Greetings fellow StarCraft II players! The past couple weeks have been amazing for the StarCraft II community. At the Dreamhack Open we saw the Swedish "Spoon Terran," Thorzain, triumph over GSL champion Polt in front of a hometown crowd in an amazing series. That same weekend, the Major League Gaming Spring Arena finals went to best of 7 games to see DongRaeGu victorious against MarineKing, avenging a loss in the Winter Championship. Looking ahead, Team Liquid StarLeague 4 was just announced here and is already getting a lot of excitement from the community. And finally, we have exciting news coming out of Korea as KeSPA and OnGameNet commit to all-new StarCraft II leagues, joining GomTV's GSL and GSTL to create an all-new StarCraft II eSports landscape. Add all of that to the 2012 Blizzard World Championship Series, and the StarCraft II community is already off to an epic 2012 in what could be the most exciting eSports year yet.

In the midst of all this great community news, we want to announce some of the exciting things we’re working on this year for StarCraft II. Here's a list of some of the features we are planning to release at or around the launch of Heart of the Swarm:

Multiplayer resume from replay
Global Play
Multilanguage support
Clan/group system
Unranked matchmaking
Multiplayer replay viewing
Let's go into more detail on each of these, starting with multiplayer resume functionality. We know how important eSports is for the StarCraft II community, and it’s important to us too. For some time now we have been discussing ways to improve StarCraft II to ensure that tournaments both large and small run as smoothly as possible. While we are discussing many different improvements, we've heard your feedback and are creating a way that games can be continued if they are ended prematurely during an eSports event. We have been investigating solutions to this issue for some time, but we expect to offer the ability to resume play from a replay at or around the launch of Heart of the Swarm.

Some of you may have read details about Diablo III Global Play, which will allow Diablo III players to create characters in different regions from their home region so they can play with friends in other parts of the world. We know this is something StarCraft II players have been asking for, and we’re working hard to make it available along with multilanguage support, at or around the release of Heart of the Swarm. We’ll have information as we get closer to Heart of the Swarm’s release.

We continue to read your passionate requests for clan support. We can confirm that we are building a clan/group system that will be released with Heart of the Swarm. We also intend to have our first version of unranked play so you will have the ability to match-make against like-skilled players without having to affect your ladder ranking while you practice off-race or experiment with a new build order.

We'll also be offering a beta sneak peek of Heart of the Swarm to attendees of the MLG Spring Championship on June 8–10 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California. Additionally, we will be releasing news in the next few weeks about how your participation in the upcoming Arcade (1.5) beta can win you chances to get into the upcoming Heart of the Swarm multiplayer beta test.

It’s shaping up to be an amazing year for StarCraft II. Can you believe that Flash will soon be competing in StarCraft II? Before we sign off, we wanted to call attention to a newly created StarCraft II magazine, GLHF magazine, created by a passionate group of StarCraft players. The first issue features some high production quality in our opinion and is well worth checking out. See you online!

The StarCraft II Team

Globally, all matchups below pro-level are pretty balanced.
-We aren’t currently seeing any problems with non-pro-level matchups, but as always, we’re watching them very carefully on a weekly basis.
-We want changes we're making to balance at this time to be small, strategic adjustments that will only affect pro-level play.

Zerg at the pro-level are struggling a bit to scout effectively in the early game.
-This is tricky to balance, because we do not want to hinder sneaky strategies or tactical early play vs. zerg.
-Our goal here is to improve zerg scouting, but not to the point where other races feel like they can’t or shouldn’t make any strategic early moves vs. zerg.

Zerg at the pro-level are slightly too susceptible to all-in rushes.
-We want to make creep spread a little bit easier to counter hellions in ZvT.
-We want to make the general zerg defense slightly stronger in the early game.

Protoss at the pro-level are doing well, but not at the very top of the pro-level.
-At this time, we’re keeping a very close eye on this, and preparing to make any necessary adjustments.

We are closely watching TvP to see if the offensive capabilities of terran in the early/mid game becomes too much, or if late game strength of protoss becomes too much.
-We aren’t making a change to affect this now, but it’s very near the top of our list of things we’re watching.

Overlord movement speed increased to 0.586, up from 0.4687.
Upgraded overlord movement speed unchanged.

Queen starting energy increased to 50, up from 25.

Observer build time decreased to 30, down from 40.

With the launch of the StarCraft II World Championship Series, we’ve added a new section to StarCraft2.com dedicated entirely to eSports. This will be where you’ll find all the latest information regarding the StarCraft II World Championship Series, including upcoming events, stream information, and general event coverage.

Once you’ve navigated over to the new eSports page, you’ll find a brief overview of this year’s SC2WCS and additional general eSports information.

So what are you waiting for? Check it out now!

