These living bombs are highly effective against both structures and ground forces; in fact, a clutch of them is capable of wiping out a group of vehicles and infantry in the blink of an eye. The banelings’ lethality is further enhanced by the zerg predilection for burrowing. An apparently safe area can soon turn into a deathtrap as these monstrosities emerge and roll into the midst of their foes, giving them virtually no time to react.

At first the baneling was identified as an unstable zerg mutation of an unspecified genus. Subsequent observations have revealed it to be a morph of the zergling, the most numerous zerg subtype. Zerglings have been seen entering a brief chrysalis phase before emerging in their new form. This alarming development has demonstrated the advanced ability of the zerg queens to manipulate their offspring. Although the baneling is chemically volatile and unstable enough to explode at any time, the queens have engineered a morph that can contain its energies until just the right moment. By creating the baneling out of the most basic of zerg fighters, the queens have also ensured that an inexhaustible supply of raw materials is available for the task.

Terran commanders now train their troops to watch for these abominations. In the meantime, scientists are desperately trying to develop chemical rounds that will cause banelings to detonate before they reach terran lines.

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Welcome to the beta test of Starcraft II!

We’re excited to have reached the beta-testing stage for Starcraft II and our upgraded Battle.net service, and we’d be grateful to have you join us during the next few months of fine tuning.

Getting started:
Along with the beta of Starcraft II, we are rolling out our new Battle.net delivery system which will serve as the primary channel for downloading the game and its updates. In order to participate, you will need to use the Battle.net account associated with this email address.

In an effort to test our distribution system in a high load environment, we are giving a few days lead so that a large number of beta testers have the opportunity to read this email first. Our planned activation is Tuesday, March 31st at 6 PM PDT.

To see what time it is in your time zone, please check here:
http://www.timeanddate.com/

After that time, you will be able to login to your Battle.net account at http://us.battle.net and download the “Battle.net Client (Beta)” which adds a host of new features to Battle.net including:

* A global friends list between all Blizzard games
* The ability to quickly join or observe your friends’ games
* Detailed statistics and rankings for each game
* Track the global achievements of you and your friends
* And much, much more!

In addition, it will serve as the launch pad for Starcraft II and will automatically begin downloading your authenticated copy once you run it for the first time. Once the game is installed, you will be able to access the Battle.net Client from within the game or as a standalone desktop application.

Sending us feedback:
In the bottom left corner of the Battle.net Client (CTRL-SHIFT-B from within Starcraft II) there is a button called ‘Feedback’ which will bring up a place for you to report any bugs or suggestions. We also welcome feedback on the official Starcraft II forums at http://forums.battle.net/board.html?forumId=12009&sid=3000

Please retain this email for your records. If you experience any technical issues getting started or while playing, please email support at SC2Support@blizzard.com.

We look forward to seeing you online soon!

It’s unknown if this is a real mail or not at this time, and we’ll find out if more fans get the same e-mail. Please report in to us if you have received a similar e-mail!

Before believing the mail to be authentic, consider the following:

* The mail is slightly different in style than other mails sent out by Blizzard.
* Blizzard rarely use third party links in their mails, the timezone link seems out of place.
* Blizzard likes to make a big thing out of things like their betas, so even considering sending any form of mass mail (even to a small group) revealing the Beta start date is unlikely.

1) Register on Battle.net

Got to Battle.net, and log in with a Blizzard Account, WoW account or make a new account. Making multiple accounts will likely not work, as this is a brand new system, and Blizzard will most likely have checks for the beta opt-ins to not count people with the same name/addresses twice. If you do get chosen, and have multiple accounts, they could possibly discount you. An easy tip is “don’t cheat”, and it should all work out fine!

2) Authenticate your account

Just make sure your account is authenticated, through the function on Battle.net that sends you an e-mail. Not 100% sure if it matters, but it might do!

3) Go to Preferences

This is the important part. Click on Communication Preferences, and wait a few seconds for a pop-up window to appear with two choices…

4) Opt-in for future beta’s (Including the Starcraft 2 Beta)

You now get a window that looks like the image below, and you can choose if you want to receive the Blizzard Insider news letter or not, and if you want to participate in the Blizzard Beta Opt-in or not. This should be two easy choices! The “Blizzard Beta” is in this particular case the StarCraft II beta. They have not yet started drawing names, but will likely do so soon.

• How much damage did that Reaper raid do on the enemy economy?
• Does it look like the enemy is going to be able to make a comeback?
• Is that player walking into a losing battle?

These are all questions that are raised in exciting competitive games and replays. With the new replay system, players and eSports casters will be able to follow these games in much more depth, as well as understand the repercussions of players’ major decisions on the battlefield. Players will be able to easily compare statistics of opposing players in real time as well as make their own predictions based on stats comparing army size, resource collection rate, resource allocations, and tech research in progress.

** Replay UI is still very much work in progress
*** Shown are two tabs of various info tabs the player will be able to view while viewing a replay

As always, feel free to give the Devs and I a w00t if your enjoying these Q&As!

