UPDATE: David Kim has made a new post saying that a few more changes will be added to the most recent Balance Test Map.
Thank you for your feedback everyone. After evaluating your feedback and discussing this subject more in detail, we’re currently thinking of adding these two changes to the balance test map (and extension mod):
- Spore Crawler damage decreased from 15+30bio to 15+15bio - Hydralisk damage against air increased from 12 to 12+4bio
Please focus further discussion around the above adjustments only, and again, thank you very much.
David Kim, lead balance designer of StarCraft II, has made a discussion thread on the official Battle.net forums as to the community's thoughts on the Swarm Host as well as general Zerg vs. Zerg balance. Regarding the Swarm Host, the community has been questioning the unit's balance due to a recent tournament match in which a ZvZ match lasted an abnormally long time because of the stalemate that Swarm Hosts caused. In the discussion thread, David Kim described the balance team's current decision:
Over the last few months, we’ve been internally playtesting a variety of design changes to the Swarm Host. We’ve come to believe that, in the long term, a change to overall Swarm Host design could be a good thing, but in the short term, we’d prefer to not disrupt the interesting non-stalemate Swarm Host play we currently see. Therefore, we don’t believe in removing the unit or completely redesigning it at this time.
In addition to that, it seems like the balance team is looking for ways to alter ZvZ balance without affecting any of the other matchups. There are a few possibilities that have been mentioned by David Kim:
We’re thinking along these lines: - Revert spore buff and buff hydralisk anti-air vs. biological units only. o With this, even if Broodlords are Abducted by Vipers, they would still be great against base Defenses. o The Mutalisk strength in ZvZ could possibly be countered a bit better by Hydralisks. o The effect on ZvZ would be acceptable, and the potential effects on ZvP and ZvT are minor.
- Change the Viper’s Abduct ability to make massive units immune to it. o By making Brood Lords immune to Abduct, we’d solve the stalemate. Late game ZvZ would be mostly about who wins in the air. o There are downsides -- Abduct is a really cool ability, and it is something Zerg needs vs. Colossi in PvZ. o To address that, we’d consider a potential buff to Blinding Cloud so that Vipers would still be a valuable utility unit in the ZvP matchup.
Another call to action is out, with the map "MerryGoRoundLE (2.1.1 Balance v1.0)" and the extension mod “Balance Test Mod” containing the following changes:
Terran
Removed Transformation Servos upgrade
Changed Hellion/Hellbat transform requirement to Armory
David Kim has just posted another balance update on the StarCraft II forums, explaining to the community how the game balance is currently looking.
There are two options that the balance team is looking at, both regarding buffing Terran. Option one is to reduce the mineral and gas costs of infantry upgrade levels 2 and 3 by 25 each. Option two is removing the Transformation Servos upgrade and allowing Hellions to transform into Hellbats once an Armory is built. You can read the details and justifications for these proposed changes in the full post, which is fairly short.
Although it is in closed alpha, Heroes of the Storm has numerous skins available for purchase. Currently, each hero has one or two skins that cost anywhere from eight dollars to fifteen dollars. Click through below to see the skins available for the StarCraft heroes!
The dates for BlizzCon 2014 have been announced! On Friday, November 7 and Saturday, November 8, 2014, the halls of the Anaheim Convention Center will open to the sounds of Blizzard franchises coming together for a weekend of excitement.
Tickets for the event will be available in two batches, one on Wednesday, May 7 at 7 p.m. PT and the other on Saturday, May 10 at 10 a.m. PT through this online ticketing service. Tickets to the exclusive pre-BlizzCon Benefit Dinner will also be available through the same service on Wednesday, May 14 at 7 p.m. PT. As always, if you are unable to make it to the Anaheim Convention Center, you can always purchase a virtual ticket to watch the BlizzCon livestream right from home. There is also a helpful page on the BlizzCon official site, which explains how tickets work, how much they cost, when they are available and more, which you can view here.
For more information, you can check out the press release, or the associated official news post. We're looking forward to covering all the amazing news that will be at BlizzCon, so be sure to stick around!
In a recent study published on PLOS ONE, researchers discovered through studying StarCraft II players that "declines in cognitive-motor functioning" began past the age of 24. That being the case, there was a decrease in players' speed (measured in the research article with "looking-doing latency") the older they were from 24. Something to consider is that other real-life activities don't necessarily equate speed with efficacy; likewise, a StarCraft II player's skill level did not seem to have a strong correlation with their age.
