Many old-school RTS players remember what it was like to use one game disc to spawn in a second player. Back in the heyday of Warcraft II and the original StarCraft, you could bring a player (who didn’t yet own the game) into your game and play together. We called it Spawning, and we’re pleased to announce that Spawning is now available in StarCraft II.
Nowadays, anyone who hasn’t yet purchased StarCraft II can still play, thanks to the Starter Edition. While Starter Edition players have access to much of the game, there are many features that they previously couldn’t try before upgrading to the full game. Spawning closes that gap. Any player at a lower expansion level who joins a party that includes a player at a higher expansion level is Spawned up, and gets to play using the features and options of the highest expansion level for as long as they’re in a party together.
For example, when a Starter Edition player joins a party with a Wings of Liberty-level player, both are instantly playing Wings of Liberty. When those two players then join a party with a Heart of the Swarm-level player, they all immediately gain access to Heart of the Swarm content, and they keep that access until their party no longer includes any higher-expansion level players.
This is great news for those of us who have friends who want to play but don't know or can't commit to buying either SC2, HotS, or both. There's also a new achievement and portrait that you can see at the link, and a video that explains all of it.
Blizzard Entertainment today introduced a system called spawning into Starcraft II, allowing its Starter Edition and Wings of Liberty players to be temporarily upgraded to Heart of the Swarm accounts when playing with friends.
GameSpot caught up with Blizzard Entertainment production director Chris Sigaty to discuss the move and what it means for the future of Starcraft II.
Why are you doing this?
There's a couple of things that are coming together here. There's spawning, and then there's Starter Edition. And Starter Edition is something that we've actually had for a while, but we have done, being self-critical, a poor job of making people aware of. We limit the race to Terran traditionally because we feel they're the most accessible to brand-new users coming into Starcraft II. But, starting today up until the end of Sunday, all three races are available. We will go back to one race being active, but then we'll have weekends with promotions to switch the race or have multiple races active at once.
Spawning has been a feature in Blizzard games since Warcraft II and Starcraft: Brood War. As such a Blizzard-specific feature, why has it taken so long for this to come to Starcraft II?
I think priorities. This was something we talked about in the past but never really had a good vision for it. We were working on important features for the core game as we did Heart of the Swarm, and a lot of the patches that followed up Wings of Liberty that added things like Masters and Grand Masters leagues. If you go across the patches they were all adding newly important functionality. Then Heart of The Swarm drops with a whole bunch of great stuff, including things that make life easier for players to find each other, take command, all the new replay functionality, all that stuff felt more important. Now that we've had the bandwidth to do this, it just felt like the right time now that we've finally had a little bit of air to breathe into this feature.
Beyond the bandwidth side, I think one of the things that Starcraft faces as a perception issue is being a really hardcore versus eSport. It's about the best of the best facing off against each other to show who's the better player. If you go back to Warcraft II, the original Starcraft, and then Warcraft III after it, I think there's a lot of nostalgic memories around just playing Big Game Hunters with a large group of friends, or playing in team games against each other where the pressure wasn't that. I think a feature like this will help bring down the perception that SCII is only a game about playing competitively and at a super-high skill level, and that there is a way to interface in SCII that's not so focused on who's the most elite player.
A few months ago you stated there were no plans for a multiplayer free-to-play Starcraft II. Do you believe the Starter Edition and spawning is the better way of going about putting the game out to the masses?
I don't know if it's a better way or not. But I think some of the pitches--and this is my personal view on it--free-to-play is a great concept for some games, but the way Starcraft II is built, it's just not designed for stuff like skin and that sort of stuff that players have suggested so far. For what we have today, this does feel like the right answer. Whether free-to-play as a consumer product versus a boxed product on which one is better, it's hard for me to judge that. For that we've built, and how we built it, the Starter Edition/spawned way seems like the best way we can make it accessible to players, and the widest group of players.
