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StarCraft (video game)

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StarCraft is a real-time strategy computer game produced by Blizzard Entertainment in 1998. The game is similar to Blizzard's previous hit Warcraft II, but with an improved gameplay. The main storyline of the game evolves around a war struggle between three galactic races: the Protoss (peaceful aliens), the Zerg (monster-type aliens) and the Terrans (humans).

StarCraft was the highest selling PC game in 1998. In that same year Blizzard released an expansion pack called StarCraft: Brood War.

General information

Warcraft II, while advanced for its time, featured the noted weakness of having characters parallel across the two races: each unit had a corresponding unit in the other race, and the technology trees were similar. Starcraft improved upon this by incorporating three races, Protoss, Zerg and Terran, instead of two, and by revamping the unit rosters to include unique technologies and units in all three factions.

The game also includes multi-player gaming on Blizzard's own internet gaming service Battle.net. One can play against opponents all over the world free of any charge beyond the original purchase of the game and local Internet access fees. Many fans enjoyed playing in groups against the computer in skirmish games - the programming of the AI was extremely good and the computer could play devious, hard and clever, but always fair - even though fans also enjoyed creating unfair maps, that were extremely hard to beat. A couple of years after the release of the game Blizzard also released several free maps on the "insane" level.

An expansion pack called Brood War was released in 1998. The expansion provides several new units for each race and a whole new set of scenarios which continue where the StarCraft scenarios left off.

Popularity

In the early 2000s, the game received an explosive popularity among Korean online gamers, to the point of being referred as the national sport of Korea by some avid gamers.

In 2004, Starcraft Broodwar is still the most popular online game in the world, proofed by the german multigaming clan clan pro-Gaming

The game itself has its own culture, similar to Slashdot's and other Massive Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) communities. Its most popular expression among the gaming community is the "Zerg rush", referring to any mass attack of expendable units where it is foreknown that almost all units will die, but the massive use of these will destroy the target.

Novels and eBooks

StarCraft even became an inspiration for the creation of official novels and eBooks, such as:

and many other written by fans.

Races

See the individual races for their various buildings and units.

Scenarios

The game comes with a campaign/map editor called StarEdit. StarEdit has many features, including a trigger system that allows one to make radical changes to the way that map works.

Readily giving gamers the ability to create map scenarios allows for the gamers to become creators. Scenarios are created with entirely different sets of rules, objectives, and units. More popular user created scenarios include VTEC Paintball, Tankwars, and Commando Wars.

Similar games

Official sites

Strategies

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