—StarCraft II Q&A Batch 50—

1. Overlord can be upgraded to carry units, and spawn creep, and Overseer can detect, spawn changeling, and has a longer line of sight. Why not just have the Overlord upgraded with these abilities, rather than have him transform? – Mooiki (Lordaeron)

We want each race’s detection ability to be well balanced. We don’t want to see every Overlord with detection after upgrading the ability once at Lair. Separating detection capability into two units creates important choices for Zerg players, to ensure their army has enough support of each type available.

2. Any support for stereoscopic play? - Ylleks (Azeroth)

Stereoscopic vision can be an interesting feature, as we’ve seen with the recently added support in World of Warcraft and other games. For now however, the team is concentrating on the core aspects of StarCraft II and making sure the core features of the game that will be used by everyone are as good as can be. Later on down the road we can evaluate more features like this and see if they make sense to support in StarCraft II.

3. At previous events with playable StarCraft II stations we often saw players doing classic Brood War build orders and tactics. Taking all the new things into account, how far do you get with playing just like in Brood War? Is it a clear disadvantage or a good way to start? - instarcraft.de

It will depend on the player’s play type and creativity. The experience and skills from the original StarCraft will definitely help players get familiar with StarCraft II. However, there are a lot more units, abilities, and buildings in StarCraft II than the original StarCraft. Players can always start out playing in the way that they used to play in the original StarCraft. As they grow more comfortable with the game they can begin exploring the new units and abilities and discover lots of new strategies. It’s not a matter of advantage or disadvantage, it depends more on the players’ play styles and preferences.

4. Will it be possible to use characters to colour ingame text like in SC1? – StarCraftWire.net

No, currently there is no in-game colored text support. Colored text was a neat trick in the original game, but we wanted to ensure that all in-game communication is clear and easily-readable, so we’re only supporting default text style.

5. In the single player, you said we can choose from the missions and the way we want to go forward. Will it be like we definitely will play all the missions and we can choose the order, or does it mean that probably we will miss some missions? – StarCraft II Hungary

In most cases, you’ll be able to go back and explore a mission branch that you skipped earlier in the campaign, so you can experience almost all of the missions in a single play-through of the campaign. There may be a couple of rare cases where a choice you make closes off a mission, however.

6. Will campaign decisions in the Terran portion affect campaign outcomes/branches in the Zerg and Protoss portions? - TheWarCenter

We looked into this possibility, but after some debate, we decided it was most important that each campaign delivers a self-contained, yet epic storyline. Giving each campaign a single start and ending was the best way to ensure a coherent plot.

7. In the original StarCraft, you could make the Lurker (through bug use), while burrowed, hold fire until told to attack, something which led to many exciting situations. Are there any plans to include a “hold fire” command for the Lurker in SC2? In addition, worker units lacked Hold and Patrol commands in SC, will this be the case in SC2 as well? – Team Liquid (Zanric)

There is no hold fire command for Lurker in the current build. However we will look into every possibility that encourages more tactical, exciting gameplay and keeps the game balanced.

The folks over at Tom’s Hardware have put a great write together on a custom built Puget Systems PC. 4 Quad Core processors, multiple RAID setups, 39 fans (slightly overstated), and $16,000 later you have a super computer for complex fractal equations that is as loud as a fly and runs slightly warmer than your refrigerator.

I’d still let to see what the FPS is on a high end game.

- Waldo

On their own, siege tanks were vulnerable to a melee assault, or any assault. This often led to marine/medivac combos backing them up a short range behind the gigantic arclite siege tanks. Starcraft 2’s answer to this obvious weakness? The Crucio has improved survivability, at an additional cost of minerals/vespane gas, which should make it more effective in an open battlefield. This should make the siege tank more playable in an open map.

Observing the siege tank against light infantry on Blizzard’s site is encouraging 5 marines, with a medic only last three blasts from the powerful shock cannon. The doctor is dead just one shot later. This means the total costs of the 5 marines and medic (At least 250 minerals for the 5 marines + whatever the medic costs) is more than the 200 minerals and 150 vespane gas for the siege tank.

From Starcraft 2 Q&A 25

1. Does the Nomad have all the abilities an SCV has? (Of course it has its own abilities, but it would be interesting to know if you can at least temporarily replace lost SCVs with Nomads in a game.)

No, Nomads will not have the abilitis of a SCV. The buildings a Nomad will be able to build, will be unique to the Nomad unit. And you cant gather resources with a Nomad.

So Karune, you are telling me I have to build two support units if I’m Terran? Basically, yes. That is the case. Imagine building two different peons, wisps, or acolytes in Warcraft 3. Wait a minute — Undead has one for mining lumber (ghoul) and another for gold/building (acolyte). Even with the lack of the ability to gather resources, the Nomad appears to line up well, in theory, with the ghoul.

Nomads are normally employed for first-line colony surveillance and protection duties against dangerous local life forms or climate events. These vehicles boast an impressive array of sensors delicate enough to detect even cloaked or burrowed enemies. By deploying its two aft-mounted nano-welders, the nomad can construct a variety of small, semi-permanent defensive structures to meet various threats in a matter of moments.

The introduction of these two abilities (build the autoturret and detect cloaked units) give the Nomad a high level of utility at all levels of game play. Imagine having a walking, breathing “dust of appearance”? This unit get’s 4 sexy protoss chicks out of 5 in my semi unofficial, official rating system.