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StarCraft II Art Tools Open Beta available
If you're a 3D artist looking for some new toys to get that creative streak going, Blizzard has just the thing for you. The StarCraft II Art Tools package is now in open beta, and includes plugins for 3DS Max, along with a ton of StarCraft II source art files, tutorials, and documentation to get you up and running. The art tools package isn't just a new toy from Blizzard -- it's the same tools that the StarCraft II development team used to create Heart of the Swarm. The tools package allows artistic players to create new models, textures, particle effects, animations, or pretty much any other 3D art asset that you can dream up for the StarCraft II engine. This is, however, a beta -- so there may be bugs with the program. However, Blizzard of course has an official feedback thread for users to leave bug reports and suggestions for improvement. To participate in the open beta, simply visit the announcement page, download the program in either 32-bit or 64-bit version, grab the documentation, and get to creating!
Age of Conan composer joins PlanetSide 2 and Starcraft II nominees for music award
Say what you will about the rest of the game, there's little argument that Age of Conan has impressive music. And now, soundtrack composer Knut Avenstroup Haugen joins the list of nominees for the Best Score in a Video Game at the 2013 Hollywood Music in Media Awards. His nomination comes for his work heard in AoC's latest content update, Dragon's Spine, which can be heard in the trailer. Other nominees include Jeff Broadbent (Planetside 2) and Russel Bower, Derek Duke, Glenn Stafford, and Neal Acree (Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm), nominated in January and March, respectively. The winner for best score will be selected at the HMMA ceremony at Hollywood's Fonda Theatre November 21st. Interested in listening to these impressive soundtracks for yourself? You'll find selections for both AoC and PS2 (and many more) in our own Jukebox Heroes feature.
StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm review: Zerg rushing towards resolution
In music theory, there's a series of notes called a tritone interval. (I'm a writer and a Rock Band player, not a musician, so bear with me, band members.) The tritone consists of three different whole tones: The first sets the stage, marks the spot on the musical scale that our ear can attune itself to. The second note is actually dissonant – it throws off the harmony, and introduces new elements so distasteful that the chord used to be called "The Devil in Music."The third tone, however, finishes off the chord in exactly the right way, and brings resolution to all of the dissonance. Leonard Bernstein famously put the tritone to great use in the song "Maria" from West Side Story: "Ma-" is the beginning tone, "-ri-" shakes things up with some disharmony, and "-a" resolves the melody, justifying the lead couple's forbidden love.Now, using that theory to talk about Blizzard's StarCraft 2 trilogy is a little unfair. The second campaign, Heart of the Swarm, isn't anywhere near "distasteful." But it does introduce plenty of new elements to the series, spinning off the RTS classic into places that Wings of Liberty never dared to go. And like that second note of a tritone, it makes sure to leave plenty of ambiguity and promise out there, making sure we're all ready for the big finale in Legacy of the Void.%Gallery-176756%
Weekly news roundup with Panser of TradeChat
TradeChat's Panser returns with this week's WoW Insider news recap, where we look back at the hottest news from the past week and whatever other kickin' rad things may have come our way. This week's topics include: StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm launches Cross-realm players no longer eligible for Oondasta/Nalak loot The few, the proud, the CRZ-less realms There will be no more 5-mans in Mists, will return next expansion PVP season 13 announced World of Warcraft Bloodstorm graphic novel teaser images What's your /played? If you enjoyed the show, make sure to subscribe to TradeChat, leave a comment, and come back next week for the next episode!
Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm launch schedule
Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm officially launches, as the image suggests, on March 12, but, with the game launching at midnight tonight, launch events have kicked off all over the world. The evening of March 11 is when celebrations began in Sydney, Australia, where, at the time of writing, the game has been available for purchase for a full eight hours. Events are currently taking place in Europe, with activities underway and being broadcast live on Blizzard's official twitch channel right now. The European events include a tournament featuring well-known players such as Stephano, LucifroN, Grubby and White-Ra, who are competing live on stage, mixed in with developer interviews, exclusive content and more! If you're too late to check out the European streams, which finish at 8pm EST, fear not, because the US events kick off at 9pm PST, with Day9 and Husky kicking off proceedings. There will be live show matches, displaying the new "take command" feature, and new custom games, and two attendees will have the opportunity to play with Suppy and ViBE in a 2v2 pro/am match. Mike Morhaime, Chris Metzen, Chris Sigaty and Sam Didier will be in attendance at the US event, taking part in developer presentations, custom games and much more. Again, if you weren't able to make it to Irvine to attend the event, this will all be broadcast live via the official Twitch channel. Do check out Blizzard's launch pages for further information on any of the events.