The idea is that the game is most fun when you play with your friends, and that's what this feature lets you do easily. In free-to-play, it's more about how am I interacting with the purchase of this game myself, where this feature is approaching it like "What's an easy way to get players to be able to play with their friends?"
Is there a possibility of having one-versus-one ladder play unlocked in the future?
As you have to be in a party, there's no current plans to have the one-versus-one ladder active at this time. We'll continue to look and see how this is successful, and who knows what the future holds, but right now we don't have any plans in that direction.
Based on previous spawnings in older games, do you have any guess on how many will use this, or how much the player base will increase?
I have zero idea. (laughs) I think this will help educate the existing community and they'll understand it is actually very easy to share and get people into SCII, where maybe they didn't understand that.
Do you think spawning is the best way to get these people into Starcraft II--those who have a notion of the game as a one-versus-one hardcore eSport?
I think so. Having a friend along to help steer you in the right places is a hope. When you came over to somebody's house to play the game with friends in the old days, and that person knew, not only were they helping you play the game even though you didn't own it, they were also helping educate you on the fun. I think this is a really good way of having a guide along with you--"Let's try this; let's go do this." Without it, you need to figure that out for yourself. Being with a friend has that benefit to it where you can have that guide, where you can go, what you can do, and what's fun.
On June 05 2013 01:41 Rannasha wrote: Meh, I thought this was an awesome thing, but then came the "only one race" limitation. Close, but no cigar.
From what I understand, if you're spawning someone with Starter Edition they're still only limited to Terran, but WoL players still have access to all 3 races in HotS.
I really like this though, means I can finally invite a few friends of mine that don't have HOTS and didn't want to purchase it up to this point! Thank you for this awesome feature <3
I'd imagine that the one-race limit for starter editions could be circumvented in certain custom and arcade maps by an in-game race selection screen rather than using the lobby one.
On June 05 2013 01:41 Rannasha wrote: Meh, I thought this was an awesome thing, but then came the "only one race" limitation. Close, but no cigar.
From what I understand, if you're spawning someone with Starter Edition they're still only limited to Terran, but WoL players still have access to all 3 races in HotS.
Oh man that brings me back. My very first contact with Starcraft was 2v2v2v2 in the computer lab at school with a good 5-6 of those copies being spawns.
Hopefully this will help growth. The terran-only lock-out is somewhat understandable. A starter-edition player probably isn't intrinsically attached too deeply to either of the other races (and if he/she is, why doesn't he/she buy the game?).
Certainly a step in the right direction, and good to see that Blizzard is continuing to make substantial changes to improve appeal and playability.
Can't you just create a arcade map that just is a copy of a normal game but have an ingame race selector? OBS maps and such were basically copies of the normal game but with other features, I don't know if this is possible though.
Nice welcome addition to Starcraft 2 scene. Not something incredibly huge (it is much clunkier way of getting players into the game than straight up free-to-play model) but still a step taken in the right direction for growth.
I personally wish they just made standard ranked and unranked play f2p, with other features (custom game, arcade, unit skins) sold off in pieces with current retail option being the cheap bundle to buy all of the features.
Pretty cool! When I was a kid with no expendable income, having spawning on Warcraft 2 was what made hundreds of hours spent playing together with my brother possible. I always thought it was such a great feature. Nice to see them doing something similar again.
I wonder why Blizzard doesn't check the success of games like Dota2 and League... Why not make SC2 free to play and open a store much like the one in Dota2 where you can buy skins (e.g the dark zealot skins for protoss) and so on, buy decals, buy portraits or whatever. They'd probably make more cash out of it in the long run and they would attract so many more players.
I have countless of friends who refuse to buy Starcraft as it's quite expensive, especially when there's good and fun free games to play. What student or low incomer, except hardcore Starcraftfans, would BUY Starcraft when they have the option to play moba games for free?
Meh.
EDIT: Just need to clear this up: I am not whining that Blizzard charge people to play the game. I willingly paid for all the starcraft games as I am a huge fan. The reason I'm sad is because Starcraft could have been so much bigger and there could be so many more players.
