[Peleus]

Developer Update with Production Director Chris Sigaty
May 7, 2012 9:00 AM PDT



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
• Multi-language Support
• Clan Support
• Unranked Matchmaking
• Multi-player 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!

[Rageboredguy]

hoo-*******-ray!

[Dumbledore]

I r excited

[ToRSpartaz]

Blizzard you had me at Clan Support

Quick Comments

	x5.NotoriouS:
	ToRVenom:
	TheGentleman:
	ToRPandarine:
	asdfSchnitzel:

[Meatex]

Features that were promised more than a year ago held back to encourage sales for new expansion
I will save any interest/excitement until they reveal how well done said features are

Quick Comments

Dox:

nothin but complaints from you lately mate

[mGGDaedalus]

All the features they announced are great, although I'm not super excited because they're mostly things that should've been in the game 2 years ago. Still, at least they're listening. Better late than never.

[Aean(:]

see you there at HotS

[Peleus]

Well yes it would have been nice ages ago, but let's just be happy that it's coming rather than perpetually pissed think of how many other games out there should have had features x,y or z but didn't, and instead of being updated they just never get it.

Just got mixed feelings about the bliz hate, I've still spent over 700 hours (in game) on a game I spent $60-$70 for. It can't be that bad, and I've certainly got my moneys worth over so many other games.

[FSBenAD]

Most of those features Ive wanted for a while!

Multiplayer resume from replay is something that really interests me depending on how it works. If its just general case, get any replay, get to a point and then hit play from here, it can be an awesome training tool! Dam I just lost a game cause I engaged badly. Well now you can practice that engagement a few times to learn the right way to do it,

Clan/Group support.. This should of been in since day 1!

Multiplayer replay viewing.. Oh my god yes! SO much easier to talk someone through a game when you can watch it together without having to spend 25% of the time just trying to make sure you are looking at the same thing lol

[ToRFutureBoy]

I'm surprised the amount of work being put into multiplayer actually. Perhaps there are a lot more out there that actually do play multis only.

[x5.NotoriouS]

looks great, not sure how an unranked ladder will work tho, in terms of creating fair matches~

[Insom]

Originally Posted by pRoNotoriouS

looks great, not sure how an unranked ladder will work tho, in terms of creating fair matches~

There will have too be a hidden MMR based on unranked ladder which is different to ranked ladder, because if you rank ladder too 300MMR (just a random number) then go unranked ladder, your ranked ladder MMR will never change, and you'll be stuck playing the same group of players forever?

Im pretty sure i just confused myself

[Asrathiel]

Nice. Let's hope they come through with it all ^_^

[deL]

[ThatGuyDoMo]

The global play has me most excited

[inFeZa]

Multiplayer resume from replay - This just means that i can't whine at blizzard for not implementing lan mode.

Global Play - Cool, should have happened at release.

Multilanguage support - 한국어를 공부해요?

Clan/group system - About time! Would like to see how good it is.

Unranked matchmaking - Good, now you don't have to ask for practice when ur terrible at another race, nor care about your ladder rank when you just want to offrace or make/practice new builds.

Multiplayer replay viewing - Should have been implemented with 1.4, online casts will be better, but nothing beats the live game.

Quick Comments

TCPLemminks:

Has me more excited then Buster is right now

[mGGDrGooSe]

So I'm hoping that global play means we can still region lock by choice, obviously if it only goes off a ping cutoff, then how will we get to choose between korea and NA, as they have the same ping for some people I believe. The only real concern is how much having a ladder and an unranked match will affect search times. If I want to ladder but everyone else wants unranked, am I gonna be forced to go over to unranked in order to not have 20 minute search times? I think the pros out weigh the cons, but I would still want to get some form of feedback from the unrnked match that lets me know how I'm progressing. That sounds like it would defeat the purpose of the unranked match up (as I'm sure they are doing it primarily to combat ladder anxiety), but maybe it could be something saved in the replay, I can then go the sc2gears to plot my ELO. I think that would be cool.

[QEDbourkes]

looks good, wish we didnt have to wait till hots though

[rezyn8]

Still would like to have a release date so we know when to expect these changes. I'd expect Q4 2012 or Q1 2013 considering there will be a playable version of HotS at MLG in June and the beta will be soon after that.

My personal faves:

Clan support - finally
Multiplayer resume from Replay - will avoid these interweb breakdowns as seen at the last GSTL finals
Multiplayer Replay viewing - will be excellent for casting and coaching

[Daboo]

Atleast the finally got to it. Kinda irritating for the people who bought extra accounts to play on other servers.

