Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 5 2012, 10:47 pm by Ahli.

Thank you for this.

Ho boy.

I just realized that I may have some beta keys coming my way once that starts, so I can probably give some out as prizes or something for our own contests as well.

When you say "prizes" does that mean for sc2 contests or sc1 contests? Or both?

If I get enough keys, probably both (assuming the winner of the SC1 contest has SC2).

huh? You need StarCraft 2 (aka WoL) to play HotS beta? Somehow I thought it would be a standalone expansion.

I'm not sure, I just assumed that Blizzard would take back it's claim that they were standalone games and require
WoL (at least for the beta). If not then, then that won't be a requirement to win.

Uhm, all maps require assets. So it might be stupid to make HotS a stand-alone game because then you can't play all arcade maps. These maps might use Wings of Libertey and Heart of the Swarm assets which is very likely for all of the maps. Blizzard said that mappers are NOT allowed to transfer assets from the expansion to the main game which would indeed hurt the sales and therefore Blizzard. So that's perfectly fine.

In the end Heart of the Swarm is just a big Assets + Campaign + Multiplayer expansion and a new cash flow for Blizzard to continue developing their engine and maintaining the game. I've put more time into SC2 than I would value the 40€ that I've spend to buy WoL. So I've no problem at all with buying HotS and forcing everyone to buy WoL to play HotS for the arcade's sake. Just compare your costs/hour for going into the cinema and buying a video game with multiplayer support. For me, even D3 was already worth it, even if I think that the endgame isn't perfect, yet. But there will be at least 1 expansion to D3. So we know already that it is going to be addressed while they gather real data instead of thoughts about how the players progress and at which pace through the game.