Battle.net World Championship

Quick heads up - the Battle.net World Championship kicks off tomorrow in Shanghai, China, featuring both World of Warcraft Arena and Starcraft II competitions. The event will feature a "free, six-channel HD broadcast" via the BWC website.

I'm kinda looking forward to watching this thing; other than the last GSL finals, I feel like I haven't watched a major SC2 tournament in a year. The festivities kick off tomorrow night and run from 9pm-ish Friday until 8am-ish Sunday morning. Check out the full schedule for more details.

SC2: Heart of the Swarm Release, Preorder Info

Blizzard finally announced a definitive release date for Heart of the Swarm earlier today. The expansion pack hits on March 12, 2013 for $39.99.

Additionally, there are Digital Deluxe and Collector's Edition versions available for $60 and $80, respectively. The Digital Deluxe version adds a handful of skins and portraits for use in SC2 along with a pet for your World of Warcraft characters and zerg-like wings and a banner for Diablo III. The Collector's Edition includes all of that stuff plus a behind-the-scenes DVD, the game's soundtrack, an art book, and a mousepad. I could maybe see buying these if I still played WoW or D3, but then again I'm a cheap bastard.

The best preorder deal seems to belong to Amazon right now. While you don't get a price break, you do score access to the HotS beta. The game's Amazon page states that they'll email you a code "within 4 business days" so that you can get your frag on early. Pretty tempting.

My Take on the "Decline" of Starcraft II

The sky is falling, the sky is falling!

What's the deal with Starcraft II lately?

League of Legends is the most popular game in the world. Korean SC2 team Slayers is disbanding and three of their players are switching to LoL. Event prize money is stagnant and stream viewer numbers are down. The game's popularity is even dwindling in South Korea, a Starcraft hotbed for more than 10 years; SC2 isn't even among the top 10 games played in the country's "PC bang" LAN centers.

Is SC2 on the way out, or are these just growing pains?

Gamescom 2012: Day 1

Today was the official start of Gamescom, even though a bunch of stuff happened yesterday (Day 0?). Once again, Verge/Polygon has a continuously-updating news post here that is a good source for news as it happens.

A few things caught my eye today, and I'll definitely be keeping track of these games over the next few months.

• Command and Conquer goes F2P - http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/08/command-conquer-series-pivots-into-a-free-to-play-future/
  I've never played C&C, which probably makes me a terrible person. I've dabbled in RTS stuff in the past, but Starcraft 2 got me into the genre in a big way. You can sign up for the upcoming beta test here.
• Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon F2P - http://ghost-recon.ubi.com/ghost-recon-online/en-US/home/
  F2P shooters are almost universally terrible - the gunplay never feels right to me. Even bigger name freebies like BF:Heroes and TF2 were a letdown. I don't have a lot of faith in this one, but considering I haven't spent more than 1-2 months with a shooter since CoD4, I'm trying to remain optimistic.
• Anno Online introduces F2P game - http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/8/15/3244159/anno-online-announced-from-ubisoft
  Apparently today was F2P day. As with C&C, I've never played an Anno game, though I almost bought Anno 2070 during the Steam sale. I'm still extremely cautious about F2P games since most of them are more pay-to-win than free-to-play, so we'll see what happens.
• SC2: Heart of the Swarm Beta incoming - http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/8/15/3244544/starcraft-2-heart-of-the-swarm-beta-invites/in/3005796
  After the disaster that was Brink I swore that I'd never preorder another game, ever. I still preordered HotS. While SC2 and I have had an on-again-off-again relationship over the past couple of years, I keep coming back every few months. It's the only game on the horizon that I feel confident enough to pay full price to play.

CNN: Pro Gamer or Addict?

CNN posted a series of articles titled "Gaming Reality" earlier this week, the first of which followed MarineKing, a Starcraft II pro gamer from South Korea. The author uses the World Cyber Games 2011 tournament as a backdrop for a discussion of gaming addiction as he takes a look at MarineKing - MKP for short - and his path to gaming stardom in South Korea. On Monday they posted a couple of followups, Blizzard's response to the original article and another which asked whether or not pro gamers should be considered athletes after some complaints about the tone of the first piece.

The original article and videos are definitely worth a look. We learn about MKP's introduction to the original Starcraft in elementary school and his parents' subsequent efforts to curtail his gaming hours. His parents eventually saw MKP's talent for what it was and decided to support his efforts to become a top pro. Interwoven with the MKP story is a bunch of information about gaming addiction in South Korea, which the video at the top of the article emphasizes more heavily than the accompanying text.