The fan-made StarCraft II MMO StarCraft Universe has gone into open beta, celebrating with the release of this new trailer boasting some very impressive voice work, mod skills and artistic direction. Currently it’s a single-player prologue only which you can find by searching for ‘SC Universe RPG Chronicles of Fate’ in your custom maps.

Take a look at the excellent trailer below, and hit up the official site for more. They’re currently asking for donations to expand beyond the current prologue, so if you give it a whirl and you like what you see, consider helping out.

Source: RPS

It’s time to get the clan back together – patch 2.0.4 for Heart of the Swarm is coming, and Blizzard are updating Wings of Liberty to include the clan support detailed last year.

Also included in the upcoming patch are new replay features, the new UI changes, improvements to the Editor, and the new matchmaking options such as unranked play and AI vs. mode.

“The background download for Wings of Liberty patch 2.0.4 was activated on February 9,” read’s Blizzard’s post. “We strongly encourage all players to leave the launcher running for an extended period of time at some point over the next few days to ensure that you’re ready to play when the patch goes live.”

Source: Battle.net

Blizzard have announced that the beta test for StarCraft II‘s Heart of the Swarm expansion will end on March 1st — for members of the general public, anyway.

“It is important to note that we will continue to operate a private beta test until Heart of the Swarm goes live on March 12,” reads Blizzard’s announcement. “We will be working with our eSports partners to ensure that they are able to feature the new expansion in professional StarCraft II matches after March 1.”

If you haven’t tried the beta for yourself yet, anybody who pre-orders the game gets instant access to it — so what are you waiting for? If you’d like to know more about what some of the top professional gamers are thinking about the expansion, check out this weekend’s Sunday eSports preview.

Source: Battle.net

The wonderful advantage of Blizzard’s methodical approach towards their eSports baby, StarCraft 2, is that it never stays the same. Take the Heart of the Swarm beta, for example. To the uninformed the game would look essentially identical, but the quantity and subtlety of some changes have made the expansion to the real-time strategy beast a completely different kettle of fish to the game which first what went live late last year.

Some units have been removed completely; others have been substantially reworked, and some haven’t changed a bit. Old strategies have been dusted off and revamped for a new age, and brand new ones are being invented every day.

To get the best picture of just where things stand before Heart of the Swarm launches next month, I rounded up some people for whom the game matters the most.

As we ramp up to Heart of the Swarm‘s launch next month, Blizzard are detailing the changes being made to not only the game itself but also the supporting modes around it. In this video, you can see the new Training Mode in action, along with an explanation of how to choose the difficulty best for you, as well as an overview of the versus-AI games (which now ask you to play ranked matches against AI so you can be paired with an AI appropriate for you). Unranked play is also examined, with narrator Cloaken explaining that this arrived as a direct result of “a ton of player feedback”. Check it out below:

Blizzard have rolled out a new ARG going by the name of ‘Project Blackstone’. You can hit up the site yourself and learn all about it — assuming you’re able to log in, that is.

If you’re the sort who likes to puzzle these things out on your own, stop reading!

For those of you who don’t care and just want to crack it open and feast on the juicy innards, read on below for all the details.

According to PCGamesN, the hex code in the source can be decoded to reveal the password: Y7_$0>0k_3<$m. Underneath the login you can witness an email exchange between Dr. Helek Branamoor and a researcher named Talen Ayers, angrily discussing his kidnapping and being forced to work on the dissection of zerg corpses. Delightful!

Source: PCGamesN

Blizzard have released details of their global launch events for Heart of the Swarm, and the one of most particular interest to us here at GON is, of course, the Australian event. From 8PM AEDT on March 11, Blizzard will be holding their event (and live-streaming it) at Melbourne’s Federation Square.

The activity is being held in conjunction with EB Games, and will feature a cosplay competition, Q&A sessions with members of the development team, and of course Heart of the Swarm matches featuring top pro-gamers.

If you’ve pre-ordered at EB, you’ll be able to take your receipt along to the event and pick up a copy once it ticks over to midnight. You’ll also be able to get your copy autographed! Good times.

