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StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm lets you recover lost games, take command during replays
StarCraft 2 community manager Kevin Johnson produced the above video, a quick rundown of some major additions to the StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm eSports suite and multiplayer experience. Chief among these new features is "Take Command," which allows you to jump into a replay and take over as any player – you can rewrite history, prove your strategy yields better results or relive the conquests of your favorite eSports match-up.You can now also recover games. No matter how your game ended prematurely, you can round up all the original players and pick up from where you left off. Or not, there's an option to set the start time in the recovered game to whenever you want.Additionally, players can watch replays in a group, and individual units now benefit from new physics – the example above shows a cadre of Terran soldiers being torn apart in rather animated fashion as they fight off some Zerg. Remember, kids: the only good bug is a dead bug.StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm launches on March 12, 2013. The game's ongoing public beta is slated to end on March 1.
The Guild Counsel: Why The Raid is worth seeing
Over the weekend, Gary Gannon from Gamebreaker.TV hosted a unique event in the world of MMOs: a film premiere, complete with fancy suits and ties and even an afterparty (albeit in the form of a chat room). The film is The Raid, which followed the World of Warcraft guild Double Dragons as it worked through the raid content from Wrath of the Lich King. There has been a lot of feedback from those who saw the premiere, but it's been decidedly mixed so far. Furthermore, viewers had such strong reactions to certain parts of the documentary that director Kevin Michael Johnson made a post on the site to try to address some of the criticism. But is the mixed review simply the cynical gamer at his best, or is it legit? In this week's Guild Counsel, we'll take a closer look at The Raid, and I'll explain why I think it's definitely worth seeing.
Catch The Raid's world premiere for free
Hot on the heels of 2009's Second Skin, MMO players are once again the subject of an in-depth documentary about their lives and playing styles as Gamebreaker.TV is hosting the world premiere of The Raid for all to enjoy. Directed by gamer Kevin Johnson, The Raid follows a guild of World of Warcraft players who tackle some of the toughest challenges of the game and open up about what being a raider means to them. The 20-minute runtime examines what drives players to the raiding scene and introduces outsiders to the collaboration and competition that goes on during these events. The primary focus, however, is on the social aspect of raiding and how it binds a group of people together for a single purpose. You can catch the documentary after the jump until Wednesday evening at 10 p.m. EDT. Please note that the film starts around the 26-minute mark if you don't want to sit through the pre-show interviews. Give it a watch and let us know what you think -- did The Raid hit the spot or miss its target?
"The Raid" movie documentary examines WoW raiding
If there's anything I've learned over the years as a gamer, it's to approach films and TV shows about games or gaming with extreme caution. Be it cinematic game-to-film monstrosities like the Street Fighter movie or sensationalist "documentary" garbage like the fifth estate's Top Gun, there always seems to be a disconnect between the people operating the camera and the subjects they're trying to portray. World of Warcraft in particular has received plenty of positive and negative attention, but in recent years, there has been an increasing movement among geeky creatives to try their hand at explaining the game and the phenomenon of its popularity through all sorts of projects. The Raid is one of those projects. The Raid is a short, 20-minute documentary that sets out to understand not World of Warcraft itself but raiding in the game. What raiding is, how it's different than in other single- or multi-player games, and what makes it so compelling are all touched on by the documentary. Some of the topics might seem rudimentary to actual raiders, but that's because the target audience of the film isn't raiders but rather their friends, family, and any other outsiders who struggle to understand what it is that we're doing within the game. That doesn't mean actual players won't have a reason to watch the documentary, though; raiders will easily be able to connect with the narrative of the film and the players featured in it.
Microsoft exec avoids confirming Vista release
We should start off by saying that this could be nothing but cautionary corporate-speak, but rather than confirming the scheduled January ship date for Windows Vista -- which is what everyone at the company's annual analyst meeting wanted to hear -- Microsoft exec Kevin Johnson seemingly opened up the door to fresh delay rumors by telling attendees that the beleaguered OS will be released "when it is available." Johnson's comments came as a response to analysts who wanted to know if Vista was still on track for a January release; instead of a simple "yes," however, he told the group that "we are going to ship the product when it is ready, and we are going to take it milestone by milestone." Now, what sounds like a non-denial of further delays could simply be part of a new policy to avoid making specific promises, but following Bill Gates's recent "statistical analysis" that Vista is only 80% likely to ship in January, this development is troubling to say the least. At this point we don't really know what to expect anymore, and since our current XP-powered setup already does everything we need it to, we're getting pretty close to not caring if Vista is ever released at all.
