In the distant past (early 2000s) there was a member of Blizzforums who went by the name “Siegest”. He wrote a short story about “Pykie the Probe”. I’m not sure who did the artwork, and only recently came across it while searching my backups for something else, but I thought that it would be worth it to upload it again. I figured it would serve well as one of the first Fan Fictions of the new Starcraft.org!
What did you think of Pykie?
At Major League Gaming’s Spring Championship (June 8th-10th) attendees will be able to play a beta of Heart of the Swarm! Tickets are only $35 to the event which is being held at the Anaheim Convention Center outside LA, California. There will be some kiosks out on the floor offering folks a chance to play the beta. At this point no one knows if this is the same build we saw at Blizzcon or a more recent one.
A recent Dev Update explains that they’ve changed a lot, maybe we’ll see these changes at the MLG Spring event?
Which new unit are you most interested in?
Google has a new easter egg, all you have to do is search for zerg rush!
Tip: click on them! How high of a score can you get?!
Back in the early 2000s Starcraft.org presented the StarCraft community with a campaign from JudasCloud, named “The Shifters”. It’s not a technically advanced campaign, the only fancy modifcations are some portrait swaps and using custom music in various places. Throughout the years The Shifters has floated around Starcraft.org, at one point the EXE was even updated for 1.10, but after that point it was forgotten… until now!
There are many cool campaigns for StarCraft/BW, but The Shifters has always intrigued me. The premise is simple: Disaffected humans finding themselves allying with the Zerg, throw in a love interest, some good writing, and you’ve got yourself a way to waste an evening on a cool story.
How has it aged? Well I would say that any negatives surround the use of Starcraft as the medium. After 14 year there are many technical issues that might pop up with the game. I took awhile to figure out how to update the old EXE to work with the most recent version of Starcraft, luckily it doesn’t require you to downgrade or anything.
Download The Shifters (76mb, zip archive)
If you prefer to play Starcraft/BW through different means (via a launcher to play in window mode for instance) you can skip using the exe, it’s a simple mod that switches some portraits around (Zheng = Raynor without the patch, otherwise he uses the Vulture portrait).
There is an early mission where you are supposed to clear out a number of zerg enemies, please do not treat it as a standard campaign mission of “turtle up, build stuff, roll over”, the Zerg have access to every unit, and will go air heavy, your best bet is to push early, do not wait (I found abusing Goliaths and Tanks worked well).
Aside from the mission I mentioned, the campaign’s difficulty is mostly easy, you can tell that JudasCloud preferred to tell a story, so it might feel as if you’re watching a movie in a few places, that’s intended.
What did you think of The Shifters? Is it how you remembered? Are you playing it for the first time? Let us know what you think!
Just like I promised, here’s the new design!
There are a few kinks to work out, and I still have to decide how to organize the menu and sidebar areas, but I’m rather happy with it. Submissions are also re-opened! For the moment it’s only Fan Fiction and Fan Art. In the near future I’ll open up submissions for Strategies and Customs.
Don’t hesitate to let me know here or on the forums what you think, and please let me know if you come across a bug, thanks!
Pykie the Probe