If for some reason you still haven’t seen the fantastic opening cinematic for Heart of the Swarm, make sure you remedy that before you head down.

Hit up the official site for more.

Blizzard have released a video demonstrating the upcoming changes being made to the StarCraft II UI in Heart of the Swarm, due out on March 12. The video focuses on the way the company have streamlined the menus, as well as made it easier to join games with fewer clicks. Also included is a discussion of the ‘Players on my Network’ feature, which allows you see all players on your current network — for example if you’re playing on a university campus, or at a LAN cafe. Take a look!

Although “accessibility” has sort of become a dirty word, there’s still a lot to be said for making something easier for new players to understand — and that is what Blizzard are hoping to do when Heart of the Swarm hits in March.

Game director Dustin Browder said to Polygon that the new training mode against learning AI forms part of their approach to making sure new players don’t get overwhelmed. “We have some time set aside to give new users a better experience,” he said. “We used to say ‘The campaign is the tutorial for the multiplayer’ and it never really was.”

“It was partially true. You’d learn the race, you’d understand what the units did, but you didn’t know how many barracks to build, you didn’t understand that a rush was incoming right now, so get ready! The campaign just doesn’t play that way. The reason a lot of players are strong at ‘turtling’ is because that’s how campaign teaches you to play; a lot of our past campaigns certainly did. We’re doing that less in this game.”

Also coming are a series of UI tweaks related to making harvesting easier to understand, auto rally points, unranked play, and a new XP system to keep you progressing regardless of whether you win or lose.

Source: Polygon

As somebody who is often more excited for the StarCraft II story than the multiplayer side, I’m always keen to gobble up Blizzard’s cinematics like so much gravy at Christmas — and today’s release of the full opening movie to Heart of the Swarm is just what the gobbler ordered. Enjoy it below (or download it from our file mirror in HD), and keep an eye out for the brief Wilhelm scream along the way.

Heart of the Swarm launches on March 12 — part of a very busy month for PC gamers.

Source: Battle.net

Imagine you’re sitting down, enjoying your favourite game, on the lounge, sofa or maybe a nice comfortable computer chair. Everything seems reasonably normal, although there’s something just a little bit off. The corners of the screen are a bit harder to see, and occasionally you have to squint.

It’s like you rolled out of bed, except you’ve been awake for hours. You scrub your eyes, drag the grit out of the side of your eyelid. It gets better, your vision clearer, eyes more relaxed. You’d think the problem was gone, except it never seems to fully go away. Maybe you just didn’t sleep enough last night: the light from the computer screen disrupts sleeping patterns, after all.

We’ve all experienced something similar, feeling a little lethargic in the eyes, needing time to “wake up”, as it were. Some need more time to wake up than most; often that’s just the differences between humans. Nick McGuffin’s eyes never fully “woke up” — and now he’s in danger of losing his eyesight altogether. Thanks to the support of Australia’s StarCraft 2 community though, he may be able to afford the surgery he so desperately needs.

Blizzard have always intended to offer a paid name change feature when it comes to StarCraft 2, but new work on their plates including the development of Heart of the Swarm has meant that this name change feature has slipped under the radar a few times.

To apologise for this, and to tide you over until it arrives, the company is now offering another free name change that you can take advantage of in your Battle.net account. “The small percentage of players who used the free name changes that we previously offered, the introduction of Battle.net Battle Tags, careful consideration of how character names will work with Battle Tags in the future, and our increasing focus on completing StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm all contributed to us deprioritizing the Paid Character Name Change feature,” wrote the team.

“The fact that we didn’t keep you updated when we deprioritized the feature was a mistake, and we aim to do a much better job of keeping you informed in the future.”

“If you’d like to change your character name, log in to Account Management and choose your StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty game license. On your game license screen a “Character Name Change” button at the bottom will initiate the request. After confirming that you’d like to change your character name, log in to StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, and you’ll be prompted to assign your character a new name.”

Source: Battle.net