We've seen quite a few system requirements for StarCraft II, many of which ended up being nothing more than baseless rumors, but these ... if these aren't legit, I'm done. Blizzard support for Europe has the system specs listed in full as if it's no big deal. It's StarCraft, so of course it's a big deal.
Minimum Requirements:
Operating System - Windows XP/XP64 (Service Pack 3), Windows Vista/Vista64 (Service Pack 1), Windows 7 Home Premium
Graphics - 3D graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capability with 128 MB VRAM
such as an ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT class card or better
It's worth noting this is specifically what you'll need to run the beta. I wouldn't be surprised if the full retail version of StarCraft II has slightly tweaked requirements. Also: wow, these are really low. What kind of magic are you pulling behind the scenes, guys?
[Update: Guess we should have known they were too good to be true, eh? These specs aren't the real deal. Rather, they were meant to be a placeholder until Blizzard gets around to starting the beta.]
"seeing as the graphics are already outdated theres no magic and there physics engine well....havent really seen anything taking advantage of nvidia physx"...
I'm not playing the StarCraft II beta right now. Are you?
Probably not, but the Internet has begun to rumble with rumors that the long-awaited beta may be right around the corner. Rumors started when someone with a keen eye spotted what appears to be the Starcraft II beta running on a screen in a teaser trailer for the third season of The Jace Hall Show.
Confirmation that it's about to launch? Not really -- Jace's show is known for its scripted (but hilarious) gaming-related antics, so it's entirely possible it's just a little "wink wink, nudge nudge" joke Easter Egg thrown in for laughs. But on the other hand, StarCraft fan Web site Starcraftwire.net is reporting that other fan sites are allegedly getting emails from Blizzard regarding an upcoming beta.
So the bottom line here is this: We don't know any more than we knew before, and there's no real news on the StarCraft II beta. But we're never giving up hope that it's right around the corner. We can dream, right?
"@Hamza: Is that Megan Fox, she looks somewhat smarter for some reason?
@Nick: I met Hall almost a decade ago back in the Lithtech hayday. You would be hard pressed to hear anyone say a single..."...
It looks like the Protoss will be playable in the first StarCraft II release, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. In a recent official message board post, Blizzard’s Stefanie Gwinner revealed that the delectable aliens are to be featured as part of a “mini-campaign.” Save the slobber -- not all of the units or upgrades are to be shown in this planned slice.
“This part of the campaign mode is of course way shorter than the Terran part, Gwinner wrote,” but it is very fun to have a very different style to add even more variety to the game.”
“That being said, the Protoss mini-campaign will not prepare you for the multiplayer as Protoss,” Gwinner added. “You won’t even be using all units or getting to know buildings and upgrades.
“In general, even for (the) Terran, it is not the objective of the single-player to show how to play the game effectively; it is to tell a story and do a lot of fun things (and), that would not be possible in multiplayer.”
Elated that the Protoss will have some sort of playable role in the campaign, we decided to paint the town red. After pissing off our upstairs neighbor and having the police called on us for “fiddling” with his door, we’ve since decided that relating this information is the best way to celebrate. Cheers!
Here's a bit of sad news for Diablo III fans. So sad, in fact, that if you happen to be one of those "I can never let anyone see me cry" guys, you should probably run off to a secluded area. Like, right now. Go!
Activision Blizzard CFO Thomas Tippl recently talked about how the Blizzard side of the business has been going, and more importantly, when exactly all of the studio's games are coming out. According to Kotaku, we shouldn't expect to see Diablo III until 2011 at the earliest.
2010 will be a busy year for Blizzard, what with StarCraft II, the new and improved Battle.net, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and whatever else may be in the works. This of course pushes those StarCraft expansions and Diablo into the "next few years."
As a Blizzard fan, long waits sort of come with the membership. But you know what? It sure would be nice to say, "hey world, I had the chance to play Diablo III before you ended in 2012." Make it happen, people.
Another story related to a Blizzard game where a time far off from the present is discussed? Uh huh. The two themes have become so intertwined with one another that it isn't even disappointing to hear anymore; it's simply the norm.
The StarCraft II beta, which we foolishly expected to go public this year, has been shoved into 2010. This news was confirmed by producer Chris Sigaty at a Russian videogame expo called IgroMir. I didn't know such a convention existed, but with a name like that, I'll be sure to never forget.
