StarCraft? In the latest WCG qualifying rounds Stork defends his country´s reputation against Malaysia and Mexico. First match is against JohnRambo from Malaysia. Second match is against GOSl which represent Mexico. And now to some epic fight between Bisu vs Jeadong, an PvZ match that will entertain you. Thats all for today. Take care and have a nice weekend.]]> Blizzard Quote: Developer Panel. StarCraft II November 19 2009 On November 6 at Igromir, Lead Producer Chris Sigaty talked about the development of the hotly anticipated game, StarCraft II. He described some features that look set to make the sequel even better than the original and at the same time keep all the things that made StarCraft an RTS classic. Chris explained that four basic principles have been taken into account during the development of StarCraft II. The first is to improve all the features of the original StarCraft; the second to implement an absolutely new approach to singleplayer in an RTS game. The third and the fourth principles are the complete incorporation of the game into the Battle.net platform, and the creation of a unique game editor. The game’s engine has been built from scratch. The graphics follows the style of the first game but look modern and up-to-date. The three races will be different not only visually but also in how they play. Many units familiar from the original StarCraft have been changed, and many new units have been added. However, StarCraft fans will recognize many units they already know very well. The maps are rich, filled with lots of new objects, and the user interface has been greatly improved. The singleplayer campaign will be absolutely unique. The story of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty takes place four years after the conclusion of StarCraft: Brood War. Players take the role of Jim Raynor. The singleplayer mode will be brought to life with a so-called history mode where players will be able to interact with the environment; for instance, you can talk to NPCs and discover the latest news from all over the in-game world. Players will be able to buy upgrades, hire mercenaries and conduct laboratory research. For example, if a player prefers to use marines, he or she can concentrate all their efforts on upgrading this unit. StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty’s singleplayer campaign will consist of 28 non-linear missions. The sequence of events will differ depending on the actions of the player. The new version of Blizzard’s online gaming platform, Battle.net, will be one of the most important parts of StarCraft II. It will allow users to always be online: now players will not need to log into Battle.net to find a match. Moreover, each player will be able to find an opponent of the same experience and skills. Each player will have their own profile which will contain all the up-to-date information about them including achievements. Achievements will be something new to the StarCraft series. They will make the gameplay more exciting and challenging. Also some of them will have unique rewards like decals. Players will be able to participate in multiplayer with the implementation of leagues. Each player will have to take part in 10 qualifying matches to be included in a league uniting players of the same experience and skills. Ladders will be compiled within those leagues. Battle.net will also unite players of all Blizzard games. One of the features which will help in this is cross-game chat for all Blizzard games. Thus, a StarCraft II player will be able to talk to his or her friend who is currently playing World of Warcraft. The StarCraft II editor will allow users to create various maps and mods for the game with very few restrictions. Also planned is a special map market which will ultimately allow players to trade maps with each other for money. ]]> Tychus Findlay. Hardened veteran of the Guild Wars. This new character bio provides some insight into this shady character's troubled past. Short Story: The Changeling A short story by James M. Waugh. You'll also find a video of the Changeling ability in action. Finally, we are provided a handful of new screen shots as well as new artwork.]]> Blizzard Quote: 1. Not all potential players of StarCraft II have played the original StarCraft before, thus they might encounter problems with the understanding of the story. Is it possible to play the campaign of StarCraft II without knowing anything? Will you come up with some things that happened in the original StarCraft and Brood War again – just so that people not familiar to the story get more information? We plan on having story elements that will bring players up to speed on the most recent plot developments and prepare them for the StarCraft II storyline. We also plan on having a plot summary of what transpired in the original StarCraft and Brood War during the installation process. However we feel that regardless of your familiarity with the original story, all players will be able to enjoy the story developments in StarCraft II. 2. You have already announced that you are going to record various stats when playing StarCraft II with the new Battle.net 2.0 – but how detailed will those statistics be? Will one be able to see how many units of a certain kind (for example Marines) one have build or even killed so far? We will be recording a large amount of stats for StarCraft II, but we are still in discussion as to which stats will ultimately be tracked. We will determine how detailed the stat-tracking will be based on what information we think will benefit our players the most to help improve their game. 3. You have already stated that you will support DirectX 10, but what about DirectX 11? We currently do not have any plans on supporting DirectX11-specific features, but the game will be compatible with DirectX11. 4. How many stats will a Hero unit be able to take? Three like in Warcraft 3 or is there even a limit? If you create a user-map with heroes, you can outfit them with a large number of stats. However, currently only three stats will be able to be displayed on the UI due to limited space. 5. In lore Protoss warp in their units and buildings from some far planet. Will there be any mechanic that reflects this such as a “warp out” that could act as a refund? We do not have any plans to include a “warp out” game mechanic. We have discussed the possibility of this in the past, but it felt too similar to the Terran mechanics of being able to salvage the structures. 6. Will there be a converter to convert our favorite original StarCraft maps to StarCraft II maps? I don’t want to lose all of my favorite maps from the original StarCraft when I get StarCraft II. There will not be a map converter for StarCraft II. Map-makers will have to manually rebuild any of their maps using the new StarCraft II map editor. 7. I’m just going to assume that you will have some sort of window mode in StarCraft II. But I was wondering if you’re going to implement a windowed mode like the one that World of Warcraft has? You know where you can maximize the window, removing the borders and enabling fullscreen mode yet providing easy access to the desktop. You will be able to select both windowed and full-screen windowed modes from the options menu. ]]>