starcraft 2
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StarCraft 2 demo deployed by Blizzard
The Starcraft 2 demo is now -- finally -- available for PC and Mac. The sample includes the first three campaign missions and doesn't require a Battle.net account (so no online, sorry). It's perfect if you're still debating relinquishing all of your free time to the game. Link after the break!
12 Days of Joyswag: StarCraft 2 Collector's Edition, t-shirt, Razer Abyssus mouse and Vespula mousepad
To celebrate the holidays, we're having twelve straight days of giveaways up through Christmas day. And while we say it's to celebrate, really ... we're simply getting rid of some of the larger packages around the ol' office. Day six means we're halfway through (and you've got that much less time to prepare for the big day!) and we've got a PC gaming bundle including the massive Collector's Edition of StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty, a StarCraft 2 t-shirt (in L, XL, or 2XL), a Razer Abyssus mouse, and a Razer Vespula mousepad. It's pretty much everything you need – you provide the computer and enough liquor to wash away the pain of getting demolished in match after match online. %Gallery-98239%
Blizzard games and expansions on sale at Amazon
Whether you're looking to rebuild your Diablo or Starcraft software collections, or if you just want to get down on the complete World of Warcraft anthology before it gets extended tomorrow, you should probably go hit up Amazon. For today only, they've got big sales on Blizzard's big games.
StarCraft 2 makes North America a 'public test region,' live now
Like World of Warcraft before it, Blizzard revealed its "public test region" program for StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty, giving Zerg-rushers and Zealot-sneakers an early preview of patches yet to come. First up, patch 1.20 is available for PTR participants, giving players hands-on with Battle.net chat channels, editor improvements, and forthcoming balance tweaks (among many, many other things). There doesn't seem to be a limit to the number of SC2 players able to participate, though the FAQ stipulates "players must have an active StarCraft 2 North America game account created before November 11, 2010 -- the player's account must not be a guest pass account, suspended, or banned." According to ShackNews, Blizzard's SC2 public test region program will "conduct public tests for most if not all future game patches." As for how long patch 1.20 will be available in preview? Like most things Blizzard, it won't be available publicly "until we feel the patch has been appropriately tested."
G-Star 2010: From the show floor
With the booming popularity of Korean games in western culture, the G-Star convention in Busan, South Korea is quickly turning into an international event. We had an opportunity to attend the four-day convention to see the latest and greatest from Korean online gaming. Follow along after the jump as I describe my experiences on the first day of the convention, as well as take a look at what else you can expect as we go into days two, three and four.
Blizzard launches dial-in Battle.net authenticator
Are you troubled by strange activity in your Battle.net account? Do you experience feelings of dread in your WarCraft or StarCraft games? Have you or your family ever seen a fraud, hacker, or scam? If the answer is "yes," then don't wait another minute. Pick up the phone and call the professionals: Blizzard's Dial-In Authenticator. Their courteous and efficient automated system is on call 24 hours a day to verify your identity in case of suspicious account activity. It's ready to authenticate you.
LGJ: Blizzard, Cheating and Copyright Infringement
Mark Methenitis contributes Law of the Game on Joystiq ("LGJ"), a column on legal issues as they relate to video games: Everyone else is talking about the Supreme Court, but I'm going to hold off on any further commentary until we have an actual decision to analyze. Instead, I want to bring your attention back to a suit filed by Blizzard in California, Blizzard v. VanKuipers, Simpson, and John Does 1-10 (aka the GameThreat.net case). This case seems to be the sequel of sorts to the "Glider" case from the not too distant past (Blizzard v. MDY Industries). In short, that case was about a World of WarCraft "autopilot" program called Glider. Glider circumvented Warden (the WoW cheat protection software). The short version of the result from that case is that MDY Industries, the maker of Glider, was held liable for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement for putting out Glider, which violated WoW's End User License Agreement and Terms of Service. The opinion also upheld Blizzard's right to sue over issues that diminished the player experience. That brings us to the GameThreat.net case. Some of this should sound pretty familiar. GameThreat.net put out a series of StarCraft 2 hacks and cheats, which worked in multiplayer. These programs were available very shortly after the launch of StarCraft 2, and that, of course, irritated Blizzard, which sent a cease and desist of some sort. While it may have initially appeared the two were in compliance, Blizzard discovered they have re-distributed their source code to others, who have continued to make it available. As a result, Blizzard is suing on basically the same premise as Glider. As is often the case, the ideas here present a bit of a double-edged sword.