The research article goes through how older players definitely experienced a decline in their motor skills, but compensated for their loss of speed through more efficient usage of hotkeys, resorting to simpler but equally effective strategies, and focusing more on strategic planning. By delegating more tasks to the user interface, older players could certainly reach similar levels of skills as younger players.
On two measures, older players showed signs of being more advanced than they actually are. Both Unique Hotkeys per game timestamp (more with age; p*<0.001), and Offscreen attacks per game timestamp (more with age; p*<0.001) were strong candidates as compensators. Older players in our sample exhibited more impressive hotkey performance, even when skill was controlled for, suggesting that our participants may be indirectly compensating for declines by offloading demands to the game interface. An increase in attacks to areas outside of the view-screen might reflect heightened awareness of global game information via attention to the ‘mini-map’. Generally then, older players seem better at using available interface features (customizable keys and the ‘mini-map’) than younger players.
The paper is an interesting read if you can make your way through the scientific jargon and number-crunching, so be sure to check it out.
It's the 2nd of April, which means all of the April Fools jokes are revealed to be false and everyone can rest assured that news will no longer be riddled with fabrications. There were a variety of April Fools posts that were on Blizzard homepages yesterday, which ranged from the horrifying to the hilarious. There were quite a few StarCraft-related ones this year, so let's get started.
First up was Herald of the Stars, the "new title" for the upcoming Legacy of the Void expansion for StarCraft II. With various abbreviation-themed jokes (hint: Herald of the Stars abbreviates to HotS) and ludicrous changes to the expansion's plot and gameplay, the Herald of the Stars news post wasn't fooling anyone, but was comical nonetheless.
Next up was an upcoming hero for Heroes of the Storm, Pajamathur. Pajamathur is the baby incarnation of Abathur, and has all the abilities that such an adorable little Zerg-spawn deserves. With a hilarious custom model (how can this not make you laugh) and nonsensical abilities, this new hero was on everyone's mind this April Fools Day.
The last StarCraft-related April Fools joke is Blizzard Outcasts: Vengeance of the Vanquished. This new fighting game from Blizzard brought all of the unsung heroes from each of their franchises into a deathmatch of unepic proportions. With characters such as Arcturus Mengsk and Deckard Cain exchanging punches and hurling swords, this joke was definitely the strangest of all of them.
Other than the aforementioned posts, there was also Happy Reaper, the Flappy Bird clone based off of Malthael, the angel of death from Diablo III: Reaper of Souls. With a playable version that's accessible right from your browser, there's no excuse for you to not be decimating Nephalem right now. On the World of Warcraft side there was the new Draenei models and fake patch notes. Both are worth checking out for the horrifying possibilities of bad design choices.
That was it for this year's April Fools Day, at least in regards to Blizzard games. We hope you all enjoyed the jokes and pranks that you experienced, and here's to a great Spring!
Dustin Browder has posted a new article on the Heroes of the Storm front page describing the leveling and experience gain system in the game. He goes into detail about how the system has changed over the course of development, and also elaborates on why these changes were made.
When we first started, we had individual hero leveling like many games in the genre. We liked how it forced players to split up into different locations, and coming together was a cost and a risk. We also liked how individual experience rewarded players for doing well, and really encouraged players to do their best; knowing that they were falling behind if they started to give away too many victories.
The entire article is worth a read, especially how the current leveling system allows for characters such as Abathur to exist. To check out the full article, click here.
In preparation for Season 2 of StarCraft II, the ladder map pool is receiving some new additions. The new 1v1 maps are King Sejong Station LE, Overgrowth LE, Merry Go Round LE, and Waystation. The maps being removed are Polar Night, Yeonsu, Daedalus Point, and Heavy Rain. This makes the full Season 2 1v1 ladder map pool as follows:
Complete 1v1 Map Pool for 2014 Season 2 Alterzim Stronghold TE Frost LE Habitation Station LE King Sejong Station LE Overgrowth LE Merry Go Round LE Waystation
For the full list of new maps, including maps for 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4, click here.
As Tychus Week continues for Heroes of the Storm, the developers of the game have released a Q&A discussing the design of Tychus as a playable hero. There's only a few questions in the Q&A, but there's a lot of info to be learned.
Trikslyr: Let’s talk about the design of Tychus; how was it decided to make him an assassin, and what makes him different from other heroes?
