As noted over on the us.battle.net website, all players need for the free-to-play StarCraft II: Starter Edition is a connection to the Internet and a Battle.net account. Those who sign up for the StarCraft II: Starter Edition will be allowed access to the first four missions of the game’s single-player campaign, including Mar Sara 1-3 and a choice of either Dr. Hansen’s first mission or Tychus’s first mission.

It will also provide them with access to the first two Challenge Missions: Covert Ops and Tactical Command and the terran race in Single-Player vs. AI and Custom Games, as well as access to custom maps such as High Orbit, Shattered Temple, Discord IV and Xel’Naga Caverns. Any achievements or campaign progress they earn while playing the Starter Edition will be automatically saved onto their Battle.net account.

This of course means that if players then choose to upgrade to the full version of the StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty game, their achievements and progress will carry over. The custom game and multiplayer maps could be cycled from time to time. In addition, Starter Edition players will also be able to view their profile, ladder and achievements pages.

StarCraft II: Starter Edition players will only be able to play up until the 4th campaign mission, and most of the Challenge Missions will be unavailable. They won’t be able to use versus, co-op matchmaking, chat channels, most custom maps and the party system either. Although there are only 4 maps available at this stage, another will be made available soon.

Will you be signing up for the free-to-play StarCraft II: Starter Edition?

The video was on YouTube however has now been removed due to a copyright claim, however if you are keen to see the ending check out this link.

Personally I hate spoilers therefore I will not talk about what happens in the video, however as I am not a StarCraft 2 gamer I did skip through it to see if it looked authentic, it is obviously unfinished but it did look pretty genuine to me, also the fact that YouTube videos have been removed suggests that it is real.

StarCraft II was released back in July this year and it is a well-known fact that it has been split into three parts, firstly Wings of Liberty followed by Heart of the Swarm and then finally Legacy of the Void.

The fact that the expansions have been planned for a long time suggests that writers and developers have been working on the expansions for some time, therefore I very much doubt Blizzard will combat the leak by changing Heart of the Swarm’s ending as this could have serious repercussions on the story line etc.

We would love to hear what you thought of the leaked video. Did you refuse to watch it? If not, was you impressed?

Source: TomsHardware

Ok, well we lied a tiny bit. It’s not the retail version of Starcraft, but a custom made version by a company called iSwifter who are known for streaming flash games to handheld devices through the cloud.

The game is played and controlled by using the touch-screen buttons that are set out along each side of the screen, plus it wouldn’t be an iPad game without the use of pinching and dragging your fingers on the screen, so there is plenty of that too.

Check out the video in the source below to see the game in action.

Source: Kotaku