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Blizzard releases LAN mode in new SC2 expansion
After connection troubles in the finals of two recent major live Starcraft 2 events, GSL 3 and MLG Dallas, there were many cries for a LAN mode for Starcraft 2. Today, Blizzard announced that they have released a small expansion pack for Starcraft 2 which includes a LAN mode. In addition, chat channels, additional single player campaigns, new units, extensive balance changes, graphics modifications, and other gameplay tweaks have been included.
The expansion pack is called Starcraft: Brood War and is already in stores at a retail price of $20.
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Blizzard hopes this expansion will finally stop all the whining
With LAN mode, tournament organizers no longer have to fear connection troubles to Battle.net in the finals of the biggest Starcraft 2 tournament in the world. It will also decrease latency in live tournaments leading to instant unit control and letting players truly micro their units. Most importantly, it means GSL fans won't have to listen to Tasteless and Artosis try to stall and fill 30 minutes of airtime.
Many players lamented the lack of chat channels when Starcraft 2 initially came out. This new expansion includes full chat channel support. Some of the features include custom channels with a channel operator, operator commands, and the ability to use bots. This will allow companies to really spam their advertisements which is great for everyone.
The new single player campaign features 10 missions for each race. The story is a prequel to Starcraft 2 and answers many of the questions Starcraft 2 players have about the Starcraft Universe, including how Kerrigan first became the Queen of Blades, Arcturus Mengsk's rise to power, and Jim Raynor's extensive history with Kerrigan and the Terran Dominion's predecessor, the Confederacy. Fanboys all around the world are extremely excited to learn all this lore that had been secret until now.
Blizzard also made a large number of balance changes in this new expansion citing “over 10 years of balance testing.” Some of the major changes include the removal of the Roach, Mothership, and Marauder. Blizzard's press release said “Everyone knows the Mothership was OP, and we made a couple half-assed attempts to balance the Roach, but really there should've been more QQ about Marauders. We were surprised to look at the forums and see almost zero mention of Marauders being unbalanced.” Blizzard decided to fix the Mothership problem, by replacing it with an easier to make, cheaper, and massable unit called the Arbiter (plural: arbiterssss).
+ Show Spoiler [community patch notes] +
I could have spent a lot of time with this section, but it would've been long as hell and I haven't played BW in years, so leave your SC2 to BW balance changes in the comments, and I'll include them here
Another thing Blizzard wanted to fix was how fricking easy Starcraft 2 is. Blizzard's statement stated, “We hate macro, so being able to select multiple buildings makes macro too easy, so we removed that so players have to click each building. Also we decided to cap the number of units in a control group, so players can't just hit 1A to attack. Now they'll have to hit 1A 2A 3A to attack. Those extra key presses will make all the difference in the world. We also made sure to move all the hotkeys to all the corners of the keyboard, since it was way to easy to keep your hand on the left part of the keyboard.” Blizzard also dumbed down the units so that they take the most moronic path possible “just to piss players off.”
Lastly, Blizzard wanted to address was the graphics settings. After seeing all the pros just use low graphics settings, Blizzard decided it was dumb to waste any time on creating nice graphics and just made all the graphics look like they were created in 1998.
Many professional players applauded these changes and are excited that they will have to spend twice as much time practicing to keep up with the Koreans' mechanics. Casual players are also excited that they won't have any false hope of actually becoming good at the game. Perhaps the only downside is that many Starcraft forums will collapse without people constantly talking about the lack of LAN mode or chat channels.
