‘StarCraft 2’: Blizzard Brings In Spawning

Blizzard has introduced Spawning into StarCraft 2.

Spawning is something Blizzard has done with their games for quite a while, and some have wondered why it took this long for the feature to come to their ultra-popular real-time strategy game.

You may be asking what Spawning is at this point, so here’s a quick overview: You currently own StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty, but you’re now playing online against people who own the new Heart of the Swarm expansion that gives you upgrades to every race and new solo missions as the Zerg. Spawning allows you to temporarily upgrade to Heart of the Swarm so you can take part in the battles with the new units and such.

The way Blizzard sees it, Spawning will allow new gamers using the Starter Editions and seasoned players using only StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty to see what they’re missing with StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm, and the experience could lead to more sales of the expansion if they have fun with it.

Starting today up until the end of Sunday, all three races are available in StarCraft 2: Starter Edition. Then every once in a while, there will be promotions where you can switch races if you want. So if you have a hankering to play with Pylons (Protoss building unit), you can use those promotions to take advantage.

Production director Chris Sigaty explains why the feature is just now coming to StarCraft 2:

“I think priorities. This was something we talked about in the past but never really had a good vision for it. We were working on important features for the core game as we did Heart of the Swarm. … Then Heart of The Swarm drops with a whole bunch of great stuff, including things that make life easier for players to find each other … it just felt like the right time now that we’ve finally had a little bit of air to breathe into this feature.”

What do you think of Blizzard finally adding Spawning to StarCraft 2?