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Finally! Activision Blizzard officially announced the release date of Starcraft 2. Starcraft 2 is set to be released on July 27, 2010.
Here are the SRPs and list of sites where you can pre-order Starcraft 2 Wings of Liberty
Starcraft 2 Wings of Liberty
Price: $59.99
Starcraft 2 Wings of Liberty Collector’s edition
Price: $99.99
Includes :
- STARCRAFT II: WINGS OF LIBERTY PC/MAC GAME
- THE ART OF STARCRAFT II: WINGS OF LIBERTY ART BOOK
- JIM RAYNOR “DOG TAG” 2GB USB DRIVE INCLUDING ORIGINAL STARCRAFT ANTHOLOGY
- WINGS OF LIBERTY EXCLUSIVE BEHIND-THE-SCENES DVD
- STARCRAFT COMIC ISSUE #0
- COLLECTOR’S EDITION SOUNDTRACK
- EXCLUSIVE IN-GAME WORLD OF WARCRAFT PET (BABY THOR)
- EXCLUSIVE BATTLE.NET DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT
Unlock special features through Battle.net, including in-game army icons, unique avatar portraits, and an exclusive version of the in-game Thor unit.
And of course, the official statement from Activision Blizzard
StarCraft(R) II: Wings of Liberty(TM) in Stores Starting July 27, 2010
IRVINE, Calif., May 03, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that its highly anticipated real-time strategy game, StarCraft(R) II: Wings of Liberty(TM), will arrive in stores throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Mexico, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau starting on July 27, 2010. Players will also be able to purchase StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty directly from Blizzard Entertainment shortly after the retail launch.
“We’ve been looking forward to revisiting the StarCraft universe for many years, and we’re excited that the time for that is almost here,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “Thanks to our beta testers, we’re making great progress on the final stages of development, and we’ll be ready to welcome players all over the world to StarCraft II and the new Battle.net(R) in just a few months.”
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is the sequel to Blizzard Entertainment’s 1998 hit StarCraft, which has been hailed by players and critics worldwide as one of the top real-time strategy games of all time. Sporting a vibrant 3D-graphics engine, StarCraft II will once again center on the clash between the protoss, terrans, and zerg, with each side deploying legions of veteran, upgraded, and new unit types. Unparalleled online play for StarCraft II will be available through a new version of Battle.net, Blizzard Entertainment’s world-renowned gaming service. Battle.net has been redesigned from the ground up to be the premier online gaming destination for Blizzard gamers, with several enhancements and new features, such as voice communication, cloud file storage, leagues and ladders, achievements, stat-tracking, and more.
The solo campaign for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty will continue the epic saga where it left off in StarCraft: Brood War(R). The story line chronicles the exploits of marshal-turned-rebel-leader Jim Raynor and features both familiar faces and new heroes. Players will be able to tailor the experience, choosing their own mission path and selecting technology and research upgrades to suit their playing style throughout the 29-mission campaign. Several challenge-mode mini-games will also be included, with focused goals designed to ease players into the basics of multiplayer strategies.
As of this posting, Starcraft 2 beta has been patched at least 10 times (plus a bit of minor ninja updates here and there) and everything about the game is continuously updated, from the UI, Balance, Maps and the post-game summary that shows neat graphs of how you and your opponent performed in your previous game.
My thoughts on the current state of Starcraft 2 (Multiplayer) and Battle.net 2.0
There are so many ways to be creative in Starcraft 2 regardless of what race you play. Like in Broodwar, the way you open the game and react differently depending on your opponent’s races, the maps (and individual players, once you get to analyze the way they play) will decide the outcome of the game. It is still a game of “making the least mistakes possible”, “keeping those mineral patches saturated” and all the meta stuff that we loved in Broodwar. One thing i noticed though (for D- to D+ players) macro-oriented players will be pwning micro-oriented ones at least 6:4 but after playing a couple of hundred games, you’ll learn to balance macro and micro. All the fear about the new mechanics (MBS, max unit selection) ruining the game vaporized btw.
Battle.net 2.0 is just superb. A week before EB, Gamestop, etc. offered Starcraft 2 beta keys for those who preorder Starcraft 2, Matchmaking and Placement match results were very accurate. The division you land into after the placement matches are accurate, you’re matched against players who’re close to your level — around this time, there were 8k to 12k people online at any given time (on the US server). But after the stores gave the keys free for preorders, the division placement and matchmaking wen’t a bit wonky (18k to 22k players online at any given time on the US server), but that’s no surprise considering the time that SC2 beta has been out and the way the meta game has evolved since then, and I’m definite that this is how it’s going to be during the first few weeks after Starcraft 2′s release.
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23
Battle.net 2.0 has been reset and finally, the profile reset bug has (supposedly) been fixed. Immortal has been nerfed, Infestor skills has been tweaked. A beta version of the powerful Starcraft 2 Galaxy Editor is included in this patch as well. Oh and a lot of undocumented changes in this patch has been discovered by TL members by reading sniffing through the Patch #9 xml data 
Unlisted changes in the official change log
credits : teamliquid member, Zelniq
- New sound effects and some lightly edited music (& 1 new protoss track)
- Neural Parasite casts faster (tentacle shoots out quicker)
- Can now Bind Locations like you could in SC1. CTRL + F5 – F8 binds the camera location, F5-F8 recalls those locations. useful for rally points, warp-in, mule’ing, etc.
