The Starcraft II Beta Developer Twitter Chat # 1 revealed several details about beta testing.

  • Blizzard plans to release a major content patch mid-April to enable some basic achievements and improved voice chat, 3v3 and 4v4 maps, among other unidentified features.
  • A Mac beta client will be available in April, when it’s ready.
  • The Map Editor will be out before late-April.
  • No new races are planned for the three episodes of Starcraft II.
  • The roach, Infestor and reaper are currently in their Watch List.
  • Critters were not priority for beta, and will eventually be added.
  • Plans for Defense of the Ancients (DOTA) and community maps ladder and matchmaking.
  • Dustin said more players will be invited to beta in upcoming weeks, and encourages gamers to enable the beta opt-in option in the Battle.net Account webpage to qualify.
  • Replay hosting and sharing won’t be available at ship date.
  • Streamed replays for Tournament Finals is planned in future Starcraft II expansions.

Below you can read the 4-pages transcript.

Blizzard Quote:
So many people are complaining about this on the forum… is it true that there will be no chat channels? I hope not!

We do have plans for chat channels. Specifically, we want to organize chat channels around users’ interests so you know what types of conversations you are going to get into when you join a channel. This feature is not something that will be in for beta. Currently we plan to do this feature in a patch after the game launches.

Are you guys still working on the Map Editor; and if so, what features are you planning to incorporate into the final piece?

Yes. We’re still working on the Map Editor and currently working on the publishing system. We intend to release an early version of the editor during the beta so the map-making community can get a head start creating their own maps. This is going to be a stretch for us to pull off, but our hope is to get it out before the end of April.

Do you really use beers to balance units? And do you really use that rubber gun to make a decision?

I’m drunk now! Seriously the Jace Hall show was fun to do, but we take our jobs pretty seriously when it comes to the actual work. =)

More after the break.