Two days later Blizzard released the second SCII Beta patch today. Here are the changes.

Balance Changes

• TERRAN

  • Banshee

    • - Cloak: This ability no longer requires Fusion Core to research.

  • Barracks

    • - The build time for this building has decreased from 65 to 60.

  • Factory

    • - The build time for this building has decreased from 65 to 60.

  • Reactor

    • - The build time for this building has decreased from 40 to 25.

  • Reaper

    • - The build time for this unit has increased from 30 to 40.
    • - Nitro Boost: The build time for this upgrade has increased from 90 to 100.

  • Starport

    • - The build time for this building has decreased from 55 to 50.

  • Tech Lab

    • - The build time for this building has decreased from 30 to 25.

• PROTOSS

  • Mothership

    • - The build time for this unit has increased from 120 to 160.
    • - The food cost of this unit has increased from 6 to 8.
    • - The number of shots fired by this unit has decreased from 8 to 6.
    • - The shield of this unit has decreased from 400 to 350.
    • - The health of this unit has decreased from 400 to 350.
    • - The acceleration of this unit has decreased from 1.3125 to 0.3125.
    • - The deceleration of this unit has increased from 0 to 1.

  • Nexus

    • - Chrono Boost: The duration of this ability has decreased from 30 to 20.

• ZERG

  • Corruptor

    • - The damage done by this unit has increased from 12 (+8 massive) to 12 (+10 massive).

Those participating in the Beta were given a patch to install last night.

We have updated the Protoss Units page to reflect the changes. The Terran page will be the next page to be updated and will be coming in the coming days.

Here are the patch notes:

BALANCE CHANGES

• TERRAN

  • Viking

  • • - The armor value for this unit in Fighter Mode has decreased from 1 to 0.
    • - The damage done by this unit in Fighter Mode has changed from 6 (+8 armored) to 10 (+4 armored).

  • Reaper

  • • - The damage done from D-8 Charges has decreased from 40 to 30.
    • - The delay between attacks for D-8 Charges has decreased from 2.5 to 1.8.

  • Orbital Command

  • • - The build time for this upgrade has decreased from 50 to 35.

• PROTOSS

  • Observer

  • • - Gravitic Boosters: The cost of this research has decreased from 150 minerals and 150 vespene gas to 100 minerals and 100 vespene gas.

  • High Templar

  • • - Phase Shift: This ability has been removed from the game.
    • - New ability: Feedback – Drains all energy from the target unit and causes damage equal to the amount of energy drained.

  • Colossus

  • • - The building pathing radius for this unit has decreased from .75 to .5625.

  • Mothership

  • • - Vortex: The energy cost of this ability has increased from 75 to 100.
    • - Vortex: The target radius of this ability has decreased from 3.0 to 2.5.
    • - Temporal Rift: This ability has been removed from the game.
    • - Wormhole Transit: This ability has been removed from the game.
    • - New ability: Mass Recall – Teleports all of the player’s units in the target area to the Mothership.

  • Nexus

  • • - Chrono Boost can no longer target allies.

  • Gateway

  • • - The build time of this building has increased from 50 to 65.

• ZERG

  • Infestor

  • • - Fungal Growth: The damage done by this ability has decreased from 48 to 36.
    • - Fungal Growth: This ability now prevents affected units from burrowing.
    • - Neural Parasite: Functionality changed – The Infestor now channels this spell, which lasts 10 seconds or until the Infestor is destroyed. You can now target all units with this ability.
    • - Terran Infestation: The ability’s energy cost has reduced from 50 to 25 and Infested Terrans now spawn 1 at a time.

BUG FIXES

• - Addressed an issue causing people to receive an “Internal Battle.net Error” message with their game client.
• - Muting your microphone will no longer cause your microphone to be turned off in the operating system once the program has exited.
  • Please note that the voice chat functionality has only partially been implemented. There are many known issues with voice chat that we expect to address in a future patch.
• - The “Medium” graphical settings were reconfigured to work better on appropriate machines. The video settings “auto-detect” functionality has been reset as a result.
• - Added a frame rate limiter to the game menus to prevent some graphics cards from running at higher frame rates than necessary.

Hey everyone,

With the Beta underway, you can find plenty of videos on YouTube. Here’s a funny one of someone using the Terran Planetary Fortress as an attack unit to rush with.

Blizzard sent out more Beta keys today to try to catch up on players who went to Blizzcon but have not recieved their promised keys. They also sent out more to players who opted it. If you have not opted in yet, you can do so from the sidebar on the site.

I would not recommend buying a beta key on Ebay by the way. I’ve heard reports of $300 beta keys. Don’t support their stupidity.

So we are still slowly but surely working on updating the information on the site. The SCBW Protoss Unit page is still incomplete, but has a general preview of what the others will look like in the end. The StarCraft II Protoss Unit page was “finished” today. We will not go into specifics on stats due to it being a Beta and bound to have plenty of changes up until it hits the stores. And there are still a lot of Unit Portraits I need to find. But you can get a good grasp of what the units are.

Blizzard Released the StarCraft II Beta yesterday allowing people to start trying the game. You can wait for your beta invite if you’ve opted in. If you haven’t opted in, there’s a link to do so on the sidebar of the site.

This was the first wave of invites. More people will be invited as time marches on. So don’t be down if you didn’t get one yet.

The minimum requirements for the beta are below:

PC Minimum Requirements:
• Windows XP SP3/Vista SP1/Windows 7
• 2.2 Ghz Pentium IV or equivalent AMD Athlon processor
• 1 GB system RAM/1.5 GB for Vista and Windows 7
• 128 MB NVidia GeForce 6600 GT/ATI Radeon 9800 PRO video card
• 1024×768 minimum display resolution
• 4 GB free hard space (Beta)
• Broadband connection

StarCraft II Beta releases THIS MONTH! Closed Beta late February!

StarCraft II and Battle.net 2.0 is scheduled for release in 2010. (WoW Cataclysm too. But we don’t care about that so much )

Exciting news, huh?

We’ll keep you updated on any specifics on dates when we get them.