- Zerg buildings now bleed when low HP
- Protoss buildings now have little bolts of electricity flash around when low HP AND low/empty shields
- the bar indicating the procedure of larva spawn now goes from left to right.
- it adds another bar for hatch/lair/hive upgrate. In the previous version it just replaces the larva spawn bar.
- now you can cancel a egg and make it back into a larva with full return
- Colossus can no longer walk through/over force field
- Orbital command scanner sweep graphical change
- hydralisk/thor/zerglings can now /dance and /cheer
- 8 new player colors (possibly only accessable by map editor? dunno, depends on max # of players in a multiplayer game)
- a window now pops up showing the countdown to being revealed (25 sec), when you lose all of your town halls
- all types of units now have a Rank description, like Disciple, Predator, General, etc
- new creep tumor texture, new baneling egg morphing texture.
- health bars no longer turn yellow if they lose any damage at all. now they stay greenish while theyre at high HP
- All zerg buildings now have animations for whenever they are researching/upgrading/building anything. often times they just move around faster
- new mouse cursors for each race
- the preview of any structure before it is morphed by zerg, now is no longer translucent, it looks exactly the same as if the structure was finished.
- when you tell a spire to morph into a greater spire, there’s a totally sweet animation!
- new hydralisk range upgrade icon. (used to have the same one as Roach Burrowed Movement upgrade)
- new texture for Fleet Beacon. high templar warping in looks different
- hellion’s flame is now blue
- ghost academy now animates while it’s doing stuff, or did it always? (cybernetics core still does not sadly)
- Decals
- New Help menu
Known Bugs
credits : teamliquid member, Zelniq
- Can no longer target spells/abilities on your buildings or units by clicking on their icons in the selected unit panel. This means you cannot Spawn Larvae nor Chrono Boost by clicking on the building icons. Same goes for other abilities like Repair, Transfusion. seems like a bug rather than an intentional change, makes no sense to not be able to use actions on unit profiles
- Cancelling a morphing lava apparently allows for a major exploit to get extra larvae to spawn while 3 eggs are morphing, then canceling the eggs and getting more larvae, allowing players to continuously increase larva count, allowing for some insanely strong zergling rushes
Discuss the undocumented changes of the patch here :
TL Thread : “Unlisted Patch 9 Changes!”
Balance Changes
StarCraft II Beta – Patch 9 (version 0.11.0.15097)
General
- 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.
- n 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.
Balance Changes
-
Terran
- Marauder
- Concussive Shells research cost decreased from 100/100 80 seconds to 50/50 60 seconds.
- Marauder
-
Protoss
- Immortal
- Build time increased from 40 to 55.
- Immortal
-
Zerg
- Infested Terran
- Damage increased from 5 to 8.
- Speed decreased from 1.5 to 0.9375
- Queen
- Speed off creep decreased from 1.5 to 0.938. (Speed on creep unchanged.)
- Spine Crawler
- Neural Parasite range increased from 7 to 9.
- Fungal Growth projectile removed; Units in the target area are now instantly hit.
- Infestor
- Concussive Shells research cost decreased from 100/100 80 seconds to 50/50 60 seconds.
- Infested Terran
Maps
- 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:
- 1v1
- Added (2)IncinerationZone
- 2v2
- Removed (4)LostTemple
- Removed (4)Metalopolis
- Added (4)AridWastes
- Added (4)Coalition
- Added (4)Decena
- Added (4)ScorchedHaven
- 1v1 (Novice)
- Removed (4)NoviceKulasRavine
- 2v2 (Novice)
- Removed (4)NoviceKulasRavine
- Removed (4)NoviceShakurasPlateau
- Added (4)NoviceDecena
- Added (4)NoviceScorchedHaven
- Added (4)NoviceTwilightFortress
- 1v1
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Two members of the Unholy Trinity gets the nerf bat, The Roach (again) and the Marauder. This beta patch mainly promotes Terrans to explore mech builds and discourage early Marauder cheese harass. Not sure about what the patch wants Zerg players to do though, since i haven’t had much trouble againt roaches lately after the last nerf beating it took.
Balance Changes
StarCraft II Beta – Patch 8 (version 0.10.0.14803)
General
-
Korea
- Added support to display the game rating information on the login screen.
- Balance Changes
-
TERRAN
- Thor
- Build time decreased from 75 seconds to 60 seconds.
- Siege Tank
- Build time decreased from 50 seconds to 45 seconds.
- Marauder
- Concussive Shells now require an upgrade.
- Barracks Tech Lab
- Concussive Shells upgrade added.
- Concussive Shells upgrade costs 100/100 and takes 80 seconds to complete.
- Thor
- Void Ray
- Changed to only have 2 damage levels instead of 3. Still takes the same amount of time to fully charge.
- Base damage changed from 2 (+4 armored) to 5.
- Powered-up damage changed from 8 (+16 armored) to 10 (+15 armored).
- Armor value decreased from 1 to 0.
- Cost increased from 200/150 to 250/150.
- Roach
- Burrowed move speed decreased from 2 to 1.4.
- Armor value decreased from 2 to 1.
- Hydralisk
- Life decreased from 90 to 80.
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