Starcraft II Beta launches

The wait is finally over folks as Blizzard today launch the closed beta test of their highly anticipated real-time strategy game, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty.

The wait is finally over folks as Blizzard today launch the closed beta test of their highly anticipated real-time strategy game, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. 

For those who were lucky enough to get an invite, you now download and participate in the first phase of the beta test through Blizzard’s redesigned Battle.net service. According to Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment:

Gathering concentrated feedback from our players is an important step for us as we head into the final stretch of development for StarCraft II and the new Battle.net service. We look forward to having our players’ help in polishing the overall experience and preparing for launch.

In related news, Blizzard has also unveiled the system requirements for the multiplayer beta along with a list of the known bugs and issues:

PC Minimum Requirements:

• Windows XP SP3/Vista SP1/Windows 7
• 2.2 Ghz Pentium IV or equivalent AMD Athlon processor
• 1 GB system RAM/1.5 GB for Vista and Windows 7
• 128 MB NVidia GeForce 6600 GT/ATI Radeon 9800 PRO video card
• 1024×768 minimum display resolution
• 4 GB free hard space (Beta)
• Broadband connection

*Note* the final requirements for Starcraft II have not yet been determined. Due to ongoing development the minimum requirements listed above are subject to change at any time. During this phase a Mac version will NOT be available, please check back.

** PLEASE UPDATE YOUR DRIVERS ** – Old drivers can cause significant issues in StarCraft II. Please ensure your video card drivers are up-to-date.

StarCraft II Public Beta – Known Issues

This is a listing of some of the known issues that we expect some players may experience while playing in the Public Beta, please keep in mind that this list is not complete.

The latest patch notes can always be found at: forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=23094049316&sid=5000

General Issues:

• The Intel Core i7 processor occasionally runs StarCraft II slower than usual.
• ATI x1800/x1900 cards display black box shadows with Medium lighting. – Try lowering your graphics settings to temporarily resolve this issue.
• Some objects are visible through the fog of war on low graphics settings.
• The mouse cursor is not always confined to the game window when running windowed fullscreen mode with dual monitors.
• StarCraft II microphone settings are overwriting Windows’ microphone settings.
• Unsupported aspect ratios can become available when using a portrait style monitor.
• Some letters are being cut off in the message log at certain resolutions.
• The game can close when switching to another program shortly after starting StarCraft II. – If you experience this issue please try updating your systems drivers.
• Samsung 2253LW monitors experience an issue with the 1600×1200 resolution not stretching properly to fit the screen.
• Resolution issues can occur when rapidly changing between display modes. – Changing display modes can correct the issue.

Paged Pool Memory:

Players may experience a drop of performance or odd graphical issues after playing for long periods of time. Usually when this occurs a message will appear mentioning the players page pool memory. If you receive the overlay messages informing you of the problem you can try to lower your graphic settings and restarting your client/machine, or increasing the system’s memory. Also ensure your drivers are up to date and all OS updates have been applied.