Richard: When we’re deciding what role a hero falls into and what makes them unique, we first think about the fantasy of the character and what they did in their universes. In Wings of Liberty, Tychus was a take-no-prisoners badass who rode around in a stolen Odin, used a chain gun and grenades to mow down the Zerg, and started a bar fight with Jimmy on the Hyperion. He’s clearly a rebel that let his fists do the talking. In this case, a hard hitting assassin just made sense.
On March 12, David Kim held an open Q&A on Reddit for a few hours. He answered various questions regarding tournaments and balance, and it's definitely worth checking out.
Q: Are any "large scale" or "mechanic" redesigns being considering for Legacy of the Void? For example considering changing mechanics around high ground advantage, the soft 3 base income cap, warpgate, etc?
David Kim: We're currently working on all parts of the next expansion, but everything is a work in progress. If something is problematic, we would discuss it and try possible changes. But one of our core philosophies on SC2 design is if the change isn't completely amazing, we prefer not to do it.
So in this specific case, things like high ground advantage working the way it does currently vs. how it worked in BW vs. other advantages we can think of that are different, it's really hard to clearly say that one mechanic is better in all the cases. Overall, we are trying various changes in various areas, but it's really difficult to say for certain what will go through at the end of the day.
When you guys have good suggestions on specific problematic areas as well as possible solutions, we definitely discuss and/or try those things internally as we work on the next game to be able to know exactly why or why not we're deciding on a certain area. Eg. We've tried and still retry things like different suggestions for the Swarm Host, more harsh counters to Force Fields, or old units like Lurkers, and so on.
The Heroes of the Storm Technical Alpha is live! You can watch streams of the game over here!
Also, Blizzard has posted an article helping players install and access the game.
We’ve invited a limited amount of US-based players, including testers opted-in via Battle.net, friends and family members of Blizzard employees, as well as a number of international press sites and community contributors, to participate in this very early Technical Alpha testing phase. If you haven’t received an invitation to the Tech Alpha yet, make sure you’ve elected to participate in Heroes of the Storm testing by opting in on your Battle.net account’s Beta Profile Settings page. By doing so, you’ll give yourself the best chance at gaining testing access as our needs evolve and we expand the pool of invited players in the weeks and months to come.
In preparation for the upcoming technical alpha of Heroes of the Storm, Blizzard has released a new video that guides people through their first few moments of the Heroes of the Storm technical alpha.
The Heroes of the Storm official forums are also live, and the amount of activity on it is massive! Go check it out here.
Blizzard has just posted a lot of info regarding Heroes of the Storm on Battle.net. Their article explains various parts of the game, such as how to purchase heroes, how to purchase skins, the experience and level progression, and more.
To summarize the information on this article, there are several ways to choose a hero to play. There's a weekly rotation of free heroes, all of which are available to play, without cost, for that particular week. However, if you wish to purchase a hero so that they are available permanently, you can do so with gold. Gold is a currency which can be earned by completing in-game goals, daily quests, and gaining player levels. In addition, you may test drive any of the heroes in the game by going to the shop and trying them out. This allows players to buy heroes after knowing what they do, instead of being forced to make a blind purchase.
Skins and mounts are purchased with real money, although there are some interesting exceptions. There may be quests in the future which allow you to unlock skins or mounts, and there are also several tints for each skin (including the default skin for each hero) that allows you to look different, no matter your monetary investment into the game. There are also going to be mounts that are exclusive to players who have made a real-money purchase during the alpha and beta phases for the game.
By playing more and more matches, you will gain experience for player levels. Getting higher levels means unlocking different features for the game, such as an extra hero in the free weekly rotation, or Hero Quests, or hero skins. Hero Quests are quests for each hero that can be played once reaching level 10. There are three Hero Quests for each hero at level 10, and three more at level 20 that can be completed for experience and unspecified customization options for that hero.
To check out the full article, you can click here. Hopefully, the technical alpha will be on its way very soon!
There are a few posts on the Battle.net forums related to upcoming balance updates, most notable of which is a modified release schedule. Due to current ongoing tournaments, Blizzard has decided to push back the balance update's release for Europe only:
As David Kim mentioned in his recent forum post, we’ll be moving forward with a new balance update this week. However, we realized that our original release schedule for Friday, February 28 would offer WCS Europe Premier League Group F competitors just a few short hours to practice with the new changes. Instead, we’re going to slightly alter our release schedule by holding off on the balance update for the European Battle.net region until after the Group F broadcast concludes on Saturday, March 1.
