StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void multiplayer updates

New information about Legacy of the Void, the upcoming third release of the StarCraft II trilogy, has been scant at best. We learned about the campaign mode at BlizzCon, but little beyond that. This afternoon, however, the StarCraft II developers released a few tidbits of information about Legacy of the Void‘s multiplayer development. While the update includes information about general gameplay and all three playable factions, we feel these are the highlights:

• The developers are experimenting with slowing down combat. In their internal testing, attack animations were reduced by 40% and damage values were increased to compensate. So far, they’re finding that the change reduced the skill component in combat and made games feel longer. The change is not final, only an internal experiment for now.
• The new protoss unit for Legacy of the Void is a core Gateway unit with a ground-only ranged attack. The unit can spawn a Shade, move that Shade independently of the unit itself, and after a set duration, the unit teleports to the Shade’s location. You will simultaneously be controlling where the unit should be right now, and where you want it to be later.

The combat speed change is particularly intriguing; fast reaction time has long been one of the hallmarks of skilled StarCraft players. Making significant changes to the pacing of combat could change the micromanagement (“micro”) aspect of the game completely, especially for pro players. It could give them extra time for movement between attacks, offering more mobile engagements. However, the change could introduce the possibility of higher accessibility for new and casual players. Though those players would welcome the accessibility, slowing things down after this many years with StarCraft could result in Legacy of the Void feeling sluggish for established players. This experiment is not available for public testing, however, so speculation is all we have.

Head over to Battle.net to check out all of the Legacy of the Void multiplayer updates.