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Starcraft 2 Beta launches -- Kiss your free time goodbye
- megamark16 17y agoMy brother does QA for Blizzard and I'm pretty sure he's been working on the Starcraft 2 team. Congrats to everybody who's work so hard to bring us this much anticipated title. Goodbye free time indeed :-)
- CoryMathews 17y agoAnd there I was thinking this game would never be released...
- rms 17y agoomg for real? I wonder how much the beta invites are going to be going for on eBay.
- DrJokepu 17y agoI feel really sorry for the people who don't have the patience to wait a bit more and fork out large amounts of money to participate in beta. Clearly the final product will provide a lot more polished experience. They're giving up a lot of fun for some bragging rights.
- Psyonic 17y agoI'm not part of this beta, and I wouldn't pay $300 for a key either, but I've participated in Blizzard's betas before, and I have to say there is something kind of special about it. I'm not just talking about bragging rights... it's about playing when everything is unknown. By the time the game comes out, strategies from the beta will already be well-known. Things change, not only over time, but as Blizzard makes changes, but never quite as fast as in the beta.
- Alex3917 17y agoThe only reason it would make sense to pay $300 would be if you wanted a job at Blizzard. For example I know there was a blogger named Shlonglor who got a job there because of his awesome Warcraft 2 blog. Although perhaps the culture of blizzard has changed some since 1996.
- Psyonic 17y agoI remember reading his blog a few times. Pretty cool that it landed him a job. Do you know what he does there, exactly?
- NickPollard 17y agoHe was (and I believe still is) their main webmaster, last I heard he was particularly focused on the WoW website. He often goes by the name 'Nebu' (short for Nebuchadnezzar).
- mrbad101 17y agoI didn't think I'd ever see the name Schlonglor again. Here's my story: I used to be a very avid Warcraft II player. I used KALI for the IPX over TCP/IP emulation to play online through my 14.4 modem. Anyways, I had gotten really good at playing the game online, thanks to Schlonglor's guides along with lots of practice. One day I had just finished playing a game, and beat the other person. I started chatting when them, when they told me that they were pretty new to Warcraft II. I asked how they got into it, and she told me, her brother was the Schlonglor! At first I was floored. I couldn't believe it. We talked for quite awhile, and then shes tells me that her brother is there. She then asked if I would like to play against him. Of course I accepted! My hands were literally shaking at the thought of playing against one of Warcraft II idols. We start playing, and I work faster and harder that I've ever played in a game. I instantly could tell this guy was him, because the way he played was exactly like all the screenshots I had memorized of his games. (Wayyyy before YouTube, so there were no videos.) The game progressed, and long(ish) story short, he made some heavy attacks on me, killed my base, and assume he had won. Moments later, my real army and real base that I was hiding moved in, and crushed him. He was asking me.. "How did you do that??" "Where did that all come from??" I had the most s$%t-eating grin on my face. I was so proud that I had beat him. He then tells me that he hasn't play for the last few weeks, and was out of practice. I didn't care.. I had still just beaten the Schlonglor!! Him and I proceeded to chat it up for awhile. He congratulated me on the win, we parted ways, and I never heard from him again. Soon after I put down the game, figuring there was no way to really beat that experience. Good memories.. Thanks for bringing them up Alex :)
- chaosmachine 17y agoIf it's anything like past betas (Warcraft 3), there will be leaked copies and pirate servers set up.
- zackattack 17y agoOkay, how on EARTH does a pirate server work? That must take an INCREDIBLE amount of reverse engineering/packet monitoring.. Or they stole a copy of the server sw?
- DarkShikari 17y agoThere have been pirate servers of many MMORPGs, far more complex than any simple RTS (Everquest, World of Warcraft, Earth and Beyond, Ragnarok Online, among others).
- zackattack 17y agoRight, that's what i mean, how?
- daeken 17y agoYou start off simple. You write a packet sniffer and begin analysis of the protocol. As you determine how the protocol works, you can start to implement the base of a server. Implement authorization, game discovery, etc. If you'd like to know more, hit me up on IRC -- I cut my teeth on MMO server emulation, so it's a subject that's near and dear to my heart.
- hristov 17y agoWell if you want to start a professional career as a starcraft player, if you want to be a "starcraft athlete" if you will, you pretty much have to be in the beta.
- mlinsey 17y agoI don't see why. Plenty of current pro StarCraft players achieved that status by intense training long after the game was even released.
