The World of StarCraft MMO mod for StarCraft 2 has been rename and retooled into Starcraft Universe. The change comes on the heels of a wild week for the mod's creator in which he was given a cease and desist letter from Activisions Lawyers, offered a job by League of Legends developer Riot Games, and finally flown out to Blizzard HQ to present his case to the team. The end result of this yielded a new mod that's slightly retooled, renamed, and not quite the MMO people originally hoped for.
The biggest change and the one sure to disappoint the most people, is the mod will not allow players to level their characters at all. Instead "progression" will be loot based. The maximum amount of players in the game at any one time is 12, this is due to the limitations of the Starcraft 2 mod tools and game engine.
Here's some of the features the team is promising for Starcraft Universe:
- A wide variety of monsters, bosses, and character classes. SCU classes include: Infantry, Special-Ops, Demolition, and many others.
- A game save system. These maps will allows players to create, save, and load existing characters (a unique function uncommon to custom StarCraft maps).
- Hundreds of customizable weapons, runes, and equipment to choose from. They can be acquired as loot or bought in shops.
- Multiplayer experience. These maps allow (and encourage) up to twelve players in one match.
The end result sounds a bit more like a traditional co-op experience, something a bit like Monster Hunter, and less like an MMO. That's not necessarily a bad thing - I think it's just not what people will be expecting. There's no time table on the release of the mod, but you can hit up the official forums to get the latest news on it as it progresses.
Source: Techspot.com