SC2Mapster

Arcade Highlight: Trial of Zeal by Zolstice

Blizzard's latest featured map goes by the name "Trial of Zeal". Trial of Zeal is a team-based gladiator arena game. To win a game your team must knock out every member of the opposing team. Since heroes revive themselves after a short period of time, team coordination is required to win. To keep games short, players also have to deal with team-health. This special health bar drops as heroes take damage, and after it's depleted, no more heroes on that team can revive.

Take a look at Blizzard's highlight video below!

Be sure to check out the thread on sc2mapster here, and read the official blizzard post here.

A-RPG CastleUlrezaj by Delphinium1987 and NanaKey

CastleUlrezaj is a single player cross-boundary A-RPG which contains an integrated story and multiple areas waiting for you to explore. In this game, you will control Tassadar, the legendary hero to face Ulrezaj, one of the most dangerous terrorist in Protoss history. You need to fight against the destructive war machines, weird alien organisms and most vicious psi-power in the cosmos. You'll also be accompanied by two powerful allies who will fight alongside you.

You can feast your eyes on the map's amazing visuals by checking out the thread here, or taking a look at the video linked here.

CastleUlrezaj is currently available on the NA Battle net servers, so go try it out! If you want to play the game offline, it's available for download on sc2mapster here.

New Spawning Feature

A brand-new "Spawning" feature has been added to sc2. From now on, every member of a party has the same access to the game as the person with the highest expansion level in the party. In other words, if a starter edition player is in a party with a WoL player, he can access the WoL ladder, custom games, and arcade. The same thing goes for HotS- any WoL player can access the HotS ladder as long as a HotS player is in their party. This means that the HotS-only arcade is now available to WoL players as long as they have a friend with HotS willing to play with them.

As an added bonus, using this feature will unlock a starcrafts in-game portrait.

Here's the official Blizzard post on it.

Let us know what you think here!

Warships Arcade Highlight

The latest map to receive an Arcade highlight goes by the name "Warships". It's a 6 player space warfare map, where each player constructs their ships to suit their own play style. This highlight even includes a video, which you can check out below.

You can join the discussion here or check out the full article here.

Swarm of Hearts Charity Event by OldEnt and co

Communities StarCraft II Arcade maps would like to invite you to Swarm of Hearts, a StarCraft II Arcade charity event organised by the Community. Swarm of Hearts is a collaborative effort of four Arcade games: Aeon of Storms, Night of the Dead, Star Battle and The Star Strikers. Those games are amongst the most polished and the most popular maps in the StarCraft II Arcade. The four Communites decided to host this event to reach their common goals which are:

• Raise funds to a charity - Doctors Without Borders
• Promote the best StarCraft II Arcade has to offer
• Build better Arcade scene.

For more information, visit their Teamliquid thread. The event will be going on tomorrow (4/20); below is a video of the session they ran last week!

Dogfighters by LosTacos

Dogfighters is a third person team action game with a focus on aerial combat. The game works entirely through a physics engine, allowing players to take command of their very own ships. Each team has to take down the enemy's bunker, which powers the forcefield protecting their base. Bunkers are tough targets and can shoot down your missiles before they make contact, so you'll need to help the ground troops who assist your team in destroying it. Ships are customize-able and can be fitted with several different weapons and features, each with advantages and disadvantages.

It's currently still a work-in-progress, so remember that everything you see in the video is still subject to change.

Make sure you check out the thread and leave your feedback here!

Also be sure to check out Blizzard's most recent Arcade Highlight!

Curious about how the custom observer UI used from the Swarm Launch event? Check out the official documentation and guide!

WoW TD2 by PinkyBlue

Simply put, this is a classic tower defense game with mazes and mini games, based off of and inspired by World of Warcraft. The towers utilized in-game are heroes of Azeroth, the enemies are common monsters from Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms, Northrend, Outland and other dangerous places around the world of Warcraft.

Warhounds are back!

That's right, warhounds have been added back into starcraft 2. But not just for the Terrans- that would be unfair. All three races will now be able to use warhounds. You can see the reasoning behind blizzard's decision to reintroduce the warhound here.

At sc2mapster, we agree with blizzard that warhounds are pretty awesome. Make sure you let us know what you think here.

Hearthstone Announced

Blizzard recently announced a brand new game based off the existing WoW IP, called Hearthstone. The game is an online, free to play, trading card game. The game will be a much smaller-scale title compared to most blizzard games. If you want to sign up for the beta, you can edit your beta profile settings inside your battle.net account. You can click here to check out the official website.

You can take a look at the information video below.

Join the discussion and let us know what you think here!

Heart of the Swarm Released

Heart of the Swarm is finally here, and servers are live across the world! If you haven't purchased the game yet, you can get it at Battle.Net. If you want to see the official patch notes for HotS, take a look here. If you're wondering how publishing works with HotS out, or you're struggling to figure out which dependencies to use in your project, take a look at this thread. If you've already completed the campaign and want to discuss the story, head over here (Spoilers!). Finally, remember to join the sc2mapster group to find testers for your maps and get questions answered.

There were some awesome Heart of the Swarm animations aired during the launch event. If you missed the stream, you can check them out below.

And as always, remember to use [Spoiler] tags in threads discussing the story.

Update #2: For those wondering how publishing maps will work in HotS, take a look at this post.

Sixen Update: If anyone needs to catch up on the lore, I was on a special edition of Up to Speed with Clutch from NASL, I'll link to the VOD as soon as they put it together. In addition, I'll be at the Irvine live event, maybe I'll get some cool stuff to share with you guys!

HotS Updates

As you all probably know, Heart of the Swarm launches this Tuesday, March 12th! The official list of launch times for each region is now available here, so you can see exactly when you can start playing! Blizzard also posted updates regarding the campaign. Kerrigan's leveling system is explained here, and the mutation and evolution system is explained here. Feel free to join the update discussion here. If you haven't seen it already, the HotS launch trailer is below.

With the launch of the game quickly approaching, we'd also like to remind you to keep posts spoiler-free. If you're creating a thread to discuss the story, be sure to place a "[Spoiler]" warning in the title.

Update: Patch 2.0.4 is incoming! Artestru also posted a reminder to back up your mods and maps in case something goes wrong with the patching like last time. Get ready for a swarm of new editor updates :)

Mercenaries in Space by maticpl

Mercenaries in Space is a multiplayer action-RPG with mission-based gameplay. Players can select one of two different classes to play as, and outfit their character with various items and upgrades before launching into a mission.

Mercenaries in Space is an currently available on EU servers under the RPG section of the arcade. Be sure to check out the thread and leave your feedback here!

Street Empires Update by IggNight

Some of you might remember a map by the name of Street Empires by IggNight. He's recently release a major update to the map, including a new firing system, a vehicle system, a smart AI to fight against, and tons of custom-made models.

If you haven't seen the project yet, be sure to check it out here! It's currently available on US and EU servers.

HotS Opening Cinematic

Blizzard has released the opening cinematic for Heart of the Swarm in full HD glory! Make sure you check it out below, or join the discussion here!

Starcraft Machinima by PrettyAwesome

The Cinematic editor is a pretty powerful tool for making machinima, and PrettyAwesome is using it for just that. Check out the latest episode of HasuCraft below!

Make sure you leave your feedback at in the thread here!