On June 05 2013 02:35 sd_andeh wrote: I wonder why Blizzard doesn't check the success of games like Dota2 and League... Why not make SC2 free to play and open a store much like the one in Dota2 where you can buy skins (e.g the dark zealot skins for protoss) and so on, buy decals, buy portraits or whatever. They'd probably make more cash out of it in the long run and they would attract so many more players.
I have countless of friends who refuse to buy Starcraft as it's quite expensive, especially when there's good and fun free games to play. What student or low incomer, except hardcore Starcraftfans, would BUY Starcraft when they have the option to play moba games for free?
Meh.
What's quite funny though is that those f2p games fans usually spend a lot more than what sc2 currently costs. Or that's what i read from most LoL forums where people say they already spent well over 100€ on the game.
That being said unit skins for multiplayer... ugh, wouldn't like that. Unless there is an option to always show default skins.
On June 05 2013 02:35 sd_andeh wrote: I wonder why Blizzard doesn't check the success of games like Dota2 and League... Why not make SC2 free to play and open a store much like the one in Dota2 where you can buy skins (e.g the dark zealot skins for protoss) and so on, buy decals, buy portraits or whatever. They'd probably make more cash out of it in the long run and they would attract so many more players.
I have countless of friends who refuse to buy Starcraft as it's quite expensive, especially when there's good and fun free games to play. What student or low incomer, except hardcore Starcraftfans, would BUY Starcraft when they have the option to play moba games for free?
Meh.
EDIT: Just need to clear this up: I am not whining that Blizzard charge people to play the game. I willingly paid for all the starcraft games as I am a huge fan. The reason I'm sad is because Starcraft could have been so much bigger and there could be so many more players.
Because Mobas are team games and Starcraft 2 is mainly a 1vs1 game. People just doesn't care that much about cosmetic stuff when you only play with one other person.
ok i only have WOL and wish to play ladder in HOTS, thats not possible right since i need to party some1 else? I actually still dont get how it works, I log in into WOL and my friend is on HOTS, he cna invite me to party w/o me downloading HOTS patches?
This is a great change! It's a shame only terran is allowed, I think the incentive of being able to play games without your friends is enough to encourage people who can afford it to buy the game on its own. Hopefully that changes.
On June 05 2013 02:50 justiceknight wrote: ok i only have WOL and wish to play ladder in HOTS, thats not possible right since i need to party some1 else? I actually still dont get how it works, I log in into WOL and my friend is on HOTS, he cna invite me to party w/o me downloading HOTS patches?
the HotS patches are already in your game files even if you only have WoL. I assume you can only ladder 2v2
On June 05 2013 02:35 sd_andeh wrote: I wonder why Blizzard doesn't check the success of games like Dota2 and League... Why not make SC2 free to play and open a store much like the one in Dota2 where you can buy skins (e.g the dark zealot skins for protoss) and so on, buy decals, buy portraits or whatever. They'd probably make more cash out of it in the long run and they would attract so many more players.
I have countless of friends who refuse to buy Starcraft as it's quite expensive, especially when there's good and fun free games to play. What student or low incomer, except hardcore Starcraftfans, would BUY Starcraft when they have the option to play moba games for free?
Meh.
What's quite funny though is that those f2p games fans usually spend a lot more than what sc2 currently costs. Or that's what i read from most LoL forums where people say they already spent well over 100€ on the game.
That being said unit skins for multiplayer... ugh, wouldn't like that. Unless there is an option to always show default skins.
I already have that problem in the game though. As in, annoying zerglins-skins and so on. I still want that option no matter what.
On June 05 2013 02:35 sd_andeh wrote: I wonder why Blizzard doesn't check the success of games like Dota2 and League... Why not make SC2 free to play and open a store much like the one in Dota2 where you can buy skins (e.g the dark zealot skins for protoss) and so on, buy decals, buy portraits or whatever. They'd probably make more cash out of it in the long run and they would attract so many more players.
