This may not be any big news to some, but there has been some major new news about Heart of the Swarm. And if anyone is lucky enough to pass by MLG Anaheim you will be able to play a sneak peak beta version of the expansion there. None of the recently revealed changes will have anything to do with the races themselves really, it is a bunch of changes to the client itself, but there are some interesting new additions. Most of these changes have been asked for by the community so some of you may be happy to hear that they actually will be implented into the game, although you will have to wait a few months as the release won’t be untill late autumn / early winter. The following things were announced on Monday:

• Multiplayer resume from replay
• Global Play
• Multilanguage support
• Clan system
• Unranked matchmaking
• Multiplayer replay viewing

And what exactly does all this mean? Well, Multiplayer resume from replay is a system where you can resume your games from a replay, this is more or less only developed for esports as it makes it easier if someone crashes in the middle of the match. Global Play is the interesting part though, even if you have a say North American account you can still play on the Korean and European servers without buying new accounts for the respective servers. Multilanguage support is a part of the previously mentioned Global Play system, in other words you may run the Korean client in English and the English client in Korean among many other languages.

The more player focused additions are community wishes come true, the Clan system as the name suggests allows you to create clans and have your clantag displayed in front of your name without renaming your account. Unranked matchmaking is for those who wish to play against other players of their appropriate skill level but not risk their rating. And last but not least, Multiplayer replay reviewing allows you and a friend to sync replays while watching the same replay. Most of these seem like useful additions to the game, at least in my eyes. Appart from this, if you participate in their Arcade 1.5 event you will have a chance to secure your beta access already. Accoring to the post it is possible that the beta will go live sometime in July this summer. If you wish to read the full article and every detail about these new changes, you may move on to the Blizzard development blog, there are more good stuff there as well, not just Starcraft 2 updates.

Obviously none of these changes are set in stone and are still being tested so some may disappear before the release, but let’s hope they keep them as these things have been asked for since the release of Wings of Liberty. Although things like Unranked Matchmaking may seem more unnecessary than the others, it’s still a good thing for those who do not wish to play around with their rating when they’re just playing for fun. The Multilanguage system is a great addition though, although it may just be me, but the Korean ingame voices are incredibly annoying at times. I’m looking forward to Heart of the Swarm a lot, and hopefully there will be more great additions added to it before the release, and Blizzard, please give me my Shredders back, I want to throw 5 of them into my opponent’s mineral line. Feel free to drop a comment below!

.......................................................

•