Blizzard‘s StarCraft II Wings of Liberty is now a free-to-play game starting November 14. Normally, a boring announcement on social media would suffice. However, Blizzard and the StarCraft II team saw an opportunity with the recent Electronic Arts and Star Wars Battlefront II situation and decided to have some fun. On both their Facebook and Twitter accounts, StarCraft posted a video making fun of games with “pay-to-win” mechanics. It featured a young teen playing on his PC, who then turns around to ask his dad if he could buy some “stronger units” so he could compete. The dad then explains to the young man why the move is an insult to his pro-gamer grandfather.
Watch the full video below. It is only a minute long, but it is a very effective ad for the game and quite funny.
SC2 is not exactly completely free. Only the original campaign is free, with all the other campaigns costing extra. That includes Heart of the Swarm, Legacy of the Void, and Nova Covert Ops. Each are available for $14.99 USD, or as a bundle for $39.99 ($5 savings). Blizzard will still continue to offer premium upgrades and special skins as well. Players who already own all three campaign packs will receive a special thank you in the form of an exclusive Ghost skin plus three new portraits.
Aside from the single player campaigns, players will have access to ranked multiplayer ladder. This also includes all units from the expansion campaigns. The only requirement to unlock permanently is to earn 10 first wins of the day in Unranked or versus A.I. play. This ensures that the quality and integrity of the ranked experience is intact.
Free-to-play features go live after applying the 4.0 patch. In addition, it also introduces new a co-op commander and announcer Mira Han and Matt Horner. Moreover, it adds a new co-op mission called ‘Part and Parcel’, making users collect parts to assist General Davis in rebuilding her war machine. To see the full patch 4.0 changelog, visit the SC2 website.
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