Starcraft Junkie

It's been barely 2 months since Starcraft 2 Beta was revealed and Blizzard has already released Patch 5 for their much anticipated game. This new patch weakens the Zerg in certain areas as well as once again reducing the Protoss build times for their warp gate technology.

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!

And the news come rolling along!

Head onto the Blizzard's Starcraft 2 site for some new information about the new Battle.net system that will be employed with the Starcraft 2 release. Furthermore, in Activision's conference call today, they announced that Blizzard's Starcraft 2 will be released mid-2010 along with the revamped battle.net system. Also, as Starcraft2forums.org pointed out, Mike Morhaime also happened to announce in the meeting that the Starcraft 2 beta will be announced THIS February! Hope they don't miss out on this deadline!

We are happy to announce that we have added a new language to our StarCraft II site. Italian speakers can now check out the latest news about StarCraft II in their own language. We have also added a landing page for our Polish community which will be expanded upon in the near future. In addition to translating the site into these two languages, we will also be releasing StarCraft II itself in Italian and Polish! Take a moment to check out the new StarCraft II sites and the new Battle.net forums for Italian, Polish, and Russian speakers!

Italian website: http://eu.starcraft2.com/index.xml?locale=it_it
Polish splash page: http://eu.starcraft2.com/index.xml?locale=pl_pl
Italian media alert: http://eu.blizzard.com/it-it/company/press/pressreleases.html?100120
Polish media alert: http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/company/press/pressreleases.html?100120pl

Additionally we received info from X answering a question whether or not we will be able to swap between langauges in-game:

First of all, we are of course also localizing in Russian, since this has been announced from the beginning, you can check out the Russian site here: http://eu.starcraft2.com/index.xml?locale=ru_ru
We have also added russian forums today (http://forums.battle.net/index.html?sid=3007) as well as Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/StarCraftRU) and Twitter (http://twitter.com/starcraft_ru) pages that will soon fill up with more content.

Concerning switching between languages, to start off you will have the language of the box that you purchase. We are planning on releasing language packs at some point, but this will not be for release. We will get information on this to you most likely after release of StarCraft 2.

A new featured story regarding the Mothership has been posted on the official StarCraft 2 website. Go check it out for an interesting read!

http://www.starcraft2.com/features/story/mothership.xml

Teamliquid had an opportunity to interview StarCraft II lead designer Dustin Browder. This long interview features some really cool information about the development of the game and about Dustin Browder himself. Be sure to take a look by clicking here.

Cidra just released Batch 55 over at Battle.net

5. In lore Protoss warp in their units and buildings from some far planet. Will there be any mechanic that reflects this such as a "warp out" that could act as a refund?
We do not have any plans to include a warp out game mechanic. We have discussed the possibility of this in the past, but it felt too similar to the Terran mechanics of being able to salvage the structures.

Be sure to read the rest and tell us what you think at the forums.

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

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.

As everyone knows, Blizzcon 2009 concluded last week, with plenty of information released about Starcraft 2, as well as the rest of Blizzard's products. Unforunately, though over 60 pictures and a few videos were taken of the event by SCZ members, due to a technical blunder, all of our SCZ videos and pictures were deleted. Thankfully, many other attendees of Blizzcon have posted their videos and images, so not all is lost! 

• Starcraft 2 Exhibition Match 1v1 by StarcraftLegacy
• Starcraft 2 Map Panel by HiveWorkShop
• Starcraft 2 Behind-the-Scenes Map Editor by HiveWorkShop

Also, luckly, the SCZ memory of Starcraft 2 and its gameplay has not been wiped as well. Please be free to ask questions on the forum thread about Starcraft 2, its graphics, its gameplay, and whatever other questions you have. However, please note that all answers will not be final and is probably going to change many times before Starcraft 2 ships.