ANAHEIM, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The interstellar battle between the terran, zerg, and protoss is about to consume even more of the galaxy, as Blizzard Entertainment today announced that the ultimate real-time strategy game will soon be free to play.
The Legacy of the Void Campaign is focusing on Artanis, leader of the Protoss race. Units; Units in the campaign are unlocked by playing the mission that introduces them, as indicated in the Missions section below. Afterwards, the unit is available to be built in all following missions, making the order in which the missions are. StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void has a late-game mission that encapsulates what its campaign should be. You control the alien Protoss, fighting alongside both a Human and a Zerg base. Discover the best Game Key offers, compare prices to download and play StarCraft 2 - Campaign Collection at the best cost. Compare the CD Key price from suppliers all around the world. Activate CD Keys on your Battle.net client to download the games and play in multiplayer or singleplayer. StarCraft® II: Campaign Collection. Info History Stats Regions. 3,230th most popular. Historical Low: Blizzard on 2018-06-20: 50% off: $19.99: Current Best: Blizzard. Battle for Aiur with three unique Protoss-inspired portraits and a new unit skin for StarCraft II, an Archon pet for World of Warcraft, a Protoss-themed card back for Hearthstone, and a Probe pet and Protoss transmog for Diablo III. Plus, you'll be the most intimidating player in the Nexus with your awe-inspiring Void Speeder Mount.
Beginning November 14, players around the world will get free access to the full award-winning Wings of Liberty® campaign and the elite multiplayer competition of StarCraft® II's ranked ladder, including all the latest units and balance updates through the latest release in the series, Legacy of the Void™. Players will also enjoy expanded access to StarCraft II's highly popular co-op mode, with all Co-op Commanders playable for free.†
'StarCraft II is one of the highest-rated PC games of all time, and we're excited to give even more people around the world a chance to find out why it has inspired such a passionate global community,' said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. 'With the massive Wings of Liberty single-player campaign, endlessly replayable co-op mode, prestigious ranked ladder, comprehensive map-making tools, and more, StarCraft II now delivers the ultimate real-time strategy experience completely free.'
Those whowish to experience later chapters in the StarCraft II story can purchase the additional single-player campaigns, Heart of the Swarm®, Legacy of the Void®, and Nova Covert Ops®,individually ($14.99 USD each) or together in the Campaign Collection ($39.99) through the online Blizzard Shop. For a limited time, players who already own Wings of Liberty (as of October 31, 2017) but have not yet purchased Heart of the Swarm will be able to get the latter campaign free by logging in to the Blizzard Battle.net® desktop app and claiming their free Heart of the Swarm gift between November 8 and December 8, 2017.
As a thank-you to the dedicated StarCraft II player community, those who already own any version of StarCraft II prior to October 31, 2017 will receive a special Eidolon Ghost skin and three portraits commemorating their founder's status in the game after StarCraft II goes free starting on November 14.
StarCraft II is available today for Windows® and Mac® PCs fully localized into English, Brazilian Portuguese, European and Latin American Spanish, French, German, Italian, Polish, Russian, Korean, and simplified and traditional Chinese. Learn more about the game at www.starcraft2.com.
†Access to ranked ladder granted after earning first 10 wins of the day in Unranked mode or Versus A.I. mode, or upon purchase of any campaign, the Campaign Collection, or the War Chest. Co-op Commanders available for play free of charge through level five. Terraria 1 3 mobile gameplay. Purchase required to advance a Co-op Commander beyond level five—with the exception of Raynor, Kerrigan, and Artanis, which are free to play up to and beyond level five.
About Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. Is catalina available.
Best known for blockbuster hits including World of Warcraft®, Hearthstone®, Overwatch®, the Warcraft®, StarCraft®, and Diablo® franchises, and the multi-franchise Heroes of the Storm®, Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. (www.blizzard.com), a division of Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ: ATVI), is a premier developer and publisher of entertainment software renowned for creating some of the industry's most critically acclaimed games. Blizzard Entertainment's track record includes twenty-one #1 games* and multiple Game of the Year awards. The company's online-gaming service is one of the largest in the world, with millions of active players.
*Sales and/or downloads, based on internal company records and reports from key distribution partners.
Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-looking Statements: Information in this press release that involves Blizzard Entertainment's expectations, plans, intentions or strategies regarding the future, including statements about the features, functionality, and release dates of free StarCraft II content and the price, availability, and release dates of Heart of the Swarm, Legacy of the Void, Nova Covert Ops, and the Campaign Collection are forward-looking statements that are not facts and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause Blizzard Entertainment's actual future results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements set forth in this release include unanticipated product delays and other factors identified in the risk factors sections of Activision Blizzard's most recent annual report on Form 10-K and any subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. The forward-looking statements in this release are based upon information available to Blizzard Entertainment and Activision Blizzard as of the date of this release, and neither Blizzard Entertainment nor Activision Blizzard assumes any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements believed to be true when made may ultimately prove to be incorrect. These statements are not guarantees of the future performance of Blizzard Entertainment or Activision Blizzard and are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, some of which are beyond its control and may cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations.
StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void has a late-game mission that encapsulates what its campaign should be. You control the alien Protoss, fighting alongside both a Human and a Zerg base. An overwhelming enemy launches attacks, and other characters discuss how to stop them. Yet you're the protagonist, shifting your troops from one spot to the next will allow defenses to win, while each successful attack provides a space for you or your allies to move forward. It's a gloriously chaotic, chatty mess.
The problem: It's just one mission. The bigger problem: It's just one mission in an epilogue, after 20 missions of the main single-player campaign being about the Protoss dithering around alone, with Kerrigan's Zerg and Raynor's Humans barely around. It can be a slog, which is a surprise given Blizzard's history of success at making real-time strategy campaigns.
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What you'll like
A Blizzard tradition
Blizzard's success in RTS design relies on the combination of two things: a propulsive story and clever mission design. Both have existed in Blizzard games since the original StarCraft and Warcraft 3. The first two installments of StarCraft 2 each had simple, personal stories — Raynor wants to track down Kerrigan, and Kerrigan wants to track down Raynor — which were good enough to hang the games on to, letting the mission and campaign design do their work.
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The mission design of Legacy of the Void stands alongside its predecessors. Few of the missions are straightforward, RTS-style build-base-and-smash-enemy. They try to keep you moving, usually by spreading objectives across the map, forcing you to weigh a smash-and-grab versus maintaining a strong defense. Desert night casino.
Clever mission design
Some of them are exceptionally clever. My favorite had your base on a moving platform, which shifts up and down around a space station on a track, seeking resources and defenses to maintain a battle fleet that would do the bulk of the fighting. Another standout involves an invincible duel between two characters, who gain strength from the presence of nearby allies.
Even the traditional hero dungeon of taking a couple of super-characters like Artanis gets a pleasant remix in a late mission in which all of the Protoss characters split up into three wildly different, fast-paced sections. Yet Legacy of the Void can be a little too reliant on the straightforward base defense mission, particularly in the endgame.
Above: Big battles are signature Blizzard RTS design.
It's when these missions connect to the wider campaign that issues arise. Legacy of the Void, like both Heart of the Swarm and Wings of Liberty before it, offers a slow campaign of acquiring new units and customizing them. Those customization options are fascinating, as well, with different Protoss factions offering different options, like the Dark Templar Stalker units as a basic assault unit, while the Aiur faction offers a StarCraft I-style Dragoon instead. But Void lacks the experimentation missions of Swarm, where you got to toy with each decision before setting it up. It feels like an option in a game here, instead of a small part of a greater whole.
What you won't like
A muddled story
Indeed, Legacy of the Void's campaign never really coheres in the way its predecessors did. Its core problem is that it attempts to achieve two separate goals with one glaring flaw. The goals: Create a Protoss campaign that focuses on them in the way that the previous two installments focused on Humans and Zerg; and craft a climactic final chapter of the StarCraft 2 trilogy of the great war against Amon. The weakness: The Protoss are really boring from a character perspective.
Above: Artanis [right] and Karax hold an 'important' conversation.
Across the 20 missions of the main campaign, it barely has a two-dimensional character to be found, let alone three. Every Protoss character seems unable to speak in anything except earnest declarations. A sample conversation between Artanis, leader of the Protoss, and Karax, his engineer, might go like this:Karax: 'I've discovered a new cool thing that our Solar Core can do! Let me explain it to you!'
Artanis: 'That sounds helpful! You should keep trying to find more new stuff!'
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Karax: 'What a good idea! I'll get right to work!'
These conversations, filled entirely with exclamation marks, occur after every mission. Sometimes twice, after traveling to a new system. And yes, they're mostly skippable, but these conversations were a reward, or at least not a chore, in the previous two incarnations of StarCraft 2. Safari supported versions. More important, this insipid earnestness carries over to every other aspect of the campaign — there's no entertaining banter in-mission or out.
Above: Kerrigan drives by and waves hello.
An earnest apocalypse
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I can forgive Protoss dullness, though, in better circumstances. They are the dour elder race of the StarCraft universe, so of course their game was going to be like this. But combining this self-seriousness with the epic finale of the end of the war with Amon is a recipe for turgid disaster. Planets are destroyed, races are driven to near-extinction, grand alliances are made, but because Void focuses so entirely on the Protoss, all this occurs without a character worth caring about. Raynor and Kerrigan, the main characters of StarCraft, do little more but drive by and wave for a mission or two (which, unsurprisingly, tend to be the most interesting missions of the entire game).
Meanwhile, Legacy of the Void suffers tremendously from the lack of a villain character, which Mengsk provided in the first two incarnations. Amon may be evil, but he's almost entirely silent, and his motivations are thoroughly boring compared to the grasping, venal, thoroughly human Arcturus. It says a lot, none of it good, about the core campaign of Void that the final cutscene of the StarCraft 2 saga doesn't even mention Artanis or the mainstream Protoss.
Conclusion
And then StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void concludes with an epilogue that actually includes all three races, and almost all the major characters. It's the story, and missions, that the game should have been, but it too suffers from being compressed into a tiny three missions.
Free roulette table. Some individual missions may stand out, both in the main campaign and in the too-short epilogue, but the baffling divisions make Legacy of the Void the weakest single-player campaign of the StarCraft 2 trilogy.
Score: 73/100
StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void is out now for PC and Mac. The publisher provided GamesBeat with a digital copy of the game for the purposes of this review.
