StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty features the return of the three species from the original game: Protoss, Terran, and Zerg. In the Terran campaign, the original StarCraft briefing room is replaced with an interactive version of the battlecruiser Hyperion, with Jim Raynor, a bitter and hard-drinking mercenary captain, as the central character. In a departure from previous Blizzard games, the campaign is non-linear, with Raynor taking jobs for money and using that money to buy additional units and upgrades. Although each playthrough will vary, the result remains consistent, keeping the storyline linear. Blizzard's Vice President Rob Pardo stressed that each campaign will function very differently. The Terran campaign, Wings of Liberty, places players in a mercenary-style campaign, as Terran rebel group Raynor's Raiders raise funds by taking assignments from outside groups. The second release, Heart of the Swarm, is Zerg-focused and has role-playing elements. Sarah Kerrigan is the focus of the campaign, and the story revolves around the possibility of her redemption. The Protoss-themed Legacy of the Void is the third expansion, with the Protoss Artanis attempting to reunite the Protoss tribes in order to stop the resurrection of Amon, a fallen Xel'Naga. Wings of Liberty has 29 playable campaign missions; 26 are playable in a single playthrough, three missions are choice-related alternates, and one hidden secret mission. The Wings of Liberty campaign contains several missions with unique features, such as lava that floods the battlefield every five minutes, forcing the player to move their units to high ground before they are destroyed. In another mission, enemy units attack the player only at night, forcing the player into a form of siege warfare. In one mission, the player must use a single unit to influence the tide of an AI-controlled battle. Between missions, players can choose units, buildings, and upgrades that are not available in the multiplayer missions. Wings of Liberty features approximately the same number of units as the original StarCraft. Some units from the original game have returned, some featuring new upgrades and abilities. For example, the Protoss Zealot, a melee unit from the original game, has the researchable ability to dash forward and quickly reach nearby enemies as a refinement of its speed upgrade from the original. Other units have been replaced or removed. Other changes to unit design have been inspired by story events in StarCraft and its expansion StarCraft: Brood War, replacing old units with new or renamed versions which sport different attributes and abilities. or have the ability to teleport short distances. StarCraft IIs campaign has units that are only playable in the campaign and not in the regular multiplayer mode, though they are available for custom maps. These mostly consist of units that have been scrapped from development such as the Terran Diamondback as well as various returning units from the original StarCraft such as the Terran Wraith and Goliath. The campaign features hirable mercenaries, modified versions of certain units with enhanced attributes such as health or damage that become available for hire once the standard unit is unlocked. Editor The StarCraft II Editor is a campaign, map, and mod editor. It is the first editor by Blizzard to feature built-in mod creation and usage support. Updated art and data from the original StarCraft that were not used, along with models and data that were scrapped during the development process (including those made as April Fools jokes) will be available in the editor. Unlike previous editors made by Blizzard, it is the first to have Internet connectivity features such as map publishing, retrieval, and online activation of the editor client. Lead producer Chris Sigaty has stated that the editor gives players the ability to create role-playing, Hero-type units and structures resembling those from Warcraft III. At BlizzCon 2009, Blizzard demonstrated a build of the StarCraft II Editor showcasing its capabilities, such as the ability to customize the user interface. The final build includes a third-person style perspective for missions. The editor was available for the first time during the phase 1 beta testing of StarCraft II, when it came with a patch. With the start of phase 2, the editor was updated. There is a map-making community using the editor, creating first-person shooter games, role-playing video games, tower defense, and multiplayer online battle arena-type games. The map database is updated as more map makers create mods for the community. The editor changes the way maps are distributed: rather than hosting games using local map files, users create and join games using maps that have been published to Battle.net. Map or mod uploads are limited to a total of 50 MB of storage, divided between ten files at most, with no file being larger than 10 MB. Although the StarCraft II Editor