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StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment as a sequel to the award-winning 1998 video game StarCraft. StarCraft II is split into three installments: the base game with the subtitle Wings of Liberty, and two expansion packs, Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void. The game is expected to be set four years after the events of StarCraft: Brood War, and follow the exploits of Jim Raynor as he leads an insurgent group against the autocratic Terran Dominion. StarCraft II is also designed to focus more heavily on the multiplayer aspect, when compared to the original StarCraft. 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 states 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". Most Protoss and Terran units, and some Zerg units, have been shown on the StarCraft II official website, and in several video demonstrations held by Blizzard. The single player missions will be highly customizable and are featured in the StarCraft II Community Zone. Units StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty features approximately the same number of units as the original game. Units in StarCraft II have new abilities, compared to the original, that encourage more complex interaction with the game environment. StarCraft II's campaign will also have exclusive units which would only be playable in the campaign and not in the regular multiplayer mode (though they are available for map makers to use in custom maps). StarCraft II Marketplace A major new addition to the map-making community is going to be the StarCraft II Marketplace where high quality maps will be sold for a small fee as "premium maps" over Battle.net. Galaxy Editor Galaxy Editor is StarCraft II's campaign, map and mod editor which is included with all versions of the client. It is more sophisticated than StarCraft's StarEdit and WarCraft III's World Editor for creating custom maps or campaigns and is the first editor by Blizzard to feature inbuilt mods creation and usage support. The Galaxy Editor was available for the first time during the phase 1 beta testing of StarCraft II when it came with a patch. Synopsis Characters and setting The campaign storyline of StarCraft II takes place four years after StarCraft: Brood War, and features the return of a number of characters from the original series; Chris Metzen, Vice President of Creative Development at Blizzard, has emphasized that by the events of StarCraft II, Raynor has become jaded and embittered by the way he was used and betrayed by Arcturus Mengsk. Other new characters to the series include Tychus Findlay, first introduced in the StarCraft II teaser cinematic, a marine who will be a member of Raynor's crew, and Matt Horner, Raynor's second in command, a character originally featured in the novel Queen of Blades. Cast The English language version of StarCraft II has several new and returning voice actors. According to Rob Pardo and Chris Sigaty, development for StarCraft II was put on hold for a year in 2005 due to the assistance needed for World of Warcraft. StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty supports the DirectX 9 (Pixel shader 2.0) software and will be fully compatible with DirectX 10 as well, although the development team has not yet decided whether to add exclusive DirectX 10 graphic effects. Since the announcement, fans have also been able to participate in the development of StarCraft II through feedback and questions on fansites and forums. The StarCraft II community was made aware of internal development processes by an official representative that went by the name of Karune (Kevin Yu) on the Battle.net Discussion Forums. Furthermore, occasionally Battle reports of the latest alpha build of StarCraft II were put up on the official website which were commentated by Lead Designer Dustin Browder and Blizzard eSports Team Member Robert Simpson. He also said that StarCraft II is to be released as a trilogy of games, starting with Wings of Liberty, focused on the Terrans, followed by Heart of the Swarm, revolving around the Zerg, and finally Legacy of the Void, devoted to the Protoss. On February 25, 2009, Blizzard announced the Blizzard Theme Park Contest where prizes would include two beta keys for StarCraft II. Rob Pardo indicated in a June interview that LAN support would not be included in StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. 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 closer to release it was revealed that the Southeast Asia / Australia / New Zealand version of the game would not be strictly region-locked, with gamers able to play on either the SEA/ANZ servers or 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 a month or so of interval. As of March 2010, it has been stated that the new platform is currently being tested outside the beta and is planned for release in early July 2010, for both StarCraft II and World of WarCraft: Cataclysm, with a later upgrade for Diablo 3. On May 5th, 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 will see gamers able to search their Facebook friends lists for StarCraft II opponents. StarCraft II is now set for a July 27, 2010 release date according to Blizzard. On February 17, 2010, StarCraft II began closed beta testing. Marketing Blizzard entered into a co-marketing agreement with Korean Air that will last for six months, in which two of the airline's airplanes on both domestic and international routes prominently display StarCraft II advertising featuring Jim Raynor on the fuselage. The collector's edition will come with an artbook, 2GB 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, and redeemable codes for downloadable content including a unique model for the in-game Thor unit 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 as long as their World of Warcraft subscriptions are active.
