“Yes. We’re still working on the Map Editor and currently working on the publishing system. We intend to release an early version of the editor during the beta so the map-making community can get a head start creating their own maps. This is going to be a stretch for us to pull off, but our hope is to get it out before the end of April.” – Blizz Tech Chat forum post

That link above will lead to a Q&A on the SCII Beta. You can learn lots of interesting facts about Blizzard’s plans for SCII.

Balance Changes

PROTOSS

Cybernetics Core

- Warp Gate research time increased from 60 seconds to 140 seconds.

ZERG

Hatchery/Lair/Hive

- Burrow research time increased from 50 seconds to 100 seconds.
- Burrow research cost increased from 50 Minerals and 50 Vespene Gas to 100 Minerals and 100 Vespene Gas.

Nydus Network

- Nydus Worm build time increased from 10 seconds to 20 seconds.

Hydralisk

- The delay between attacks has been increased from 0.75 seconds to 0.83 seconds.

Infestor

- Neural Parasite has been redesigned:
- The limited duration of 10 seconds has been removed.
- Can no longer target air units.
- Cast range decreased from 9 to 7.
- Burrowed Infestor move speed decreased from 1.5 to 1.
- Infestor life decreased from 120 to 90.
- Infestors that are burrowed now have the same threat level as above-ground units for the purposes of automatically acquiring targets.

Bug Fixes

- Fixed an issue with High graphics settings that could cause particles not to render.

Just to let you know, we’ve had added a little bit more content to the site in the past couple of days.

The new Screen Shots page has slide shows of the Screen Shots of the Month and Screen Shots from StarCraft II taken by Puppet Master and I.

The Blizzard Battle Report Videos for StarCraft II have been collected and put into one page.

A collection of StarCraft themed Wallpaper is now up on a page for download.

The Tech Tree listings from the in game Help are now up at the Tech Trees page.

And finally the StarCraft II Terran Units Page is complete.

The Zerg StarCraft II Units Page will be up soon too.

The poll for February ended a week ago. Finally starting a new one. Here are the results!

Zeratul and the Protoss in general seem to have more fans so far. Poor Kerrigan being there in 3rd place.

The new poll for March starts now:

And below is the Screen Shot of the Month and this time it’s from StarCraft II’s Beta. And because it’s hard to make out the details, this and any others I put up will be in 1094 x 819, just click on the image to see it enlarged. Don’t forget, you can post your submission in the thread on the forums and we’ll put it up and credit you. Here are some Battle Cruisers (and a Yamato blast) finishing up an enemy Terran base on Twilight Fortress.

Screenshot by Quelex.

Patch 3:

Balance Changes

• TERRAN
  • Engineering Bay
    • Infantry Armor: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
    • Infantry Weapons: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
    • Armory
    • Vehicle Plating: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
    • Vehicle Weapons: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
    • Ship Plating: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
    • Ship Weapons: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.

• PROTOSS
  • Zealot
    • The maximum shield capacity of this unit has been decreased from 60 to 50.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where the Infestor’s Neural Parasite ability could cause Reapers to lose the ability to move.
• Fixed an issue that could use an incorrect HDR format on some ATI cards.
• Fixed a crash that could happen on some ATI cards.

Patch 4:

General

• Korea
  • Added support to display the game rating information on the F10 in-game menu within the beta.

All of this information came directly off of blizzard’s site and can be viewed here:

http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=23094049316&sid=5000

And we are still working on the SCII Terran and Zerg unit pages. They should be up by the end of this coming week. I’ll be updating the screen shot/poll of the month soon too.

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).

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.

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.

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 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.