offers more features than the original StarCraft Editor in terms of game customization, there are concerns that the publishing limitations of Battle.net will not allow for large-scale custom maps or extensive map availability unless there is an external map publishing tool. The StarCraft II Arcade is a major addition to the map-making community, where high quality maps may be sold for a small fee as "premium maps" over Battle.net. As a part of the arcade feature, a custom map called "Blizzard DOTA", which eventually became a standalone game named Heroes of the Storm, was announced alongside several other mods of Blizzard Entertainment at BlizzCon 2010. At that time, the map was developed to showcase the modding abilities that were to be added to StarCraft II. LAN play StarCraft II does not offer the ability to play directly over a local area network (LAN), as is possible with StarCraft; all network games are routed through the Internet via Blizzard's gaming servers. The latency delay between commands issued and game response when played online is greatly reduced when playing over a LAN and this allows for much finer control over in-game units; there were concerns that a professional scene would not develop as a result. Over 250,000 fans signed a petition asking Blizzard to add LAN play to StarCraft II, before the game's release. Currently, Blizzard has no plans to support LAN play. Although it does not change the routing of the game through Blizzard's servers, a 'Players Near You' feature was added in StarCraft II patch 2.0.4, to help with organizing games with other players on the same local network. ==Synopsis==

Background The campaign storyline of StarCraft II takes place four years after StarCraft: Brood War, and features the return of Zeratul, Arcturus Mengsk, Artanis, Sarah Kerrigan, and Jim Raynor. It also features new characters such as Rory Swann and Tychus Findlay. In StarCraft II, players revisit familiar worlds, like Char, Mar Sara, and Tarsonis, as well as new locations, such as the jungle planet Bel'Shir and New Folsom. The Xel'Naga, an ancient space-faring race responsible for creating the Protoss and the Zerg, also play a major role in the story. Plot Four years after the Brood War, the Dominion is once again the dominant Terran power in the Koprulu sector. News reports reveal that in the four years since the end of the Brood Wars, the standing Dominion military forces have been reduced and defense budget has instead been diverted to hunting down rebel forces that operate against the Dominion. For reasons unknown, Kerrigan gathered the swarm at Char and then vanished from sight. With the Zerg gone, the Protoss have once again taken a passive role in the galaxy. Jim Raynor has formed a revolutionary group named Raynor's Raiders in order to overthrow Dominion Emperor Arcturus Mengsk. On Mar Sara, Raynor meets with an old comrade, Tychus Findlay. Together, they liberate the local population from Dominion control and also discover a component of a mysterious Xel'Naga artifact. As the Zerg begin to overrun Mar Sara, Raynor arranges an evacuation to his battlecruiser, the Hyperion, captained by Matt Horner, Raynor's second-in-command. With Tychus acting as the middleman, the Raiders embark on a series of missions to find the remaining pieces of the Xel'Naga artifact, which they sell to the enigmatic Moebius Foundation in order to fund their revolution. Along the way, they meet with Gabriel Tosh, a rogue Dominion psychic assassin known as a Spectre, and Ariel Hanson, a researcher on the Zerg and leader of a small farming colony. The Raiders perform missions to help Tosh procure the raw materials to train new Spectres as well as to aid Hanson as she attempts to secure her colonists who are caught between the Zerg infesting their planets and the Protoss attempting to eradicate the infestation. Horner also arranges a series of missions to undermine Mengsk, recovering intelligence information about his war crimes and broadcasting them across the Dominion. Finally, Zeratul sneaks aboard the Hyperion to deliver a psychic crystal that allows Raynor to share visions involving an ominous prophecy where Zerg-Protoss hybrids and an enslaved Zerg swarm wipe out Humanity and the Protoss. The vision reveals that only Kerrigan has the power to prevent the eradication of all life in the sector and beyond. After collecting more artifact pieces, Raynor's forces encounter Dominion battleships at the pre-agreed Moebius Foundation rendezvous point. The Moebius Foundation is revealed to be under the control of Valerian Mengsk, Arcturus' son. Valerian, intending to show himself as a worthy successor to his father, asks Raynor to help him invade Char and use the artifact to restore Kerrigan's humanity, thus weakening the Zerg. To the initial dismay of the crew, Raynor agrees. With Valerian's aid, Raynor recovers the final artifact piece, and the Raiders and Dominion invade Char. The Dominion fleet is devastated by the