Blizzard's StarCraft II Closed Beta Begins
Gamers who signed up to participate in the StarCraft II beta should keep an eye on their Inboxes.
Blizzard said today that the closed beta for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is officially underway. The company revealed in a press release that "thousands" of gamers will begin to receive their invitations starting today. This will be the first phase of many in the closed beta, so don't panic just yet if your invitation isn't sitting in your Inbox.
"In addition to providing feedback on the multiplayer balance of StarCraft II, testers are also getting a first look at Blizzard Entertainment's revamped Battle.net service, which will be the online platform for StarCraft II, World of Warcraft, and future Blizzard Entertainment games," the company said.
Here are the official beta specs:
PC Minimum Requirements:
Windows XP SP3/Vista SP1/Windows 7
2.2 GHz Pentium IV or equivalent AMD Athlon processor
1 GB system RAM/1.5 GB for Vista and Windows 7
128 MB NVidia GeForce 6600 GT/ATI Radeon 9800 PRO video card
1024x768 minimum display resolution
4 GB free hard space (Beta)
Broadband connection
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is currently slated to ship in the first half of 2010.
- Guy Shot Over Gaming Noise, Beating Up Mom
- Microsoft to Charge for Windows Phone 7
- Microsoft Injects Outlook With Social Network Mojo
- Metro 2033 for PC Supports DX 11, 3D Vision
- iMac Survives Fire; Burnt, Melted, Fully Operational
- Gas Powered Games' New RTS: Kings and Castles
- SOE Launches New EverQuest II Expansion
- Diablo III Female Barbarian Revealed
- Intel and Nokia Join Forces to Make Linux OS
- ''Clash of the Titans'' PC Giveaway From Shuttle
- More iPad Cost Estimates Show Room for Price Cut
- HP Planning to Beat Apple in Tablet Pricing War
- The StarCraft II Beta Part 1: Download, Install
- What Gates and Jobs Really Think of Each Other
- S3 Dual-GPU Card Competes with ATI Eyefinity
- Blizzard Wants Battle.Net As Gaming's Facebook
- Foxconn Guards Kick and Threaten Reporter
- Hotmail Breached; Microsoft Now Investigating
WOW FINALLY!!!
Wow Finally!!!
Didn't make it in ;_; uncool.
in the upper right corner on teamliquid.com you can see live user streams of members whos playing right now
I hope the transition is better than the Warcraft 2 to Warcraft 3 fiasco. I personally thought the 3d move screwed up the gameplay and I enjoyed Warcraft 2 much more than 3.
The bar has been set so high by the original Starcraft. I can't imagine this release being on the same scale as the original in its day but, one could still hope despite no LAN support which is a huge hurdle to overcome in itself for this genre.
WOW! I have waiting for Starcraft II since Starcrft release when I was 7 grade! That is very good news to hear this information!
Haven't anybody thounght the requiemnet a little lower than recently game?
Yeah...those system requirements are really low for a new game. I mean, I know Blizzard likes to keep lots of people in their consumer base...but a 9800 Pro?
Wow.
Ultimate91
By your grammar im astonished that you past the 5th grade.
Reading your comment was almost as painful as watching the Special Olympics, or Womans Basketball.
Check your self too
Mr Parrish
Please fix the title, thats just silly.
I have the beta and my 8800gts and E8400 can only mark 40 fps under ultra settings at 1650x1050
If i make some things to medium and to high i can get a smooth 60 fps+ The game looks great but on lowest settings it's so bare
Check your self too
LOL! You got PWND! BTW, did you ever stop to think that English could possibly be a second language for that person?
Yay! Star Craft!
I have the beta and my 8800gts and E8400 can only mark 40 fps under ultra settings at 1650x1050If i make some things to medium and to high i can get a smooth 60 fps+ The game looks great but on lowest settings it's so bare
Yeah, but 40FPS is plenty for a RTS. Hell the original probibly only ran at under 30FPS like Diablo 2 anyway....
Glad to hear how your system runs the game though, cause I have that same Processor! But I have a 4870 1GB running 1080P.
Thanks for sharing how it runs on your system!
