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Chat with Devs:

StarCraft II is definitely evolving to be even more intense than the original StarCraft, with the increased mobility of units with cliff traversing abilities, as well as new transport abilities. In response, the development team has buffed up the Terran Planetary Fortress to have splash damage as well, which has proven to hold off decently against raids now, especially with your SCVs fixing the command center at a very high rate. As always, shoot the devs and I a w00t! if you are enjoying this Q&A batch!

- Karune

We haven't heard much about StarCraft 2 in a Blizzcast in a while, but this time around StarCraft 2 gets a good 12 minutes dedicated to the give and take process between the artists and game designers. Samwise Didier an Dustin Browder talk about everything from the Thor to Voltron, to a two-headed fire breathing flying Ultralisk.

Check out a new screenshot released by Blizzard as well as listen to the Blizzcast after the jump.

This is a rather lengthy but interesting press conference with Samwise Didier and Chris Sigaty from Blizzcon '08. It's in four parts so the others are after the jump. The green blur goes away in the first 5 seconds.

The other three parts of the press conference are after the jump. Enjoy!

I have talked to plenty of gamers out there who say "I can't wait for StarCraft 2! But, I'll have to upgrade my machine first." Well this post is for you. Kalos at StarCraftwire.net has done some more research and put together a list of hardware he recommends you buy if you are looking to upgrade for StarCraft 2.

The requirements I had in mind when selecting the below parts can be seen in my previous StarCraft 2 System Requirements article and to a lesser extent across the previous chapters of the Kalos Chronicles. Regarding the graphical requirements of StarCraft 2, we found solid proof from Blizzard's own development team when we uncovered the contents of the StarCraft 2 Graphics Requirements Confirmed article I wrote a few months back. With this in mind, a very quick and minimalistic summary for hardware requirements, here goes our current estimated recommendations:

Check'em out after the jump

I often don't link to or report on anything pro StarCraft related because for one, I'm more of a casual player, and two, I feel most people reading OMGStarCraft or Gamepro are casual gamers as well. Sure we all have our competitive sides, and I love to get on Battle.net and pound the snot out of some whiny 12-year old with my siege tanks as much as the next person. But I've never played any game for money and I have no trophies or ribbons to show either.

Alas, these opinions out of the pro StarCraft community are interesting and serve a purpose for any StarCraft fan that reads this blog. These impressions are detailed, informative, and sure to wet your appetite.

This is long. Really Long. While we tried to stay away from balance discussion, it inevitably comes up and this piece was no different. Please keep in mind that many of the complaints or issues people had will be fixed through the beta so they are hardly detrimental - the review build that we played was already out of date by the first day of blizzcon.

Read what Chill, Zatic, SpiralArchitect, Plexa, intrigue and NeoIllusions think about StarCraft 2 after the jump.

The guys at starcraftvine.com took the liberty of breaking the "no cam" policy while in the StarCraft 2 gameplay area at Blizzcon and the outcome is a nice HD video of a Terran player stomping a Protoss player into the ground.

Check it out after the jump!

Karune, aka Kevin Yu, Blizzard's RTS community manager, has finally settled back in after Blizzcon and spent some serious time answering people's questions on the latest build of StarCraft 2. Here is what he had to say:

Chat with Devs: After BlizzCon, it has been very exciting to see all the feedback from the fans and pro players about the latest build of StarCraft II. There was lots of noted feedback about both the Colossus and the Nydus Worms (which we are currently polling on right now in the gameplay forum: [link]). At my most recent meeting with Dustin, we decided to chat about some of the lesser focused on topics, that have undergone quite a few changes since the original StarCraft.

Blizzard has announced the five winners of their Halloween Pumpkin Carving Contest. The winners each receive a Logitech G51 Surround Sound Speaker System designed for gamers. The18 honorable mentions can be seen in Blizzard's gallery by CLICKING HERE.

This country has been slowly falling apart for the past 8 years and more recently has begun to endure the worst economic crisis since the great depression. But today that changes, today we elect a new president and with that comes the hope of change in our leadership's policies for the better. Today is a joyous day and in that spirit I want to make you, the readers, happy by compiling all the StarCraft II gameplay videos I can find from Blizzcon '08 for your viewing pleasure.

So If you're reading this right now and you haven't cast your ballot yet, shut off your monitor, get out of your chair, get into your car and go vote! Than come back and watch these videos. If you aren't old enough yet to vote, watch these videos first, than go watch some TV coverage of the election and try and learn something!

My fellow Americans, today we make history ... but until we hear who wins the election we mine as well watch some StarCraft II videos :)

Enjoy.

A Kerrigan animatic shown at Blizzcon, you may remember this scene from StarCraft

One thing that often gets overlooked at Blizzcon is the art panel. The room itself is jam-packed with fans asking all kinds of questions, but press coverage on the interwebs is usually minimal. That needs to change, the press needs to embrace Blizzard's motto of Bigger, Bolder, more Badass.

The magic that Blizzard creates is fueled not only by Chris Metzen, the man behind the stories, but by Samwise Didier and his team of extremely talented artists. I was able to sit in on the roughly 90-minute long panel discussion led by Didier and his minions, I mean colleagues, Allen Dilling (unit design) and Brian Sousa (level design). I left that room with a new found respect for what these guys do every day at their job, and I have to say I was a bit jealous.