Blizzard's Project Blackstone is a Heart of the Swarm viral campaign
Blizzard Entertainment registered a site called ProjectBlackstone.com late last year, and fans wondered if maybe it might be related to the mysterious upcoming Blizzard project code-named Titan. But no such luck, it seems: The domain went live this week and, soon after that, some crafty Redditors found the password. (It's "Y7_$0>0k_3<$m," if you want to try it yourself). The whole campaign has been revealed as a Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm tie-in.Opening the site up reveals emails between various Terran characters talking about experimenting on Zerg lifeforms and presumably we'll see updates in the future that will fill out the story heading into the new game. Heart of the Swarm, the second part of the trilogy that Blizzard's Starcraft 2 has become, is due out on March 12.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Project Blackstone site goes live, password discovered
Back in November, Blizzard registered a few domain names, including the mysterious projectblackstone.com. As it remain untouched, we were left wondering if it could signal a new game on the horizon -- perhaps something to do with Titan. Well, today Project Blackstone is live and has been redirected to a battle.net site. It looks to be a viral advertising campaign for Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm, and it's an impressive follow-up to the game's recently revealed opening cinematic. You'll need to log in to the Project Blackstone page, and lucky for you we have the access code! Y7_$0>0k_3<$m Seems like a few clever folks on Reddit discovered the password in the source code of the Project Blackstone page, within an encrypted chunk of text. Head over to the site to read your messages from Dr. Helek Branamoor and the rest of the Blackstone Research staff. We're guessing that new ones will be posted every week, so keep a close eye on the site! It also appears that Dr. Branamoor is on Twitter, and he doesn't look like someone I'd want to work for. What do you think about Project Blackstone so far?
StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm cinematic revealed
Blizzard revealed the StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm opening cinematic late last night. Sure, it isn't Warcraft material, but it's fair to say we all enjoy the work that comes from the team that made the Mists of Pandaria cinematic. And don't lie -- you pet collectors are going to be picking up the Collector's Edition of Heart of the Swarm for its Baneling pet anyway. The cinematic, which you can view behind the cut below along with its accompanying blue post, depicts a Zerg siege of the Terran Dominion as Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades, seeks vengeance against Arcturus Mengsk. We really could have done without the Wilhelm Scream at 1:43 in the cinematic, but to be entirely fair, StarCraft has a long history of using it and other cliché stock sound effects.
StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm playable at MLG, Wings of Liberty on sale
The upcoming weekend is a big one for StarCraft fans: The United States Nationals of the StarCraft II World Championship is taking place at the MLG Spring Championship all weekend long. For those of you not interested the e-sports scene, there's another event coinciding with this one: The Heart of the Swarm press event is taking place this weekend, and an early build of the upcoming expansion is playable at demo stations on the MLG floor. Heart of the Swarm isn't officially in the beta phase yet, so this will be the first time players have an opportunity to see the expansion first-hand. To celebrate both the Nationals and the Heart of the Swarm preview, Blizzard has put StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty on sale for the weekend. Blizzard has taken 33% off of the standard box price of $59.99, bringing the price down to $39.99. Update: Check Battle.net for further information on this weekend's events as well as a pair of video previews of Heart of the Swarm. You can also find the videos embedded below.
Play Diablo 1 with World of Warcraft models in StarCraft 2
The StarCraft II Arcade feature, a tool intended to help the community highlight quality custom maps and game modes created with the StarCraft modding tools, has recently gone into beta. Coinciding with that beta, Blizzard has launched a contest that requires you to play, rate, and review an Arcade game for a chance to win a Heart of the Swarm beta key. One of the delightful custom game modes that has become an Arcade chart-topper is an incestuous mix of all of Blizzard's major franchises: It's the first Diablo game ported into StarCraft II using World of Warcraft art assets for the 3-D models. The gameplay doesn't match the original Diablo click-for-click, but the core mechanics and all of the sound files have been carried from one game to the next, including Deckard Cain's signature "stay awhile and listen." StarCraft II shoutcaster Husky recently featured the game mode on his YouTube channel, and you can watch his 18+ minute preview/review embedded below.
Activision: At least two Blizzard titles coming in 2012, if none released this year
Speaking during a financial earnings call today, Activision COO Thomas Tippl said that if we don't see any games from Blizzard this year, the publisher expects to see them next year. "Because Blizzard Entertainment has not yet confirmed the launch date for its next global release," Tippl told investors and press, "our outlook at this time does not include a new game from Blizzard in 2011." But don't worry, Blizzard fans, Activision's got a whip it's not afraid to crack: "Should we not release a major title from Blizzard this year, we would expect for planning purposes to launch a minimum of two Blizzard titles in 2012." Presumably, those two titles would be Heart of the Swarm (the Zerg-based expansion for Starcraft 2) and the long-awaited Diablo 3. Blizzard president Mike Morhaime joined the call after Tippl spoke and promised that more information was coming about both. Blizzard's developers, he said, are hard at work on Heart of the Swarm, and we'll hear more "in the coming months." Additionally, Morhaime said that he would talk about Diablo 3 "and the upcoming beta on the next call," in about three months. "Until we get to beta and have the community help us test the game," he later said, "we're not going to lock in a release date." Blizzard is also working to get both World of Warcraft: Cataclysm and Starcraft 2 out in China, but had "no specific updates to share at this time" about those releases -- or the "Titan" MMO, for that matter. Morhaime did plug both the upcoming BlizzCon and Blizzard's twentieth anniversary this year, and closed by saying that "the games we have in the pipeline represent the best and widest slate of games we have ever produced."
Battle.net chief: next StarCraft is 18 months away
Blizzard's Battle.net project director, Greg Canessa, was quoted at GDC Online suggesting an early 2012 release window for sequel-spansion StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm. GameSpot caught the quote during a panel, in which Canessa responded to future Battle.net upgrades by saying they are "a main area of focus we're going to be seeing on the Starcraft side over the next 18 months between now and Heart of the Swarm." However, a Blizzard representative told Joystiq "We have not announced a release date or window for Heart of the Swarm." Blizzard's next release will be for the World of Warcraft (population 12 million) expansion Cataclysm on December 7. With that bit of news out there, hopefully BlizzCon's big reveal will end the hellish wait for a Diablo 3 release date.
