The Sons of the Storm is home to the drawings and blogs of many core Blizzard Artists. One of the most memorable blogs from the site is written by Renè Koiter (of Twincrusier) is a tribute to his twin brother and artistic partner, Michel Koiter, who passed away 7 years ago. It's truly a moving story which shows a brother's love which further fosters support from the love Blizzard has for all of the members of it's development family.

When StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty came to the world, again his brother's memory was honored in one of the most memorable moments in the entire game. In light of acknowledgement to his beloved brother, Renè has revisited and updated the tribute blog to include the meaning behind an obviously symbolic moment in a segment named "Worth the Fight". A portion of this addition is quoted below:

One day in early 2010, Sammy hailed me into his office. He booted up one of StarCraft II's cutscenes that the Cinematics department had been working on. "You seen this?", he asked. It was the game's protagonist Jim Raynor in his battle armor boosting the moral of his troops before deploying to a crucial assault. It cut to a close-up of Raynor's gauntlet holding a dog tag of a fallen soldier under his command. The dog tag read M. Koiter as he delivered the line "...because some things are just worth fighting for". Nick Carpenter, Cinematics' art director, had been inspired by Michel's story during StarCraft II's development and decided to reference him in the game after seven years of post-mortem. At BlizzCon 2009, I was costumed as Jim Raynor and watching the scene unfold, I empathized thoroughly...

Time halts and I recall just solidifying, my mind soaking up the impact and consequences of it all.

It's truly a tribute that tugs at the emotions and even warrants reading a second time if it hasn't been read already.

Blizzard has posted the current top 200 StarCraft II players in North America. This update arrived on August 30th, marking 20 days after the first update. The following are the top 20 North American players:

Rank	Race	Character Name
1	Terran	SeleCT
2	Protoss	HuK
3	Terran	KawaiiRice
4	Zerg	SLush
5	Protoss	Cheese
6	Terran	Fenix
7	Terran	MurDeR
8	Protoss	Taurent
9	Protoss	IefNaij
10	Protoss	TTOne
11	Terran	REBUKED
12	Protoss	Katari
13	Protoss	Axslav
14	Protoss	KiWiKaKi
15	Protoss	DdoRo
17	Terran	Hincram
16	Zerg	MasterAsia
18	Terran	drewbie
19	Zerg	ostojiy
20	Zerg	CatZ

Legacy Weekly #32 has just warped in, bringing you all the StarCraft news from the last week in an easy to read format delivered straight to you here on the front page. You can read the latest issue here.

Source:
StarCraft: Legacy - Legacy Weekly #32

Blizzard has released Situation Report: Patch 1.1 and Beyond, a list of upcoming patch changes for the upcoming 1.1 patch, which is due mid-September. The article includes plans for several major balance changes for all three races:

Greetings, citizens of the Koprulu sector! StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is celebrating its one-month anniversary and we’re extremely excited to witness the amazing community that’s come together around the game. To that end, we want you to know we are hard at work on the first feature and balance patch, and expect to have it completed and available by the middle of September. Patch 1.1 will contain a number of improvements including additional mod features, Editor improvements and bug fixes, some custom game improvements, support for NVIDIA’s 3D Vision, and more. We'd also like to share some specific plans for this patch with you.

To begin, we've heard a lot of feedback from our global community about standardized hotkey options. We're happy to announce that in patch 1.1 we are going to make the Standard (US) and Standard for Lefties (US) hotkey options available in all regions.

Balance Changes

We have several balance changes in store. One general change we're making is that friendly units will no longer provide vision after being killed. Enemy units previously revealed will no longer be targetable. Now let's break down the additional balance changes we're implementing.

Maps

We're going to be adding destructible rocks to the Desert Oasis map to make natural expansions easier to protect. In addition, the center map watchtower area is being narrowed.

Protoss

We have two key changes in mind for the zealot: the build time is being increased from 33 to 38 seconds, and the warpgate cooldown is being increased from 23 to 28 seconds. Zealot rushes are currently too powerful at various skill levels, particularly those that rely on rapidly assaulting an enemy base from nearby "proxy" gateways. We feel the window players have to scout for and fend off this rush is too small. We also want to address the problem of protoss being able to dump minerals a bit too quickly with the combination of warpgates and Chrono Boost.

Terran

There are several changes in the works for terrans. Reapers against zerg are stronger than expected. Due to the zealot build time increase, reapers would be a bit problematic in combination with proxy barracks, bunkers, and/or marauders against protoss. Therefore, we have decided to increase the build time of reapers as well from 40 to 45 seconds. Fast reaper + bunker, or fast marine + bunker rushes are problematic against zerg. Although this rush would never outright destroy the zerg player, we feel zerg suffers too much of a disadvantage from either having to cancel the fast expansion, or getting trapped inside the main base for too long, so we are also increasing the bunker build time from 30 to 35 seconds.

Siege tanks in large numbers are performing too well in all matchups. In the mid- to late-game, siege tanks are too dominant against all ground units. We want a small set of light and unarmored ground units to perform better against siege tanks. With this in mind, we're changing the Siege Mode damage of the siege tank from 50 to 35, +15 vs. armored; to correspond with this, damage upgrades will be changed from +5 to +3, +2 vs. armored. This change reduces the base damage of the siege tank against light and unarmored units, as well as the splash damage.

Battlecruisers currently lack good counters from the ground and still perform very well against a wide array of unit types. We're aware that it is not easy to get battlecruisers out for the cost, but at the same time, it is possible in both 1v1s and team games to create stalemate situations to bring them out. Overall, we feel that battlecruisers are too strong for their cost, and the terran-forced stalemate situations are causing less interesting gameplay. We will be lowering their damage against ground units from 10 to 8.

Zerg

Ultralisk damage is being decreased from 15, +25 vs. armored to 15, +20 vs. armored. This reduction is comparable to the changes being made to the battlecruiser and siege tank. Like the battlecruiser, ultralisks are simply too powerful for the cost, even though they are difficult to muster. Also, in combination with other units, ultralisks are difficult to counter from the ground. The ultralisk building attack (Ram) is being removed because the damage rate is too similar to its normal attack, which will be used against buildings instead. When ultralisks target tightly packed smaller buildings such as supply depots, the Ram attack is actually outputting considerably less overall damage than its normal attack, as Ram only hits a single target.

And Beyond...

We are reading your posts on the forums and creating lists of features and bugs to address in future patches. We have mid- to long-term plans to further evolve the Custom Game experience, and soon, enhance our social features with the addition of chat channels. We will be sharing more specific information in the coming weeks. As with all of our previous games, we will support StarCraft II for many years to come. Your feedback and participation is critical in making this not only the best game it can be, but also the most engaged gaming community in the world. We look forward to the implementation of patch 1.1, as well as sharing our plans for our future gameplay and Battle.net features.

We'll see you online!

Source:
Blizzard StarCraft II Situation Report #1

"Death will rise from the tide!" Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain once warned -- and at BlizzCon 2010, the band's dire musical prophecy will finally come to pass. Everyone who attends this year's BlizzCon or purchases the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket will receive an exclusive set of murlocalyptic in-game items for World of Warcraft and StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. World of Warcraft players will be joined by Deathy, a murloc companion decked out as Deathwing and doing his best to strike fear into the hearts of Azeroth's crustacean population. You'll also be able to display your tidal pride in StarCraft II with a Murloc Marine character portrait and a pair of deep-sea decals to emblazon on your units, each with a different terran, protoss, and zerg design.