I wonder how the unranked ladder will be. It would be awesome to select the race you want to play against. ( PvT fs prac gogogo) .

[EveGaming]

Awesome! Can't wait to get our Team's hands on HotS when it comes out! Global play will make everything so much easier.

[Zealo]

if they're going to do unranked matchmaking, i'd like to see you be able to select everything (your race, opponent's race, and map)

Quick Comments

mGGDaedalus:

you do this on sea and wait 3hrs for a match

[inFeZa]

When legacy of the void comes out i really hope that we will look back at WoL and be like... Wow how did we live without all these crucial features. when the game is pretty much done and complete, no more future patches. (ala bw)

[Daboo]

^^Most people were doing that already ,no shortage of outrage on forums on how many features were missing, comparison to bnet 1, other games.

[ToR.Arnor]

Does anyone else think "Unranked Ladder" is almoat useless? T_T

everything else looks interesting

Quick Comments

Maynarde:

Nope I think it's fantastic lol

[|Erasmus|]

Originally Posted by Arnor@CityHunter

Does anyone else think "Unranked Ladder" is almoat useless? T_T

everything else looks interesting

If it lets me hit 'find match' to practice my offraces without tanking my main account, it's all good.

Global play... will that be for ladder, or just for custom/unranked games or what? If it's ladder that is pretty huge, and will cause a lot of lag. If it's so you can be in the same chat channels and create customs with people without hitting them on ladder, I'm a fan. So sick of sitting in the clan chat on NA with no one online cause i get horrendous ping to sea...

[neKo]

UGH unranked ladder, sigh what's the point anymore.

[FLuX]

Global play... Does that mean that all the current leagues from each region are all brought together into one region? Or am I misreading that completely?
Otherwise, I'm interested to see how it all comes out in the finished product. Unranked matches look cool, I doubt I'll use it much personally though; it's awesome that they're adding in clan support; and, multiplayer resume from replay is probably the next best thing they could have done without implementing LAN. Looking forward to these new changes

[Peleus]

Unranked ladder will be useful for those practicing off race etc or those with ladder anxiety, increasing the casual market.

I'd say global play will essentially be what it's like for us now with NA / SEA. Everyone will have logins to different zones avaliable and be able to compete fully on that server, but server rankings / ladders will be separate as they are now. This allows people to still play on their local server with minimal lag.

[Maynarde]

I think all these upcoming features are great, don't see a downside to any of it.

As I see it's not going to be one big giant ladder with all servers lumped in together. That would be a nightmare lag wise. It makes sense to just be able to have access to other ladders / servers via ONE client (as per Diablo 3 which they mention in the article as an example). Will they be merging some ladders? Will you be able to make a different account on each server or just have multiple ladders with one account? All this we'll just have to wait and see.

Re: unranked ladder, I think it's an excellent tool for ALL leagues. If you want to try out a build order and not lose points you have the perfect medium and don't need to hassle friends for a custom if they're busy.

Regardless, I'm really excited for the future of SC2 in 2012 So many big things happening and they all look promising.

[Asrathiel]

Originally Posted by Maynarde

Re: unranked ladder, I think it's an excellent tool for ALL leagues. If you want to try out a build order and not lose points you have the perfect medium and don't need to hassle friends for a custom if they're busy.

Yup, that. I reckon it'll get me doing multiplayer a shitload more than I do now

[Meatex]

I can guarantee with almost total certainty that the global play will be gimped in some way - perhaps you will only be able to play unranked on other regions or something dumb
It would be nice if they just unlocked everything so I could go on Korea and play smooth games but its blizzard we are talking about. There is going to be a catch

Quick Comments

	Maynarde:	You are one negative dude lol
	Dox:	2 douche posts in 1 thread, bravo!

[ROOT`iaguz]

It's nice they are making a great thing better. Admittedly it's still not LAN and a lot of these things should of just been out when they released the game but at least we're getting them eventually.

In my history of playing RTS games, Blizzard support their games the most, more then any other developer I can think of. Course, with more players and money then any other RTS developer it's only to be expected, but still. It's kind of nice I guess.

[TABottles]

Wow! Everything on the feature list gets me so giddy for heart of the swarm. When I hear about units, I'm not that interested.. more scared. But this! Awesome!

[TADivinity]

What more needs to be said?