- hristov 17y agoYeah but it was much tougher for them than those few guys that were lucky enough to be in the beta. The tournaments that came first couple of years after the game came out were almost exclusively won by beta players, such as Grrr and Maynard. It took some time for the Koreans to come in and start owning everyone. Now that the most talented Korean pros are guaranteed to be in the beta, good luck out training them.
- mlinsey 17y agoI still disagree. For example, Jaedong started playing a lot later than Boxer and Soso. I don't think missing out on the beta will be a singificant disadvantage for pro players for more than 8-12 months.
- lambdom 17y agoJust for your information, since starcraft and warcraft are really popular in Korea, we usually use the term "gosu" for professional player which basically mean "progammer" in Korean. So, we often see things such as: This guy is pretty gosu or This guy is chobo (beginner) ;)
- hristov 17y agoOh I know that, I have wasted enough time getting maphacked on battlenet.
- teilo 17y agoAnd here I thought they were going to rename the project "Starcraft Forever".
- Janteh 17y agoAwesome! It's a pitty that it's Windows only though, but I'm sure they will work it out for Mac before the release. During this phase a Mac version will NOT be available, please check back.
- listic 17y agoDon't worry; Blizzard were fans of Mac since ever; I'm sure they won't let Mac users down now.
- adamilardi 17y agoDon't worry Steve Jobs lovers you can still pretend like you don't care
- joshu 17y agoI've been thinking of getting a windows PC together to play this. Am I likely to be happy if I use a newish Mac Mini?
- amock 17y agoI've had trouble with Window 7 under Bootcamp on other Macs, but if you're going to run XP or Vista you shouldn't have any trouble.
- endtime 17y agoMy 2006 Macbook Pro runs Windows 7 almost perfectly (the only problem is that some of the function keys don't work).
- Psyonic 17y agoThe beta specifically, or just sc2? The actual game will be mac compatible.
- pmjordan 17y agoCPU wise you should be fine. System requirements call for GeForce 6600 or Radeon 9800 though, so the shared-memory GPU of the Mini might not suffice. I suggest comparing the 3DMark score of the mini with that of a card that's definitely supported.
- joshu 17y agoI thought modern minis have real gpus? Must research.
- pclark 17y agoa Mac Mini won't run this well. iMac would though.
- xal 17y agoYou can log into your battle.net account. If you are in it lets you download the beta. There don't seem to be CDkeys because it's tied to your battle.net account. No one has gotten emails yet.
- leif 17y agobeta checker works under wine 1.1.38 :)
- thinkbohemian 17y agoCrap, i need more minerals.
- epochwolf 17y agoYou must construct additional pylons
- johndoe77 17y agoSpawn more overlords
- adamilardi 17y agoMy wife is haunted by those words
- esornoso 17y agoMiracles do happen.
- xsmasher 17y agoSystem specs are interesting: Windows XP SP3/Vista SP1/Windows 7 In a space that's usually defined by bleeding-edge hardware, that's a strong testament to the staying power of XP (and the low adoption rates of Vista and Win7).
- natmaster 17y agoBlizzard's success has been partly due to their targeting of the lowest end systems for their games. Supporting WinXP is not surprising thing. An example is when they launched the original Starcraft, they chose to go with sprite based graphics, at a time when realtime 3D had become the norm. This allowed them to not only produce a better looking game, but combined with the 640x480 screen resolution, run on many machines.
- Psyonic 17y agoIt also kept it from aging quite as quickly. I can still play most sprite based super nintendo games, but most n64 games make me gag. Early 3d is pretty hideous.
- dbz 17y agoYES YES YES!
- adamilardi 17y agoThere are few great moments in a man's life. Birth Marriage Children...and starcraft 2. I almost cried
- mcu 17y agoJust got my invite! It's a thing of beauty.
- sliverstorm 17y agoOf all the PC games I want to play, I was not expecting SC2 to be on the list of 'too much for my laptop to handle'. Not that my laptop is a beast by any means, but I mean cummon- it's Starcraft! (1.6GHz C2D and X3100)
- wenbert 17y agoI remember reading news that it doesn't have LAN play? Is this still true?
- aik 17y agoIf anyone has a cd-key for a blizzard game they don't play anymore, I wouldn't mind taking it off your hands. message/email me. :)
- rorsgod 17y agoI was awfully close to actually paying $350 on an eBay auction for a key.. Luckily some blog my friend linked me to on Facebook was giving out some invites. I thought it'd just be another scam, but I got an invite mailed to me in a couple of hours. Go figure... Anyway here's the blog: http://starcraft2betainvites.blogspot.com http://starcraft2betainvites.blogspot.com