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What’s new in Heart of the Swarm™?

With StarCraft® II: Wings of Liberty, we set out to advance StarCraft’s carefully balanced and tactically challenging real-time strategy model by adding better matchmaking, advanced social features, new units, and a sweeping cinematic campaign. In Heart of the Swarm, we’re pushing StarCraft even further — to the edges of the galaxy.

We’ll take you to uncharted worlds, delve deeper into the hive mind of the zerg than ever before, and improve the competitive play experience on Battle.net. We're also bringing content made by our community of fans to the fore, and unearthing a playground of new maps. Here’s what’s emerging from the war room in HotS:

Campaign

The Story Continues

Heart of the Swarm continues the story of StarCraft II: the conflict between the humanoid terrans, the ravenous zerg, and the psionic protoss. As these races struggle, the specter of alien gods threatens to sweep aside what fragile stability still exists in the galaxy.

Sarah Kerrigan, the former zerg Queen of Blades, has seen her humanity restored by an ancient artifact, but she remains a threat to all she encounters. The memory of her time as the mutant leader of the swarm lingers — as does her yearning for revenge.

Lead the Zerg

As the zerg surge through the galaxy, you’ll control their vengeful avatar, and destroy your targets with Kerrigan’s powerful psionic abilities and years of spec-ops ghost training.

Kerrigan will continually grow stronger while she fights to reassemble and change the zerg swarm. By completing missions and advanced bonus objectives, you can unlock powers that strengthen the Queen (like regeneration and destructive psionics) or bolster the swarm itself with the ability to spawn banelings from beneath the ground or reconstitute slain zerglings at your base.

Kerrigan’s presence on the battlefield demands a clash of the titans. You’ll send her brood crashing against whole armies, but you’ll also pit the former Queen of Blades and her retinue against immense threats – ancient zerg who refuse to swear fealty, tank-destroying overmechs, and more – in intense ‘boss’ battles unlike any we’ve deployed before in StarCraft.

Change the Swarm

The zerg swarm is ever-growing, ever-evolving – and you can shape it to your whims in Kerrigan’s evolution pit. Digest biomass on planets you’ve dominated, and you’ll unlock the ability to evolve zerg strains in one of two directions. You might transform your zerglings into leaping raptors or proliferative swarmlings, focusing your army on harassment or pure numbers…and leaving the swarm forever changed.

You’ll also be able to tweak zerg strains on the fly by mutating your units between missions, like making your zerglings attack faster if you’re going up against armored targets.

Multiplayer

The Dogs of War, Improved

New Units

New developments, new recruits and a few desperate measures are changing the face of war. Fresh units like the tempest, viper, and widow mine are dropping in for each race, adding more dynamics to the diverse confrontations in the Koprulu sector.

Meanwhile, some veteran units are being retrofitted for the fight. For example, fire-blasting hellions can transform into hellbats to engage in close combat, and the protoss mothership can now be built from the stripped-down mothership core, a structure able to recall entire armies to the protoss base or purify invaders with a psionic cannon. That’s just the beginning.

We’ve readied a revised training mode to get you accustomed; it’ll include detailed walkthrough elements and race-specific challenges to really help you step up your game, one order and hotkey at a time. We’re also improving unit AI in a variety of ways by adding new difficulty levels to play against and the ability to command AI allies.

And, at last, our alien warriors and doomed soldiers have new dances.

New Maps

In a contest of wills, the board you play on is every bit as important as the pieces you play with. Heart of the Swarm adds new official multiplayer maps to StarCraft II to shake up the play experience for ladder and custom games alike. These maps bring new tilesets: protoss space stations, icy wastelands, terran metropolises, vine-covered jungles and more. We’re also changing the rules of engagement with fresh terrain features, like collapsible rocks that can be used to block areas of a map.

You’ll see tuned and tweaked art and physics throughout HotS maps new and old – grotesque purple creep now crawls up structures, and defeated units uniquely explode, burst apart or collapse thanks to dynamic new death animations.

