Starcraft Junkie

According to Rob Pardo Bizzard’s VP of game design, Starcraft 2 is going to be released as a trilogy! Current reports indicate that the single player campaign was too much for a single game. As a result, the game will be broken down into three seperate games: Terran: Wings of Liberty, Zerg: Heart of the Sarm, and Protoss: Legacy of the Void. Multiplayer would be unaffected and would ship with all three races playable. Each disc wouldn’t be considered an expansion, but instead a whole game.

This is a mixed blessing for Starcraft fans. On one hand, having three seperate games means that there will be a LOT of content to play through. On the other hand, that probably means that to get the full experience, we’ll need to pay 3x as much! It’s nice to note that the multiplayer will work with any disc, so that those that just want to play multiplayer can just buy one CD.

Two new interviews with Blizzard for you to enjoy:

Shack: So related to this concern about macro, I know a lot of fans are worried about Multiple Building Selection. Are you still making changes to that system, or is that finalized?

Kevin Yu: In the build that you’ll see at BlizzCon it’s more of a compromise. Clicking on each of the barracks–let’s say you have three barracks. It won’t be like you press “M” once and you’ll have three marines pop out. You’re actually going to have to press “M” three times, which is a little more controlled over what comes out. Because let’s say you have a tech lab on one, and on another you have a reactor, so they build different units and such. You can actually have a little more control over that now.

We’ve tried different things like enable tabbing inbetween each building. Like you click a control group of all your barracks, and you have to tab inbetween each time to press “M.” So you have a control group that’s 4 for your barracks; 4, M, Tab, M, Tab, M, Tab, M.

Source: ShackNews

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Interview 2!

We’re not sure exactly what the deal is with the recent upsurge in interviews to obscure video game websites, but apparently Frank Pearce and Bob Colayco sat down with TVG to discuss the ongoing development StarCraft 2. They covered the usual topics without any direct new information (except maybe more of a confirmation that SC: Ghost is not under development), so unless you’re a conspiracy enthusiast with a penchant for reading between the lines to find information that’s not there, you’re not going to glean much from this interview.

In the interview they talked mostly about StarCraft 2, a little bit about StarCraft: Ghost, and the obligatory mention of WarCraft, Blizzard’s current goliath flagship title.

Maybe you’ll find some worthy tidbits that we missed, but these days any time Blizzard sneezes it’s news.

TVG: There’s no plan to even pave the way for a StarCraft RTS on the console by resurrecting StarCraft Ghost for instance?

Pearce: No, we’ve got our hands full with StarCraft II, Diablo III, and Wrath of the LIch King – Ghost isn’t even on the radar.

TVG: Relic Entertainment has announced that Dawn of War II will be released in the first quarter of 2009; how do you feel about their ideas about where the RTS genre should be heading?

Pearce: They’ve got some cool stuff. I’ve heard about Dawn of War II potentially having a co-operative [campaign] experience, which is a really cool idea. [It's] something we talked about that we don’t have for the launch of StarCraft II, but it’s definitely something that we’ve kept in mind when creating the technology so it doesn’t preclude from doing something like that in the future.

TVG: If you went down that path, is it something you’d consider for a patch or would you keep it back for an expansion?

Pearce: It could be either. I don’t know about a patch, hopefully the technology we’ll have in place with the map editor and Battle.net will make it something that if we wanted to do, we could do it with a map pack.

Read the full article here. Enjoy!

Source: TVG

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New Starcraft 2 lore was released recently about the planet Char:

Char was formerly one of the thirteen core worlds of the Confederacy, but it is most notorious as the primary hive planet of the alien zerg. Upon its discovery, Char was found to be an inhospitable volcanic planet with thick ash covering most of its surface and tainting its acrid atmosphere. The hazardous environment is further intensified by extremely high levels of cosmic radiation from Char’s volatile pairing of binary stars, a class VI F0 sub dwarf orbiting an M8 irregular variable. Char’s elliptical orbit means whole regions of its sunward face can become molten seas during a close approach, with temporary islands forming in them due to rapid cooling as the planet swings away to the frozen outer reaches of the system.

In spite of the hellish conditions, Char was originally settled to exploit its fantastically rich reserves of heavy metals to fuel the rapidly growing Confederate economy. However, the planet became a source of friction between the Terran Confederacy and independent mining guilds operating out of Moria.

(more…)

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Actually, the Hydralisk has since been boosted up quite a bit in terms of damage. They currently have 80 hit points and have a ground attack of 13 + 3 versus armored and an air attack of 12 + 5 versus armored. The Hydralisk also has a range of 6 and moves at a ‘fast’ speed, with no need to upgrade with the speed bonus anymore. Roaches on the other hand, only have an attack of 10, half the Hydralisk’s range, and is slower to move as well. The new damage the Hydralisk is able to put out now makes it very dangerous, as Zerg players will be able to take out buildings with a pack of Hydras, with only a few volleys (same goes to Battlecruisers!). Nonetheless, they are extremely weak at 80 hit points, and thus need to always be protected. The new cost for Hydralisks are also 100 minerals and 100 gas.

via StarcraftLegacy 

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A German magazine was granted a visit with Blizzard Entertainment and has released an article about its supposed system requirements. They do seem a bit high; perhaps it would be a good time to upgrade your computer!

Here’s what the magazine suggested:

StarCraft 2 is at the moment at the alpha phase and it’s possible these could be final requirements. Of course it is, however, possible that the system values could easily change before release of this game.

Minumum Requirements
GFX: GeForce 7/8 Series or Radeon 1000/2000 with 256 MB RAM
CPU: Pentium 4
RAM: 1 GB
Internet: ADSL 1 Mbit

Recommended Requirements
GFX: GeForce 8000 or Radeon 2000 series with 512 MB RAM
CPU: Core 2 Duo or Athlon X2.
RAM: 2 GB
Internet: ADSL 3 Mbit

Optimal Requirements
GFX: Geforce 9000er or Radeon 3000er Series
CPU: Core 2 Duo 3 GHz or Athlon X2
RAM: 2GB with DualChannel mode

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