As you read these words, it’s likely that I’m sitting on a United Airlines plane on my way to LAX, with my final destination being Anaheim, Calif., and BlizzCon ’09. And as I sit on this plane, my thoughts drifting randomly from one Blizzard topic to the next, I can’t help but wonder what this year’s convention has in store for me, for all of us.

Last year’s convention was certainly unforgettable. The announcement that StarCraft II would be a trilogy of games, combined with being one of the first outsiders to play Diablo III, made for a very memorable first BlizzCon.

Follow me as I look into my crystal ball (more like bag of airline peanuts), and speculate on what we can expect from this year’s Blizzard extravaganza. Oh, and there’s a list of other juicy StarCraft II facts at the end of this post as well.

It's pretty straight forward: I want to hear all your questions about StarCraft II and Diablo III. Omgstarcraft.com and omgrpg.com will be at BlizzCon '09 in Anaheim, Calif., starting tomorrow and we'll be interviewing the developers of every game. What's on your mind? Thought of something we haven't? This is your chance to prod the devs of your favorite upcoming games and get the answers you're dying to hear.

Send any questions you have to omgstarcraft@gmail.com. The best ones will be added to our list of questions and we'll do our best to get them answered.

We're looking forward to a great BlizzCon; we hope you are too. There's more coverage on StarCraft II's singleplayer game coming in a few hours. Keep checking back!

I stumbled upon this StarCraft cinematic today and thought it was a brand new Blizzard teaser trailer at first. Come to find out, it was actually created by a fan who goes by the name "Freespace" and is a member of the StarCraft: Legacy community.

For those of you who aren't familiar with StarCraft: Legacy, it is one of the oldest StarCraft fansites and communities on the Web. According to the Web page dedicated to the cinematic, titled StarCraft: First Contact, Freespace is a creative director at his fledgling CGI start-up company, Tractor Media. He has a passion for CG and is combining it with his passion of StarCraft in hopes to jump start his business.

Read the plot to this original prequel idea and watch this amazing cinematic after the jump!

Three lucky artists have taken top honors in this month's "Vespene Laughs" comic contest held by Blizzard and will receive beta keys for StarCraft II. Some comic strips are funnier than others but all are great attempts. Lord knows they draw better than I could ever hope to. Click the comics below to head to the gallery, from there you can click on each one again to see the full version.


Robert Klemm

April's three Vespene Laughs winners, who will get beta keys for StarCraft II, have been revealed recently.

Congratulations to the winners of our monthly StarCraft "Vespene Laughs" Comic Contest! We'd like to thank everyone who participated -- we received many hilarious and creative comics from all around the world, and picking the winners wasn't easy.

--starcraft2.com

Click here to submit comics for the Vespene Laughs contest. Winners receive a key for the StarCraft II beta.

Hit the jump to check out the other 2 winners.

The latest comic contest winners are out. Don't forget that there is still time to enter into Blizzard's comic contest as well as their Theme Park contest to win StarCraft II beta keys.

Check out the gallery below for the winning comics.

Vespene Laughs comic contest winners for the month of Feb. (4 images)

StarCraft and eSports have once again surfaced in the blogosphere and in a very impressive way. StarCraft is known for its popularity in Korea, but the latest headlines speak of a new collegiate league that has 23 major universities already involved.

StarFeeder's
contributing writer “Peanut,” otherwise known as Christina Kelly at Harvard University here in Boston, MA, — about 30-minutes from where I live — has written an op-ed piece about the Collegiate StarCraft League published in The Harvard Crimson.

News has been very sparse the past weeks and perhaps that's a good thing, maybe the devs are nearing a release date, or at least a beta date.

Despite this, Blizzard has announced that in addition to its comic strip contest and its theme park contest, they will be holding a writing contest.

Interested fans should submit a piece of fictional writing between 3,000 and 10,000 words that takes place in one of Blizzard's universes. The winner will get a trip to Blizzard's Irvine, California headquarters to meet with the writing staff, and will go home with a Frostmourne Sword. Seven runner-ups will get various Blizzard books as prizes.

You may remember that over 6 months ago the Ghost used to have a cool ability known as the "drop pod." Ghost's were able to use their laser designator to call in a drop pod loaded with friendly Terran units, just like they would call down a nuke.

At first the drop pod could only be filled with Marines and was a means for quick reinforcements anywhere a Ghost was on the battlefield. A smart player may have even used the Ghost's cloak ability to get behind enemy lines and then call in the drop pod to land more forces deep within an enemy's base, behind their outer defenses. Later the developers toyed with the idea of allowing any unit to be put inside the pod. Players quickly started to dream of scenarios where pods would fall from the sky releasing eight SCV's at a mineral line for quick base expansion.

A while back Blizzard asked fans to vote for their favorite Dark Templar model and the results are in. So long as the developers listen to the fans like they said they will, we should be seeing both the Lenassa and Zer'atai clans of Dark Templar in the game.