I have countless of friends who refuse to buy Starcraft as it's quite expensive, especially when there's good and fun free games to play. What student or low incomer, except hardcore Starcraftfans, would BUY Starcraft when they have the option to play moba games for free?
Meh.
EDIT: Just need to clear this up: I am not whining that Blizzard charge people to play the game. I willingly paid for all the starcraft games as I am a huge fan. The reason I'm sad is because Starcraft could have been so much bigger and there could be so many more players.
Because Mobas are team games and Starcraft 2 is mainly a 1vs1 game. People just doesn't care that much about cosmetic stuff when you only play with one other person.
Well, that doesn't really change the fact that we'd get so many more players through f2p. I'm sure most protosses would pay for the zealot skin. Or zergs pay for the raptor-zergling. Even if they don't, more players would only be good. Whenever I check facebook and watch for old friends, I see a lot of "non-gamers" who suddenly turned into gamers when they turned 20-25. However, they don't play sc2, they play MOBA. I don't like that.
So here's this thing that was the reason we kept LAN out of the game, but we're putting it in as a "feature", except it's actually less functional than what you could do in 1998 because you can only pick one race. It's like we're advancing both forwards AND backwards at the same time!
I don't normally make critical posts to announcements like this, but this seems kind of absurd. I suppose playing with cheap-o friends is cool. Although it sucks that they can only play one race.
That's a brilliant idea! It's a pretty great compromise to have people pirate the game to friend in order for them to try it out
The debate of having only Terran available is quite interesting. Businesswise it's probably a great idea. I can imagine Zerg and Protoss being very intriguing to try for someone who has only tried Terran (The most boring looking race )
On June 05 2013 03:10 Fix637 wrote: So here's this thing that was the reason we kept LAN out of the game, but we're putting it in as a "feature", except it's actually less functional than what you could do in 1998 because you can only pick one race. It's like we're advancing both forwards AND backwards at the same time!
I don't normally make critical posts to announcements like this, but this seems kind of absurd. I suppose playing with cheap-o friends is cool. Although it sucks that they can only play one race.
Nice ! I didn't think of buying HOTS , but with this i may end up reconsidaring it . So i can play with friends not owning either game and just playing with the starters edition ? That would certainly fire up the interest in any cheapskate wanting to try out the game .
That's how I played Warcraft 2. With my dad buying the game and then connecting two PCs. The memories... how things change, now the feature exists only because Blizz felt that the acquirent base can grow further.
It's interesting to see TL users praise a company for providing a feature (after selling a game and the expansion at the two-games full prize) that used to be standard years ago: makes me wonder if I'm too old, if money changes things that much, if people are stupid or if I'm too negative. Probably a mixture of all? It would be fun to see if, whenever LoTV will be launched, some Blizz guy will come up with a "hey guys we solved our problems! Now you have LAN!" - what would the community reaction be like?
On the other hand, one can answer that features aren't to be taken for granted, so I should be grateful in any case.
Am I the only one left with a sour taste in his mouth after hearing this news? Ironic that actually this is supposed to be good news...
Right now on NA, the Spawned player can select Protoss / Terran / Zerg. Can't select random (lol).
My spawned player had a Starter Edition, not even a WoL account. It may be a bug, it may be as intended (but I doubt it according to the official video).
On June 05 2013 03:37 Shade_FR wrote: Right now on NA, the Spawned player can select Protoss / Terran / Zerg. Can't select random (lol).
My spawned player had a Starter Edition, not even a WoL account. It may be a bug, it may be as intended (but I doubt it according to the official video).
no its not a bugg somone with started edetion can be spwaned
On June 05 2013 03:37 Shade_FR wrote: Right now on NA, the Spawned player can select Protoss / Terran / Zerg. Can't select random (lol).
