StarCraft II: Abathur Goes Co-Op Commander In 3.3.0
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 look like Abathur is taking to the stage to deliver a talk about sales figures or something.
Observe:
So! The patch involves Abathur as a co-op commander:
In creating Abathur, we wanted to provide a Commander for players who wanted to play Zerg without having to rely on a Hero unit being on the battlefield. Additionally, we wanted to ensure that we fulfilled the unique fantasy elements for which Abathur is so well-known.
To do this, we’ve equipped Abathur with some very powerful abilities and upgrades that augment the strength of his units on the battlefield. In addition, we’ve added an entirely new Evolution mechanic that is available exclusively to Abathur. Through Evolution, Abathur can use the Biomass of fallen foes to spin new essences into his units to make them even more powerful. Thanks to this relentless pursuit of perfection, Abathur will give you access to the most powerful units you’ve ever used in Co-op Missions, and with them, you will wreak whatever havoc you deign necessary.
There are more details in a dedicated blog entry if you're interested in trying him out. Skimming it as a novice it seems to be about corpse acquisition, so Abathur is basically an insecty Victor Frankenstein?
The patch notes then say wondrous things like "Each week, players can queue for the Weekly Mutation" and "Fixed an issue where Karax was inadvertently generating extra energy while Chrono Wave was active" and "Malignant Creep Tumor has had its sight radius slightly reduced".
3.3.0 also brings emoticons to chat. They have the poop emoji and a flexing arm amongst the basic pack, but owning the SC2 expansions will widen your pictogram library to include things like a zerg heart and a photon cannon.
Other highlights from my reading of the various notes and subnotes include Raynor's hair being repaired ("Fixed an issue where Raynor’s hair could sometimes display placeholder art on certain settings"), something they should have called Careless Whisper ("Fixed an issue where players could receive the “you missed a whisper” notification after a player interacts with the Whisper") and an answer to the problem of levitating dead bodies ("Fixed an issue when using Vorazun’s Time Stop ability and killing an enemy could result in floating corpses").
Full patch note log is here. It'll launch today for North America but other regions may vary. The patch itself is free of charge but unlocking Abathur will cost you $4.99.