First off, at the Gamescon 2011 event in Europe next month, Blizzard plans to have a playable version of Heart of The Swarm there for gamers to try out. We’re betting it will be about the same progress as last time we got word on things or maybe a couple more missions.

There has also been a new gameplay video for the two campaign missions found on the web.

For Wings of Liberty, we will be seeing new maps on the ladder soon as Ladder Season 2 comes to a close. The leagues are already locked, but you can still try to boost your MMR (Matchmaking Rating) or get to the top of your division. The ladder reset will be coming (along with the usual temporary downtime for the online servers) on Tuesday, July 26th. With the new ladder season, North America will now be linked with Latin America, increasing the player pool.

As for our polls, here are the results from last time. Almost the same amount of people buying the regular game will be buying the Collector’s Edition which is surprising.

The newest poll asks about the new campaign style for Heart of The Swarm. Some people like the decision of having Kerrigan as a hero unit that stays with you, while others prefer the regular style of solely focusing on your army to accomplish objectives.

The new poll will run until September since it started late.

The main change is the role of Kerrigan as a hero unit that will be used in most missions. Blizzard gives her a feeling of massive power due to her higher stats, unique spells, and a new RPG feature. You can choose a “Battle Focus” that determines her statistics, spells, and passive boosts and level up your Kerrigan.

Battle Focuses can be changed between missions, and they are thinking about allowing it mid mission as well. So far there are 4 shown and only two were available. Spec Ops is more spell oriented, giving you a AoE attack, a boost to your energy, and a hallucination of herself that can deal half damage. Corruption is defense based giving extra armor. For commands it gives you Spawn Broodling, which turns the targeted non massive/hero unit into 5 broodlings and instantly kills it. Corrosive Spores is another AoE attack that grants temporary damage increases from all attackers against the targets as well as damaging them.

The last two Battle Focuses have nothing shown. Since the 4 core attributes shown are Energy, Armor, Strength, and HP are shown, it’s likely that Strength will give passive boosts to damage and close range abilities while HP will probably be designed with HP boosts and spells to heal and protect Kerrigan from damage.

The other most interesting thing revealed is how regular units in your army will be more customizable. Wings of Liberty allowed you to get Tech Lab upgrades and unique to the campaign upgrades that would be kept from mission to mission. Heart of The Swarm seems to have that same feature for the Zerg Units using the Evolution Chamber. However, the truly interesting this is that you will be able to evolve each unit. Zerglings can turn into Swarmlings (Spawn 3 Zerglings at a time instead of 2) or Raptors (which get a 10 HP boost and a Zealot Charge like leap onto nearby enemies). These effects are permanent like the Research Path in Wings of Liberty and must be chosen carefully. Below are the list of known units.

Zerglings

Swarmlings:

Spawns 3 Zerglings at a time instead of 2 at no additional cost.

Raptor:

Leap at nearby enemies and gain 10 additional HP.

Banelings

Splitterling:

A special Baneling that’s explosion splits it into two smaller units. Those smaller units have the same attack but the splitting ability stops after the smaller ones explode.

Gorgeling:

Buildings destroyed by them are turned into collectable resources.

Roaches

Prowler:

Basically the Roach with the Tunneling Claws ability, Prowlers currently can move while burrowed.

Leech:

Gain +10 life per kill (up to 6 times) and gain more HP regeneration while burrowed.

The gameplay video above also shows of some of the first two missions. “War For The Brood” takes place on Char and pits Kerrigan against a Brood Mother who denies her right to be Queen of Blades. “Silence Their Cries” takes place on a world making use of the hidden Iceworld tileset from Wings of Liberty. Kerrigan seeks out another Brood Mother but ends up fighting against the Protoss. This mission has a environment mechanic like in Devil’s Playground from Wings of Liberty with the lava, except in this case you see units being slowly frozen and thawed from the world’s dangerous weather.

Anyhow, here are the results from last month’s poll. I have to disagree with the majority as I enjoyed Starjeweled more than Left 2 Die. Aiur Chef being last doesn’t surprise me, but if you haven’t played that yet you should try it just to hear the voice acting’s hilarity.

This month’s poll asks whether or not you will be picking up a copy of Heart of The Swarm when it comes out, and if so whether or not you get the Collector’s Edition.

Thanks to Dr. Bob for sending it in.

For more information, please check out Blizzard’s official press release via this link:

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/press/pressreleases.html?100505

Also, many thanks to Reap This Whirlwind for finding this article.

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.

The StarCraft II team at Blizzard seems to be scrambling to do a lot of work lately on the game (if you follow their Twitter page anyhow).

One video popped up somewhere we thought you Protoss guys might like. It’s a Protoss Mother Ship destroying some Zerg forces.

Here is a collection of all the screen shots that Puppet Master and myself have been putting up for the StarCraft II Beta. They are in a slide show format, and are at 800×600 pixels. Special thanks to Photobucket.

The Screen Shot of the Month collection done by me is here too.

Screen Shot Of The Month

Quelex’s StarCraft II Screen Shot Collection

Puppet Master’s StarCraft II Screen Shot Collection

Battle Report #4 Protoss vs Terran @ Lost Temple

Battle Report #3 Zerg vs Protoss @ Scrap Yard

Battle Report #2 Terran vs Zerg @ Blistering Sands

Battle Report #1 Terran vs Protoss @ Kulas Ravine