StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm Released 271
Today Blizzard launched its first expansion to StarCraft 2, titled Heart of the Swarm. When initially developing StarCraft 2, Blizzard made the decision to split the game into three parts, each with a campaign as long as the original StarCraft. The initial release in 2010, Wings of Liberty, centered on the story of the Terrans. The newly-released Heart of the Swarm is focused on the Zerg. The final release, Legacy of the Void, will dedicate its campaign to the Protoss (and does not have a projected release timeframe yet). In addition to the new campaign, new units have been introduced for multiplayer and new maps have been added, which ought to shake things up in the competitive landscape. Blizzard has also made long-awaited improvements to the social system, including support for groups and clans.
Re:Hope the Auth Servers are Running! (Score:5, Informative)
"AT RELEASE", SC2: Wings of Liberty had an offline "guest" mode that could play single player and custom maps, but could not play any multiplayer (no LAN support). It continues to behave in exactly this way.
Re:Nuclear Options? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hope the Auth Servers are Running! (Score:5, Informative)
No...after more research, it was a bug, and it is mostly fixed. See here [battle.net] for details.
TL;DR:
Blizzard screwed up offline mode at one point.
Currently to go offline, you must have:
1) The game fully downloaded (makes sense)
2) Go online once after patching (they are working on fixing this).
So right now if you are a hermit in a cave with no online connectivity, but you happened to pick up the open wi-fi of a passing hiker and patch SC2, but then did not go online after the patch....then you are screwed.
Otherwise, yes, you can apparently play the campaign offline.
Re:Why am I at work? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Hope the Auth Servers are Running! (Score:4, Informative)
Yep...I first saw that thread last year, but never went back to read the entire follow up.
It's definitely a bug [battle.net], and mostly fixed at that.
Re:So far it's pretty good (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hope the Auth Servers are Running! (Score:5, Informative)