Activision Blizzard posts better-than-expected Q3 results: $51m in profits on $745m in revenue
Thanks to "strong performance" from industry staples like Activision Publishing's Call of Duty franchise and Blizzard Entertainment's perennial MMO World of Warcraft and a stellar launch for Blizz's long-anticipated sequel StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty, Activision Blizzard exceeded its prior third-quarter outlook of $600 million with net revenues of $745 million in the period ending September 30, 2010. Compare that to net revenues of $703 million for the same period last year. It also reported profits of $51 million for the quarter versus $15 million for the same period last year. "For the third quarter, we exceeded our net revenues and earnings per share outlook and delivered strong year-over-year growth," Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick explained. "Activision Publishing is about to introduce what is likely to be the biggest entertainment launch of the year with Call of Duty: Black Ops, followed by Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, which we believe will deliver an incredible breadth of new content to the world's largest massively multiplayer online role playing game community." That's another way of saying, "If you think these Q3 numbers are great, wait until you see next quarter!" And with Q4 capping off Activision Blizzard's fiscal (and calendar) year, Kotick notes that things are looking better than ever for ol' Actiblizzard. "As a result of our over-performance, we are raising our calendar year 2010 net revenue and earnings outlook. We expect to deliver the most profitable year in our history with record operating margins." Specifically the publishing giant is raising its outlook for net revenues from $4.18 billion to $4.28 billion – shareholders should like the sound of that. Gamers will just enjoy Black Ops and Cataclysm. And gamers who are also shareholders can use some of that money to pay for the games you just bought. Investing!
New Blizzard community website, forums begin testing in November
The announcement came out this morning on the EU forums that Blizzard is getting ready to roll out its new community website and forums for World of Warcraft some time in early November. Anyone who has been to the community site for StarCraft 2 will already be aware of some of the new features including a more advanced forum system than what we have now. Features will include the ability to report a post for trolling or spam without changing pages, being able to see a quick summary of the thread by mousing over and letting players up- and down-rate responses. The current forums will be set as locked during the beginning of the transition and then will be completely removed toward the end. This means that if there are any old guides, posts or fun things from days of old that you want to see moved to the new forums, you should copy them to your own computer now. One thing that is curiously missing from the announcement is what alternative Blizzard has developed to its original Real ID forums concept since it was thrown out. StarCraft 2 has a centralized handle that is associated with your Battle.net login, and it is the same handle/avatar that's used for multiplayer games. Hopefully, they'll provide more details on issues like this as things start to lead up to the changeover. The full blue post is after the break.
Blizzard 'hard pressed' to make 2011 for next StarCraft 2
Blizzard may not have an "official" release window for Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm, but don't expect it to occur in 2011.SC2 Lead Producer Chris Sigaty told IGN the company would be "very hard pressed to bring [Heart of the Swarm] out next year." He noted that there is no release date, but because the sequel-spansion is more ambitious than Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne was to its core game, he doesn't "anticipate it being done in that one year time frame." Sigaty's words are in the same vein as those of Battle.net project director, Greg Canessa, who implied the game would have an early 2012 launch. So, for those still holding out hope for a 2011 release for Heart of the Swarm, just keep on weaning that dream.
Blizzard's Pardo: 'DOTA' belongs to community, not Valve
Intra-industry sniping is, as any commenter will tell you, the fuel that powers the engine of gaming blogs. Imagine our disappointment, then, upon seeing Blizzard's design VP Rob Pardo being completely reasonable when he explained to Eurogamer why he thought Valve trademarking the word "DOTA" was a misstep. "DOTA" is, of course, short for "Defense of the Ancients," a WarCraft III variant created by the game's fan community. Valve recently announced it was working on a sequel to the mod, prompting them to file a trademark for the acronym (but not the full title) earlier this year."To us, that means that you're really taking it away from the Blizzard and Warcraft III community and that just doesn't seem the right thing to do. Valve is usually so pro mod community. It's such a community company that it just seems like a really strange move to us... I really don't understand why [they would do it], to be honest." Pardo's sentiment echoes that of two of the original mod's designers, Steve "Pendragon" Mescon and Steve "Guinsoo" Feak, who spoke out against the trademark in August. Blizzard, for its part, is clearly undeterred by Valve's claim, as evidenced by the fact that it's currently fashioning a StarCraft II mod called "Blizzard Dota."
