Gamasutra is reporting that Blizzard Entertainment has issued a statement regarding the World of Starcraft mod being developed by Ryan Winzen. Winzen's mod drew scrutiny from Blizzard and its parent company, Activision, when the modder posted a 'work in progress' video on YouTube. The video was pulled when Blizzard invoked its copyright protection. Since then, Winzen has received a job offer from Riot Games and a lot of attention from the worldwide gaming audience.

"It was never our intention to stop development on the mod or discourage the community from expressing their creativity through the StarCraft II editor," Blizzard said in a statement. " As always, we actively encourage development of custom maps and mods for StarCraft II, as we’ve done with our strategy games in the past."

Blizzard went on the say that it's looking forward to seeing development of the mod continue, and that it has invited Winzen to the company's campus to meet the game's development team.

Source:  Gamasutra

It didn't take long for Blizzard to react to Monday's release of a trailer showing what modders were calling "World of Starcraft". The lead modder on the project, Ryan, received a notice from YouTube that his video had been removed due to "copyright complaint(s) regarding material (he) posted". It appears that Blizzard's ultra-agressive stance protecting its copyrighted materials came full bore on this group's project.

This post from the mod team is quoted at Rock Paper Shotgun:

You created a tool that allowed us to do anything with your assets. You encouraged us to use your assets and were eager to see what we might come up with. You had to have seen this coming?

I know it’s hard to trust someone you’ve never met to piggyback on your own legacy. The brilliance of StarCraft combined with the multiplayer focus of World of Warcraft. You might be a little worried about your lore being butchered… or even more-so worried about a guy with no supervision tainting the name of your company with poor product.

Let me assure you that I am in no way shape or form going to deliver anything less than complete perfection. I’ve been following your work since Warcraft. I’ve worked with every editor you’ve put out since I was 13 years old.

If you have a problem with what I am doing… or would like to talk about it. I’m all ears. But please don’t send me some messenger with a cease and desist letter.

Read more here and find all of the relevant links as well.

Blizzard has announced the release of the 1.2.0 patch for Starcraft II. The patch includes some racial balancing, level editor bug fixes, Battle.Net chat channels and more. The patch appears to be heavily focused on the level editor with devs calling the patch fixes "notable".

General

• Battle.net Chat Channels have been added! Players can now join others in both public and private channels.
  • Added in-game chat bar command to whisper to other players. Using the "/w" command will open up a list of available friends, party members, chat channels, and other players within your current game.
  • Added Battle.net option to auto-join previous private channels.
  • Added Battle.net option to prevent chat channel text from appearing in in-game chat display.
• A new Master League has been added! This league now represents the highest tier of players.
• Customizable Hotkey Support has been added.
• Stalemate Detection has been added. This will end the game in a tie for all remaining players if no players have income, production, or destroyed structures for three consecutive minutes. A countdown timer will now appear when the game detects this scenario.
• An Extreme graphics option is now available. Players can now configure screen space ambient occlusion.

Read the full patch notes on the Starcraft II site.

Blizzard Entertainment has released a demo for its blockbuster realtime strategy title, Starcraft II. The demo features three missions and a terran vs terran AI skirmish. For those who don't know exactly what Starcraft II is, the Blizzard team has put up a handy dandy FAQ.

In typical real-time strategy games, players build armies and vie for control of the battlefield. The armies in play can be as small as a single squad of marines or as large as a full-blown planetary invasion force. As commander, you observe the battlefield from a top-down perspective and issue orders to your units in real time. Strategic thinking is key to success; you need to gather information about your opponents, anticipate their moves, outflank their attacks, and formulate a winning strategy.

Read the FAQ here or jump right into the demo download here.

Blizzard has announced that a new public test server for Starcraft II has opened up. Along with the announcement is a long FAQ with all of the information that potential participants may wish to know.

Q: What is the Public Test Region?
A: The Public Test Region, or PTR, is a way for you to help us test and provide feedback on upcoming patches before they go live. Think of the PTR as open beta tests for patches. We've used the PTR system for many years with World of Warcraft and have had great success in improving patches by inviting players to participate, report bugs, and let us know what they think of the changes before they're implemented in the live game. 

Q: Who can participate?
A: To participate in the current PTR phase, players must have an active StarCraft II North America game account created before November 11, 2010. The player's account must not be a guest pass account, suspended, or banned.

Read more here.

The official Blizzard Starcraft II site has been updated with an announcement that more Starcraft II players have been banned for cheating, hacking or for being in violation of the Battle.Net terms of service.

We recently issued a new round of account suspensions and bans to StarCraft II players who were in violation of the Battle.net Terms of Use for cheating and/or using hack programs while playing. In addition to undermining the spirit of fair competition that’s essential to play on Battle.net, cheating and hacking can lead to stability and performance issues with the service. As always, maintaining a stable, safe, and secure online-gaming experience for legitimate players is a top priority for us, and we'll be continuing to keep watch on Battle.net and take action as needed.

Read all of the community comments here.

The Starcraft 2 development team has confirmed to Shack News that a new patch will be coming next week. The patch will bring some balance changes, new map filters for specific map types, and a bug fix. Check out the details.

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty - Patch 1.1.3

General

• New game categories have been added to filter Tower Defense and Tug of War custom maps.

Balance

TERRAN
• Thor
  • This unit will now prioritize attacking ground combat units over Medivacs.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a desync that could occur when trying to watch replays that had a dependency on bank files.

Blizzard Entertainment has announced the winners of the Custom Map Contest held recently. The trio of winners each received a trip to Blizzcon 2010, had the winning map appear in a Starcraft II demo during Blizzcon and received $5,000 for their efforts.

It was tough to pick three winners from a field of contestants who brought so much to the table, but the efforts of these designers managed to shine brighter than a supernova. Please join us in recognizing the achievements of the following talented map makers:

Benjamin Lagarhus – MAD
Ivan Vidusenko – Zergling Round-Up
Andreas Lundkvist – Photon Command

Source: Starcraft II Official blog.

According to a new post at the official Starcraft II site, players have been granted one free name change for a single character. The post encourages players to use this power wisely.

All StarCraft II accounts have been granted one free name change. If you'd like to change your character name, log in to Account Management and choose your StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty game license. On your game license screen a "Character Name Change" button at the bottom will initiate the request. After confirming that you'd like to change your character name, simply log in to StarCraft II and you'll be prompted to select a new one. Please be sure to use this name change wisely.