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Hey there, I'm Kevin Johnson, the Community Manager
for StarCraft II at Blizzard Entertainment.
Some of you may know me as "Cloaken" from the StarCraft forums.
As the first expansion to StarCraft II - Heart of the Swarm -
will be releasing on March 12th of this year,
we wanted to take a few moments to walk you through some
of the new social features that we're adding to the game.
Let's jump right in.
Right off the bat you'll notice that we've made some
sweeping changes to the overall user interface.
We really feel these changes will be beneficial to making
the StarCraft II experience more enjoyable for our players.
Some of the design goals we set in the revamp
of the UI for Swarm were:
Simplify navigation,
increase consistency,
and improve usability.
Now, you are just one click away from any major screen
in the user interface. As an example,
access to the Custom Games menu can now be found
directly on the home screen, no longer requiring
you to select Multiplayer to access it.
With this new full-screen, landscape format,
we've streamlined the look and feel,
giving us more space to make future improvements.
We have also taken a look at chat, as we know it's a
feature our community cares a great deal about.
We have tweaked the home screen so that it will
surface chat channels you might be interested
in here on the right side of the screen.
Or, simply dive into a familiar chat channel
via the input point here.
Below, you can see we are also surfacing quick
access to Featured Groups, which is a highlighted part
of our new Clans and Groups system.
In Heart of the Swarm, you'll be able to create
your own social groups so that you can connect with
individuals who share common interests with you.
Clans are designed to be smaller and invitation-only
with a focus on competitive StarCraft.
Clans also have the ability to assign a clan tag and
will display next to a member's name while in-game,
while groups are larger interest-driven entities
that can be centered around pretty much anything.
Each Clan and Group comes with their own private chat channel,
and an interface for organizing news, info, and a membership roster.
Currently, Clans and Groups are similar in functionality.
Going forward, our development focus on
the Clans feature will be to add more competitive features,
whereas Groups will always remain focused on
fostering more casual interactions.
Another interesting feature available to players with Swarm is
the ability to connect with people who
are playing StarCraft on the same network as you.
We're calling this feature "Players Near You."
So, you might be wondering -
what exactly does this feature do for me?
Well, as an example, if you are a student at a university
or playing StarCraft from an Internet gaming room,
this is an easy way to connect with new friends
who are playing the game on the same local network.
If it's something you'd rather not have available to you,
you can always turn it off in the options menu located here.
Lastly, StarCraft II players will soon have
the ability to access the game on servers outside
their native region with Global Play.
As a relatively intuitive feature,
each time you log into the game you have the option to
choose the server region you would like to play on.
With this feature, you can now compete against players
from all corners of the world, at any moment.
If you happen to be a custom map developer,
you'll also be able to upload your creations to other regions.
Keep in mind, though, that the responsiveness
of the game will be affected by the distance between
your home location and the server you are playing on.
That pretty much does it for our quick overview of
new social features coming with Heart of the Swarm.
We look forward to hearing your feedback on these features
over on the StarCraft II forums and we can't wait
to get the finished game into your hands on March 12th.
Thanks for watching!
We'll catch up with you again in our next video,
where we will cover new features designed to help
train and prepare players for competitive play.