Overview
Starcraft II is an evolutionary continuation of Starcraft I.
Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty and Two Expansions
Starcraft II is split into 3 games. The base game is named Wings of Liberty and hosts the Terran campaign. Two expansions will also be released: Heart of the Swarm (Zerg) and Legacy of the Void (Protoss). Blizzard has mentioned they don’t want them to fill like expansions and intends for them to have just as much story and content as Wings of Liberty. This decision was announced at the 2008 Blizzard Worldwide Invitational by Blizzard Executive Vice President Rob Pardo. The premise behind the decision was to allow the developers the ability to fit all they wanted to into the final game(s)[1].
Single-Player Features
Larger Campaigns and Mission Options
As part of the push to release three games instead of one, Blizzard is creating a campaign for each race with 26-30 missions. Players will have more flexibility of which missions they want to do, play tangent missions, have mini-missions… Blizzard is presenting the player with the opportunity to decide what path they want to take.
Dustin Browder: … “We’ve got some research that you can do, and that’s really just a fancy way of saying we have some quests for you. So you have a scientist that says, “Okay, here’s the deal: I can get some really cool technology for you, but I need you to go get some stuff from the battlefields.” So when you get into the battlefields, some battlefields will say hey, there’s a research objective. Find the Protoss artifacts, or find and kill that giant horrible Zerg creature that’s going to really wreck your day unless you’re really ready to fight him.”
[2]
Awesome Missions
Dustin has described some pretty cool map ideas. The intent here is to provide a game experience that never gets dull, and we find Blizzard pursuing this more and more with each game.
Dustin Browder: … “We’ve got a mission right now where every five minutes, lava rises and kills everything on the ground. Everything dies. You’ve got to get to the high ground or die. We’ve got a mission right now where infested Terrans are attacking at night, but they’re hiding in the ground by day, so you need to just hold out all night long like you’re in I Am Legend. Like, “I’ve got to live!” and then day, “Get ‘em! Kill ‘em while they sleep!” And you run out and you burn everything as fast as you can, and then when darkness starts coming you have to get back and hide out.”
[2]
In-game Abilities and Improvements
Players can now earn in game abilities, access to units, and more by completing missions and spending money. These abilities are for single-player games only.
Dustin Browder: … “They can choose the order of the missions, they can choose which units they want to upgrade. So if you love yourself some medics, hey I got a couple upgrades for you they would make them so powerful we’d never put them in multiplayer. We’ve got a couple upgrades in there–oh, did you want an eight-man bunker with three armor? Go you. Did you want a Hercules dropship that can carry three Thors into battle, and looks like it can? There’s all kinds of crazy stuff that you only get through the solo campaign. I think it’ll really rock ‘em, but we’ll see.”
[2]
Multi-Player Features
Battle.net 2.0
Blizzard has been promoting their new Battle.net for sometime, and while we can be wary that this is going to be the next Steam platform plus subscription fees, we are probably in for a treat. The new Battle.net for Starcraft II will support many new features, but because the development team is still fine-tuning Battle.net none of them are well-detailed.
Dustin Browder: … “We’re hoping to have support for casual leagues, support for professional leagues, hardcore leagues. Hoping to do a lot more with friends, more with replay sharing.”
[2]
Match Making
It’s been done before, but we can rest assured Blizzard is taking there time with this one. It wasn’t very available in Starcraft I, and will certainly be a welcome feature in Starcraft II.
De-feature: No LAN Multiplayer
Blizzard has stated and has generally held to the position that LAN support will not be available. All multiplayer games will have to go through Battle.net. There has been much contention over this, and perhaps the best possible scenario for all would be the possibility of using the LAN only after validating the game over Battle.net.
Map Development Features
New Map Editor
The draw here is that many of the units that are not available in the multiplayer games but found in the missions will be available through the map editor. Since some randomization is being implemented in the mission maps, we may also see the ability to create random events and scenarios in the map editor.
Battle.net Centric
Maps can now be sold through Battle.net to the community. They can also be downloaded directly off Battle.net.
Dustin Browder: … “What will happen is, the player who has made the map will publish the map to the service, so they can get a hold of it, and he’ll have to decide what he wants to charge if he wants to charge. I don’t know what the exact rules will be. Like is there a limit how much they can charge? Can they charge $10,000 to see if there are any buyers? They’ll be some structure there for it, but they will decide and the community will decide what’s worth it, what’s reasonable and what’s not reasonable.
For Starcraft II at launch, it’s just going to be like Warcraft III, but you won’t get it peer-to-peer. Like in Warcraft III, if you try to join a game and you don’t have the map, you get booted because you’re a noob and they don’t want to give you the map. So you’re like, “Oh where do I get this map? I guess I have to find the website.” And it’s kind of a pain. We’re going to host all the maps on Battle.net now. When you publish a map it goes to Battle.net, and anyone can get it, they can play it with their friends, they can play it online, whatever they want to do. At some point down the road, they’ll be premium maps. Maps you won’t be able to just pull off of Battle.net for free, and where you’ll actually pay a developer.” [3]
