Starcraft II "Spawning" Lets You Share Your Game

Cognimancer

Imperial Intelligence
Jun 13, 2012
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Starcraft II "Spawning" Lets You Share Your Game


Resurrecting some old-school sensibilities, Blizzard now allows players to spread the love.

The single-player campaigns in Starcraft are pretty nice, but multiplayer has always been the meat and potatoes of the series. Obviously you need a solid community of players to maintain that kind of atmosphere, so Blizzard's always looking for ways to bring newcomers into the fold. The developer's latest strategy, a system called "Spawning," allows you and your friends to play Starcraft II together with almost all of its online features, as long as one person owns a copy of the game.

The system harkens back to the days of Warcraft II and the original Starcraft, where groups of friends could play together using a single serial key. Spawning achieves the same effect without the need to pass a set of installation discs around the room. Whenever you join a party with another player who has a higher expansion level than you, your game is bumped up to provide access to all the features your friend has - effectively "spawning" you into the expansion. This means you can get a group of friends to install the free Starter Edition of the game, then invite them into a match with your Heart of the Swarm-registered account to grant everyone use of the full game and the expansion's features.

There are a few conditions: you can't piggyback your way into the single-player campaign of an expansion you don't own through spawning, and Starter Edition games that spawn into higher levels are still restricted to one faction. Everything else (additional modes, ranked and unranked team ladders, and custom maps) is at your disposal until you leave the party.

Source: Battle.net [http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/10145834]

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kajinking

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Aug 12, 2009
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Heard this before thanks to Carbot. I was kinda sad that you only get a Carbot icon and not some in-game zergling skins based on the cartoons.
 

Agayek

Ravenous Gormandizer
Oct 23, 2008
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This is actually pretty nice. I wouldn't have expected them to make any steps back, so it's a pleasant surprise.

It'd be rather lovely if they'd go back to letting people LAN the game with one set of discs though. The lack of that capacity, for no reason other than naked greed, is just galling. Ah well. At least they're moving in the right direction.
 

Charli

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Nov 23, 2008
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That and 80% of the team that was pulled off of titan is now working on catching up on (the already pretty timely and good at the moment) WoW Content. Blizzard I am please.

More of all this.
 

ExtraDebit

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Jul 16, 2011
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LOL I know alot of friends that bought the expansion just the play the single player (and was disappointed at that) who never touched the ladder, both they and myself felt the MP in SC2 doesn't have the grip like it used to in sc1. Its sometimes more fun to watch than to play which is sad.
 

Abomination

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Dec 17, 2012
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Charli said:
That and 80% of the team that was pulled off of titan is now working on catching up on (the already pretty timely and good at the moment) WoW Content. Blizzard I am please.

More of all this.
Wildstar is fast approaching, I wonder if that has anything to do with Titan being scrapped?
 

Abomination

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Dec 17, 2012
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ExtraDebit said:
LOL I know alot of friends that bought the expansion just the play the single player (and was disappointed at that) who never touched the ladder, both they and myself felt the MP in SC2 doesn't have the grip like it used to in sc1. Its sometimes more fun to watch than to play which is sad.
I found I enjoyed Starcraft far more playing with friends randomly than attempting to play online against random people.

The ladder is so... intense. It's not about fun - it's about competition. LAN parties with Starcraft were awesome... god I feel old.
 

Alar

The Stormbringer
Dec 1, 2009
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Wow. Blizzard, in this day and age, is doing something like this... and then you've got the Xbone which is going to make people pay what essentially amounts to a RENTAL FEE to borrow games from their friends. Kudos to you, Blizzard.
 

loa

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Jan 28, 2012
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Another watered down version of an ancient feature that should've been included at launch to begin with praised as an "exciting new feature", wow I am so going back to starcraft 2 now.
It's like corrupt-a-wish with blizzard nowadays.
 

Kyrinn

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May 10, 2011
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loa said:
Another watered down version of an ancient feature that should've been included at launch to begin with praised as an "exciting new feature", wow I am so going back to starcraft 2 now.
It's like corrupt-a-wish with blizzard nowadays.
Blizzard does something decent:
"Wow Blizz, fuck you! Why didn't you do this ages ago? I liked it better the way it was before!"
I've never understood this type of response. It's like complaining about getting one less birthday gift than last year.
Also full access to the arcade is pretty awesome.

Abomination said:
Charli said:
That and 80% of the team that was pulled off of titan is now working on catching up on (the already pretty timely and good at the moment) WoW Content. Blizzard I am please.

More of all this.
Wildstar is fast approaching, I wonder if that has anything to do with Titan being scrapped?
More likely they just didn't like where it was going development-wise like starcraft ghost. If they were worried about another game they'd just wait and steal the good parts from it when it released.
 

Darks63

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Mar 8, 2010
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I would be more hyped if they allowed you to play the single player campaign for free myself.
 

Hargrimm

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Jan 1, 2010
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Kyrinn said:
loa said:
Another watered down version of an ancient feature that should've been included at launch to begin with praised as an "exciting new feature", wow I am so going back to starcraft 2 now.
It's like corrupt-a-wish with blizzard nowadays.
Blizzard does something decent:
"Wow Blizz, fuck you! Why didn't you do this ages ago? I liked it better the way it was before!"
I've never understood this type of response. It's like complaining about getting one less birthday gift than last year.
Also full access to the arcade is pretty awesome.
You what would really be decent? No DRM, so I could actually share my game with my friends. You know, like GOG allows me to?
"Exciting new feature" my ass.
 

mad825

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Mar 28, 2010
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They are really trying to still sell SC huh? Considering Wol is still £25 for a 3 year old game I'm not surprised. Well, after the betrayal I'm just going to wait for when it's all out and cheap...It's going to be a few years from now.
 

Abomination

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Dec 17, 2012
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Kyrinn said:
Abomination said:
Charli said:
That and 80% of the team that was pulled off of titan is now working on catching up on (the already pretty timely and good at the moment) WoW Content. Blizzard I am please.

More of all this.
Wildstar is fast approaching, I wonder if that has anything to do with Titan being scrapped?
More likely they just didn't like where it was going development-wise like starcraft ghost. If they were worried about another game they'd just wait and steal the good parts from it when it released.
Wasn't Titan going to be "another" MMO?

It just seems strange to release a product designed to directly compete with another one of your products - especially your flag ship. This isn't like Coke making Fanta, the cost of producing Fanta alongside Coke is minuscule whereas the cost of making a whole new MMO is the same as having to build another factory JUST to make Fanta.
 

Artemicion

Need superslick, Kupo.
Dec 7, 2009
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They've finally implemented a feature that the original Age of Empires had back in 1997... and still restricts features of the game for fear they might have too much unpaid fun.

Proving once again that the original AoE is still better than most modern strategy games.

gg, somebody pass the wood, etc
 

Ferisar

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Oct 2, 2010
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Dead Raen said:
They've finally implemented a feature that the original Age of Empires had back in 1997... and still restricts features of the game for fear they might have too much unpaid fun.

Proving once again that the original AoE is still better than most modern strategy games.

gg, somebody pass the wood, etc
Ah, yes. AoE, the best game of all time.

I still play it toda-- wait, no. No.

OT:
This is nice. I might actually get to use it because a friend of mine wanted to check the game out recently.

Also -insert obligatory fake internet outrage here about something something I'm bitter-