA Football 11 for the month as the NPD Group said the game sold 721,000 copies in the US. According to NPD analyst Anita Frazier, the sales of StarCraft II "helped the PC games category to realize a 103 percent increase in dollars over last July."

Just before the release of StarCraft II, developer Blizzard launched its Dominion Propaganda contest where fans were able to submit artwork created in the style of WWII war posters but with a Terran Dominion theme. Blizzard has now revealed the winners of the contest on its web site.

The grand prize winner is above this news post as "Sia" created a highly detailed visual of a Space Marine with lots of activity in the background. "Sia" wins a boatload of prizes for the winning piece of artwork including a nice Alienware M11x gaming laptop. You can check out the other winners and the honorable mentions on the StarCraft II Dominion web site.

StarCraft II's new community web site has continues to add content in preparation for Tuesday's launch Blizzard's sci-fi RTS sequel. The site has now added two new videos which we have reproduced here. The one you see above this post gives the basics of the game's single player campaign without going into too much story detail. The other video goes over how the game uses the new Battle.net system for various features. You can check out that video after the jump.

The site has also posted a detailed game guide going over the basics of the game, the multiplayer units, the various worlds and races, StarCraft II's cast of characters and more.

Download the StarCraft II campaign overview trailer at Big Download
Download the StarCraft II Battle.net overview trailer at Big Download

All of us would like the beta test for StarCraft II to begin. However it looks like some unnamed person at Blizzard unwittingly decided to get tons of web sites in a frenzy by posting up a placeholder for the system specs of the long awaited RTS sequel on the European StarCraft II support site.

Lots of web sites quickly posted up the info but didn't actually read the system specs. If they did they would discover they are exactly the same as World of Warcraft's system requirements. In any case, Blizzard's PR folks have been contacting those sites to squash the "news" of the system spec. The game's official message board also has a statement, saying,"The page where this information was found was a placeholder that should not have gone up. We will have more information about the system requirements once the beta starts." In the meantime the official Blizzard support page for StarCraft II is indeed up and running and has a couple of nuggets of info but with no system specs yet.

Ever since Blizzard announced that their long awaited RTS sequel StarCraft II would be split up into three parts, most folks had assumed the first installment, Wings of Liberty, would be all about the Terran race in its single player campaign. As it turns out, the game will also have something a little extra for Protoss fans.

As confirmed by Blizzard's European community team in a Battle.net message board post, the single player campaign for Wings of Liberty will have a main Terran campaign and "a Protoss mini-campaign that lets you control Protoss units. This part of the campaign mode is of course way shorter than the Terran part, but it is very fun to have a very different playstyle to add even more variety to the game."

Because we had never been to a BlizzCon before we thought that our first chance to go hands-on with StarCraft II would come with the game's multiplayer beta test. And then Blizzard decided to push the game's release back into 2010. That gave us the chance to head to this year's BlizzCon and finally go hands-on with the title.

The press room at BlizzCon allowed us the chance to sample part of the single player campaign along with its skirmish mode. Naturally we started our (time limited) demo with the single player campaign. It began with a cinematic sequence where Jim Raynor, the hero of the first StarCraft game, is on board a Terran ship under attack by Zerg. The ship manages to get away but news reports from all over show that the Zerg are attacking lots of Terran planets.

In this part of the single player campaign you navigate not with a simple UI interface but with more of a adventure-game look. You actually move around parts of the ship as Jim Raynor (bridge, armor, lab, etc) and that's how you gain access to your mission's weapons, extra technology and even what missions to take. In our demo we had our choice of two different missions. We decided to take on an escort mission to protect and some Terran scientists from an attack from the Zerg.

Click on the jump for more info:

Just after the announcement was made by Activision Blizzard on the delay of StarCraft II's release into the first half of 2010, Blizzard's PR folks sent over this official statement to Big Download with more info about the delay of the long awaited sci-fi RTS sequel. Here is is in full:

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to make sure you were aware of this message that we just posted for players regarding StarCraft II and Battle.net.

Today we announced that StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty will not be ready for release by the end of 2009. Over the past couple of weeks, it has become clear that it will take longer than expected to prepare the new Battle.net for the launch of the game. The upgraded Battle.net is an integral part of the StarCraft II experience and will be an essential part of all of our games moving forward. This extra development time will be critical to help us realize our vision for the service.

Our mission is to develop games that deliver an epic entertainment experience. As part of that commitment, we will always take as much time as needed to ensure that our games and services meet the expectations of our players and the standard for quality that we set for ourselves as developers. As we work to make Battle.net the premier online gaming destination, we'll also continue to polish and refine StarCraft II, and we look forward to delivering a real-time strategy gaming experience worthy of the series' legacy in the first half of 2010.

We will share more details about the beta, Battle.net, and StarCraft II's launch in the future. Keep an eye on the official website at www.starcraft2.com for updates, and as always, thank you for your continued enthusiasm and support for StarCraft II and all of Blizzard Entertainment's games.