Twelve years after Starcraft captured the minds of gamers throughout the world, its much anticipated sequel has been released!
Starcraft II features the same three factions: Terran, Protoss and Zerg. Its first release (that’s right, the first release) has a playable Terran campaign mode.
There will be two more SC releases in the future, each featuring Protoss and Zerg campaigns.
So what are you waiting for?! Get on Battle.net and play the most epic RTS this side of the millennium!

The first wave of beta invitations have been sent out to lucky participants! To those still interested, you can opt in for the Starcraft II beta at http://www.battle.net and hope to be chosen in future waves. No word yet as to how many waves will be selected or how long the beta will last. Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty is expected by July 2010.

The current minimum requirements are as follows:

• 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 has posted Valentine’s Wallpapers on StarCraft2.com:

Blizzcast Episode 7 was released. Although no new Starcraft II information was featured. Check it out here!

An update to the Starcraft II Fansite kit was also released with new unit rendors and screenshots.  Pick it up here!

Feature Changes

- In-game Speed Options menu now has a “Enable CPU Throttling” checkbox.
Enabling this option will allow StarCraft to consume fewer CPU cycles. By default this option is off.

Bug Fixes

- Fixed an issue with the reply feature where any character followed by a “r “was being treated as a reply.
- Removed an unnecessary delay when processing palette cycling updates.
- Lessened the imposed delay in the CPU Throttling feature.

In a month otherwise void of StarCraft II news, 1UP has gotten another StarCraft II exclusive, discussing some of the features of the upcoming StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty game with Dustin Browder, lead designer of StarCraft II. It discusses some of the meta-game mechanics for the Zerg Heart of the Swarm and Protoss Legacy of the Void expansions:

1UP: Do you anticipate the production cycle for the StarCraft 2 trilogy to feel like making three separate games, or more like World of WarCraft and its expansions, where the bulk of the work is on the first installment, and subsequent ones are more about iterating and refining rather than inventing?

DB: Well that’s the hope; that a good amount of the hard work of designing gameplay mechanics and systems, as well as the internal tasks of creating tools and protocols to develop all this content, is mostly settled at this point as we get deeper into the creation of the core game. So once we ship the core game of StarCraft 2 and start delving into the expansions, we’ll have a great deal of that infrastructure under our belts and be able to concentrate primarily on content creation for the two expansion sets.

That said, we’re conscious of making sure we are providing new and compelling content for the expansions. The meta-aspects of the Zerg and Protoss campaigns, for example, will work a lot differently than how we’re doing things with the core StarCraft 2 game. It doesn’t make sense for Kerrigan to be flying around in a battlecruiser and picking out mercenary missions for cash, which is what you’ll be doing with Raynor in the core game’s campaign. So we’ll be doing something different with Kerrigan to get her to evolve and grow her Zerg army. Meanwhile, Zeratul’s Protoss campaign may require you to engage in diplomacy with the different Protoss tribes in order to gain access to different units and technologies.

Everyone here at SCFreak wish you and yours a happy and safe holiday season! Here’s to 2009 and SCII! Hopefully next year, we’ll be unwrapping StarCraft II! Take care and enjoy!

Blizzard has unveiled a new feature: Battle Reports. Watch Blizard’s best players go head to head as the Terran and Protoss with commentary from lead designer Dustin Browder and eSports team member Robert Simpson. Watch the first episode here!

In a printout of upcoming game releases in Singapore, Starcaft 2 is strangely found listed to be released in Q1 2009. It is very unusual to see large titles such as Starcraft 2 to be leaked out by a low priority document such as this, if leaked out at all. In any case, while this leak is not definite confirmation of any possible release date, Blizzard’s recent move to a Starcraft 2 trilogy may allow such a case to be not as unbelievable as once thought.

However, if this is referring to the fiscal year then it will be released around the holiday season, which is much more likely.

Click here to see the leaked document.

SCFreak.org is now 6 years old!