New StarCraft 2 Death Animations Video, Q&A Batch 51 Released

May 28th, 2009

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/v/BqYUNhBuodQ&autoplay=1 150 150]

A whole wad of new StarCraft 2 news just came out of nowhere today. All the forums lit up with the release of Q&A batch 51 from Karune (Blizzard Community Manager) and a new video showing us some awesome new death animations.

The entire Q&A can be viewed at SCLegacy. Karune drops the bombshell and states the Map Editor WILL be in the beta:

6. StarCraft II is a package consisting of single player/campaign, multiplayer (+replay viewer), map editor and Battle.net. All four are complex and without a doubt require testing and patching. Has it been decided which of the above components are set to be included in public beta testing?

You can have multiplayer game access through Battle.net during the beta and you can watch the replays as well. There will also be access to the Map Editor during the beta process but not necessarily from the start. Single player campaign will not be included in the beta.

He also confirms there will be no single player aspect at all, as we speculated here. I really enjoy Blizzard’s single player campaigns, so it is a tad annoying that we have to wait even longer to learn about the structure of StarCraft 2′s campaign. At least all those creative types will be able to craft interesting/shocking custom maps for us to play around with in-between intense Zerg-murderfests.

On a slightly unrelated note, the European World of WarCraft servers merged with Battle.net. This is, apparently, one of the final internal preparations for the StarCraft 2 beta.

What a great time to be a Blizzard fan.