One of the many nice things about Heart of the Swarm has been how it’s made the Zerg a much more flexible and interesting faction to watch. That really hit home for me yesterday watching the first group of the WCS America round of 16, where Norwegian Zerg Jens “Snute" Aasgaard showed off the variety of play with Heart of the Swarm Zerg, and his own resilience as a player.
You can watch last night’s play over on Twitch: his series against NesTea starts at 9:30, and his series against Alicia (highly recommended) starts at 2:15:30. The MLG-operated WCS America continues tonight (and every night this week save Friday) at 11 PM UK / 6PM Eastern. Tonight, however, the WCS America broadcast is preceded by the first-ever SHOUTcraft America Grand Finals, between Sam “Kane" Morrissette and Ryan “State" Visbeck. It starts at 8 PM UK / 3 PM Eastern and streams via TotalBiscuit’s Twitch channel.
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World of Warcraft has seen a significant dip in subscriptions over the last three months. Activision have reported a 1.3 million decline in the financial quarter ending March 31, leaving Blizzard’s MMO with a still-enviable subscriber base of 8.3 million.
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Poor DreamHack, we all cried. Left out of the StarCraft 2 World Championship Series, shunned from the cool kids’ table where Blizzard and its new pals MLG, ESL, and OGN / GOMTV were planning to revolutionize StarCraft 2.
Now, after weeks of confusing mixed-signals, a troubled North American qualifying tournament, and some problematic tournament rules that may quash the kind of vibrant regional play the WCS was supposed to encourage, DreamHack is looking like a pretty great alternative. While Blizzard and its partners put the WCS back on the rails, StarCraft fans can spend this weekend enjoying the start of the 2013 DreamHack open series in Stockholm. Play starts at 10 AM UK / 5 AM Eastern on the DreamHack Twitch stream.
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The Mouth of Blizzard has shown up at the gates of their Irvine fortress waving an approximate figure for digital and physical sales of Heart of the Swarm during its launch. It has loads of zeros attached.
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In the last eight days, Heart of the Swarm’s dev team have been looking on in awe as StarCraft’s international community burrow into their creation. They’ve watching every single major match so far, through the IEM World Championship and MLG’s Winter Championship, and have drawn a few early conclusions.
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The first Heart of the Swarm MLG championship concluded in Dallas this weekend, with Korean Zerg Lee “Life" Seung Hyun taking first-place with a 4-2 victory over Terran StarCraft legend Lee “Flash" Young Ho. In addition to the $25,000 grand prize, Life also had the distinction of becoming a back-to-back MLG winner, having won the 2012 Fall Championship as well. As this was the first Heart of the Swarm MLG, we were watching closely to see what trends and changes showed up in this high-level competition.
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My first reaction is one of relief. Blizzard can still pull off a great, traditional RTS expansion with a dramatic story and a renewed multiplayer game. I wasn’t sure they still had it in them.
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Heart of the Swarm launch week concludes, fittingly enough, with the first MLG Heart of the Swarm championship in Dallas. League of Legends will also be broadcasting this week’s North American division LCS games from Dallas, as well as the North American Summer Promotion Qualifier and an international exhibition tournament. The streams begin at 6 PM Eastern and the games start a half hour later, at 6:30 Eastern / 10:30 UK.
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So Heart of the Swarm’s out, and it’s changed everything. Go to bed this evening and you’ll probably find Dustin Browder and his team at Blizzard have tweaked the way you clean your teeth. But one of its most significant changes is to something you likely haven’t spared a thought for yet: league percentages. If you play in ranked matches, Heart of the Swarm is going to change who it is you wind up fighting.
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When Blizzard say that Heart of the Swarm launches on March 12, as they have done increasingly often of late, they mean that Heart of the Swarm launches on March 12 in California, where they live. However, shocking anecdotal evidence has revealed that as many as eight StarCraft 2 players don’t live in California. Indeed, as the snow mounts up outside my window this morning, so does the nagging feeling that I don’t live in California either.
Thankfully, Blizzard have seen fit to publish approximate unlock times for every region getting a Heart of the Swarm release, beginning in less than three hours’ time with Bangkok. Find your corner of the world in the list below.