Your Universe

Improved Community Features

Heart of the Swarm’s bringing a major overhaul to the StarCraft multiplayer experience. Groups (parties focused around a specific activity or fandom) and clans (competition-oriented teams) give you the chance to join together for practice or team play, communicate easily in private chat channels, meet like-minded players and share your strategies. You’ll also be able to play on the multiplayer ladders of any region while still playing in your native language.

We’ve given you total control over your game state. The take command option will allow you to pick up a game from a saved replay, including reenacting famous games between pro players. In addition, you'll be able to watch any replay together with your friends in real time, and count on the recover game feature to save your in-progress multiplayer game (in case of a dropped connection or hardware failure).

If you want to be pitted against players of your skill level, but don’t want to worry about your ladder ranking, you can participate in unranked matchmaking. Heart of the Swarm multiplayer games (and single-player custom games) will also incorporate a leveling system that’ll let you show off your style with unlocked portraits, decals, dances and unit skins representing the battles you’ve fought.

Battle.net will have a revamped interface to make each of these new features (and the ones you already rely on) quicker and easier to use.

Game Editor

Major improvements to the already-powerful StarCraft II editor are underway. The current editor can produce extreme variations on existing maps and playstyles, along with puzzle games, fighting games, platform-action games, and more.

Prior to the release of Heart of the Swarm, we’re upgrading the editor so it’s even easier to use: advanced functionality for your game cinematics, superior UI editing, new animations and models, improvements to working with terrain and triggers, and libraries of functions to ensure that making your own maps and mods is faster and deeper, as well as a fine-tuned arcade to make community maps easier to find, publish and upvote.

To give you a head-start, we’re making several of these community and multiplayer features available to all Wings of Liberty owners prior to the release of Heart of the Swarm, with Patch 2.0.

Enter the Fray!

We want Heart of the Swarm to warp you directly into the epic StarCraft universe, prepare you for multiplayer battles with friends old and new, and coax out the galactic conqueror living deep in your heart. Check your rifles, charge your psionic blades and uncoil your proboscises. We can’t wait to meet you on the frontlines.

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Comments (7,387)