heavy Zerg defenses, but Raynor secures a foothold on Char and rendezvouses with Dominion forces led by Horace Warfield, a decorated Dominion general. Warfield is later injured and appoints Raynor commander of surviving Dominion forces as well. The combined forces of the Raiders and Dominion military push towards the main Hive Cluster of the planet, protecting the artifact as it charges to full power, and the artifact eventually destroys all Zerg within its blast radius. Raynor's team finds Kerrigan restored to human form; however, Tychus reveals that he made a deal with Arcturus Mengsk, trading Kerrigan's life for his own freedom. Raynor defends Kerrigan from Tychus' attempt to kill her, fatally shooting Tychus with a bullet he intended to kill Mengsk with. The closing scene shows Raynor carrying Sarah Kerrigan out of the main hive in his arms. Cast The English language version of StarCraft II has Robert Clotworthy and James Harper reprising their roles from StarCraft as the voices of Jim Raynor and Arcturus Mengsk. Notable absences included Tricia Helfer replacing Glynnis Talken as Kerrigan, Michael Dorn replacing Michael Gough as Tassadar, and Fred Tatasciore filling in for the late Jack Ritschel as Zeratul. The voice director for the game was Andrea Romano. Over 58 voice actors were hired for the game, some of whom voiced multiple characters. ==Development==

The development of StarCraft II was announced on May 19, 2007, at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in Seoul, South Korea. According to Rob Pardo and Chris Sigaty, development on the game, though initially delayed for a year by the temporary reassignment of Blizzard's resources to World of Warcraft, began in 2003, shortly after Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne was released. StarCraft II supports the DirectX 9 (Pixel shader 2.0) software, and it is also fully compatible with DirectX 10 as well. The development team had decided not to add exclusive DirectX 10 graphic effects. which allowed for more realistic environmental elements such as "debris rolling down a ramp" At the June 2008 Blizzard Worldwide Invitational, Blizzard Executive Vice President Rob Pardo announced that development of the single-player campaign was approximately one-third complete, as well as that Wings of Liberty would be followed up by two expansion packs – StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, which would focus around the Zerg and StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void, which would focus around the Protoss. The updated news and updates page of Battle.net for Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne stated that the top 20 players from each realm was to be given a StarCraft II beta key. Blizzard posted a release date for the game's first beta of Summer 2009, but failed to release a beta during that time. Since May 6, 2009, it was possible to sign up for the beta phase of the game. In November 2009, the game's producer Chris Sigaty confirmed there would be no public beta for the game taking place in 2009 but assured fans that it would happen next year. In February 2010, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime announced that a closed beta would open later that month. On February 17, 2010, StarCraft II began closed beta testing, as promised. The beta was expected to last for 3–5 months. Beta keys for the initial release were sold on eBay for prices as high as $400. Blizzard also released a map editor for the beta as part of Patch 9. According to the company, they had planned to release a major content patch towards the end of beta testing. As of July 23, 2010, eighteen patches had been released for the beta (only seventeen on European servers), including a patch which provided access to the Galaxy map editor. On May 12, 2010, Blizzard released the beta client for computers running Mac OS X, for the users who had signed up. On May 17, 2010, Blizzard announced that the first phase of the beta test would be coming to an end in all regions on May 31, but it was later extended to June 7. The second phase began on July 7, 2010, and ended on July 19, 2010. In an interview held in June 2009, Rob Pardo indicated that LAN support would not be included in StarCraft II. Removing LAN requires players to connect through Blizzard's servers before being able to play multiplayer games, causing gamers to voice their dissatisfaction online. Further controversy was sparked when Blizzard confirmed that the game would not support cross-server play out of the box, restricting gamers to only play against local opponents—for instance, US gamers against those in the US and Europeans against Europeans. The company originally explained that Australia and New Zealand servers would be located in Southeast Asia, pitting them against combatants from Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. However, starting from patch 1.1.0, it was announced that the Southeast Asia/Australia/New Zealand version of the game would not be strictly region-locked, with gamers able to play on both the SEA/ANZ servers and the North American ones. Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard, announced during the opening ceremony of Blizzcon 2009 that StarCraft II and the new Battle.net platform would both be released in 2010, with an approximately one-month gap between releases. As of March 2010, Blizzard had stated that the new platform was being tested outside the beta and was planned for release in early July 2010, for both StarCraft II and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, with a later upgrade for Diablo III. On May 5, 2010, it was revealed that StarCraft II and Battle.net 2.0 would be integrated with social networking site Facebook, "linking the world's premier online gaming platform with the world's most popular social platform"—a move that allowed gamers to search among their Facebook friends for StarCraft II opponents. Wired magazine, in its annual Vaporware Award, ranked StarCraft II first among the delayed technology products of 2009. StarCraft II was finally released on July 27, 2010, with launch parties in selected cities of countries around the world. Customers and reviewers who received the installation DVD before the July 27 release were greeted with an error screen, telling them to wait until the release date. There was no known workaround and some reviewers had praised the action for limiting journalists to playing and reviewing the game with the rest of the public. Compared to the original StarCraft, StarCraft II was designed to focus more heavily on the multiplayer aspect, with changes that included major improvements to Battle.net, a new competitive "ladder" system for ranked games, and new matchmaking mechanics that were designed to "match-up" players of equal skill level. StarCraft II continues its predecessor's use of pre-rendered cinematic cut scenes to advance the plot while also improving the quality of in-game cut scenes within the levels themselves, which are rendered on-the-fly using the same game engine as the graphics in the game proper. Blizzard stated that, with the new graphics engine that StarCraft II uses to render the gameplay, they "can actually create in-game cut-scenes of near-cinematic quality". Improvements include advanced scenery allocation and more detailed space terrain, such as floating space platforms with planets and asteroids in the background. Small cliffs, extensions, and advertising signs were shown to have been improved and refined. This change followed the introduction of microtransaction based content, including cosmetic unit skins, co-op commanders, and mission packs. The financial strategy appeared to be ineffective and in October 2020 the company stopped producing new for-purchase content although season rolls and balance fixes remained. Expansions During the development of StarCraft II, it was announced that the game and its expansions would form a trilogy; each chapter would feature one of the three playable races. The first expansion focuses on the Zerg race; Heart of the Swarm was released on March 12, 2013. The second expansion Legacy of the Void, which centers on the Protoss race, was released on November 10, 2015. An additional single-player campaign called StarCraft II: Nova Covert Ops was released in 2016 in three episodes. This as downloadable content (DLC) focuses on a Terran special ops character called Nova Terra. ==Release==

2015 Versions On April 8, 2010, Blizzard announced that the game would be available in a standard and collector's edition. The game was made available for digital download from Blizzard on the release date; pre-loading began on July 15. The collector's edition comes with an artbook, 2 GB flash drive modeled after Jim Raynor's dog tag with the original StarCraft and Brood War expansion preloaded, behind-the-scenes DVD, soundtrack, comic book, unique avatar portraits, a unique model for the in-game Thor unit in multiplayer, and a World of Warcraft pet. On June 24, 2010, at a press-only Korean event, Blizzard announced that Korean players would be able to play StarCraft II for free with an active World of Warcraft subscription. In PC bangs, or other cybercafés, players can play the game by paying 500 to 1500 South Korean won (approx. $0.50 to $1.50) per hour. Other options include a 30-day subscription for ₩9900 (approx. $8), a 24 hours play-time ticket for ₩2000 (approx. $1.50), and unlimited access for ₩69,000 (approx. $56). On August 3, 2011, Blizzard replaced the previously available StarCraft II demo with the new StarCraft II: Starter Edition. It allows anyone to play part of the game for free and it comes as a 7 GB package downloaded using the Blizzard Downloader client. The Starter Edition is available for Mac and Windows, and requires a Battle.net account and an Internet connection to play. Technical difficulties Several gaming and technology sites reported an "overheating