News

It's been quite some time since the reveal of Legacy of the Void, the upcoming addition to the StarCraft franchise. At BlizzCon 2014, attendees were told that they would be given priority when Legacy of the Void beta access is handed out. Now it seems that preparation for beta is well underway.

The Daily Dot wrote an article a few days ago stating that their sources say, “Blizzard will be aiming for an end of March or early April release." While their article isn't very long, it gives a very tight estimate of when we may see the game.

Another person added: “Blizzard will be aiming for an end of March or early April release. It’s great timing for them. WCS Season 1 will be all but over and this will give players plenty of time to stream the beta and generate some excitement. As things stand the beta is pretty much ready to launch with the balance team just tweaking a few units.”

The source added that the beta will most likely be rolled out in a manner akin to Heart of The Swarm. “It will be initially closed with access to the pros, the press and people’s machines that fit a certain type of spec,” the person explained. “Then increasing waves of requested keys and giveaways before becoming an open beta.”

Other sites have found interesting information that supports a late March beta release. JudgeHype has discovered new images in the Battle.net application, ones that appear to be background images for Legacy of the Void's launcher.

Furthermore, Blizzard announced that the StarCraft II PTR will be taken down on March 5th before being reactivated the following week. This could be in preparation for starting up the Legacy of the Void beta servers.

We'll be taking down the PTR on the morning of Thursday, March 5 and potentially bringing it back online the following week. However, due to our current development timeline, there is a chance that we will not bring the PTR back online and will simply release the build to our live servers a few weeks later.

For those Arcade developers who have been hard at work with the new Warcraft III assets, make sure to save your projects before Thursday.

Thank you!

Any more news about the beta will be covered on our site, so keep an eye out.

Sources:
The Daily Dot - Legacy of the Void beta 'to arrive end of March, early April'
JudgeHype - Premières traces de Legacy of the Void dans l'application Battle.net
Battle.net - PTR Coming Down March 5

A lengthy explanation of the StarCraft II ladder, where it currently stands, and where it's expected to go has been posted.

Adjust league distribution
As mentioned, we’ve identified that the current league distribution percentages aren’t in line with our target percentages. The upcoming distribution changes should allow many more players to be in the correct league, and for each league to have the correct percentage of players based on the figures we announced for Heart of the Swarm. Once this adjustment is made, some players will see a change in their current league placement.

For the full post, click here.

Source:
Battle.net - StarCraft II Ladder Update: March 2, 2015

A new multiplayer development update for Legacy of the Void has been released, asking for feedback on currently proposed changes to units new and old

Scan range experimentation

We've also seen some community feedback about changes that can be made to the scan range to increase the responsiveness of units in combat. We’ve made some adjustments internally and we’re initially liking how it plays out. This is something we’re planning on testing further in the beta.

Thor

The Thor self-repair ability has been removed.

The Thor self-repair ability isn’t really working. As we’ve pointed out before, we don’t like that fact that there’s no strategic decision outside of combat. If a Thor is damaged, players will always use the self-repair ability if they’re not in combat. Our current plans are to remove this ability for the start of beta and see how the Thor works without the added complexity of a different mode or an active ability.

Immortal

Barrier is no longer an upgrade

Damage absorbed has been reduced to 100 down from 200.

Immortal Barrier ability being an upgrade isn’t working out well for us, so we went back to no upgrade and reduced the damage absorbed. It was too buried in tech, and in order to use Immortals with max efficiency, you had to have the additional building. So we’re trying to just balance the unit without the ability being an upgrade.

Roach

Roach burrow move now works when Burrow is researched and no longer requires an upgrade.

This ability allows for some cool micro that we’d like to see more of in Void, so we made it a bit more accessible for now. We’re also considering increasing the movement speed of Roaches while burrowed.

To read the full post, click here.

Source:
Battle.net - Legacy of the Void: Multiplayer Development Update: February 12, 2015

Blizzard has revealed plans to reward outstanding members of the community with a unique portrait. While details on who will receive this portrait is currently being contemplated, the prospect of having recognition for community contributions is reassuring to those that have helped make great strides in StarCraft II.

The portrait, called the StarCraft II “Community Commander” portrait, looks like this: