With the worldwide success of the 1998 PC game Starcraft which has hit the globe by a storm, now comes Starcraft 2, its much awaited sequel.

Starcraft 2 is a RTS game that was develop by Blizzard, it was release on July 27, 2010. It is the sequel on the award winning Starcraft. Starcraft 2 is now split into three installments, Wings of liberty and two expansion packs, Heart of Swarm and Legacy of the Void, unlike its predecessor Starcraft which has only Starcraft:Broodwar. There are still 3 races, Zerg, Protoss, and Terran, these are still the only playable factions within the game. Blizzard stated that the game will focus more on the multiplayer aspect, as compared to its predecessor, multiplayer will still utilize battle.net, and there would also be an addition “ladder” system for ranked games and matchmaking mechanics. I think the improvement on the multiplayer aspect is an improvement for security against those who download the game illegally on the internet, since to be able to play on battle.net you need an original copy of the game.

Regarding on the graphics on the game, it has improved since its predecessor; details on the different races and different terrain have quite improved. Blizzard also stated that the cut-scenes will be close to cinema like quality, they have released some videos on their website in case you want to see for yourself. There would also be improvements on the map editor; it is now called Galaxy editor. It is more sophisticated compared to Starcrafts’ Star Edit and Warcraft IIIs’ World Editor, it has the feature on usage support and inbuilt mods. There would be also premium maps that can be bought at Starcraft 2 marketplace (more money for Blizzard then, I just hope they can be able to support the problems that would arise). There’s also a rumor that even DOTA (the world famous map that was develop on Warcraft III) could not meet the requirements to be registered as a premium map. (I wonder what those requirements would be since DOTA is a very successful map on Warcraft III).

I was able to play Starcraft 2 on its BETA stage and I would say that it has a good opportunity on penetrating the market. The graphics and game play is superb, my only problem would be the multiplayer aspect, I hope that Blizzard could find a way that there would be less lag, just like HON (Heroes of Newerth) where even players from Asia have absolutely no lag when playing versus players from the West or East. Also there should have a “reconnect” feature where if a player suddenly disconnects due to internet problems, they can still reconnect to the game. Blizzard has done it once again with the release of Starcraft 2, let us just wait and see what are the upcoming events that Blizzard has for its newest game.

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