With more time on Blizzard's side, perhaps we will see the inclusion of the StarCraft IImap editor in the beta after all? Fully expect me to take your silence as a "yes," guys.
I'm sure we've all been in a situation where the power has gone or the Internet's shut down right when we've been in the middle of a hot gaming session. What do you do in those situations? Throw the controller? Scream and rage? If you're one eighteen-year-old Starcraft fan, you grab a kitchen knife and stab the first 15-year-old girl who walks past your house. Sensible option.
A Swedish Starcraft gamer flew into a fit of rage when his Internet cut off while he was playing the RTS title, so he ran into the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and then started attacking the young girl as she passed by his house. He stabbed her multiple times, but fortunately has survived the attack.
The nutjob has been charged with attempted homicide and has been sent off for psychiatric treatment. The world breathes a sigh of relief that he was playing Starcraft and not Demon's Souls, as things could have been far worse.
You may have noticed that Blizzard takes a while to put out their games. Their two biggest releases coming up, Diablo III and StarCraft II, have been in development for what seems like ages. Often games that are in development for this long are stuck in the mire of game design, and may never see the light of day, so it's understandable that Gamasutra would raise the question of if "the development time has been extended to a surprising degree" when they talked with Blizzard lead content designer Kevin Martens. Martens thinks this is Blizzard's greatest advantage, however.
"Here's the secret to Blizzard games, and this is a secret that won't help any of our competitors: endless iteration," he explained. "We'll take something, we'll put it in the game. Maybe we'll like it when we put it in, maybe we won't. We'll leave it in there for a while, we'll let it percolate. We'll play it and play it and play it, and then we'll come back. We might throw it all out, or we'll throw half of that out and redo it."
Basically, being able to try things over and over and over again makes their games better. Seems pretty logical to me, even, dare I say it, obvious. Still, how many companies actually have all the time in the world to test out every option in every game. I guess that's why Martens isn't too scared to reveal this "secret."
Blizzard’s annual BlizzCon expo celebrating all things StarCraft, Warcraft and Diablo isn’t as profitable as one might think. Despite selling 20,000 tickets at $125 a pop, a ton of merchandising at the con and the DirecTV deal, Blizzard didn't see any profits from the show.
Executive Vice President, Frank Pearce, spoke at Austin GDC yesterday where he opened up on the cost of the convention:
"BlizzCon is operated at a substantial loss for the company. "It's a huge marketing opportunity, so that's the benefit we get out of that. But in terms of any kind of financial gain, it actually is a loss for us."
Frank wouldn’t go into details on how much is lost, but it’s got to be a pretty penny. GameSpot points out that Blizzard has to rent out the Anaheim Convention Center, provide around 2,000 PCs for demos and there’s all those cash prizes too. Plus, there’s the celebrity factor with Kerrigan's voice actress Tricia Helfer making an appearance along with Ozzy Osbourne’s concert.
It may have cost them a ton, but I’m sure the 11 million World of Warcraft players help Blizzard sleep at night.
FUN FACT TIME! Frank also gave an insight on some interesting numbers in relation to WoW:
"Put together, the massively multiplayer online role-playing game and its two expansions have 7,650 quests, 70,000 spells, 40,000 NPCs, 1.5 million assets, and 5.5 million lines of code, and requires 4,000 employees, 13,250 server blades, and 75,000 CPU cores."
StarCraft 2's map editor looks to be pretty robust, and Blizzard was happy to show off some of the power under the hood at Blizzcon. Imagine maps in the style of action role-playing games, shoot-'em-ups, and even first-person shooters. Blizzard was able to crank out examples of each from the new editor.
At a game play panel at Blizzcon, a third-person Action RPG and a Galaga-style shmup were shown off. As VG247 says, with this kind of map-making flexibility and power, it makes sense that new maps might cost money. Of course, there will still be free ones too. Joystiq points to an FPS made using the editor, featuring a character model from the cancelled StarCraft Ghost. They say that this was created in just a few days.
I can't wait to see what gamers do when armed with this power.
"When I first saw all this while standing in line to play D3, the ideas that just flowed through my head were nuts. I am so looking forward to playing with this editor and to see what others come ..."...
Wow. Tricia Helfer is getting in all of the high profile games! First she’s voicing Dare in Halo 3: ODST. Now, she’s voicing Kerrigan in StarCraft 2.
