Starcraft Junkie

Those participating in the Beta were given a patch to install last night.

We have updated the Protoss Units page to reflect the changes. The Terran page will be the next page to be updated and will be coming in the coming days.

Here are the patch notes:

BALANCE CHANGES

• TERRAN

  • Viking

  • • - The armor value for this unit in Fighter Mode has decreased from 1 to 0.
    • - The damage done by this unit in Fighter Mode has changed from 6 (+8 armored) to 10 (+4 armored).

  • Reaper

  • • - The damage done from D-8 Charges has decreased from 40 to 30.
    • - The delay between attacks for D-8 Charges has decreased from 2.5 to 1.8.

  • Orbital Command

  • • - The build time for this upgrade has decreased from 50 to 35.

• PROTOSS

  • Observer

  • • - Gravitic Boosters: The cost of this research has decreased from 150 minerals and 150 vespene gas to 100 minerals and 100 vespene gas.

  • High Templar

  • • - Phase Shift: This ability has been removed from the game.
    • - New ability: Feedback – Drains all energy from the target unit and causes damage equal to the amount of energy drained.

  • Colossus

  • • - The building pathing radius for this unit has decreased from .75 to .5625.

  • Mothership

  • • - Vortex: The energy cost of this ability has increased from 75 to 100.
    • - Vortex: The target radius of this ability has decreased from 3.0 to 2.5.
    • - Temporal Rift: This ability has been removed from the game.
    • - Wormhole Transit: This ability has been removed from the game.
    • - New ability: Mass Recall – Teleports all of the player’s units in the target area to the Mothership.

  • Nexus

  • • - Chrono Boost can no longer target allies.

  • Gateway

  • • - The build time of this building has increased from 50 to 65.

• ZERG

  • Infestor

  • • - Fungal Growth: The damage done by this ability has decreased from 48 to 36.
    • - Fungal Growth: This ability now prevents affected units from burrowing.
    • - Neural Parasite: Functionality changed – The Infestor now channels this spell, which lasts 10 seconds or until the Infestor is destroyed. You can now target all units with this ability.
    • - Terran Infestation: The ability’s energy cost has reduced from 50 to 25 and Infested Terrans now spawn 1 at a time.

BUG FIXES

• - Addressed an issue causing people to receive an “Internal Battle.net Error” message with their game client.
• - Muting your microphone will no longer cause your microphone to be turned off in the operating system once the program has exited.
  • Please note that the voice chat functionality has only partially been implemented. There are many known issues with voice chat that we expect to address in a future patch.
• - The “Medium” graphical settings were reconfigured to work better on appropriate machines. The video settings “auto-detect” functionality has been reset as a result.
• - Added a frame rate limiter to the game menus to prevent some graphics cards from running at higher frame rates than necessary.

Hey everyone,

With the Beta underway, you can find plenty of videos on YouTube. Here’s a funny one of someone using the Terran Planetary Fortress as an attack unit to rush with.

Blizzard sent out more Beta keys today to try to catch up on players who went to Blizzcon but have not recieved their promised keys. They also sent out more to players who opted it. If you have not opted in yet, you can do so from the sidebar on the site.

I would not recommend buying a beta key on Ebay by the way. I’ve heard reports of $300 beta keys. Don’t support their stupidity.

So we are still slowly but surely working on updating the information on the site. The SCBW Protoss Unit page is still incomplete, but has a general preview of what the others will look like in the end. The StarCraft II Protoss Unit page was “finished” today. We will not go into specifics on stats due to it being a Beta and bound to have plenty of changes up until it hits the stores. And there are still a lot of Unit Portraits I need to find. But you can get a good grasp of what the units are.

Well into their way of testing out the StarCraft II Beta, IGN posted a preview of the Terran race with much love for the Thor. Marines are pretty...

Blizzard has delivered. Thousands of people have already downloaded and installed the StarCraft 2 Beta, the Battle.net 2.0 platform is online and fully operational (where it counts), maps are downloaded swiftly, and finding a match takes seconds.

In general, the beta seems to be going very smoothly. Many players already populate the various leagues, the interface is smooth and quite intuitive, and is, amazingly, integrated into every part of the game in a very unobtrusive and efficient way. Some complaints about unused space have been made, but where it matters – inside the game – it functions beautifully.

Ten Blizzard maps have been made available, all in either 1v1 or 2v2 sizes, on a variety of tilesets:

• Blistering Sands
• Desert Oasis
• Scrap Station
• Steppes of War
• Kulas Ravine
• Lost Temple
• Metropolis
• Twilight Fortress
• Shakruras Plateau

Some maps come in two flavors – novice and normal. Novice type maps have a slightly modified topography and provide players with conditions conducive to less eventful early games.

