Alongside its new campaign and units, Heart of the Swarm is coming bundled with many improvements to Starcraft 2’s base game – groups, a new UI, new replay features, etc. They’re so good that Blizzard don’t want Wings of Liberty to suffer in comparison, so they’re releasing all these improvements for the old game in a single patch. Patch 2.0.4 to be specific.
It’s the last major patch for Wings of Liberty before the release of Heart of the Swarm and you can see all it contains below.
According to Blizzard’s blog post,Wings of Liberty 2.0.4 includes:
- An all-new user interface with new menu screens. (Which Jeremy wrote about here.)
- The launch of in-game Clans and Groups. (Which we covered in-depth here.)
- New Replay features, such as Watch with Others and Take Command. (Oh, we covered this too.)
- A multitude of Editor improvements. (Nope, this is new. Here’s a picture of a duck by way of apology.)
- New matchmaking options: Training Mode, Vs. AI Mode, and Unranked Play. (well, now I’m feeling I’ve failed you. A panda picture, sorry).
- All-new AI Options, including AI Communication. (Damn. A puppy might tide you over.)
- Players Near You, so you can find other StarCraft II players on your local network. (Hmm. Nothing to see here.)
- New customizable Observer UI. (Nor here.)
The update will be rolling out soon and should appear as an update popup when the time is right. So don’t fret, keep playing as normal and then BOOM it’ll be done. If you’re still feeling anxious try reading Blizzard’s surprisingly lengthy walkthrough for an automatic update.