Hasta La Gadget!

StarCraft has long been a favorite among RTS players, so it wasn’t surprising that StarCraft 2 launched with great success. If you’ve already completed the first installment of StarCraft 2, then you might be interested to learn that its successor, StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm, has gone live! Yesterday we mentioned that there were different times that the servers would go live, depending on your region, but we guess based on this official announcement by Blizzard, the game has gone live for pretty much everyone. StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm is available for purchase via Blizzard’s online store for $39.99, while the original game, Wings of Liberty, is priced at $39.99. For those looking to get in on the StarCraft 2 action, it should be noted that you will require Wings of Liberty in order to play Heart of the Swarm. For those who have already begun the game, let us know what you guys think of the latest expansion in the comments below!

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While Blizzard might have briefly toyed with the idea of turning StarCraft 2 into a free-to-play model, you can rest assured that they won’t. According to a recent Reddit AMA, Blizzard’s Dustin Browder revealed that the company had no plans to go free-to-play in the “traditional sense”. Browder went on to state that Blizzard already had a free version of the game, albeit being limited in terms of feature which acts more like a trial.

“We do have a trial version that allows players to check out the game but it isn’t like Team Fortress 2. Valve did make a lot of changes to Team Fortress 2 to make that game work for free-to-play. We have not yet found design choices for StarCraft 2 that we would be happy with to make it free-to-play, so we aren’t going to do it.”

I don’t know about you guys, but personally I don’t like the free-to-play model and I am glad that Blizzard has decided not to adopt that model…yet. Browder’s statement however leaves it open to the possibility that if and when Blizzard finds a model that they are happy with, there is a chance that the free-to-play system could be adopted.

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Blizzard’s Starcraft franchise is an RTS game, so it’s hard to imagine what the game could be like if it were to be played as an MMO – or is it? If you haven’t touched Starcraft 2 in a while or if you’re looking to take a break from the competitive ladder matches, it seems that the Starcraft 2 mod, Starcraft Universe: Chronicles of Fate, is now available and will be going out over Battle.net. For those unfamiliar with the title, it’s basically a mod for Starcraft 2 that turns the otherwise RTS game into a pretty impressive looking sci-fi MMO. The project did run into some trouble a few years back, but whatever issues they had with Blizzard have since been smoothed over.

As it stands the current version of the game will be available only in single player mode, but this is just to make sure that the core of the game is working properly. The good news is that assuming everything goes well, the multiplayer instances that will support 5-10 players will be released later. At the moment the Starcraft Universe mod allows players to choose between 8 different classes, character customization, mounted vehicle combat, and a custom physics engine built by DarkRevenant. In fact it even features some prominent voice actors, such as Michael Gough who voiced Deckard Cain in Diablo, and Danielle McRae who voices Karma in League of Legends. You can check out the trailer of the mod in the video above.

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With the success that Starcraft 2 has had, we’re sure many gamers are looking forward to the expansion, Heart of the Swarm. Now the good news is that if you are one of those eager gamers and have pre-purchased the game digitally via Battle.net before the 20^th of December, don’t be surprised if you find an email in your inbox one day informing you that you have been granted beta access to the expansion. Yup, Blizzard is expanding the Heart of the Swarm beta and is now flagging gamers who have pre-purchased the game on or before the 20^th of December (originally only for those who bought before or on the 18^th of December). This does not mean that if you buy the game today that you won’t get access – Blizzard has revealed that players who pre-purchase the game after the deadline will be able to gain beta access, but they will be added in waves on a weekly basis. Sounds like good news for those who can’t wait to play the game – any of our readers out there who have gotten access to the Heart of the Swarm beta? Let us know in the comments on how you are finding it!

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Just like Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft, Starcraft 2 was released for several different regions which means that not everyone can play together. This is a bit of a bummer if you have friends living in a different region, which means you won’t get to play with them and there will be maps on either region that either side won’t have access to. Well the good news is that Blizzard has announced that in the coming months, they will be introducing Global Play in an upcoming patch.

According to Blizzard, Global Play will allow players to freely switch between regions while retaining your game language and user interface. However the drawback is that your character, profiles, stats and ladder positions will not carry from region to region, which means that switching regions would be equivalent to a fresh start. This might not be a big deal to the casual player who is looking to play with friends, but for the more competitive, this could be inconvenient as they’d have to work their way from group up. In any case Blizzard will be releasing more information on Global Play soon, so stay tuned for updates!

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