I'd love to partake in the beta. *crosses fingers*
I've been a member of battle.net for years and have WC3: Reign of Chaos, The Frozen Throne, Starcraft, and Diablo II. It feels like I waited over 10 years for the 2nd installment of this game, and I never got my beta key through battle.net tho, I actually got tired of waiting and came upon this site that had a couple hundred keys to give out. I'm not sure if they still have any keys available, but this was the site: http://gamebetakeys.com/starcraft2/
I think that they get new keys every few days so it's best to check back now and then.
Wow.Ultimate91By your grammar im astonished that you past the 5th grade.Reading your comment was almost as painful as watching the Special Olympics, or Womans Basketball.
Muphry's Law just kicked your ass.
Hopefully its come a long way since Blizzcon where it looked and played like a 5 year old game. They (Blizz) did poach some people from Relic (Dawn of War 2/Company of Heroes folks) so that should help.
2.2 GHz Pentium IV !?!?!!?
are they trying to trick us in to thinking that it hasn't taken them 11 years to make this by making it look like it came out in 2004 !?
it BETTER LOOK GOOD!!
their stupid "oh, every n00b with an abacus has to be able to run it" policy mixed with how long it has taken to polish it makes me wonder..
I'm all for low minimums, but we better be able to crank it up.
I still think starcraft looks good, low res sure, but the hand crafted (pre-rendered?) sprites have a certain quality feel to them. warcraft III was a joke graphically, the ONLY RTS to come close to replicating the look of it's previous sprite version in 3D is Red Alert 3.
the main reason I like starcraft is because of how different the races are. but I don't care how different they are mechanically, if they don't LOOK different, the illusion is broken.
GEE! Anybody click through to the really large version of the image? It's bigger than my 22 inch display. Lots of fine details. WOW!
Just posting to brag. Downloading it now... good timing too, it's our spring break equivalent at my university, and I was all afraid I'd have to spend time coding this week ~_~
Glad the default resolution isn't 480x640 like in Diablo 2. xP
=)
I've bought 4 computers since I played the original Starcraft. Granted, I'm more of a Diable/Warcraft fan, but I'd love to play this. Hell, I'd love to play the original right now.
I've spent hundreds of hours on Diablo 2 (only a dozen or so on the original), 1500 on WoW, a few hundred on WC3...
Blizzard has gotten a lot of money from me.
... I want in. =(
Glad the default resolution isn't 480x640 like in Diablo 2. xP
Yeah...
Got my Crysis rig running smooth, and I decide to load up the gold ole' Diablo 2. 640x480 (800x640 in the expansion, but I lost the CD-key). I'm running a 22" 2048x1152 monitor, 640x480 just isn't happening, sorry.
I hope they will release this game accompanied by "OFFLINE" multiplayer...............................
still sucks theres no lan option!
Would have been nice to get in but it doesn't look like I was chosen. I was in 2nd or 3rd grade when the original Starcraft came out, and I remember waiting for Brood War. Played that damn thing for years and years.
still sucks theres no lan option!
like it sucks in mw2 lol just suck it up they aren't going to change their minds when mw2 still told a shit load lol oh yeah so many people just boycotted it because no dedicated servers =p.
like it sucks in mw2 lol just suck it up they aren't going to change their minds when mw2 still told a shit load lol oh yeah so many people just boycotted it because no dedicated servers =p.
Well, they sold shitloads, but only on the console versions.
Sales on the PC version bombed. =)
Too bad though this probably just motivated them to do more console only games. =(
I hope this ends up as a "Modern Warfare 2" 2. Although I doubt it. No LAN support and you have to be logged in to Battle.Net to play single player. No Thank you.
This is a game where The Pirate Bay will give me a better version, and I will very gladly go that way seeing as Blizzard don't seem to want to fix it.
I wish that there could be a boycott on this game, although that will never happen since people have been waiting for this for too long and so they don't care that they're getting a half baked game.
FINALLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
its good that the requirements arent that high, as many as possible should be able to run the game. only makes it more opponents to face on battle net, i bet it looks good but on the stram i saw last night i didnt liked the graphics that much, but the had low quality on.
cant wait to try it out.
guess it will take a while untill i like it..
Regardless of no LAN support this game is still going to rock