The World Championship Series (WCS, check out an overview of the series) had two major events culminate this weekend: the South Korea National Championship and the North America Continental Championship. The South Korea national championship is perhaps the most competitive national tournament, rewarding the top 10 players with large cash prizes and a full trip and seed to the WCS Asian Championship. The tournament had a strong showing for Protoss players; the top 3 finishers all played Protoss, and every round saw more than a third of the participants play the enigmatic race. All-in-all, seven Protoss and three Zerg players qualified for the Asian Championship from South Korea, including such popular players as HerO, Squirtle, Rain, and Parting.
The North America Championship in Raleigh, North Carolina featured the winners from the national championships in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The top 9 players secure their spot at the World Championship. Acer.Scarlett, the winner of the Canada National Championship, was favored by many to take the tournament. A newcomer to the scene, she has only a couple of tournaments under her belt, yet has defeated some of the strongest players in her WCS run. She went 2-0 versus HuK in the Canada National, and again took 2-0 against him in the quarterfinals of the North America Championship. After defeating Vibe, she secured her spot in the finals. Currently 10-1, she will again play Vibe in the final match. The winner of the tournament wins a hefty $24,000 in addition to the World Championship trip, while second place takes home a cool $9,000.
Major League Gaming just wrapped up its Spring Championship this weekend. With four million viewers online and over 20,000 viewers and participants at the venue, it was easily of the biggest video game events to date. It featured three separate StarCraft 2 tournaments: the Battle.net World Championship Series USA National Finals, the MLG Spring Championship, and the KeSPA exposition tournament. On top of the e-sports features there, Blizzard offered game stations with Heart of the Swarm multiplayer and unveiled a lot of Heart of the Swarm information. The beta will be available very soon.
Blizzard produced a nice video demoing the new units and main changes to existing units. It offers a great overview:
Husky is famous for his StarCraft commentary. Just about any StarCraft player has made some sort of joke based on his trademark “H to usky, Husky” opening he uses for his videos. The StarCraft community exploded when he released this video to celebrate his 300,000th subscriber on YouTube, and I’ve been playing the song on loop ever since.
In the video, Husky plays the role of a Terran player matched up against a Zerg and is having problems with banelings. He has a short rapping part and stars in his raging segments, but the video is largely starring and produced by a well-known YouTuber, Kurt Hugo Schneider.
Ever wonder what it might be like to see two of your favorite Blizzard games collide in an epic battle? No, we’re not talking about cosplayers from this year’s BlizzCon (though that could be interesting). Instead, check out this video by Blizzmeng of the Zerg invasion on Azeroth. They come fast, furious and dirty — who will win? Could this be one common enemy that would unite Alliance and Horde together in battle?
Who do you think would win if the Zerg initiated a full-on invasion of Azeroth? You know they’re floating out there in space somewhere — perhaps not too far from a neighboring Blizzard world. I think we have the makings of the next post-Cataclysm expansion!
When you clear the campaign for StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty, you are treated to a great song called “Terran Up the Night,” written and performed by Blizzard’s own Elite Tauren Chieftains. You might have heard this song live at past Blizzard events. To me, it really shines as one of their most well-performed songs. For a bunch of designers and engineers, they aren’t half bad.
If you don’t want to wait to beat the game, type “overengineeredcodpiece” during the campaign when you can see the jukebox and you’ll have the option to play the song. I’ve been looking for an mp3 to no avail. Thankfully, enigmayshi made an awesome music video using StarCraft 2 cutscenes and cinematics.
Blizzard has released a list of the top 200 players on the US servers on the official StarCraft 2 blog. The rankings seem to be by points. The company plans to release an updated list every couple of weeks, and eventually implement a system to have the top tier of players have a more comprehensive and competitive league system than the current implementation. Blizzard intends to introduce a “pro league” as well as tournament features and more in the future.
The current system works great for non-pro players, but players that are the number 1 player in their diamond league may or may not rank among the top players. Some divisions seem to be “stacked” with multiple top tier players. Diamond Medivac Alamo and Diamond Medic Mu have many, many players in the top 200.
Here are the top 50, click-through to Blizzard for the complete list. Continue Reading
We’re only about a week out from the game’s release and the hype train is in full gear with a new, extended trailer featuring many of the characters we’ve come to know and love in full, glorious, high-definition! It turned out to be the final unlock in the promotional “Join the Domion!” event. Of course, with the launch version of StarCraft II containing the Terran campaign, the trailer focuses primarily on the struggle between Raynor and Mengsk, as well as his regret over what happened to Kerrigan. What I see here gives me very high hopes for the story and the cinematic way in which the game will play out.
But, really, “Ghosts of the Past” kind of speaks for itself…
*squeal*
And, yes Blizzard, I did catch the pun in the title.
In this first video highlighting a Starcraft II UMS, I’ll take a look at the AC130 Escort custom map. In it you can take on the role of an AC130 gunner, defending a caravan of Terran against waves of Zerg.
You can download the map at Curse or SC2Mapster. If you have any maps that you think deserve a feature or are looking for a particularly good UMS of a certain genre, drop a line in the comments.
The World Championship Series (WCS, check out an overview of the series) had two major events culminate this weekend: the South Korea National Championship and the North America Continental Championship. The South Korea national championship is perhaps the most competitive national tournament, rewarding the top 10 players with large cash prizes and a full trip and seed to the WCS Asian Championship. The tournament had a strong showing for Protoss players; the top 3 finishers all played Protoss, and every round saw more than a third of the participants play the enigmatic race. All-in-all, seven Protoss and three Zerg players qualified for the Asian Championship from South Korea, including such popular players as HerO, Squirtle, Rain, and Parting.