With tournaments on-going across the globe, there’s never a perfect time to roll out a balance update, but we want to make sure our target dates will have the least amount of impact possible on upcoming events. Once again, this schedule change will only affect Europe and we are still planning to release the update for all other Battle.net regions on Friday, February 28.
David Kim also posted about the upcoming balance update, explaining some of the changes that will be coming :
Widow Mine splash damage increased from 40 to 40 +40 shields We’ve seen a little confusion surrounding this change and we’d like to clarify that it does not change the Widow Mine’s single target damage. As for the splash damage, this is how it’ll work:
• Up to 1.25 radius, splash damage will increase from 40 to 40 +40 vs. shields. • From 1.25 to 1.5 radius, splash damage will increase from 20 to 20 +20 vs. shields. • From 1.5 to 1.75 radius, splash damage will increase from 10 to 10 +10 vs. shields.
Hydralisk attack delay decreased from .83 to .75 We believe this change is good for all three match ups after testing. In ZvP, it seems to make a significant difference even though it’s turning out to be not as big as we initially thought before we started testing.
Mothership Core vision decreased from 14 to 9 After testing, this change is turning out to be quite a bit of a nerf for Protoss in terms of early scouting. It also makes the army vs. army case a bit weaker for Protoss in terms of the vision the Mothership Core provides, especially when vision is critically needed, such as during Feedback vs. EMP battles.
The winners for the 2013 Blizzard Stream Awards have been announced! With a ton of award categories and thus a ton of winners, the list is simply too large to put here. So, to see all of the winners and runners-up of the 2013 Blizzard Stream Awards, click here.
Blizzard has announced that another Heroes of the Storm Q&A panel will be streamed at Twitch.tv/BlizzHeroes on January 22, 11:00am PST. The panel will feature Dustin Browder, Game Director; Kaeo Milker, Senior Game Producer; and Kevin Johnson, Senior Manager, Community Development. After the Q&A, there will be a live Heroes of the Storm showmatch with Dustin Browder and Sean "Day[9]" Plott as the commentators.
To send in your questions, just tweet to @BlizzHeroes with the hashtag #HeroesQA for a chance to receive your answers on the stream!
Over the last few days, Blizzard has given a few previews on the various features coming in patch 2.1. Most notable of these is the extension mods preview, which explains how to use extension mods and how they will change the game.
As a developer, Extension Mods will allow you to develop a mod containing a set of parameters that can be published to Battle.net and applied to any StarCraft II melee map by any player. Long gone will be the days where you need to set up each map you want to use with your custom mod and publish an individual, unique version of that existing map.
As a player, you’ll now be able to use Extension Mods to play your favorite game modes on any StarCraft II melee map, completely changing the way you play. The kinds of modifications that are possible are virtually endless; they can range from build order trainers to unit testing sandboxes to adding completely new races.
These extension mods will allow players to take any map available and play Big Game Hunters on it, or to make all units explode on death, or make minerals wander around the map!
Next up are the new levelling incentives. There are three new portraits and three new decals, based on StarCrafts by Carbot Animations, that will be attainable through levelling to the new level cap, level 35. In addition, there will be a "First Win of the Day" bonus that gives 100,000 XP for the first game you win in the day. This bonus is separate for each race, so try to win at least once with each race a day after patch 2.1 is released!
Blizzard is looking for nominations for the StarCraft II Community Choice Awards, and is asking everyone to head over to Reddit to upvote nominees for categories such as 2013 Game of the Year, 2013 Global StarCraft II Player of the Year, and WCS Korea Player of the Year. To find the Reddit posts for each of the categories, head over here, and promote your favorite nominees!
Season 6 is just around the corner, and Blizzard has shown us a peek at which maps will be added to the map pool, and which ones will be removed.
For 1v1, the maps removed are Akilon Wastes and Whirlwind LE. The new maps are called Star Station TE and Alterzim Stronghold TE. Images of Star Station TW and Alterzim Stronghold can be seen below (click to magnify):
And so, the complete season 6 1v1 map pool is this:
Complete Season 6 1v1 Map Pool Alterzim Stronghold TE Bel’Shir Vestige LE Derelict Watcher TE Frost LE Polar Night LE Star Station TE Yeonsu LE
For the full post including map pools for 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4, click here.