Windows XP/Windows Vista/Windows 7 (With the latest Service Packs) And DirectX 9.0c.)
StarCraft (Insurrection Retribution Brood War) StarCraft: Ghost StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty
The first game of the StarCraft series was released for Microsoft Windows on 31 March 1998. Many of the industry's journalists have praised StarCraft as one of the best and most important video games of all time, and for having raised the bar for developing real-time strategy games. Through this, a maximum of eight players can compete in a variety of game modes, from simply destroying all other players on a level, to king of the hill and capture the flag objective-based games. In addition, the game incorporates a variety of specialized scenarios for different types of game, such as simulating a football game, using the Terran hoverbike unit to conduct a bike race, or hosting a Zerg hunting competition. Bill Roper, one of the game's producers, stated this would be a major departure from the Warcraft approach, comparing its two equal sides to those of chess and stating that StarCraft would allow players to "develop very unique strategies based on which species, and will require to think of different strategies to combat the other two species." To pay homage to their presence on the forums and enthusiasm for the game, Blizzard Entertainment later incorporated the group's name into StarCraft as a cheat code to speed up the production of units and gave the group thanks in the game's credits. The first official game soundtrack, StarCraft: Game Music Vol. Blizzard Entertainment had previously considered a PlayStation port of the game, but it was decided that the game would instead be released on the Nintendo 64. Generally, StarCraft was received positively by critics, with many contemporary reviewers noting that while the game may not have deviated significantly from the status quo of most real-time strategy games, it was one of the best to have applied the formula. In addition, StarCraft's pioneering use of three distinct, unique and balanced races over two equal sides was praised by critics, with GameSpot commenting that this helped the game to "avoid the problem that has plagued every other game in the genre". StarCraft is frequently included in the industry's best games rankings, with it ranked 37 in Edge's top 100 games of all time. StarCraft's popularity resulted in Guinness World Records awarding the game four world records, including "Best Selling PC Strategy Game," "Largest Income in Professional Gaming," and "Largest Audience for a Game Competition" when 120,000 fans turned out to watch the final of the SKY proleague season 2005 in Busan, South Korea. Professional gamers in South Korea are media celebrities, and StarCraft games are broadcast over three television channels dedicated to the professional gaming scene. In addition, Blizzard Entertainment teamed up with Fantasy Flight Games to create a board game with detailed sculptures of game characters.
Blizzard Entertainment Mass Media Interactive Entertainment (Nintendo 64 version)
A Protoss force attacks a Zerg colony, shown from StarCraft's isometric perspective
Plot exposition often takes place in menued screens with only the characters' faces shown and their captioned voices heard. 1 tracklist
StarCraft 64 featured a lower resolution than the PC version, and a redesigned interface for the gamepad.
StarCraft (Insurrection Retribution Brood War) StarCraft: Ghost StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty
Lim Yo-Hwan (BoxeR) Lee Yun-Yeol (NaDa) Choi Yeon-Sung (iloveoov) Seo Ji-Hun (XellOs) Seo Ji-Soo (ToSsGirL) Lee Young-Ho (Flash) Jung Myung Hoon (Fantasy)
Guillaume Patry (Grrr...) Park Jung Suk (Reach) Kang Min (Nal_rA) Park Yong-Wook (Kingdom) Kim Dong-Soo (Garimto) Song Byung-Gu (Stork) Kim Taek-Yong (Bisu)
Hong Jin-Ho (Yellow) Park Sung-Joon (JulyZerg) Ma Jae-Yoon (sAviOr) Lee Jae Dong (Jaedong)