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Looks like the guys at Blizzard are hard at work and have applied patch 2 to the beta. Here’s a list of changes. Looks like small Terran buffs and small Protoss nerfs.

StarCraft II Beta – Patch 2 (version 0.4.0.14133)

Balance Changes

• Terran
  • Banshee
    • Cloak: This ability no longer requires Fusion Core to research.
  • Barracks
    • The build time for this building has decreased from 65 to 60.
  • Factory
    • The build time for this building has decreased from 65 to 60.
  • Reactor
    • The build time for this building has decreased from 40 to 25.
  • Reaper
    • The build time for this unit has increased from 30 to 40.
    • Nitro Boost: The build time for this upgrade has increased from 90 to 100.
  • Starport
    • The build time for this building has decreased from 55 to 50.
  • Tech Lab
    • The build time for this building has decreased from 30 to 25.
• Protoss
  • Mothership
    • The build time for this unit has increased from 120 to 160.
    • The food cost of this unit has increased from 6 to 8.
    • The number of shots fired by this unit has decreased from 8 to 6.
    • The shield of this unit has decreased from 400 to 350.
    • The health of this unit has decreased from 400 to 350.
    • The acceleration of this unit has decreased from 1.3125 to 0.3125.
    • The deceleration of this unit has increased from 0 to 1.
  • Nexus
    • Chrono Boost: The duration of this ability has decreased from 30 to 20.
• Zerg
  • Corruptor
    • The damage done by this unit has increased from 12 (+8 massive) to 12 (+10 massive).

Tower defense is pretty awesome. I loved it in Warcraft 3. Some awesome dudes made a flash Starcraft one. You should definitely give it a play.

I’m sure most everyone has seen this. If you haven’t seen it shame on you cause it’s freaking awesome. It’s the opening cinematic for Starcraft 2 that was teased at Blizzcon 08.

If you listened to the podcast you heard but if not they say they’re still trying to get Starcraft 2 out for the summer. Let’s all hope, keep up the great work Blizzard!

“We were targeting three to five months for the beta, we’re really at a three month period of time for the beta at this point,” StarCraft II production director Chris Sigaty said in a recent BlizzCast podcast. “We are still targeting the first half of this year, so with that in mind, it really shortens the window of time with our major content patch coming out pretty close to the end whether it’s even worth it putting out the map editor at that point.”

Blizzcast Podcast

Found this sweet gameplay video to check out. Looks like the Zerg and the Protoss are at it again! Then those pesky Terrans butt in.

You gotta hear this update to the Blizzard podcast. It’s a Starcraft 2 Beta special so you’ll dig it I’m sure.

You can listen here.

Hah well they’ve finally released the first patch and looks like they’ve found quite a few balance issues to address. Good news for those who were getting slaughtered by the cheese

Check out the update

TERRAN

Viking
The armor value for this unit in Fighter Mode has decreased from 1 to 0.
The damage done by this unit in Fighter Mode has changed from 6 (+8 armored) to 10 (+4 armored).

Reaper
The damage done from D-8 Charges has decreased from 40 to 30.
The delay between attacks for D-8 Charges has decreased from 2.5 to 1.8.

Orbital Command
The build time for this upgrade has decreased from 50 to 35.

PROTOSS

Observer
Gravitic Boosters: The cost of this research has decreased from 150 minerals and 150 vespene gas to 100 minerals and 100 vespene gas.

High Templar
Phase Shift: This ability has been removed from the game.
New ability: Feedback – Drains all energy from the target unit and causes damage equal to the amount of energy drained.

Colossus
The building pathing radius for this unit has decreased from .75 to .5625.

Mothership
Vortex: The energy cost of this ability has increased from 75 to 100.
Vortex: The target radius of this ability has decreased from 3.0 to 2.5.
Temporal Rift: This ability has been removed from the game.
Wormhole Transit: This ability has been removed from the game.
New ability: Mass Recall – Teleports all of the player’s units in the target area to the Mothership.

Nexus
Chrono Boost can no longer target allies.

Gateway
The build time of this building has increased from 50 to 65.

ZERG

Infestor
Fungal Growth: The damage done by this ability has decreased from 48 to 36.
Fungal Growth: This ability now prevents affected units from burrowing.
Neural Parasite: Functionality changed – The Infestor now channels this spell, which lasts 10 seconds or until the Infestor is destroyed. You can now target all units with this ability.
Terran Infestation: The ability’s energy cost has reduced from 50 to 25 and Infested Terrans now spawn 1 at a time.

BUG FIXES

Addressed an issue causing people to receive an “Internal Battle.net Error” message with their game client.

Muting your microphone will no longer cause your microphone to be turned off in the operating system once the program has exited.

Please note that the voice chat functionality has only partially been implemented. There are many known issues with voice chat that we expect to address in a future patch.

The “Medium” graphical settings were reconfigured to work better on appropriate machines. The video settings “auto-detect” functionality has been reset as a result.

Added a frame rate limiter to the game menus to prevent some graphics cards from running at higher frame rates than necessary.

Get your credit cards ready it’s time to preorder Starcraft 2 to make sure you can get to blasting zerglings on day 1. We’ve found a couple options for you that we recommend

1) EBGames

The best part is that they let you pickup in store so you don’t have to sit around waiting for that pesky delivery guy.

2) Amazon

Always provides great service and prices. Right now the price is standard but should go down later at Amazon if experience has taught us anything.

So pop out those wallets and get to ordering.

I’ve heard good things about the Starcraft 2 engine and it’s ability to run on older systems which of course is great. But this is really cool. These guys have made a visual comparison of running at max and minimum system settings for us to check out.

Check out their whole comparison!

Finally after lots of waiting on the parts of all the Starcraft fans out there Blizzard has opened up the Starcraft 2 multiplayer beta. This means we’re one step closer to release which is awesome.

Hopefully we’ll get access here at baneling.net soon and can provide some awesome live stream games for you guys to check out.

It looks like invites are going out in waves so if you haven’t gotten one you still may just keep crossing your fingers. And make sure you’ve signed up at battle.net to be considered for beta. More info on that can be found here.