My spawned player had a Starter Edition, not even a WoL account. It may be a bug, it may be as intended (but I doubt it according to the official video).
But wait – there’s more! [red]We’ve enabled the Protoss and Zerg races for the StarCraft II Starter Edition. That means all Starter Edition players can choose from all three races for a limited time.
Oh, the good old days, of installing SC Spawn on every computer in Comp.Sci. class and pissing off the teacher. THEY'RE BAAACCCKK!
EDIT: I think Blizzard should get on the advertising a little more heavily. They've made many changes since WoL that people don't necessarily know about. We can only badger our friends and relatives so much on their behalf and the only ads I ever see are reduced version of the intro with no information - all on SC2 streams, which is pretty much the height of pointlessness.
On June 05 2013 03:19 MavivaM wrote: That's how I played Warcraft 2. With my dad buying the game and then connecting two PCs. The memories... how things change, now the feature exists only because Blizz felt that the acquirent base can grow further. It's interesting to see TL users praise a company for providing a feature (after selling a game and the expansion at the two-games full prize) that used to be standard years ago: makes me wonder if I'm too old, if money changes things that much, if people are stupid or if I'm too negative. Probably a mixture of all? It would be fun to see if, whenever LoTV will be launched, some Blizz guy will come up with a "hey guys we solved our problems! Now you have LAN!" - what would the community reaction be like?
On the other hand, one can answer that features aren't to be taken for granted, so I should be grateful in any case.
Am I the only one left with a sour taste in his mouth after hearing this news? Ironic that actually this is supposed to be good news...
People are praising it because it isn't standard now. Christ just be happy that this feature has returned from an era where it wasn't even necessary due to games having almost no copy protection on disks and floppies.
As though any of my friends (or me) still play SC2...
Edit:
Instead of making a few simple changes to custom game lobbys that have been suggested since 2010, Blizzard continues to act as though the ladder is where people will most want to play. Hidden losses, unranked play, and spawning. Cool. Or, you know, they could just give us a proper custom games lobby (only one list available, showing only games currently open and being hosted, with kick privilages to the host).
Yeah, the Warcraft 3 system as an example looks like crap right now, but that's because of the spammy bots that over-host games with no players in them. The system was very good before the flooding of the bots (it's fine with only a few bots) that outnumbered the potential players.
But no, that might interfere with the marketplace idea they've been tossing around since Beta. Hur, hur.
I was about to post that i really like this and wanted to commend blizzard for it. Then i read that it is limited to one race ... its better than nothing but it doesnt impress me nearly as much as it would if it was not limited
On June 05 2013 04:47 [F_]aths wrote: Did someone try this? I did but I am still limited to Starter Edition. This is also true when I set my expansion level to WoL.
Nice, so we basically threw 40 Euro out of the window for the second copy of HoTS, because we (me and my wife) have two SC2s only to play team games together.
It seems so nice that Blizzard "gives away free stuff" but in fact, it is quite incosiderate to people who paid for the same thing a couple of months ago.
On June 05 2013 04:40 OblivionMage wrote: As though any of my friends (or me) still play SC2...
Edit:
Instead of making a few simple changes to custom game lobbys that have been suggested since 2010, Blizzard continues to act as though the ladder is where people will most want to play. Hidden losses, unranked play, and spawning. Cool. Or, you know, they could just give us a proper custom games lobby (only one list available, showing only games currently open and being hosted, with kick privilages to the host).
Yeah, the Warcraft 3 system as an example looks like crap right now, but that's because of the spammy bots that over-host games with no players in them. The system was very good before the flooding of the bots (it's fine with only a few bots) that outnumbered the potential players.
But no, that might interfere with the marketplace idea they've been tossing around since Beta. Hur, hur.
What does any of this have to do with anything? We get it, you liked the old custom games system. Apparently neither you nor any of your friends play SC2 any more, but you still feel the need to hang out on an SC2 forum and berate Blizzard for their handling of the game. None of that changes the fact that if Blizzard says, "Hey! We have a new feature!" responding with either "But I prefer other games these days" or "But there's this other feature of your game I disagree with" is entirely off-topic.