The Lawbringer: Buying precedent
Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Running parallel to the games we love and enjoy is a world full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? The following is an opinion piece dealing with Blizzard's ongoing litigation. The opinions and views expressed are solely those of me, Mathew, the columnist. You might have heard that Blizzard and its lawyers have recently started new litigation against three StarCraft 2 hackers in District Court. To a lot of people, this looks like another case of Blizzard going after more hackers for screwing with the online experience. To me, I see Blizzard's lawsuits as positive EULA-builders with huge benefit to the independent game market. It sounds crazy, but less so when you think about the concept of buying precedent.
StarCraft 2 mods preview: ParodyCraft
Blizzard announced that it will be continuing to support StarCraft 2 and its community with the release of four developer-created mod maps. All four of the maps were on display at BlizzCon 2010, and all but one are parodies of existing gameplay concepts. In creating these mods, StarCraft 2's developers said during a panel on Friday that they were aiming not only to show off what the game's editor can do, but to put really push its limits to see where they had work to do on it. I played all four of the mods, from the complex Left 2 Die to the silly-but-addictive Aiur Chef. All of them, along with their textures and assets, will be released inside the StarCraft 2 community for free, available to play by anyone who owns the game.
BlizzCon 2010: Starcraft 2: Secrets of the Masters panel
Yesterday afternoon at BlizzCon, Blizzard's own Starcraft 2 masters Dustin Browder, Greg Canessa, David Kim and Matt Cooper gathered to host the Secrets of the Masters panel. Seasoned Starcraft veterans won't glean much from the information they had to offer, but that's okay -- Dustin Browder himself made it clear that this panel was just for the noobs. That being said, the panel kicked off with Greg Canessa explaining how the Battle.net leagues and ladders system really worked behind the scenes, which is information even veterans wanted laid out nice and clear. He also went on to explain a few new features coming to Battle.net aimed specifically at the most hardcore of the hardcore Starcraft 2 players.
BlizzCon 2010: Closing ceremonies
As BlizzCon 2010 comes to an end, Paul Sams (chief operating officer of Blizzard) started out the ceremonies. A series of intentionally bad gamer jokes followed as he got the crowd ready. He then took it to a serious note and thanked attendees both attending in person and at home. Blizzard used this opportunity to bring out the tournament winners. Warcraft 3 winner Remind (night elf) from South Korea and StarCraft 2 winner NEXGenius (protoss), also from South Korea, were presented with $25,000 for being grand prize winners. They will also be getting an eSports ring customized to their game that's the size of Superbowl rings. The WoW Arena tournament was still going on at this point (*aAa* vs compLexity.Red), so there was no winner to announce for it yet.
New StarCraft 2 scenarios reference L4D, DoTA, Bejeweled
We thought StarCraft 2 was a little confusing before, but imagine how perplexed we were to look inside the BlizzCon program and see descriptions of upcoming maps for the game that include references to Bejeweled, Defense of the Ancients and ... Iron Chef? Here's the text from Shacknews: Aiur Chef takes you to a remote area of the planet Aiur, where aspiring zealot chefs skilled in the arts of cooking and killing compete for the title of Executor Chef. Test your wits in the puzzler StarJeweled, which challenges you to match jewels according to color to gain energy, train troops and crush your enemy's base. You'll also be able to team up with a friend to fend off a new strain of zerg infestation in Left 2 Die (a new co-op take on the StarCraft II campaign mission "Outbreak"), as well as wage war with the most powerful heroes in the universe in Blizzard All-Stars, an explosive new multiplayer scenario. First Professor Layton and Phoenix Wright team up, and now this? Apologies to Powerman 5000, but this is what it is indeed like when worlds collide.
