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3 months ago
Ten years after the StarCraft II saga started and five after its final episode, Blizzard have announced they're winding down development. They still plan to tweak balance, but won't be making new paid content. Not putting a pillow over its spaceface, but shuffling it off to a spacehome. Their announcement also muttered about thinking about what's next for StarCraft, though I wouldn't take that as…
2 years ago
Your next Starcraft II opponent might be a robot in disguise
Google's DeepMind AI division will likely end up making the next generation of military killbots, but before then, at least they'll provide new challenges for the esports crowd. In January, their "AlphaStar" StarCraft II agent trounced a crew of pro players ten to one. To make sure it wasn't a fluke, they've unleashed AlphaStar on the European public. According to this official blog post, AlphaStar…
3 years ago
I had thought Blizzard were about done with big StarCraft II balance changes, or at least had decided which units should be in the game, but nope! This week they announced a load of changes for all factions in multiplayer, redesigning some units and outright removing one. Blizzard explain, "This time around our general focus is to address underused units and abilities while also trying…
Blizzard and Google betray humanity with StarCraft 2 tools to train artificial intelligences
When the robots come for us, bad sci-fi has taught me, it'll be teenage whizzes who save the world. In light of that, I believe that Blizzard and Google's DeepMind Lab are taking the audacious and treasonous step of pre-emptively toadying to our future robot overlords. They've teamed up to release a machine learning API and toolkit to use StarCraft II [official site] as a…
4 years ago
As Westlife once sang in their famous song about esports and their associated cash drives:Tell me what makes an girl want to give you her credit card Smile when you're around and cry when you're apart If you know what makes a girl want to love you the way I do Esports, you gotta let me know so I can get over you. While I…
The third and final episode of StarCraft 2: Nova Covert Ops has arrived alongside a new update for Legacy of the Void [official site]. After years of waiting for the StarCraft spin-off that never was, the psychic super spy finally got her own story in this paid expansion. As for the update, it has brought a big rebalancing of SC2's multiplayer, adding and removing unit…
Good news for StarCraft II players who play several factions: you'll soon have a separate matchmaking rating for each one, meaning you can play/learn/try something different without tanking your ranking. Bad news for insecure SC2 players who try the "yeah but this is my first time ever playing Zerg ever in the world ever okay" excuse when losing: that won't fly any more.Update 3.7, which…
The Korea e-Sports Association, KeSPA, has announced it will be discontinuing the world's longest-running esports league, the StarCraft ProLeague as of 18 October. Its closure comes after 14 seasons of competitive play across the Brood War and SC2 iterations of the franchise. You can read the statement in full after the jump but I wanted to say that the golden years of competitive StarCraft were…
There's this idea that every in-game name chosen in youthful exuberance is an embarrassment you'll eventually want to be rid of. I actually still like and use the one I picked back then, although I occasionally switch it up nowadays because "Notorious P.I.P." is too good a pun to pass up. BUT if you picked a horror of a name as your Battletag, Blizzard are…
I'm always interested in big balance changes to long-running competitive games, the rewriting of rules and reshaping of how matches go. I'm still waiting for football to follow Dota's lead and re-landscape and re-plant the pitch every few months - I'd love to see how the cars deal with that. Over in the world of StarCraft II [official site], Blizzard have announced details of a…
5 years ago
Blizzard's Battle.net Mobile Authenticator app is now less of a faff, simply showing "Approve" and "Deny" buttons for authorising logins. Previously, it'd generate a code folks would need to type out while logging in to play Overwatch, StarCraft II, and whatnot. It's a tiny change but removing any faff from security procedures is always good. If you already use the authenticator, hooray for less faff!…
As someone who writes a lot about esports it feels weird how strange and incomprehensible I still find StarCraft and StarCraft II [official site]. I can sort of follow them but the intricacies are lost on me so I am mainly covering this Legacy of the Void [official site] 3.3 patch about co-op missions and the like because the gif on the site makes it…
Blizzard are jazzing up co-op missions in StarCraft II [official site], adding optional 'mutators' to change missions in strange and difficult ways along with a rotating lineup of 'weekly mutations'. Each week, expect new preset challenges on a certain missions, such as the combination of infested hordes spawning in waves, infested monsters bursting out of corpses, and a deep dark fog of war for the…
StarCraft II: Nova Covert Ops [official site] is the three-part single-player standalone StarCraft II mission pack that was announced at BlizzCon last year. Back then, a vague "Spring 2016" release date was attached to the first installment, however Blizzard have now confirmed March 29 as launch day for those living Stateside, and March 30 for Europe.
Blizzard plan to sell extra characters for the co-op missions in StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void, different commanders with their own abilities and unit lineup, but they've started with a freebie to whet your appetite. (Note: don't confuse your idioms and whet your whistle, or you'll have an awful time at your next rave.) A patch this week added the engineer Karax, who's big…
Feature: Devoid of humanity
StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void [official site] is the second expansion for StarCraft II, this time focused on mystical, mouthless, paladin-like alien race the Protoss. I'm not much of a one for StarCraft II multiplayer, but I wanted to see the singleplayer tale through to its conclusion and, heck, I do miss traditional real-time-strategy, so I took a belated look at the campaign mode.…
It seems daft to launch two of the year's biggest games on the same day, yet here we are. Alec is telling us all about Fallout 4 (check out Wot He Thinks and his fashion show, and who knows what's next?) but what about StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void [official site]? Well, Blizzard's subtrilogy-capping real-time strategy game is indeed out today too, but our…
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StarCraft II: Legacy Of The Void [official site] is the third and final installment of the StarCraft II trilogy and it's out this coming week - November 10, to be exact. Naturally, you might've assumed this would mark the end of StarCraft for the time being, that after this one we'd have to wait a while for the next, if there was to be another…
"Look, I don't know if you know," you say, tapping your watch, "but I have a homeworld to reclaim and a galaxy to save. Yes, I know that Legacy of the Void comes out next Tuesday, November 10th, but when?" Cool your jets, Chad. If your question is "May I play an hour or two before bed?" then the answer is yes, you may, as…
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What's the worst thing in between you and interplanetary domination in StarCraft 2? It's not the endless hordes of revolting Zerg. It's not the condescending space-worthiness of the Protoss, or the wannabee space cowboy antics of the Terrans. It's the menus. Luckily, that's all gonna change when patch 3.0 lands.
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