April 27, 2012 — Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that it will offer a beta sneak peek of StarCraft® II: Heart of the Swarm™ to attendees of Major League Gaming's (MLG) Pro Circuit Spring Championship event, June 8-10, at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, CA. A large number of public demo stations at the event will allow attendees to try out the latest multiplayer build of Heart of the Swarm in advance of the upcoming beta test. Spectator passes for the MLG Spring Championship are available here.

Top StarCraft II pro-gamers from around the world will battle for $76,000 in prize money at the Spring Championship, with the first place finisher taking home $25,000. In addition to the MLG competition and Heart of the Swarm demo stations, the Anaheim event will also feature the USA national finals for Blizzard Entertainment's StarCraft II World Championship Series. Participants in the USA Nationals will vie for $30,000 in prize money as well as invitations to the upcoming North America continental finals of the StarCraft II World Championship Series. The top finishers in that event will represent their countries in StarCraft II at the Battle.net® World Championship event taking place later this year in Asia.

With two major StarCraft II eSports tournaments and the opportunity to play Heart of the Swarm in advance of the beta test, eSports fans have plenty to look forward to at the MLG Spring Championship event in Anaheim. Those who can't make it in person can still catch all the action via live streams. Additional information about the event will be released in the coming weeks at www.majorleaguegaming.com.

One interesting thing to note is that there still is a skill gap even at the pro level. This is what we’re seeing:

1. Protoss has good representation in terms of the number of protoss tournament qualifiers at the general professional level, but has the lowest representation at the very highest professional level.
2. Zerg has the lowest representation at the general pro level, but has been showing the best standings at the highest tournament levels until very recently.
3. Terran has good representation over all.

our data shows a 70% PvT win ratio on Cloud Kingdom, a 62% win ratio in PvZ on Korhal Compound, and a 37% win ratio on Metalopolis for TvZ. It’s worth noting that these represent the heaviest imbalances in the maps on our ladder, but that this also isn’t necessarily a problem.

We are currently working nonstop on StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm (and Blizzard DOTA) and hope to be able to get Heart of the Swarm out to the public to see sometime in the near future. While we believe we have some great things lined up for the single-player campaign, I wanted to take some time to give you an update on the recent changes and what cool things we have in store for multiplayer.

Terrans

Terrans have undergone significant changes since we talked about them at BlizzCon. We have not kept the shredder, and even the warhound is in contention. The shredder was very confusing for players as well as being something that was easily used to kill a large number of workers with little to no warning. It was rarely used for its intended role of map control. The warhound still feels a little too much like a small thor, which is just not new enough to give terran players new strategies. We are still experimenting with a wide range of units, particularly from the factory, which we think is a little light on options. We have had a great deal of trouble with the terrans largely because they are such a flexible and effective race in StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. We want to provide terran players with new strategies, however, so we will continue to work on them.

If we keep the Thor, we are currently experimenting with an anti-air spider mine that would give the terrans a way to get some factory-built anti-air into small places that a Thor has trouble reaching (like near your minerals). Whether this is meaningful, considering terrans have marines, is still in question. We are also experimenting with an extremely long-ranged terran missile launcher that can be used to break siege tank lines to make terran-vs.-terran factory-based games more dynamic.

Protoss

Protoss have gone through some changes since BlizzCon as well. The oracle is still in and functioning as a protoss raider (as intended) that can give the protoss some reach in the mid-game to disrupt enemy plans. The replicant has been cut. He was causing enemy players to not build certain unit types and was actually removing diversity from the game instead of adding diversity.

The tempest was a powerful splash anti-air capital ship at BlizzCon. With the addition of the range upgrade on phoenix in Wings of Liberty we no longer feel like a splash anti-air weapon is necessary on the protoss, but we would still like to give the protoss some additional firepower in the air. The tempest is currently a very long-ranged aerial siege weapon that can strike both air and ground targets. This gives the protoss army some real reach to force an engagement on their terms in the end-game.

We’re also experimenting with some nexus abilities. One example is a mass recall that allows the protoss to be more aggressive. They can move out onto the map with their slower sentry/zealot force and, if things don’t work out, recall the force back to their base if and when things go wrong.

Zerg

Zerg are the most stable and largely unchanged since BlizzCon. The swarm host is still serving well as a zerg siege unit that can burrow and pressure the enemy from a distance (in a very zergy way), but the viper has some slightly different new abilities. In addition to Abduct, the viper also has the ability to blind biological units in an area of effect. Blinded units have their range reduced to 1. This is obviously effective against terran infantry as well as zerg roach and hydra armies. The viper can also regain energy by feeding off of minerals. This locks up the mineral patch and prevents it from being harvested, so you want to use this ability away from your base.

We have decided to keep the overseer and make the viper a pure caster. We will be taking a look at the overseer to see what we can do to make his abilities more interesting.

We are also trying some additional abilities on the nydus network to allow you to spawn different types of nydus worms. The most interesting worms have been a worm that can spew creep across several screens to create a zerg assault highway, as well as a worm that attacks only enemy buildings, meant to be used as a ground-based zerg base raider.