bug" with StarCraft II that in some cases resulted in permanent damage to video cards. The source of the problem is the fact that the frame rate is not locked on menu screens. This causes the graphics card to continuously render the image, resulting in excessive heat. Blizzard has acknowledged the problem, and posted a temporary workaround. They also recommended ensuring computer systems are well ventilated and contacting the videocard manufacturer for hardware-related issues. In response to the reports, Blizzard's Public Relations Manager, Bob Colayco said: "There is no code in our software that will cause video cards to overheat. When we saw this issue first reported, we conducted thorough additional testing and determined that for those players experiencing this problem, the cause is most likely hardware-related." Other articles recommend that users regularly clean the dust out of their computer to improve the cooling efficiency of their systems. Blizzard posted a message on their forums regarding the issue that has since been removed. The message was: "Screens that are light on detail may make your system overheat if cooling is overall insufficient. This is because the game has nothing to do so it is primarily just working on drawing the screen very quickly." as well as on the iTunes Store. A second soundtrack, Revolution Overdrive: Songs of Liberty, was released on CD, vinyl and iTunes. This soundtrack features the original and cover songs heard in JoeyRay's bar during the game. ==Professional competition==

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty was played professionally throughout the world, though much like its predecessor StarCraft: Brood War's professional competition, the highest level of play has historically been centered in South Korea. The game was widely considered the largest esport in the world during its early years and has been credited as bringing esports to the rest of the world in the way the original brought it to South Korea. In 2012, the StarCraft II World Championship Series (WCS) was created as Blizzard's primary sanctioned StarCraft II tournament circuit. ==Reception==

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty has been met with critical acclaim since its release. It received an aggregated score of 92.39% at GameRankings Matt Peckham of PC World also noted that some buyers expressed dissatisfaction with the absence of LAN-based multiplayer gameplay, the lack of cross-realm play and the campaign being limited to the Terran race. Game Revolution, in relation to only being able to play the Terran campaign, however, pointed out that "Wings of Liberty has 29 missions; the original StarCraft had just over 30. Fair odds say the next one will have roughly the same amount; Broodwar brought about 30 too. We already got the full game for $50, and we’re getting offered two expansions. If you want to feel outraged about something, pick something else." In a separate article, Ars Technica vigorously supported StarCraft II against a series of 1-star ratings given to the game on Amazon.com in protest against the lack of LAN play. Public Knowledge criticized the end-user license agreement (EULA) for StarCraft II, commenting on how the altered EULA may affect multiplayer tournaments not endorsed by Blizzard. During the 14th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences awarded StarCraft II with "Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year" and "Outstanding Achievement in Online Gameplay"; it also received nominations for "Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition" and "Outstanding Character Performance" (Neil Kaplan's vocal portrayal of Tychus Findlay). In August 2016, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty placed 26th on Times The 50 Best Video Games of All Time list. Sales Boeing 747-400 at Incheon International Airport with an advertisement for StarCraft II painted on the fuselage. Jim Raynor is prominently displayed on the plane. Blizzard entered into a co-marketing agreement with Korean Air that lasted for six months, in which two of the airline's airplanes on both domestic and international routes prominently displayed StarCraft II advertising featuring Jim Raynor on the fuselage. On August 3, 2010, Blizzard announced that StarCraft II sold more than one million units worldwide within one day of its release. After two days, when Blizzard began selling the game as a digital download on its website, approximately 500,000 additional units of the game were sold, bringing the total up to 1.5 million worldwide and making it the fastest-selling strategy game of all time. In its first month on sale, StarCraft II sold a total of three million copies worldwide. As of December 2010, the game has sold nearly 4.5 million units. The game was also heavily pirated, reportedly being downloaded over 2.3 million times, and setting a record for most data transferred by a single torrent in only three months. ==References==