This means the script should be all set in stone, and a big step is underway. Still no news on when the Beta that was announced will be coming out (My guess is late February or mid Spring) though.

At any rate, hope you all had a good Holiday season. We’ll get a new poll up soon. Until then, have fun!

Our Poll of September asked about Heart of The Swarm units as well, and came up with some neat results. We had a tie between New, New and Old, and Old was close too. New units are obviously favored since people are looking forward to trying new things with each race.

The Poll of the Month asks about the new units.

They also have released a new trailer for the game showing off a number of awesome cutscenes and showing the new units mentioned in the previous post in action.

You can watch the trailer below.

There’s also a new trailer for the Blizzard Custom Map, Blizzard DoTA below.

Protoss

- The Nexus is given a new ability called Arc Shield, which grants bonus armor to itself and a Photon Cannon like weapon temporarily. This seems to be primarily to give them a counter against early aggression and cheese.

- The Nexus also gains Mass Recall, which works just like the Mothership’s, allowing the Nexus to instantly warp units in the target area to the Nexus.

- The Carrier and Mothership seem to be removed.

New Units

Tempest

A powerful anti air unit using a splash attack, and with a weak anti ground attack.

Oracle

Ability based harassment unit. It’s Entomb command causes the target Mineral field to not be harvested from temporarily. It’s Preordain ability causes the targeted enemy building to show the units or upgrades it is warping in or researching. And finally, it’s Phase Shift causes a building to temporarily be invulnerable, but cannot operate and will also deny any tech tree paths it grants.

Replicant

Can morph into any non massive unit for any of the races, allowing for quick tactical units to be placed on the field.

Terran

Race Changes

- The Reaper no longer has a second attack to quickly take out enemy buildings, but instead will gain life regeneration.

-  Battlecruisers will be able to gain a new upgrade that gives them a temporary boost in movement speed.

- Hellions are able to transform into a fighter mode that deals cleave like damage which is more effective against upgraded biological units such as Charge-Zealots and Speed-Lings.

- Thors are now changed so that you can only have one at a time. It is however a much more powerful Thor, with plenty more HP and a strong new anti ground attack. It does however lose its anti air weapon.

- Ghost’s Cloak is now changed so that it is no longer able to be turned off and on within a moments notice. It instead can be used for a specified amount of time and if used strategically can help save Energy.

New Units

Shredder

A new unit that will deal Area of Effect damage to all enemies nearby, but disables itself if a friendly unit is in range.

Warhound

A Goliath like unit that has a powerful anti air weapon. It’s anti ground weapon is weak, but is somewhat effective against armored units.

Zerg

Race Changes

- The Corruptor loses its Corruption ability and gains a Siphon, which damages the targeted building dealing damage and gives resources to the Zerg player.

- Ultralisks gain a Burrow Charge like ability, allowing them to close in on enemies from underground easily.

- Hydralisks gain a new upgrade to move faster when not on creep.

- Banelings can now move while burrowed, allowing better ambush attacks on enemies.

- The Overseer is removed from the game.

New Units

Viper

The Viper is a new support unit that has 3 new abilities. Blinding Cloud acts like the Defiler’s Dark Swarm, causes all units in the Cloud’s area to only be able to attack at melee range. Abduct allows the Viper to pull the target unit to the location of the Viper, allowing you to drag enemies into dangerous areas. They also gain a one per Viper ability called Ocular Parasite, which acts like Parasite from the original granting permanent shared vision of the target enemy unit.

Swarm Host

Has no attack when above ground, but when Burrowed releases Locusts, a small new unit that acts as a Broodling to pound on enemies and force them to get detection before being overrun.

Some key things to take away for gameplay changes:

- Vision when going up ramps for units is reduced by 1.
- Immortal Attack Range +1.
- Blink Research time increased by 30 seconds.
- Barracks Build time increased by 5 seconds.
- Hellion’s “blue flame” upgrade’s bonus damage is reduced by 5.
- Ultralisk Build time reduced by 15 seconds.