StarCraft: Subjection, a fully-voiced, eight-part singleplayer campaign for StarCraft II which was released a few months ago, is on the most recent Arcade Highlight!
The Arcade Highlight includes an interview with the creator of the campaign, Gradius, and the process it took to create the entire series:
Traysent: How long did it take to complete Subjection? How many people worked on the campaign and what roles did they have?
Gradius: Subjection took roughly three years to complete, working on and off. Subjection was largely a one-man operation, but the contributions of talented voice actors and artists were invaluable. The credits are available on the campaign's main page: http://www.sc2mapster.com/maps/starcraft-subjection/
The campaign has four difficulty levels, is fully voice-acted, and is daunting in scale and quality. You can find it on StarCraft II by searching "Subjection" on North American Battle.net.
Blizzard has uploaded a Top 5 StarCraft II Highlights of 2013 video, showing off some of what Blizzard considers to be the most memorable moments of 2013. Enjoy!
The upcoming StarCraft II patch, patch 2.1, is active on the Public Test Realm. The features included in this patch are: extension mods, clan and group additions, the classic StarCraft soundtrack, and the afk lobby host kicker. To see the full explanation of each feature, click here.
You can access the Public Test Realm via the Battle.net Desktop App. In the app, you can select StarCraft II and change the region to "PTR: Heart of the Swarm", after which there will be small installation. After the install is complete, you can start up StarCraft II and log in to the Public Test Realm. To change back to the current version of StarCraft II, simply change the region back to what you had originally in the Desktop App.
In preparation for the upcoming patch 2.1, Blizzard is planning to open up the Public Test Realm to allow players to test all the changes and improvements.
Soon after BlizzCon ends, anyone with the Battle.net Desktop App and StarCraft II will receive access into the Public Test Realm. Once on the PTR, players will be able to see all the changes that will come with patch 2.1 and be able to send feedback through the Open Beta forum. More information on how to access and use the PTR will come after BlizzCon, so keep your eyes peeled.
The previously-announced James Raynor Sixth Scale Figure is now available for preorder! Standing fifteen inches tall, the figure comes with Raynor's gauss rifle, sniper rifle, and revolver.
Click to magnify.
To see the figure in more detail, check out this page, where you can "Test Drive" the figure and see all of the moveable parts and lights.
This extremely-detailed figure can be preordered from this page for $499.99 USD, but there's also a giveaway happening. Head over to this page to enter in the giveaway to win your very own Raynor Sixth Scale Figure.
The winners of the Community Choice Awards have been chosen! Each category had several nominees, and the community voted on their choice of 2013's most notable StarCraft II players. The winners of each category are as such:
EU Player of 2013 - Johan ‘NaNiwa’ Lucchesi
WCS America Player of 2013 - Sasha ‘Scarlett’ Hostyn
WCS Korea Player of 2013 - Lee ‘INnoVation’ Shin Hyung
2013 Global Player of the Year - Lee ‘Jaedong’ Jae Dong
Congratulations to all the winners! Here's to another awesome year of StarCraft.
Christmas time is fast approaching, and to celebrate the holidays, Blizzard has put some of their games on sale! For a short time, you can buy the games below at discounted prices:
SAVE 75% on World of Warcraft World of Warcraft — Now $4.99 (Reg. $19.99) World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria — Now $9.99 (Reg. $39.99)
SAVE 50% on StarCraft II StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty — Now $19.99 (Reg. $39.99) StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm — Now $19.99 (Reg. $39.99) StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm Digital Deluxe Edition — Now $39.99 (Reg. $59.99)
The balance test map for the recently discussed changes has been released on Battle.net. The name of the map is "Bel’Shir Vestige LE (2.0.11 Balance v1.0)" and can be found on the Custom Games list of StarCraft II. The balance changes in this map are as follows:
Protoss Oracle Movement speed increased from 3.375 to 4.0 Acceleration increased from 2 to 3 Revelation casting radius increased from 9 to 10
Terran Armory Vehicle and Ship Weapon upgrades have been combined Siege Tank Siege Mode attack period decreased from 3.0 to 2.7 Widow Mine Sentinel Missiles splash radius decreased from 1.75 to 1.25
Zerg Roach Warren The Tunneling Claws upgrade now increases burrowed Roach movement speed from 1.41 to 2.25.
For the reasoning behind these changes, check out this thread.