We have some more work to do before we’re ready to begin beta testing Heart of the Swarm. We know that everybody wants a date for when they can play, and we know how important it is to get this out in front of the community as soon as possible. We’re working on it.

Games can be incredibly useful tools to teach players valuable skills and life lessons. To help young gamers take learning “to the max™,” we’re launching Blizzard Kidzz: a suite of educational games set in the Blizzard game universes. Blizzard Kidzz games will cover important subjects for gamers aged 6 and up, including mathematics, reading/writing, science, history, and more! Visit the Blizzard Kidzz preview page now for screenshots, game descriptions, and preorder information!

Blizzard Entertainment is proud to announce a revolutionary new handheld title set in its award-winning StarCraft universe, StarCraft: Supply Depot! Read more about this epic gaming experience coming soon for iOS and Android devices, and play an exclusive demo of the game featuring the complete first mission!

Pushed to their limits, the beleaguered terrans plan a last-ditch attempt to save their people from extinction. They enter deep development on the most important research project of their time, one that will elevate warfare forever.

Check out the StarCraft: Supply Depot preview now!

We often use special press events to pass along information about what we’re working on and what’s coming in future patches and products. These announcements are useful to the community and us alike because they allow us to reach a very wide audience. In many cases however, the message is not as deep or as detailed as we’d like, so we thought we would try some developer updates (like this one) to see if we can do a better job of communicating our intent for the various features we are working on. We have a number of updates and changes coming SoonTM to StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty and we wanted to share some of them with you.

Patch 1.5 Is Coming

The upcoming 1.5 patch will be our most feature-laden patch to date. This patch represents the first steps towards the release of our first expansion for StarCraft II, Heart of the Swarm, and will include numerous upgrades and fixes throughout the game. One of the most significant additions will be the all new Arcade feature which includes improved custom game visibility, ratings, reviews, game instructions, screenshot support, and more. Patch 1.5 will also include significant improvements throughout the overall user interface, streaming support, antialiasing, editor and modding upgrades, new art tools, and more. We’ll go into further details about these features in future developer updates. In this update, I would like to provide some insight into the thinking and motivation behind a few of the upcoming changes.

Arcade & Custom Game Selection

We discussed the new Arcade and Custom Game creation tools that would be available at BlizzCon 2011 and while things have changed since then, we are looking forward to getting it out to players for testing. Overall, the biggest complaint we’ve heard is about the popularity system and how games are listed. The challenge we face with the interface is how much to orient the space towards the player, versus how much we focus the interface on the needs of the mod maker. Mod makers want a very egalitarian society where no single map has any type of “advantage” in the interface. On the other hand, most players just want to see the best maps and they don’t want to have to sort through hundreds of maps to find the ones that are good. We think what we have now doesn’t do enough to surface new maps that are good. While we tried to make things better with “Fun or Not,” the system alone isn’t doing enough for many of our mod developers so we wanted to try something different.

To help players find games more easily in patch 1.5, we intend to include an “open games list.” To be clear, this will not be every open game that is on the service. Instead, the open games list will deliver to you a selection of games from the many hundreds or thousands that are currently open. We are currently working on different ways to determine how the list you’ll see is generated.

We’ll also be releasing the art tools that we use internally to create art for StarCraft II, thus enabling mod developers the ability to more easily create their own art and add it to their creations. In addition, we’re beginning to reach out directly to mod and game developers that have created fun, quality maps on Battle.net to get direct feedback, help them tackle obstacles, and provide them with early access to the 1.5 feature set so that they can begin to prepare for Arcade prior to its release. We’ll be revealing more details about the Arcade and the changes we’ve made to the concepts in the near future.

Contact & Communication

We’ve heard concerns about the StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty social experience and many of these comments boil down to, “the service feels empty” and “I don’t know where to go to find people.” We have some simple fixes we’re going to put into the chat system to try to give players some additional connectivity. These aren’t huge fixes, but they may help players who want a more social experience.

First, we’ll allow players to resize their chat windows to fill a larger portion of the screen. We’ll also remember the chat channel you were in as well as the position of that chat channel on your screen for when you next return to the game. This will allow players who want to recreate something that feels a lot more like Warcraft III or the original StarCraft to build their own interface that looks a lot like those older games.

We’re also working on a feature that will help players connect with other players and games that are near their location (connecting through the same IP). We believe this will primarily be used by people in internet gaming rooms, offices, dorm rooms, and local tournaments where you just want to find the guy sitting in the desk next to you. Although this may not be ready in time for the release of patch 1.5, we do intend to have this available by the time Heart of the Swarm ships.

Much of the content we are working on for Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm is motivated directly by community feedback. While we’re unable to respond to every post, or even most posts, your feedback does get to us. Thanks for sending it.

Let us know what topics you’d like us to cover in future Developer Updates in the forum discussion thread. Topics that we’re thinking of covering include: Game Balance, Heart of the Swarm Multiplayer Progress, and Blizzard DOTA Gameplay.