On June 05 2013 05:11 opisska wrote: Nice, so we basically threw 40 Euro out of the window for the second copy of HoTS, because we (me and my wife) have two SC2s only to play team games together.
It seems so nice that Blizzard "gives away free stuff" but in fact, it is quite incosiderate to people who paid for the same thing a couple of months ago.
You wouldn't believe the rage that Valve got when TF2 went F2P.
Yea I noticed this like 2 weeks ago when I got my friends to play SC2 Starter. When I made a game and added to my party we were able to play HOTS. They loved the game so much both of them bought SC2+Hots.
"But wait – there’s more! We’ve enabled the Protoss and Zerg races for the StarCraft II Starter Edition. That means all Starter Edition players can choose from all three races for a limited time."
my friend is terran so good for him. My question is, if my friend had donwloaded a starter edition of Starcraft 2, and I spawned him in HotS,how does that gonna work, Is he gonna be DL'ing the whole HotS content (which is pretty big) first? OR is starter edition has already HotS content but just locked ?
On June 05 2013 07:47 shin_toss wrote: my friend is terran so good for him. My question is, if my friend had donwloaded a starter edition of Starcraft 2, and I spawned him in HotS,how does that gonna work, Is he gonna be DL'ing the whole HotS content (which is pretty big) first? OR is starter edition has already HotS content but just locked ?
They should let people play all races and it would be fine like that. The only thing you couldn't do would be singleplayer, 1v1 and getting xp/some other stuff/clans etc.
But wait – there’s more! We’ve enabled the Protoss and Zerg races for the StarCraft II Starter Edition. That means all Starter Edition players can choose from all three races for a limited time.
How much is this limited time? edit: Answered in Slasher's interview with Chris Sigaty:
But, starting today up until the end of Sunday, all three races are available. We will go back to one race being active, but then we'll have weekends with promotions to switch the race or have multiple races active at once.
Thus ignore the rest I said. It's really nice that the races will be more or less available via this method. Limiting only to terran was a problem, because it's very possible for a newcomer to have watched competitions and already like some other race.
Blizzard talks new spawning option for Starcraft II by Rod "Slasher" Breslau
Production director Chris Sigaty explains why spawning is only just now coming to RTS, says company has done a poor job making gamers aware of Starter Edition.
Excerpt:
Spawning has been a feature in Blizzard games since Warcraft II and Starcraft: Brood War. As such a Blizzard-specific feature, why has it taken so long for this to come to Starcraft II?
I think priorities. This was something we talked about in the past but never really had a good vision for it. We were working on important features for the core game as we did Heart of the Swarm, and a lot of the patches that followed up Wings of Liberty that added things like Masters and Grand Masters leagues. If you go across the patches they were all adding newly important functionality. Then Heart of The Swarm drops with a whole bunch of great stuff, including things that make life easier for players to find each other, take command, all the new replay functionality, all that stuff felt more important. Now that we've had the bandwidth to do this, it just felt like the right time now that we've finally had a little bit of air to breathe into this feature.
On June 05 2013 11:49 Havik_ wrote: Pointless for the people on here since I'm assuming that if you're posting on TeamLiquid, you've probably already bought the game :p.
But now I can convince my friend to play HotS with me and he doesn't have to pay a cent.
On June 05 2013 11:49 Havik_ wrote: Pointless for the people on here since I'm assuming that if you're posting on TeamLiquid, you've probably already bought the game :p.
But now I can convince my friend to play HotS with me and he doesn't have to pay a cent.
Exactly this. Moreover, I don't have to buy the game as a present to a friend who might get embarrassed by this or think it's a waste of good money.
interesting, would had been much better if it was available in WoL because now most of my friends haven't played SC2 for months and obsessed in LoL now.
