Title: StarCraft II


Developer: Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.


Genre: Real-Time Strategy


Platforms: PC, Mac


Game Overview:

StarCraft II continues the epic saga of the terrans, protoss, and zerg. These three distinct and powerful races will clash once again in the fast-paced real-time strategy sequel to the legendary original, StarCraft. Legions of veteran, upgraded, and brand-new unit types will do battle across the galaxy as each faction struggles for survival.

Featuring a unique single-player campaign that picks up where StarCraft: Brood War left off, StarCraft II will present a cast of new heroes and familiar faces in an edgy sci-fi story filled with adventure and intrigue. In addition, Blizzard Entertainment will again offer unparalleled online play through Battle.net, the company's world-renowned gaming service, with several enhancements and new features to make StarCraft II the ultimate competitive real-time strategy game.


Features:

Fast-paced, hard-hitting, tightly balanced competitive real-time strategy gameplay that recaptures and improves on the magic of the original game Three completely distinct races: Terrans, protoss, and zerg New units and gameplay mechanics further distinguish each race Groundbreaking single-player campaign Vibrant new 3D-graphics engine with support for dazzling visual effects and massive unit and army sizes Full multiplayer support with new competitive features and matchmaking utilities available through Battle.net Full map-making and scripting tools to give players incredible freedom in customizing and personalizing their gameplay experience

StarCraft II Frequently Asked Questions (Faq)

Hidden Secrets - What every Starcraft Player should know:

Tips - What every Starcraft Player should know:

This information was taken directly off the Blizzard SC2 forumns and I believe it's 100% correct. Rather than re-inventing the wheel I will post his owrds here. Credit should go to forumn and Ladder Player Named GRUNT for this valuable insight.

Multi-player

Mindset:

- Be patient and slow to anger. Its the internet. It doesn't matter what someone else says or does to a large extent. But getting angry or frustrated will effect your decision-making and focus.

- Don't chalk up a loss to something being 'Overpowered, Imbalanced, Cheesy', as these labels are irrelevant (I was void ray rushed two times so far, and the third fourth and fifth time I countered easily).

- Think of losing as a good thing, it's a way to refine your strategy and to learn what does and does not work.

- Aggression is a great attribute to have and will separate average from good players.

- Be gracious, win or loss.


Pre-Match


- Develop a basic strategy as to what you'd like to implement against your opponent after viewing his or her race.

- Look at the maps before you load and think of likely opponent positioning so as to know where to scout

- Be comfortable and have a familiar set of keybinds for important groups / structures


Beginning Game


- Have your build order on paper, or in your mind, and adhere to it strictly in the first 30 seconds

- Get your econ going asap and follow your general build order until you scout

- Scout. This is the most important thing in nearly any RTS. Scout their base asap, and scout the corners of your base and your closest expansion site.

- After scouting, switch your build order based on what you've seen of your opponent.

- Begin building your units / structures in reliance on scouting data to maximize your rush, and how you plan to counter their army

- Rush the opponent if your strategy calls for it, otherwise position your army so as to counter their rush

- Attack your enemy at their base, or if you can find their army in the field. Your goal here is to decimate their army and to then ruin their economy / troop building capacity, and to ascertain (if you fail) the types of units you will need to build to counter. Don't be afraid to attack. Attacking early places you as the arbiter of your own fate. As is said in the responses, usually active beats reactive.

- Attempt to inflict economy damage and avoid economy damage of your own

- At the end of the beginning stage of a match, depending on the success or failure of your rush, be ready to switch strategies.

- Only continue employing the same strategy if you have a decisive econ / unit advantage


Mid-game


- Get your expansion going unless you were all-in initially (ie your strategy previously employed dictates that if you fail you lose)

- Scout other areas to determine if your opponent has expanded

- Constantly produce troops, workers, upgrades

- Amass a main group with support (ex: Marines, Marauders and Medivacs)

- Employ a secondary group for harassing opponents econ / countering specific types of units (ex: helions to non-ranged infantry, thors or vikings to counter mass, banelings to counter clumps of infantry)

- Continue expanding and focus on map-control. Part of map-control is constant intel as to where your opponent is expanding and where you can expand to.


Late-game


- If you are losing the economy battle you will have to focus on out microing your opponent. One good way would be to arrange ambushes on his armies, or to do coordinate strikes at multiple locations simultaneously to force him to focus on micro instead of macro. You need to regain the macro advantage, negate his, or destroy vital pieces of his army.

- Continually expand and accrue intelligence from scouting


Post-game


- This is the single most important aspect of becoming a better player: WATCH REPLAYS and learn what you did right/wrong and learn what your opponent did right and wrong.

- I use a word document to write down any strategy that worked or failed against which race and my opinion as to why. Additionally, I write down trends in early-game so I understand what rush I will be facing in the future, and how I should counter.

- Don't get frustrated. Replay Losses are a positive good. They provide you with free education. Think of losses as personal instruction from your opponent.


Summary (TLDR Version):


- Watch replays and learn

- Don't get mad

- Implement lessons


Single-player


- Play the campaign once on normal, going for achievements that first play through if you so desire.

- Play the campaign once on hard, going for achievements if you desire.

- Save and save often.

- Do the challenges. The challenges in my opinion are Blizzard's way of teaching beginners how to macro and how to micro and how to counter.

- Save during the challenges; you will still get the achievements.

- Store your money and purchase an entire line of upgrades in order to get an achievement and then reload that save ;)

- Replay any branching missions (missions in which you had multiple choices)

- Play custom games against the computer

Again, Credit for this Tip's page goes to SC2 player handle GRUNT

Very well done.

Battle.net:



Q: Will Battle.net be overhauled? Will there be new features?

A: There will be some exciting new changes and features to Battle.net that will help us ensure that StarCraft II will be the ultimate competitive online real-time strategy game. Some of the areas we`re looking into include features that support online tournaments, eSports, and enhanced communication between players. We`re not quite ready to go into further detail about Battle.net at this time, but we look forward to doing so in the future.

Q: Will we still be able to play the original StarCraft on Battle.net after StarCraft II is released? A: Yes, you will.

Q: What steps are being taken to prevent cheating in multiplayer games?

A: We don1t want to tip our hand to the people who may try to cheat on Battle.net, so we can1t go into too much detail, but rest assured that security is one of our top priorities as we redesign and overhaul Battle.net, and we will take every precaution to ensure fairness in our online games. We`ve taken an aggressive stance against cheating in all of our games, and our players have overwhelmingly supported us in that, so we don`t have any intention to make any changes in that regard.

System Requirements - What every Starcraft Player should know:

StarCraft II System Requirements



PC Requirements