StarCraft II is a real-time strategy video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. It was first released in 2010 and is a follow-up to the popular game StarCraft, which came out in 1998. The story takes place in a distant future where different races fight for control of the galaxy.

The single-player campaign of StarCraft II is divided into three parts. Each part focuses on one of the three races: StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty (2010), Heart of the Swarm (2013), and Legacy of the Void (2015). A final part of the campaign, called StarCraft II: Nova Covert Ops, was released in 2016.

The multiplayer mode of StarCraft II led to the creation of separate competitive gaming events. These events interested companies other than Blizzard and gained attention in South Korea and other regions, similar to the original StarCraft esports competitions.

Since 2017, the multiplayer mode, cooperative mode, and the first single-player campaign of StarCraft II have been available for free.

Story

The story of StarCraft II continues the story of the original StarCraft games, which involve the races and characters from StarCraft.

Wings of Liberty takes place four years after the events of StarCraft: Brood War. It focuses on the conflict between Jim Raynor’s rebel group and the Terran Dominion, which is ruled by Emperor Arcturus Mengsk. The Zerg return as an ongoing threat, but Raynor eventually rescues Sarah Kerrigan, the Zerg queen who was captured and disabled.

Heart of the Swarm follows the Dominion’s attack on Raynor and Kerrigan. The story mainly follows Kerrigan’s actions against Mengsk’s forces and the new Protoss-Zerg hybrids that have appeared.

Legacy of the Void features the Protoss as the main characters, led by Zeratul and Artanis. They fight against Amon, the evil being who created the Protoss-Zerg hybrids. After the end of Legacy of the Void, a short epilogue shows all three factions uniting to face Amon inside the Void.

Nova Covert Ops happens sometime after Amon is defeated. It follows Nova, a secret agent, as she discovers a hidden plan that threatens the newly reformed Terran Dominion.

Games

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty was released in 2010. It takes place four years after the end of StarCraft: Brood War. Two expansions, Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void (both now stand-alone games), were planned from the beginning. Heart of the Swarm was released in 2013, and Legacy of the Void was released in 2015.

All games in the main series are real-time strategy games. In these games, players act as military commanders for one of the three species.

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is the official sequel to StarCraft. It was released for Windows and Mac OS X by Blizzard Entertainment on July 27, 2010. The game was announced on May 19, 2007, during the Worldwide Invitational in South Korea. A pre-rendered cinematic trailer and a gameplay demonstration of the Protoss were shown at that time. Additional features were later showcased at BlizzCons and other game conventions. The game uses a new 3D graphics engine and includes the Havok physics engine. It also uses DirectX 10 effects on Windows. Originally planned as a single game, StarCraft II was split into three parts during development. Each part focuses on one of the three races. Wings of Liberty follows the Terrans, while the expansions Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void focus on the Zerg and Protoss, respectively. The story of Wings of Liberty continues four years after the end of Brood War. It follows Jim Raynor’s struggles against the Terran Dominion.

StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm is an expansion pack for Wings of Liberty. It was released on March 12, 2013. It is the second part of the StarCraft II trilogy. The expansion adds new units and multiplayer changes from Wings of Liberty. It also includes a campaign that continues the story of Kerrigan and the Zerg race. The campaign has 27 missions, including 20 main missions and 7 side missions.

StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void completes the StarCraft saga. It was released on November 10, 2015. Legacy of the Void is a stand-alone game. It adds new units to all three races and changes existing units. It also introduces major changes to the game’s economy system. The story follows the Protoss race as they try to reclaim their homeworld. It also shows Kerrigan’s final battle against the greatest threat to the universe. The game includes a 3-mission prologue, a 19-mission main campaign, and a 3-mission epilogue.

At BlizzCon 2015, during the "Future of StarCraft II" presentation, Blizzard announced plans for additional mission packs. The Nova Covert Ops mission pack includes three episodes with nine new missions. It does not require purchasing StarCraft II and can be played with the Starter Edition. The first episode was released on March 29, 2016. At the same time, Blizzard announced new commanders for the Co-Op mode in Legacy of the Void. These additions will be released as DLC, with Karax being the first one available for free.

Development

StarCraft II was announced on May 19, 2007, almost 10 years after the original game, during the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in Seoul, South Korea. The game was developed under the working name Medusa and was planned to be available for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Mac OS X. Blizzard set a release date of July 27, 2010. Work on the game began in 2003, a short time after the release of Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne.

Music

The soundtrack for StarCraft II was created by Derek Duke, Glenn Stafford, Neal Acree, and Russell Brower. Russell Brower, who is Blizzard’s Director of Audio, explained that the music in StarCraft has two purposes. During gameplay, the music is designed to be quiet and not distracting so players can focus on the game. Only the music played during special scenes, called cinematic interludes, is allowed to be more noticeable. Brower also noted that some musical themes in StarCraft II are linked to specific characters, a method used by composers like John Williams and Richard Wagner.

