Starcraft Junkie

This week, the StarCraft 2 community has been provided with a few minor announcements and some cool StarCraft fan art creations.

The coolest update comes in the form of the recently revealed Brutalisk, a towering Zerg abomination slated to appear in Wings of Liberty, the Terran single player campaign. This unit has “custom map boss” written all over it!

(Released via Tweeter. Click for Big)

If you have been following the Blizzard rumor mill, you might have stumbled upon the short-lived newsflash that BlizzCon 2010 is scheduled for the 30th of July, 2010, in the Las Vegas Convetion Center. Good thing you haven’t paid anyone for a ticket yet, though – Bashiok, Blizzard’s official Diablo forum poster, switfly debunked the aforementioned rumor.

StarCraft fan art came in several different flavors this week, from cute miniature plush toys to an uber-detailed, 3D models of a Protoss.

Check out the full 3D model collection in this Korean Blog post.

And here’s the stripped down body of this magnificent creature.

(via StarCraft2.net.pl. You can download the full image collection here)

On the other hand, if you favor Zerg and/or plushies, here’s a dose of cuteness by mz-kitty:

What art form with StarCraft manifest itself in next? Only time will tell.

Fellow SCZ member DapixX is covering WCG 2009 in the linked thread, Includes match-ups, results, and replays. Be sure to check it out!

Take a look at this monster that will appear in the StarCraft II Campaign mode!

While we’ve been impatiently awaiting a big announcement on the StarCraft II Beta and were disappointed earlier this year to find it absent from…

Associate Cinematic Artist YeonHo Lee (Protoss) and Associate Game Balance Designer David Kim (Terran) face off in the fourth of Blizzard…

Some sad but not unexpected news.

Blizzard has confirmed that the Starcraft II Beta for Wings of Liberty will not be out until 2010. The release of the game will probably not be until the Spring or later. The last known theory was that the beta would be out before 2010 and the game during the first half of 2010, but things look like they’ll be further down the road in terms of the Beta.

If you would like to participate in the beta release for StarCraft II, you must opt in at the Starcraft II site (Here’s the URL to the page).

We will continue to keep you updated on any StarCraft news that comes our way.

Starcraft Legacy recently covered an event called “IgroMir”, which by itself was interesting, check it out.

Though the real news from this event is quite saddening. But if you know Blizzard, it won’t really surprise you:

Question from Audience: When is StarCraft 2 coming out?
Chris Sigaty: Tomorrow (audience laughs). Of course not. Normally at Blizzard we don’t speak of dates. So far we’re planning on making the beta-test next year. As soon as we feel that the game is ready, we’ll release it.

In this update, we willl cover the StarCraft 2 news bits and updates from the last 2 weeks, during which a few small pieces of information popped up around the world.  The most important announcement comes to us from Russia’s massive gaming convention, IgroMir (GameWorld in English).

For this event, Blizzard has effectively produced a Blizzcon parallel in Russia. StarCraft 2 was playable for two whole days and fans got a chance to talk with Blizzard’s representatives, who were also present. No new information was revealed, but Chris Sigaty, StarCraft 2’s Lead Producer, has unequivocally confirmed that the StarCraft 2 beta will be released in 2010, and not during November of this year as previously promised.

To the same effect, Blizzard’s President, Mike Morhaim, gave a talk to BlizzaVision’s investors, stating that the game is set to be released towards the end of the second quarter of 2010. This is in line with the statements regarding the length of the beta – 4-6 months – and lends more credit to Sigaty’s statement. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the dates won’t be pushed back yet again, even though Morhaime said that the bulk of the work on the game has been completed, with the project still progressing according to the established timeline.

Last Saturday’s Blizzcast dealt with a few open issues from August’s event, and, most importantly (or relevantly) for the StarCraft 2 audience, produced two new screenshots:

Blizzard has reinstalled the Vespene Laughs competition, allowing artists to submit StarCraft-themed comics and win some much coveted beta keys. The competition was likely scheduled to end close to the original planned date of the beta, but is now being extended in conjunction with the recent delays.

Lastly, Cydra has been kind enough to answer a series of Sensor Tower related questions on the official StarCraft 2 General Discussion Forum.

1. Is the proper name Radar Tower or Sensor Tower?

Sensor Tower

2. What model is being used: Radar Tower, Sensor Tower, or a completely new one?

Sensor Tower has a passive Radar ability which expose enemy movements within its radar capacity.

3. What are the stats? (mineral cost, gas cost, build time, HP, armor)

It costs 125 mineral and 100 geyser gas and it takes 25 build time. Sensor Tower has 200 hp and 0 default armor. You can upgrade the armor of buildings by 2 at Engineering Bay.

5. Do cloaked and burrowed units appear as blips within the radar’s range?

No. Cloaked and burrowed units don’t appear.

7. Does the Tower have any other special abilities besides its radar function?

No.

8. Is the Tower salvageable?

Yes. you can salvage it for 100% fund.

Hey everyone,

In this update, we have the results from the last poll and a new screen shot and poll for you for another month.

In the last poll, What Is Your Biggest Fear About SC2? we had the following options and results,

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

The winner was people’s computers not being able to handle the requirements. A very understandable problem.

From what I’ve heard about SC2, you won’t need the latest and greatest to play it. But it certainly helps .

Here is the new poll for November! You can vote until the end of the month.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

And the new Screen Shot of the Month features some hungry looking zerglings. Don’t forget, you can submit your own screen shot of the month on the forums and get credited on the site!

Screenshot by Quelex.

Mods in StarCraft 2 won’t be able to make a custom application launcher for StarCraft 2, like certain other Blizzard games, but they will retain…