On June 05 2013 11:49 Havik_ wrote: Pointless for the people on here since I'm assuming that if you're posting on TeamLiquid, you've probably already bought the game :p.
I have plenty of friends who bought WoL but haven't purchased HOTS. Now they can play with me any time they want at no extra cost!
Come to think of it, now all my friends who bought WoL, played it for a bit and then switched to LoL can play with me any time they want without having to invest 40 bucks into HOTS. This is awesome.
Great idea by Blizzard IMO. Everyone who was going to buy HOTS has it already... making it free to play with friends only is smart, they're still not getting the full game and they might get hooked and want to buy it.
I have had almost no interest in learning another in depth game until I started listening to the GD studio show and then heard about this and I think I will give it a shot. SC was too complex for me to become good at as a kid, but maybe SCII won't prove to be that much harder than Dota2 in time.
Crazy that it even works for arcade maps! (this allows 1v1 or solo vs computer despite being in in the same party).
On June 05 2013 08:53 Kompicek wrote: still, this is very limited spawning, not a huge deal at all. at lan party still useless.
You mean at LANs without internet access it's useless. It's not really limited AT ALL aside from the fact it doesn't work offline. Sure it's an issue, but you can't really expect them to allow unlimited solo&multiplayer offline play until they have all the sales they can get.
For offline LAN/LAN party use you can still use 3rd-party/illegitimate server emulator; granted it's not sanctioned/condoned or anything.
I think considering most bw koreans played custom game sin pc bangs that this might be a brilliant move by blizzard.I remember the old wc3 days when I literally only played custom games.I also think this will give sc2 an edge over the moba genre.Seeing how now any user can play an infinite number of fun custom maps(including moba ones) for free while the moba gamers have to stick to the same 1 map(ok 4 in case of lol) might bring in a new wave of new players bore dof the entire moba craze.
I really didn't think I'd play another SC game since I was a kid but I am really enjoying this spawning play with my brother. I might even end up buying the game and sticking with it, so I can alternate being angry at Dota and SC. And finally my Diablo 3 money is put to use, I can now see all my friends on a friends list again in a real game, and I can call them shitters when I see they are logged into World of Warcraft.
Nice this should be a pretty cool feature for people like me who still haven't picked up hots. Quick someone make a spawn team recruitment thread! I think it's alright they're only letting spawned players play terran. . .I mean everyone just wants to make hellbats anyways right?
Oh, woah..... This Blizzard announcement should have been more clear:
Bumped up players will not be able to play more than 1 race, even if they have WoL (they can now, but that's limited-time). It's completely misleading to say that they're playing as if they had HotS or WoL, because those games allow all 3 race to be played! such misleading advertising!
Can you really only play terran if you are spawned from WoL to HoTS? I see a lot of different information on this.
Spawned Wings of Liberty players can only play the race(s) available to Starter Edition players. Currently, all three races are available to Starter Edition, so Wings of Liberty players can play all three when they are spawned. We will go back to one race being active (not necessarily Terran permanently), but we'll likely have promotions where we'll switch the race or have multiple races active at once. For more insight into Spawning, I recommend reading Slasher's interview with Chris Sigaty.
If they're allowing arcade access for the spawned users, I don't entirely see the point of limiting races since the arcade will allow those people to play the races that are restricted. It's just an extra hassle to deal with. I guess people do pay money to remove extra hassles though.
While I agree that the races restrictions is a bit misleading at first, it was obvious that they weren't going to let everyone who only have the Starter Edition or WoL play all 3 races in HotS as a spawned player. They still need to make as much sales as possible and this spawning feature might help them.
I'm glad that they released this new feature, finally convince my friend to buy WoL for now (since its 50% off on the blizz store) because of it. Now time to make him buy HotS asap since he can only play Terran in HotS.
EPT
![[image loading]](https://bnetcmsus-a.akamaihd.net/cms/content_folder_media/QGNTYBLH8SHC1370319272138.png)
]