The original music for the Wings of Liberty expansion of StarCraft II lasts about four hours. Brower said his team aimed to create a music style similar to movie scores. In a short explanation provided by Blizzard, he described how the orchestral music for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty was performed by 78 members of the San Francisco Symphony and Opera. The music was recorded at the Skywalker stage at the Lucasfilm Ranch in Marin County, California, under the name "Skywalker Symphony Orchestra," with Eímear Noone conducting. Brower also mentioned that a choir with 32 voices was used in Seattle, Washington. Both the orchestral and choir recordings were mixed by John Kurlander, who had previously worked on The Lord of the Rings and Abbey Road.

The music for the Terran characters, which includes country and blues styles, was recorded at Dreamland Studio in Woodstock, New York. It was performed by members of Peter Gabriel’s band, including bassist Tony Levin and drummer Jerry Marotta. Other parts of the soundtrack were recorded at Blizzard’s studios and performed by musicians such as Laurence Juber (formerly of the band Wings) and Tommy Morgan. The soundtrack also includes the hymn Eternal Father, Strong to Save (1860), written by John Bacchus Dykes and William Whiting.

The orchestral music for Heart of the Swarm was also recorded in Marin County, again with Kurlander and Noone, and featured 80 members of the Skywalker Symphony Orchestra.

In an interview in 2013, Brower said he planned to continue using musical themes linked to characters in Legacy of the Void.

Reception

The release of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty did very well in sales and received good reviews. It sold 1.8 million copies in the first 48 hours after its release, breaking the record for the best-selling strategy game in the history of the gaming industry. It received positive reviews, with an aggregate GameRankings score of 93%, and was nominated as the "Best PC Game of 2010" on GameSpot. By the end of 2012, Wings of Liberty had sold more than 6 million copies. This success continued with the release of the first expansion pack, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, which had a GameRankings aggregate score of 86%. The standalone expansion pack sold 1.1 million copies in the first two days of its release on March 12, 2013, and was the best-selling PC game in that quarter. StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void, the third expansion pack, was also well received, with a GameRankings aggregate score of 88% and sold more than 1 million copies worldwide in the first day of its release.

By the end of 2015, the StarCraft and StarCraft II series had sold over 17.6 million copies of games and expansions. By the end of 2017, Blizzard listed the combined StarCraft franchise among their brands that had lifetime revenue totaling over $1 billion.

Multiplayer game modes

StarCraft II includes several multiplayer game modes beyond the single-player campaigns from its four expansions. The most common modes are "versus" and "co-op."

In the "versus" mode, players can compete in matches with 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, or 4v4 team sizes, where the numbers show how many players are on each team. The 1v1 format is the most popular and serves as the foundation for competitive play. Players earn experience points and achievements, but these do not directly influence future games. As players improve, the game's difficulty increases based on a system that matches players with others of similar skill levels. This ranking system, called the "ladder," organizes players by geographic region and divides them into leagues. These leagues range from the lowest (bronze) to the highest (grandmaster).

As team sizes grow, the maps used in matches often change. Players can also compete in tournaments for each team size, where teams either win or are eliminated. The "versus" mode also includes the "Archon" option, where matches appear to be 1v1 but involve multiple human players controlling a single character.

The "co-op" mode allows two human players to team up against an artificial intelligence using special hero characters. In this mode, earning experience points helps players level up, which affects future gameplay. These heroes are based on characters from the single-player campaign but have added abilities. The co-op mode includes "mutations," which are changes to the game's rules to make challenges more difficult. There are 18 co-op commanders available, with six from each of the three races. While the co-op mode uses heroes from the main game, not all 46 heroes are playable.

Professional competition

After it was released, StarCraft II became a professional game played worldwide, similar to its earlier version, StarCraft: Brood War. The highest level of competition has mostly been in South Korea.

Since StarCraft II's release, many tournaments have taken place in Korea and other countries, including the Global StarCraft II League (GSL).

The game was considered the biggest video game competition in the world during its early years. It helped spread esports globally, just as the original game did in South Korea. Over time, its popularity decreased, but it later grew again when it became free to play.

In 2012, Blizzard created the StarCraft II World Championship Series (WCS) as the main official tournament for StarCraft II. Starting in 2013, Korean leagues like the GSL and international events such as Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) and Dreamhack became part of the WCS. These events gave players points and guaranteed spots to compete in the Global Finals, which happen every year at BlizzCon.

In 2020, Blizzard changed how the WCS worked by forming a three-year partnership with esports organizers ESL and DreamHack.

Use in artificial intelligence

In November 2016, Alphabet's DeepMind team announced a partnership with Blizzard to develop "a helpful testing platform for AI researchers."

StarCraft II has been used in the study of multi-agent reinforcement learning for two reasons:

• To demonstrate that modern AI learning methods can match the skills of professional human players. In December 2018, DeepMind's StarCraft II AI, named AlphaStar, beat a professional player named MaNA 5–0. However, some people thought the conditions of the match were unfair. Later, a more balanced version of AlphaStar reached Grandmaster status in August 2019, which was described as a major milestone in AI research.
• To serve as a standard for testing and improving AI learning methods used in other types of environments.