This morning Blizzard released patch 1.3.3 for StarCraft II. Addressing a number of bugs and balance issues, patch 1.3.3 should make some pretty substantial changes to the game. The most important thing to note is that the decreased Gateway unit training time that we saw on the Public Test Realm didn’t make it into the final patch.

The full patch notes are:

General

•     The default hotkey to toggle in-game music on/off has been reverted to its hotkey prior to Patch 1.3.0. The hotkey to display APM in the observer stat panel has been changed as a result. Balance

PROTOSS

•     Archon

        Now a Massive unit.
        Range increased from 2 to 3.

•     Cybernetics Core

        Research Warp Gate research time increased from 140 to 160.

•     Gateway

        Sentry train time decreased from 42 to 37. (
        Warp Gate unit train times remain unchanged.
    Pylon power radius has been decreased from 7.5 to 6.5.

TERRAN

•     Bunker

        Salvage resource return reduced from 100% to 75%.

•     Ghost

        Cost changed from 150/150 to 200/100.

•     Thor

Thor now has 200 max energy, and starts with 50 energy. *250mm Strike Cannons now cost 150 energy to use.

ZERG

•     Infestor

        Speed decreased from 2.5 to 2.25.

•     Spore Crawler

        Root time decreased from 12 to 6.

Bug Fixes

•     Fixed an issue where Ghosts could not quickly EMP the same location.

•     Fixed an issue that allowed players to stack air units when issuing a queued stop command before the units reached the end of their patrol point.

•     Fixed an issue where unplugging your USB headset while another player was talking to you could cause a crash.

•     Fixed an issue where the APM statistic could be artificially increased.

•     Fixed an issue where 3D unit portraits were not animating smoothly at slow game speeds.

•     Fixed an issue where, when viewing a replay, no text message was displayed when a player left a game.

•     The Taiwanese hotkey to display/hide the game UI while in Observer mode now works correctly

Anyone who follows Korean eSports knows of the IP rights war between Blizzard Entertainment and the Korean eSPORTS Association. For those of you know may be new to the scene, basically Blizzard wanted OnGameNet and MBC Game (the medias broadcasting KeSPA-affiliated BroodWar games) to pay for the rights to broadcast StarCraft on television.

Today Blizzard and the Korean eSPORTS Association have come to an agreement. According to the official statement:

The fight over the intellectual property rights seems to be coming to a close.The dispute between Blizzard and Kespa will be settled amicably as of now, and a license contract will be signed shortly. The scheduled court date on the 13th has been delayed, the reason being the three parties, ongamenet, mbcgame, and Blizzard coming to an agreement.

Three parties are currently discussing the terms for a brighter future of e-sports in Korea. Ongament, and MBCgame will be at liberty to produce and sell starcraft contents, and open starcraft tournaments. Both tv networks have agreed to give exposure to blizzard with the logo, and the license fee will be given to Blizzard each year, the fee is unspecified at this time.

For those of you who want an indepth look at the history of the Korean eSports scene, check out this article. It does a pretty good job summarising the league battle between Blizzard and KeSPA.

Baneling BBQ: Lost Track of Time

by Emil Erlandsson

Visit Baneling BBQ for more cartoons from Emil Erlandsson

Today at 5 PM EST The Collegiate Starleague (a StarCraft II league for college students to participate in) will be holding its grand finals featuring The University of Waterloo versus The University of British Columbia. What’s interesting about this tournament is that three of compLexity’s players are participating. On Waterloo’s side you have coL.Antimage and on UBC’s you have coL.Stalife and coL.FireZerg.

The format of the CSL is a tad bit strange. You see, the finals will be a best of seven, except that each game is played by a different player. To mix it up even more, set three will be a 2v2 game. The match ups have already been determined as follows:

coLAntimage [Metalopolis] coLStalife
NrGHumble [Tal’Darim Altar] coLFireZerg
SuperNinja and lALalA [War Zone] Saikou and tQWannaBe
xiGerbil [Shakuras Plateau] ValiditySAGA
tGKangpo [Xel’Naga Caverns] Saikou
SCMonk [GSL Crevasse] tQWannaBe
? [Shattered Temple] ?

To watch the CSL finals (which are commentated by none other than Day[9]) head over to Day9tv at 5PM EST.