Joystiq reports that Tricia’s role in StarCraft 2 was revealed during a panel at BlizzCon this weekend. Vice President of creative development, Chris Metzen, told the audience during the StarCraft 2 lore panel that the sexy actress would be replacing Glynnis Talken as the Queen of Blades.
While I don’t mind that Tricia is the new voice of Kerrigan, I will miss Glynnis’ voice. The way she portrayed Kerrigan in the original StarCraft was just perfect.
Not long ago, Blizzard Entertainment’s Rob Pardo said, flatly, that uber-RTS StarCraft IIwould not support LAN. His words ignited a firestorm of keystrokes from an oddly vocal -- and Internet-equipped -- group of purists who clacked disapproval of the move in whatever corner of the Internet they were alerted to the grave, grave news. Those folks can relax and put the pitchforks down: Blizzard plans to incorporate some kind of LAN support for the title.
How? Call it ... essentially-LAN. Speaking with Shacknews, Battle.Net developer Greg Canessa echoed leader producer Chris Sigaty's confirmation that Blizzard is working on some kind of feature that can replicate the speed and reliability of LAN while users are still connected to Battle.Net (therefore authenticating their disc). If the concept comes to fruition, an Internet connection will still be required to play -- but there’s no need for a new petition.
Canessa explains, “We are working on solutions with regard to things we can do to maintain connectivity to Battle.net in some way, but also provide a great quality connection between players.”
When asked if this solution would be like a “pseudo-LAN,” Canessa agreed, saying “Something like that,” before continuing. “Maintaining a connection with Battle.net, I don't know if it's once or periodically, but then also having a peer-to-peer connection between players to facilitate a very low-ping, high-bandwidth connection ... those are the things that we're working on.”
It’ll be interesting to see how this works, for sure. If it doesn’t pan out, we’ll be sure to tell you about the new petition.
Back at the end of July, I got to go back to Blizzard headquarters to take a look at StarCraft II once again. This time, instead of crushing other publications under the might of my hydralisk swarms, I got some hands-on time with the single-player mode of the game. I also got the chance to speak with Andy Chambers, the lead writer for the game, as well as Chris Sigaty, the lead producer, who gave us some interesting insights into how the single-player mode of the game was created and the challenges they faced while working on the game.
"I totally called the "hub" idea. 4th paragraph, for those who don't want to read.
I'm interested to see how it works in a game where 90% of your units are expendable. But mostly I wish I had..."...
When Blizzard announced that Starcraft II would be ditching LAN support, people got upset. Local play has been a staple of Starcraft for centuries, and it was quite shocking to see that the sequel would not allow for that most ancient and noble of nerd traditions, the LAN party. Naturally, an online petition started up.
Futile as I may find online petitions, I still admire the willingness of gamers to make their voices heard, especially as they're usually a ludicrously apathetic bunch. The petition has broken the 100,000 signature mark, making for quite a loud voice indeed. Seems that, despite having the Internet, there's no substitute in many peoples' minds for good ol' fashioned human interaction.
Of course, with Blizzard being the right arm of evil publisher Activision, this collective outcry could fall on deaf ears. Blizzard is keen on pushing Battle.net with all its might, and if that means sacrificing the happiness of a mere 100,000 people, then so be it.
"@IV Backstab MC: Good to know even these days blizzard still has fucktards stupid enough to devour the feces they throw on their consumers. I'm done with blizzard, personally. They fucked World o..."...
With the "it's done when it's done" design philosophy for Starcraft II meaning a tragic yet understandable 2010 release, it seems like many of us are wondering why Battle.net was cited as a reason for the delay. Courtesy of Gamasutra, we have got some answers.
Activision's leading man Bobby Kotick says that the intention is to make Battle.net "the foundation for connecting tens of millions in the Blizzard community in a social gaming network across all Blizzard's future games." He also compared the service to Xbox LIVE saying Starcraft II and World of Warcraft would be the first to utilize it.
Blizzard president Mike Morhaime was also able to chime in on the matter, saying "we recognize that we only get one chance to make a first impression." The ambitious new Battle.net will "add social networking features, cross-game communications, unified log-in and account management and more" on top of the current feature set.
This all sounds really exciting to me. Although it's sad we won't get Starcraft II this year, the delay can only be a good thing for the state of both Battle.net and the game itself. Now please, guys, don't delay any more games -- especially not Borderlands.
Destructoid is an independently-run publication forged by our love of video games and the gaming community's need of accountable enthusiast press living the dream since March 16, 2006
1:15 PM on 01.29.2010, 
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