FAQ UPDATED 23rd July
With just a month round the corner, there are plenty of burning questions that are pretty much left unanswered or given answers that did not quite go down that well with the forum crowd.
We at Qisahn.com would try our best to give customers the full picture in order for you guys to best determine which version to get when purchasing Starcraft II.
I would be trying my best to provide the facts and reserve judgement to you guys.
Table of Contents
- What is Starcraft II?
- Why are there different regions for Starcraft II?
- How much would Starcraft II cost me off the shelf? Why that price?
- What’s new in the game?
- Performance issues.
1. What is Starcraft II?
From Wiki:
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game currently under development by Blizzard Entertainment as a sequel to the award-winning 1998 video game StarCraft. The game is being developed for concurrent release on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. StarCraft II is split into three installments: the base game with the subtitle Wings of Liberty, and two expansion packs, Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void.
The game will be released 27th July 2010.
2. Why are there different regions for Starcraft II?
Latency or more commonly known as lag.
In order to improve online gameplay performance, Starcraft II would have local servers for Singaporeans to play on. Yay!
The South-East Asian version of the game allows you to access US BNET within 60 days of release. Owners of the US copy of the game enjoy no such luxury. Source
If you are planning to take your Starcraft II experience to the next level, local tournaments require you to login with a local copy.
There is no IP lock to the online play contrary to what has been going around on the Internet.
3. How much would Starcraft II cost me off the shelf? Why that price?
The standard retail price for Starcraft II would be S$109.
The price would be roughly the same for all Asian region copies from Malaysia and all the way to the Philippines.
The pricing for this region has been determined mutually by IAH (the local distributor) & Blizzard (the makers of the game).
Local gamers (and the rest of our region grouping) have been promised for superb ping & access of local tournaments. Top dog gets to go to Blizzcon!
Internet bandwidth in this part of the world is also more costly than the rest and is factored into the pricing as well.
Thanks to H.S Hon – There are tiered pricing plans for this game in other places in the world, South America & Russia. Tiered means to play online you need to pay, think WoW. The US & SEA copies of this game are free to play ‘for life’ hence the price.
4. What’s new in the game?
If you loved the first, you would pretty much fall in love with the second.
From what I have experienced while in the Beta, the online interface is pretty functional & pretty.
You have your standard friend’s list and even Facebook integration. There is in-built voice chat as well.
The downside is there would be no chat channels on launch, but you can always party up with your friends before entering a game. Chat does exist at this point.
Gameplay wise, I’ll reserve judgement for you guys. I found it pretty awesome especially when playing against another human player.
5. Performance Issues
In case you don’t want to bother reading the bottom, my 3 year old PC handles Starcraft 2 pretty well.
I guess if you can run Left 4 Dead, I’m pretty sure you can run this as well. Your computer isn’t THAT old right?
PC Minimum System Requirements*:
- Windows® XP/Windows Vista®/Windows® 7 (Updated with the latest Service Packs) with DirectX® 9.0c
- 2.6 GHz Pentium® IV or equivalent AMD Athlon® processor
- 128 MB PCIe NVIDIA® GeForce® 6600 GT or ATI Radeon® 9800 PRO video card or better
- 12 GB available HD space
- 1 GB RAM (1.5 GB required for Windows Vista®/Windows® 7 users)
- DVD-ROM drive
- Broadband Internet connection
- 1024X720 minimum display resolution
PC Recommended System Requirements:
- Windows Vista®/Windows® 7
- Dual Core 2.4Ghz Processor
- 2 GB RAM
- 512 MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800 GTX or ATI Radeon® HD 3870 or better
*Note: Due to potential programming changes, the Minimum System Requirements for this game may change over time.
Mac Minimum System Requirements:
- Mac® OS X 10.5.8, 10.6.2 or newer
- Intel® Processor
- NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600M GT or ATI Radeon® X1600 or better
- 12 GB available HD space
- 2 GB Ram
- DVD-ROM drive
- Broadband Internet connection
- 1024X720 minimum display resolution
Mac Recommended System Requirements:
- Intel® Core 2 Duo processor
- 4 GB system RAM
- NVIDIA® GeForce® 9600M GT or ATI Radeon® HD 4670 or better
This guide is by no means definitive nor exhaustive. If you do feel there is a need to add in additional information do drop me a mail at geraldchan@qisahn.com
Do a small write up and I’ll add it in with a credit to your name.
Yes, I admit, the chick at the top of this post was used for the sole purpose of attracting people in.
Contact the author of this post, Gerald Chan, at geraldchan@qisahn.com. Follow his tweets @changerald
