This morning Blizzard released the 9th patch of the StarCraft II Beta. This new version includes the map editor, but the maps created won't be available for online games until a later patch. Still on the map field, a few removals and additions were made to the ladder rotation. A lot more changes and improvements were made including matches history, in-game voice, friends list, achievements and game interface. See the complete changelog for all the detailed additions and tweaks made to the game.
The StarCraft II Editor is now available!
- Players will now be able to begin creating trigger maps in preparation for map publishing which will be made available in an upcoming beta patch.
Achievements & Decals are now live!
- Players will now be able to earn achievements, browse the list of available achievements, and view achievements earned by friends.
- Players will be able to highlight favorite achievements in their Showcase.
- Earning certain achievements will unlock portrait and decal rewards.
The updated Homepage now includes a Recent Broadcasts panel and a News & Community panel.
A new Match History page is now available which will allow players to browse and filter their last 1,000 games played.
A new Community page is now available which features an in-game version of RSS news feeds.
A new Friends-of-Friends feature has been added, which allows players to easily find and connect with more real life friends on Battle.net through existing friends.
Additional friends' presence details are now available from the Friends' list.
Improvements have been made on the Voice Chat system in game.
- Please use the new voice chat and provide feedback via the StarCraft II beta forums.
The score screen now features a new graph tab.
The art for many parts of the user interface has been updated.
Hotkey templates have been added.
- In the gameplay options menu select from standard name based hotkeys for right and left-handed players, grid based hotkeys for right, and left-handed players, and classic StarCraft keys.
Several hotkeys have been changed to avoid conflicts with the "Select All Warpgates" UI button:
- The Set Worker Rally Point has been changed from W to R.
- Build Sensor Tower has been changed from W to N.
- Terran Infantry Weapons have been changed from W to E.
- Terran Vehicle Weapons have been changed from W to E.
- Weapon Refit has been changed from W to R.
- Burrow has been changed from W to R.
- Spawn Larva has been changed from R to V.
- Neural Parasite has been changed from R to E.
We've made a change to the (2)ScrapStation map to make the natural expansion easier to defend. New maps have been added to the ladder rotation while others have been removed as follows:
Note that the update is planned at 12:00 CDT, 23 April 2010 for the European accounts while its already live for the American one.
Update: The Bnet 2.0 login screen now says there will be further info on the update at around 15:00 CST - battle.net EU has been down or at least unusable for over a day now. Also there appears to be a major problem with larva spawn in the update.
- Fixed an issue where Larva were not dying after being cancelled.
- Fixed an issue with Banelings, Brood Lords, and Overseers obeying their original Hatchery's rally point.
ScorchedHaven is okay, I guess. Still too damn small.
They start you with all the gay portraits now (there was another database reset) and you have to get achievements to unlock the other ones. There are only about a dozen achieves so far, and they're fairly easy to get.
Decals are much like Dawn Of War, and you have to unlock them, too. I'm not a fan of where they do Zerg decals (it's like an aura thing around a building) but I can't really think of a better place.
Kotick is a controversial figure in the press and gaming community. This is in part due to advocating a business strategy focused on developing intellectual property which can be exploited over a long period, occasionally to the exclusion of creating new, risky or niche titles. In responding to why Activision Blizzard chose not to publish certain games following the Activision/Blizzard merger, he stated that focusing on franchises that "have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million franchises" has "worked very well for [Activision Blizzard]". Kotick described this business strategy as "narrow and deep" and cited it as key to attracting development talent who may not be drawn to "speculative franchises". This strategy has received a hostile reception from gamers and members of the gaming press who see it as anathema to widely anticipated small-studio developments such as Brutal Legend, originally to be published by Vivendi but dropped after the Activision Blizzard merger. Geeks.co.uk discussed the strategy under the headline "Activision's Bobby Kotick hates developers, innovation, cheap games, you".
[...]
During a speech at the 2009 Deutsche Bank Securities Technology Conference, Kotick received significant criticism from enthusiasts and the media for stating, "We have a real culture of thrift. The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games." Kotick later stated he tries to promote an atmosphere of "skepticism, pessimism, and fear" in his company and, "We are very good at keeping people focused on the deep depression."
there you go, Bobby K. is the man to hate for all of that
Yes, face it. It is clear that motivation for those people who currently do reverse-engineering of Battle.net 2.0 is lack of LAN support. And it's already work: 3 clicks and you can chose PC with you want to connect and are in you LAN :-]
Not to mention about free Battle.net 2.0 servers all around world.
It will not have battle.net support, so you're only going to be able to play with other people on hacked clients. Since they're going to be dealing with Warden when SC2 is live (Warden is not active yet), they'll have a much more difficult time cracking it. Hacked versions will likely be at least 1-2 patches behind retail, and you still will only be able to play on iccup-like sites.
the difference is, that blizzard intends and will earn money through selling the game, while id does not.
Whether people will be able to steal the game at low risks is another matter.
he means once its retail, you'll have to pay 60 dollars US for it and apparently in Russia, you'll have to pay extra if you want unlimited online. Yet, I guess people here will just pirate it and get it for "free", this site seems to condone piracy.
"The fix to wireframe casting is intentional and will not be reverted in the foreseeable future. The designers really like the idea of having the player need to get back to their base and take care of these special abilities instead of being able to control them remotely while looking elsewhere. Hopefully, this will give the player a better feeling of actually managing their base, rather than just clicking pictures on your hotkey bar or selection frames. "
The bottom area where all your selected units are displayed. You could use your macro mechanics without actually having to return to your base, and it has been fixed so that you actually have to go back to the base to use them now.
like people binding a nexus + gateways on a hotkey and then chronoboost gateways without looking at them.. was an advantage over terran (mule) & zerg (larva inject)
![shaftwhores only by [EXE]dann](/files/avatars/2007/51852-shaftwhore.gif "shaftwhores only by [EXE]dann"){kind=small}
They start you with all the gay portraits now (there was another database reset) and you have to get achievements to unlock the other ones. There are only about a dozen achieves so far, and they're fairly easy to get.
Decals are much like Dawn Of War, and you have to unlock them, too. I'm not a fan of where they do Zerg decals (it's like an aura thing around a building) but I can't really think of a better place.