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![Blizzard’s 21-hour Heart of the Swarm launch broadcast begins now; Day[9]’s King of the Beta tournament to come later](http://www.pcgamesn.com/sites/default/files/heart%20of%20the%20swarm%20launch%20events.jpg "Blizzard’s 21-hour Heart of the Swarm launch broadcast begins now; Day[9]’s King of the Beta tournament to come later")
Top StarCraft 2 players have been embedded in Blizzard’s Irvine headquarters today in anticipation of Heart of the Swarm’s staggered global release across the next two days. Under the seasoned eye and inspired commentary of Sean ‘Day[9]’ Plott, they’ll clash in King of the Beta tournament matches, to be broadcast alongside international launch events and community-created videos in a 21-hour stream on Twitch.
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Today the Intel Extreme Masters Season VII World Championship begins in Hanover, as some of the world’s top StarCraft 2 pros get a trial by fire in Heart of the Swarm in a $100,000 tournament. Pool play begins at 3:30 AM Eastern / 8:30 GMT and is can be streamed via ESL TV. The full schedule is available here.Read and Comment
Well, this isn't your average attempt at viral marketing, Blizzard have released a short video of a Sean "Day9" Plott taking a short walk outside the Palace of Versailles only to be accosted by a cloud of mean-looking mutalisks. Unfortunately, we don't learn of his fate. It may be that at this very moment Plott is being munched on by a space lizard-y-thing.
See the terror below.Read and Comment
StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm is arriving in just a matter of weeks, which has compelled Blizzard to host a livestreamed event tomorrow revealing the game's new Vengeance trailer alongside a collection of other treats, such as a developer Q&A and an eSports showmatch with commentary from Messrs TotalBiscuit and dApollo. There's a harrowing possibility that this Blizzard livestream may clash with the simultaneous announcement of more beautiful hair in games.Read and Comment
To celebrate the launch of Heart of the Swarm, and to give Wings of Liberty a send-off, retailer GAME and peripheral manufacturer Razer are co-sponsoring an enormous, 512-place, 1v1 StarCraft 2 knockout tournament for UK gamers. Farewell to Wings of Liberty will start on February 25th and the finals of the two-week tournament will be played in London on March 11th, the eve of Heart of the Swarm's release.
Expect live streaming of key matches for all the world to watch, with commentators Adam “Madals" Simmons and Robert “Pughy" Pugh. Click through to find out how you can sign up, join in and Zerg rush your way to victory.
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Take Command is perhaps the most exciting of the features Blizzard cover in their latest Heart of the Swarm spotlight; one which allows you to take control of an already-played game midway through a replay. Consider it a ‘What if?’ mechanic comparable to Forza Motorsport’s rewind button - a means to work out exactly how things might have gone if you’d gone right instead of left, metaphorically speaking. It can also function as a focused training feature if, for instance, you want to improve your micro. And most brilliantly of all, it can even be employed to leap into the recorded games of professionals in memorable tournament matches, and most likely make a hash of them.
There’s plenty more, though - elsewhere Blizzard cover custom UIs, group spectating and game recovery.Read and Comment
The first ever global StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm tournament will be hosted at the forthcoming Intel Extreme Masters World Championship in Hanover, Germany. The event will run from from March 5 to March 9 and 24 gamers from all over the globe will fight for their share of the $100,000 prize pool.
As well as showing off Heart of the Swarm itself, Blizzard will also have a chance to demonstrate the new spectator UI and, should anything go wrong, we may even get to see The Heart of the Swarm's new resume from replay function in action.Read and Comment
Heart of the Swarm comes on March 12th with changes both superficial and super-official. Or deep. That’s a better word. Those changes range from a sweeping case of the UI switcheroos to the ability to play with anybody, anywhere in the world - ping willing. And Blizzard have explained how all that’s going to work.
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“We have some time set aside to give new users a better experience," Heart of the Swarm game director Dustin Browder has told Polygon. “We used to say ‘The campaign is the tutorial for the multiplayer’ and it never really was."Read and Comment
And so this curious and probably irreversible trend for throwing the opening cinematics of games out of the nest without a game to back them up continues. Sometime in March, we’ll boot up Heart of the Swarm for the first time and go, “Oh yeah. I remember this one."
Silliness aside, Blizzard have a track record when it comes to shellshocked, foreground-heavy animation, and I think they’ve succeeded in capturing at least a smidgen of HotS’s Zerg-infused essence. Check out their efforts below.Read and Comment
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