Now that the nominees have been chosen, it is finally time to vote for your favorite StarCraft II players of 2013! You can head over here to vote for nominees in each category. May your favorite nominee become one of the 2013 StarCraft II Community Choice Award winners!
With BlizzCon having concluded, and the WCS in its off-season, Blizzard has made a balance update to Heart of the Swarm. Below are the changes to Heart of the Swarm multiplayer:
Protoss Oracle Movement speed increased from 3.375 to 4. Acceleration increased from 2 to 3. Units that burrow or cloak while under the effects of Revelation will once again be revealed after unburrowing or uncloaking.
Terran Armory Vehicle and Ship Weapon upgrades have been combined. Siege Tank Siege Mode attack period decreased from 3.0 to 2.8. Widow Mine Sentinel Missiles now deal reduced damage to units caught within its splash radius based on their distance from the target: 40 damage within 1.25 radius. 20 damage from 1.25 to 1.5. 10 damage from 1.5 to 1.75.
Zerg Roach Warren The Tunneling Claws upgrade now increases burrowed Roach movement speed from 1.41 to 2.
Blizzard has shared some information regarding a possible patch following the WCS Finals. There are six changes in total, affecting all three races, and these changes are going to be included in a test map for player feedback before pushing out a real patch. The initial proposed changes were as follows:
o Mech ground and air attack upgrades combined
o Widow mine splash radius decreased from 1.75 to 1.1
o Siege tank attack period decreased from 3 to 2.7
o Oracle cost decreased from 150/150 to 150/100
o Dark Templar movement speed increased from 2.813 to 3.375
o Roach speed upgrade also increases the burrowed roach movement speed from 1.41 to 2.25
But after some player feedback, the changes were altered slightly:
o Terran Mech ground and air attack upgrades combined
o Widow Mine splash radius decreased from 1.75 to 1.25
o Siege Tank attack period decreased from 3 to 2.7
o Roach speed upgrade also increases the burrowed roach movement speed from 1.41 to 2.25
o Oracle - Speed increased from 3.375 to 4 - Acceleration increased from 2 to 3 - Revelation range increased from 9 to 10
The test map which includes these changes will be out shortly. Meanwhile, check out the reasoning behind these changes here and here.
StarCraft Universe is a MMO RPG utilizing the battle.net service. Featuring an emphasis on story, combat and multiplayer, StarCraft Universe allows you to save your character like in any multiplayer RPG. The story is fully voice acted, featuring cinematics created by StarCraft: Legacy's Freespace.
StarCraft Universe released a trailer for their demo "Chronicles of Fate" a few months ago:
However, the project requires additional funding to see completion. Thus, the team, having acquired permission from Blizzard, requires your help on KickStarter:
Even if unable to donate, be sure to spread word of the project to help increase exposure, and bring this project to completion.
In the upcoming StarCraft II patch, Patch 2.1, the classic StarCraft soundtrack is returning, and will be here to stay. Once Patch 2.1 is on your computer, you will be able to go into the sounds settings of StarCraft II and select which soundtracks (StarCraft II, StarCraft Vanilla) will play while you... play.
Patch 2.1 is currently live on the Public Test Realm, so if you want to hear the remastered classic StarCraft soundtrack for yourself, just look here for how to get on the PTR!
A new trailer for Diablo III: Reaper of Souls was shown at BlizzCon! It shows off the new game modes, the new Mystic crafter, enchanting, and so forth. You can view the trailer below.
September has rolled in again, which means the beginning of school, the fall season, and a StarCraft II back-to-school event!
To celebrate the return of school, Blizzard is giving a 50% discount on purchases of Wings of Liberty, and 25% discounts on purchases of Heart of the Swarm. Not only that, but from September 23 to 30, players can obtain a new Feat of Strength, "You Got Schooled", which unlocks three new portraits for StarCraft II.
The Feat of Strength can be achieved by winning five games of Arcade, Custom, Ranked, Training, Unranked, or Versus A.I. online game modes in any combination or order. This, coupled with the fact that XP gain has been doubled until September 30, is a great reason to hop on StarCraft II this week and play your heart out.
If you want to play with friends that don't have full versions of StarCraft II, good news: up to September 30, all three races are unlocked and playable by StarCraft II: Starter Edition players. It's a great time to introduce friends to the game and get them into the StarCraft community.
Remember, all of these events are only active until September 30, so don't delay in getting your back to school portraits!
