StarCraft 2 Prepares for Swarm With Fat New Patch
This is StarCraft 2's biggest update yet, Blizzard says.
Just hours before Blizzard announced that Diablo 3 is coming to the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4, the company launched what it calls the biggest update to StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty yet, paving the way for the Heart of the Swarm "expansion" launching next month. This update adds a "multitude" of new features that enhance multiplayer, introduce new ways to play, and improve the game's social features.
As seen here, the v2.0.4 patch notes are quite extensive, revealing a revamped user interface, the addition of clans and groups, new replay features, an improved score screen and statistics, new matchmaking options, new AI enhancements, game privacy options and more. It's almost like a whole new game, but not.
Some of the new game modes added to Wings of Liberty include Training which teaches players the basics of how to survive online matches. Versus A.I. automatically detects your skill level and sets the computer A.I. to an appropriate difficulty. Unranked matchmaking gives players the ability to play online matches without affecting their official ladder rating.
According to the patch notes, the user interface layout, art, and graphic style have been completely revamped. Players are also now just one click away from any major screen. Many redundant screens and game modes have been ripped out, the company reports.
"We simplified basic menu navigation," Blizzard said in a recent blog. "For example, the Custom Game button is right on the main menu, so you no longer have to first select Multiplayer to get to it. We streamlined the look of the UI. This gives us more space to work with and makes it easier for us to make improvements in the future."
The patch notes reveal that Global Play will be enabled in the coming weeks which will lift the localized boundaries and allow players to select any game region (like Diablo 3). That means gamers located in the Americas region can play on game servers located in Europe, Korea, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. StarCraft 2 Global Play is not available to players in mainland China, the company states.
To see what the latest patch has to offer, head here. Blizzard has also provided three Heart of the Swarm videos which demonstrates many of the new features and changes offered in the patch, as seen below.
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Kevin Parrish has over a decade of experience as a writer, editor, and product tester. His work focused on computer hardware, networking equipment, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other internet-connected devices. His work has appeared in Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, Maximum PC, Digital Trends, Android Authority, How-To Geek, Lifewire, and others.
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ChiefScooter Oh man, I can't wait. I love the story of StarCraft. Gameplay to me is so-so, I am just not very good at RTS games (I get smoked like a cheap cigar in multiplayer with my turtle strategy that works so well against the AI). I really want to see what happens next in the StarCraft universe!Reply
That being said... I need to find my authenticator and remember my account name/password. It's been about 2 years ago now that I have last played SC2. -
cats_Paw I went back to broodwar after 2 season in sc2 ladder (Back then max rank was Diamond, and i was diamond in 1v1 and team games).Reply
Game online is simply boring for me, and i dont think ill buy HoTS.
Id like to see the story but thats about it. -
abbadon_34 Did everyone forever the BS about paying for the same game 3 times? Or splitting a game into 3 parts over 3 years so people forget and spent more money on the game? Or way they nerfed the Terrans and Protoss for "balance"? I love Starcraft, and I reallly enjoyed SC2 (until Tychus, my fav died) but lets not let them off the hook.Reply
edit: Tuchus, not Raynor -
teodoreh abbadon_34Did everyone forever the BS about paying for the same game 3 times? Or splitting a game into 3 parts over 3 years so people forget and spent more money on the game? Or way they nerfed the Terrans and Protoss for "balance"? I love Starcraft, and I reallly enjoyed SC2 (until Raynor, my fav died) but lets not let them off the hook.Reply
I haven't got a problem at all paying once every 3 years for a whole new mission campaign and new features on multiplayer. After all, if I played any kind of MMORPG game I would had payed this amount x100. -
Soda-88 MisterZPeople still play this game? The last time I played SC2 was in 2010.MC has won over half a million dollars so far in that game and is in quarter finals of $50k tournament at this very minute.Point being, yes SC2 is going strong, stronger than ever with BW pros switching over.Reply -
cats_Paw Soda-88MC has won over half a million dollars so far in that game and is in quarter finals of $50k tournament at this very minute.Point being, yes SC2 is going strong, stronger than ever with BW pros switching over.Reply
Its Stronger, but there is a massive amount of money dumped into that game by blizzard to push the game into selling the next "expansions".
You probably don know this, but statisticly, sc2 went from over 7.5 million players at launch, to under 500k at the current stage.
That means that less than 10% of the players think its a game good enought to play for more than 1 year.
Broodwar is not as famous and never was (but then again when broodwar came out, there bearly were any gamers).
I cant speak for other people, but i simply enjoy broodwar since 2000, and i never got tired of it.