On Wednesday the 10th of February Blizzard releases their 2009 results calendar and will also hold a conference call that will be broadcast over the Internet(!). This broadcast was stressed out.A good sign? We won’t know for sure until the week after next. Ofcourse there are a lot of different speculations about this. Optimistic and pessimistic ones. What will be the news? The “realist” Kennigit from TL.net wrote:

Let’s just leave this for what it is – standard financial report/conference call that is going to be broadcast….Does it really seem reasonable that they would announce beta during that call? No. It’s going to be like CEO/CFO/COO, Bobby “dolla dolla bills” Kotick and a couple bankers sitting in
talking finances for investors.

That seems logical of course but why would they broadcast it then? Other people are speculating about: “SC2 canceled”?,”No Beta in 2010″? or something like “”I’m probably going to do terrible, terrible damage to the mic by saying this…but IT’S BETA TIME!”. We hope that Blizzard won’t approve our mistrust in them again and awaiting good news.

Check out the sources to read the speculations:

Gosugamers.net

TL.net (speculations)

PRnewsWire (original)

At the Russian game convention “Igromir 2009″ [literally means "Gamesworld"] where Blizzard

is represented,Chris Sigaty answered  some questions in the panel.

One of them is related to the Beta Start

Q: When will StarCraft 2?
A: Tomorrow (laughter). Usually Blizzard we’re not talking about dates.

While we plan for next year to do a beta test.
As soon as we feel that the game is finished we will release it soon.

This is an indirect but explicit  announce that controverts Mike Morhaimes words:

“I’m confident the beta will start this year,”

At this rate we can pre-order Starcraft II for our grandchildren.

Source

It is done. Battle Report #4 was leaked a few hours ago. We have Yeon-Ho Lee against the famous David Kim. It is a Protoss versus Terran match on Lost Temple! That’s right. Lost Temple was remade for Starcraft II. The famous map for all Starcraft Players. I guess there is no need for further talk. Have fun watching the Battle Report. It is the best Battle Report so far.

You can watch it here.

Or download here.

10 Days ago Blizzard has updated the work progress of the fourth and (most likely) last Beta Battle Report in their Twitter. Many Fans on the Forum are speculating about a late Mirror Match (ZvZ) and see some late game Units like the mighty Ultralisks or even some Lurkers.

The previous Battle Reports were about all about 20 minutes and according to rumors “acted” (plot based on a scenario that was made before the Match). Though they were very good games and showed the flexibility and counter/counter-counter possibilities in the Game. We can expect some units that weren’t shown in the previous Battle Reports.

On the BlizzCon 09 we saw that there are still Starcraft players without Internet playing with Bots and relating on AI.

Not only players without Internet but people who just want to improve themselves. So the question is:
How much did the Bot improved in Starcraft II? He had 11 years to practise and become “better”. Better does not mean harder and more difficult.

A perfect bot would be an opponent where you can’t tell whether it’s a real human or a bot. How does the Starcraft II bot behave himself?

First we have the chat management. For example a “GG” from the Bot in the All Chat if he is “sure” that you have no chance of winning or other phrases like “lucker” or “nice move”.

So actually the Bot will spam you during the Game to break your concentration.  The Bot may also answer on some of your answers or insults.

The next feature is the scouting. We all know how unfair it was in the original Starcraft. You play with “blacksheepwall” playing on a 4v4 map against one bot and you have revealed map and the Bot doesn’t need to scout.

He just attacks your base without any questions about your position. Well, not any more. In Starcraft II Bots have to scout first and find your base before attacking. That’s a temptation to kill the scout and delay the opponents aggressive move. Who knows? It could work and be a great exploit against Bots.

Another feature is the learning from his opponent. If you play 5 games with Zerg against the Bot and you always go on

rush the Bot will notice it and in the next game he will go on early defense to protect himself.

This learning feature offers a lot of undreamed-of possibilities to make the Bot the “korean nerd” of tomorrow and there we have the ancient

propaganda of  the “Machine built by human destroying their creators” (e.g. Terminator). We have for example a chess AI that can beat the world champion in chess. So we could see a bot pwning David Kim or Matt Cooper. It is possible.