BlizzCon 2010 Opening Ceremony liveblog
BlizzCon 2010 is upon us and, as is customary, Blizzard will use its Opening Ceremony keynote to kick off the event – of course, WoW Insider already kicked things off last night at its annual meetup, but let's not stray too far from the purpose of this post. Things get underway, right here, at 11AM PT (we've posted handy alternative time zones for you below). Check back then for all the latest from Blizzard: from the impending WoW expansion, Cataclysm, to future StarCraft 2 installments, to the much-anticipated Diablo 3. Maybe something about that long-in-development unnamed MMO? Well, that would be nice, wouldn't it? 08:00AM - Hawaii 11:00AM - Pacific 12:00PM - Mountain 01:00PM - Central 02:00PM - Eastern 07:00PM - London 08:00PM - Paris 10:00PM - Moscow 03:00AM - Tokyo (October 23)
Breakfast Topic: BlizzCon Day 1 anticipation
BlizzCon 2010 is finally here and the schedule's pretty packed for opening day. If you lucked out on a BlizzCon ticket (and had the resources to make it out to Anaheim), you might be hard-pressed to choose which panel to attend, given that there are two stages where panels happen simultaneously. On top of that, the world's best StarCraft II and World of Warcraft arena players duke it out on separate areas, as well. After the opening ceremonies, there'll be a showcase of Diablo III gameplay concurrent with a showing of StarCraft II cinematics; these are followed by a World of Warcraft dungeons & raids panel and StarCraft II secrets of the masters; after those, there's a panel on WoW quests & lore, as well as a discussion on SC2 custom maps and editor; finally there's a live raid for WoW and a Q&A on the SC2 storyline. To close the first day, there are the costume, song, and dance contests which I'm fairly certain will be on everyone's itinerary. One easy way to go about BlizzCon would be to just follow one game, such as World of Warcraft, and attend all the relevant panels. If you're like most folks who play Blizzard games, however, you're probably a big fan of everything they churn out (you're looking at BlizzCon, after all), which means picking the best panel to attend can be a bit of a dilemma. Happy problems aside, if you didn't have to choose which stage to sit in front of -- like those of us who picked up the DirectTV stream -- what part of today seems the most exciting? Personally, I think I'd have to go for WoW quests & lore. Now that we're already at Cataclysm, I can't wait to see what they've got in store for us, story-wise. Is there anything you're really looking forward to today? Or are the cooler events (e.g., the class panel) happening tomorrow? What do you think Blizzard's got up its sleeve? BlizzCon 2010 is upon us! WoW Insider has all the latest news and information. We're bringing you liveblogging of the WoW panels, interviews with WoW celebrities and attendees and of course, lots of pictures of people in costumes. It's all here at WoW Insider!
Blizzard's Battle.net director on Real ID, cross-game integration and BlizzCon
During GDC Online, Blizzard's Battle.net project director Greg Canessa presented a "postmortem" for the latest version of the service, which enables online play and discussion for Blizzard's titles, most recently StarCraft 2. Speaking to Joystiq before the talk, Canessa was happy to discuss the recent past of the service with us, and talk a bit about the future. Battle.net is in use by all 12 million World of Warcraft players, three-plus million StarCraft 2 players, and other users, but it recently came to the attention of an even larger audience when controversy arose over Blizzard's decision to implement Real ID, requiring users to identify themselves by their real names on Battle.net. Forum users did not respond kindly to the sudden and mandatory attachment of their real names to their comments, flames and LOLcats, and that part of the plan was cut, with Real ID still being implemented in non-forum features. "The vision behind Real ID," Canessa said, "was to maintain parallel levels of identity: we have that sort of anonymous character level of identity, and then that Real ID tier that spans games, and there are incremental features that you get for being part of the Real ID community. The vision for that spanned games, got into cross-game chat and so forth. In reality, the in-game social suite was very popular, the cross-game chat that we did, the stuff within StarCraft 2.
StarCraft 2 Razer peripherals light up November
If your performance in StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty isn't where you'd like it to be, perhaps it's because your controllers aren't glowing enough. Sure, the StarCraft 2-branded Spectre mouse, Marauder keyboard and Banshee headset from Razer (all designed in collaboration with Blizzard) have other features that make them well-suited for games -- like specialized configuration utilities and quick response times -- but those aren't why anyone would buy one of these. Cool backlighting is. Besides, when the keyboard description lists things like "Optimized Key Travel Distance" as a selling point, "pretty lights" doesn't seem like such a minor thing to latch on to. The set will be released in the US, Europe and Korea in November, with the mouse retailing for $80 (€80/94,800 won), and the keyboard and headset for $120 (€120/142,800 won) each. %Gallery-105504%