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icephoenix #368
icephoenix
5/31/2011
@FINALTURISMO: yeah blizzard will probably add more units to online play, hopefully the lurker and remove that effing void ray and replace it with soemthing less op. so hopefully online games will change
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Aigaion #294
Aigaion
5/31/2011
@icephoenix: Void ray is hardly op.
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thekenu #705
thekenu
5/31/2011
@icephoenix: agree with thomas, it's hardly op it got nerfed .
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icephoenix #368
icephoenix
5/31/2011
@thekenu: its super op when scrubs mass it there is no coutner really it needs to be removed its a strategy that requires no skill too
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PeanutWaffle #928
PeanutWaffle
6/1/2011
@icephoenix:
I am not trying to insult you based on being bronze, but I am afraid it is only your skill level keeping you from beating them. Trust me voidray is one of the weakest units, especially if scouted and ESPECIALLY vs protoss. Stalkers deal with them just fine, especially with blink, as do phoenix, as do high templar storm, if they are going THAT mass. As terran, marines ruin them, and as zerg hydras and queens do fine, though zerg can have some trouble..
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Electrico #594
Electrico
6/1/2011
@PeanutWaffle: i am in bronze and i totally agree
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IhaveCrabs #953
IhaveCrabs
6/1/2011
@PeanutWaffle: theres op the only thing that can is somewhat effective against them is if you have more hydras and burrow who masses gueens void rays r the reason im stuck in bronze >_>
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Raven #1213
Raven
5/31/2011
they should add a unit that just eats another unit with a self-destruct ability. or something with tentacles, arachnid webbing, or dinosaur-like zerg units. the old zerg was more based on elephant, rats, etc. so heart of the swarm can be more of an prehistoric phase where all creatures are huge and deadly
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UNKNOWN #956
UNKNOWN
5/31/2011
I wonder if there'll be a another website for HotS... I doubt it, but with a separate ladder (meaning there might be a separate discussion for the races), and a "Wings of Liberty" logo on top of this website leaves me wondering.
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SRNGxDave #727
SRNGxDave
5/31/2011
Where can i download the demo??
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Electrico #594
Electrico
6/1/2011
@Dave: there's no demo
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Xavier #1689
Xavier
5/31/2011
Release a wallpaper please!
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drtoucan #842
drtoucan
5/31/2011
I wonder why she kept the zerg do as well as the tan.
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KikiCoffee #125
KikiCoffee
5/31/2011
@drtoucan: Side effects of being infested? It's probably a permanent thing. Her hair/skin are messed up but she's not infested anymore.
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RunerOfWolve #389
RunerOfWolve
5/31/2011
@drtoucan: Dont think she had a choice with the hair, but she looks great with tha tan
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jassteX #465
jassteX
5/31/2011
Tosh became Kerrigan???
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SadisticWolf #772
SadisticWolf
5/31/2011
Kerrigan is Toshes little sister ???
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EnDeR #1730
EnDeR
5/31/2011
awesome, will there be multiplayer changes?
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Diaz #604
Diaz
5/31/2011
Awesome. Anyone knows when is the release date?
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Crispy #546
Crispy
5/31/2011
@Diaz:
they didn't announce a date yet, but at Blizzcon they said it's far from complete, so probably next year.
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Diaz #604
Diaz
5/31/2011
@Crispy: Thanks.
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Derzerstorer #860
Derzerstorer
5/31/2011
Kerrigan is probably going to play nice for a while and seem like she's changed and then in the final few missions she'll double cross everyone and be all evil again.
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Skyoats #511
Skyoats
5/31/2011
@Derzerstorer: no way dude im sry but that already happened in BW blizzard isnt taht lame to make it happen agian
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Arcanous #642
Arcanous
5/31/2011
@Derzerstorer: no she will just skip all the nice crap and do that in the beginging. In the demo the when you win the protoss part they say fall back and Kerrigan tells her advisor to no let anyone out alive
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PrivateJoker #417
PrivateJoker
5/31/2011
Start the beta this summer. Thank you Blizzard. Stop making such consuming games, I mean keep on making them. Help its Kerrigan!!
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GhostingINC #182
GhostingINC
5/31/2011
Wonder what kind of jukebox music and arcade games they have in there Hives.
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StrCmdMan #465
StrCmdMan
5/31/2011
@GhostingINC: Obey the Hive!!!
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GhostingINC #182
GhostingINC
5/31/2011
@StrCmdMan: Lol, good one.
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wUndertUnge #529
wUndertUnge
5/31/2011
Yes! So glad that Blizzard is going this way with the story. I'd stated on the forums a few months back that this premise, whether or not Sarah is really redeemed, is THE main conflict in the story. Now, the execution is key...
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Hausdorf #292
Hausdorf
5/31/2011
Awesome
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Onerush #742
Onerush
5/31/2011
hey este se ve bueno..., so crazy jejeje

no se puede esperar más empieza la cuenta regresiba
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Grom #191
Grom
5/31/2011
she look too evil

purple is how zerg are
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JamesRaynor #361
JamesRaynor
5/31/2011
I cant wait for the game for the cut scenes alone. The story is so epic, and by looking at this trialer I am going insane to find out the storyline that will unfold! Keep up the good work Blizzard!
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Uberkillius #803
Uberkillius
5/31/2011
Purple is a girly color. Not buying this... cooties.
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ASLDKJF #853
ASLDKJF
5/31/2011
did i see neutral people (bears) like in WC3 in that gameplay video?
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Shipht #866
Shipht
5/31/2011
eh, it looks really bor....... SUPER DUPER FUN!!!!!!!!!!!
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SnipeMaster #786
SnipeMaster
5/31/2011
I can't wait till the protoss expansion pack...but looks pretty cool...brother is going nuts for it. :D
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Lethan #836
Lethan
5/31/2011
Everything is SOOO PURPLE!!
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Swagory #488
Swagory
5/31/2011
why is the video lagging!
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dragonjax #672
dragonjax
5/31/2011
this looks dope