Battle.net’s post-match screen includes a very informative tab that provides a clear summary of each players’ build orders, directly compared to each other. This second-by-second view provides a great insight into the first crucial minutes of the game and will help players understand where exactly they might have gone wrong without taking the time to go over the replay.

Next on today’s agenda, we’ve compiled a short list of changes to the game we haven’t heard about before the beta began:

• When a Protoss player has one or more Warpgates, hitting “W” will select all of them, making warping units to the field a button-click away at all times.
• Lurkers are no longer a part of the game. The unit is completely gone.
• The Protoss macro mechanic has been replaced. Instead of the periodic Probe mining bonus, the Nexus now has “Chrono Boost“, a 25-energy ability that the Nexus can use on ANY building, including those of allies, to increase the speed of unit production and research. Extremely useful in all situations, from the beginning of the game (build Probes faster) to the end (Build Mothership faster).
• Speaking of the Mothership, its “Black Hole” ability now functions as a souped-up Stasis Field, sucking up all units around the area of effect and keeping them trapped in another dimension for a short period before spitting them all out when it dissipates. Use with a well-timed Nuke for bonus points.
• Mentioned just a couple of days before the beta, Banelings can now again be used as underground mines, detonating while burrowed. However, the favorite strategy with Banelings is currently “get a lot of them and roll into the enemy base”.
• There is NO chat on battle.net besides that with your friends and the “parties” you form with them. No regional or global channels like in StarCraft 1, and no chat gem either.
• The Battlecruiser no longer has different abilities to choose from. Instead, only the Yamato Cannon is available after being researched at the Fusion Core.

• When a player losses all his main structures (Command Center, Hatchery, Nexus), all his units and structures are revealed to the enemy. This measure was implemented to prevent players from abusing the players who just beat them by playing Pylon hide-and-seek. However, it is already raising some concern about end-case situations (stalemates, players still having enough money, etc). The SC2Blog recommends turning this feature off in tournaments and other high-level competitions.

If you’re having a hard time letting go of your recently acquired StarCraft 2 Beta, you can now enjoy its theme music even when doing what you should have been doing instead of playing:
Terran theme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcghLSIpZlM
Zerg theme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ivYHY8V-XA
Protoss theme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuh96ogWoAc
Menu theme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVNyU-BF9wg

For players who are not in the beta and are eager for some action, here are some new high-definition gameplay videos. If you’re looking for more, stay tuned and keep an eye over our Facebook page – it will periodically be updated with noteworthy live streams, as they occur.

Blizzard Released the StarCraft II Beta yesterday allowing people to start trying the game. You can wait for your beta invite if you’ve opted in. If you haven’t opted in, there’s a link to do so on the sidebar of the site.

This was the first wave of invites. More people will be invited as time marches on. So don’t be down if you didn’t get one yet.

The minimum requirements for the beta are below:

PC Minimum Requirements:
• Windows XP SP3/Vista SP1/Windows 7
• 2.2 Ghz Pentium IV or equivalent AMD Athlon processor
• 1 GB system RAM/1.5 GB for Vista and Windows 7
• 128 MB NVidia GeForce 6600 GT/ATI Radeon 9800 PRO video card
• 1024×768 minimum display resolution
• 4 GB free hard space (Beta)
• Broadband connection

Blizzard Released the StarCraft II Beta yesterday allowing people to start trying the game. You can wait for your beta invite if you’ve opted in. If you haven’t opted in, there’s a link to do so on the sidebar of the site.

This was the first wave of invites. More people will be invited as time marches on. So don’t be down if you didn’t get one yet.

The minimum requirements for the beta are below:

PC Minimum Requirements:
• Windows XP SP3/Vista SP1/Windows 7
• 2.2 Ghz Pentium IV or equivalent AMD Athlon processor
• 1 GB system RAM/1.5 GB for Vista and Windows 7
• 128 MB NVidia GeForce 6600 GT/ATI Radeon 9800 PRO video card
• 1024×768 minimum display resolution
• 4 GB free hard space (Beta)
• Broadband connection

After long years of waiting and many periods of delaying, the Starcraft 2 BETA has been officially released! As of now, there are only around 2000 players in it, but expect to see lots of BETA footage to appease your lust to see the game. Those who were lucky enough to receive a BETA key, post your videos for all to see! Thanks!

IGN posted up a quick article on their early impressions of the StarCraft II Wings of Liberty Beta. It has lots of little tidbits on what's...

G4TV posted interviews with Dustin Browder, Chris Sigaty, Rob Pardo, and Greg Canessa to highlight and celebrate the launch of the StarCraft II Wings...

IGN PC reports that Blizzard Entertainment's made a substantial $1.1 million donation to The MakeAWish Foundation, a charitable organization in...