I feel like most people can get behind a lot of these changes. We’ll have to see how vision when going up ramps plays out. Immortal Attack Range will allow them to be more competitive with Collosi. Blink’s increased research time is going to to give Protoss less of a chance for early Stalker Blink Harass early on. The Barracks time increase is minor but will screw with Terran build orders slightly and cause more grief against 6 Pools. The Hellion’s Infernal Pre-Igniter upgrade being nerfed will help prevent situations where a Terran could run a few Hellions in with the upgrade and take out all the workers in just a few short seconds. And finally, it will be interesting to see if the Ultralisk build time being cut by close to 1/4 will encourage more use of them.

There are so many changes coming up in the new patch we won’t address them all. When the Patch is finally released, we will post a listing of all the changes as always.

While there hasn’t been a ton of news on Heart of The Swarm, there are some things to acknowledge.

- The game probably will not be out until Spring 2012 at the earliest.
- The Map Store will be brought in around or after the release of the expansion, allowing user created maps to earn profit for the authors.
- Blizzard DOTA is coming around the same release time. Whether or not it will be a map players will have to pay for is unknown.
- The expansion may cost less than Wings of Liberty. But we’ll see.
- More info will be coming during Blizzcon which is October 21st and 22nd.

Here are the results from our last Poll of the Month. It seems that 2/3rds are interested in the new approach while the last third want the focus to remain without the hero unit showing up in the armies every mission.

Our next poll asks about multiplayer units in Heart of the Swarm. Blizzard is planning on adding or replacing units in the multiplayer line up for each race and make the multiplayer separate from Wings of Liberty. Would you like to see some old units from StarCraft and Brood War make a return, or would you prefer new units to be showing up in multplayer?

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.

Aiur Chef is a game where you have three rounds to compete against the other players, gathering ingredients across the map and fighting each. The person who nets the most points from making the most recipes wins. The voice acting in this one is pretty damn funny.

StarJeweled is a puzzle/tug of war game. The screen is divided in two, with StarCraft units battling it out on the left, and a puzzle game on the right. You need to switch pieces around while forming chains of 3 or more pieces in order to gain energy, which can be spent on more powerful units and for casting spells.

Left 2 Die is the last one that has been released at this time. It is essentially the campaign mission Outbreak, but with some stronger enemies and an another player slot for an ally.

The last unreleased map is StarCraft II Defense of The Ancients (DoTA, as it’s known on WarCraft III), which will be a team game that pits heroes from Blizzard games against eachother in a hack and slash RPG nature.

Interestingly, the first 3 maps mentioned above which have been released have a new incentive to get players to try them out: Achievements. There’s a ton of achievement points to be racked up playing these custom games. There’s also 3 new Portraits:

You can earn the Zealot Chef from Aiur Chef by making each of the three recipes each round (Easy way to do this is to play with a friend.). Ornatus is earned from StarJeweled by casting the spell Healing Wave enough times to have healed 3,000 HP in one game (You can do this by playing against a friend or an easy computer. If you feel your units are overpowering them, Psi Storm your own units to keep the game going.). And the last portrait is the Stank (Sorry, I haven’t earned it just yet), which is a “Special Infected” from the Left 2 Die map. You need to kill one without losing any units (People recommend Siege tanks behind a Planetary Fortress wall.). Good Luck!

Since we’re in the middle of April already our newest Poll will run until the end of May.

The results of our old poll are below.

I’m glad people have been enjoying the maps on there. There are a lot of fun ones that I’m impressed with too.

Our newest poll asks which Blizzard Custom Map you like that most.

- Roach range will be increased.

- Fungal Growth will temporarily disable Blink when used on Stalkers.

- The Barracks will now require a Supply Depot.

- Reaper’s Speed upgrade will require the Factory.

- Increased HP to Zerg buildings.

So clearly they want to help out the Zerg players and try to do some nerfs to Terran.

And for you obsessed SCII people who want every Decal and Portrait, you will have to buy a BlizzCon ticket for your Web Browser/DirecTV. They announced that players who buy a ticket will recieve a Murloc Marine Portrait and Deep Sea decals.