After the recent news of Blizzard ending their Beta period on May 31st, there have been some recent patch updates to the game. Initially the beta period was strictly invite only, however, with the free beta keys in the pre-sale orders, the floodgates were open. Now several patches later, Blizzard had introduced some new features. One of these being the Facebook incorporation of Battle.net. which if you ask me, is one of the worst ideas ever.

Most games tie your account to your email, I don’t know why they want to hook into my Facebook account now. Even still, the game has still added updates to the game, such as map sharing (for custom maps) and ability to play 3v3 and 4v4 were also introduced. It is pretty amazing that such updates were added so close to the end of this beta testing and so quick to the game launch ( July 27th). Blizzard has also rolled out their major updates to Battle.net SC2 ’system’, causing nothing but trouble to those playing the beta program. Gamers trying to play the 3v3 and 4v4 matches experienced extreme lag.

Blizzard responded with an emergency update patch, opening up the UDP (“patch 13″), but did not fully correct the problem. 2v2 and 1v1 were also affected. Starcraft II was virtually unplayable until Blizzard rolled back before the ability to publish and share custom maps. This was pinpointed as the cause of the performance issues. Recently Blizzard has re-enabled this featured. There are noticeable improvements, but the game is still far from perfect.

The interface has remained the same, with a few major differences. The fonts and color schemes have improved. They are not as transparent as before, making it much easier to read the text. Patch 13 has also disabled alot of the sound effects that were working prior to the release. The biggest update however has to be to their “Add a friend” system. Up until Patch 13, the ‘Add a friend” system was working entirely through Battle.net. The latest release has now allowed the end-user to add friends by their emails or by adding your Facebook friends instead.

Patch 13 has fixed some problems, there are a lot that are still left unresolved. For example, the custom map publishing, the changes to the interface, the many bugs and fixes they need to make, the new friend system being added so soon to the end of beta, there are so many issues that are open that I fear that the launch of the game will be pushed back or not met. Does Blizzard even know what they are doing now?

We are all waiting to see!