The Heart of the Swarm 3.0 Patch is now live! This patch brings a host of new additions and improvements to the game. Please read the full patch notes below.
General
“Whispers of Oblivion” now available Three new campaign missions that were previously only available in the Legacy of the Void Beta are now available to all players. To play these missions, click on Campaign and select Legacy of the Void > Prologue. These missions focus on Zeratul and serve to bridge the story between Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void. You can now purchase any of the three StarCraft II expansions in each of their respective in-game menus on the Campaign screen. This includes the ability to pre-purchase Legacy of the Void. As a reminder, each expansion can now be purchased as a standalone product; you do not need to own previous installments in order to play subsequent ones. A 64-bit version of StarCraft II is now available. To use the 64-bit client, navigate to Settings > Game Settings > StarCraft II in the Battle.net App. StarCraft II installations have now been migrated from the old MPQ file format to the new CASC file format. For more information on CASC, see this blog post. User Interface
The entire StarCraft II user interface has been completely revamped. All major navigation has been moved to the top of the screen, including the Party Panel and Profile. Custom Games have been moved under Multiplayer. Archon Mode is now available in Custom Games on official Blizzard-authored maps. In order for map makers to add Archon Mode support to non-Blizzard maps, simply open and re-save the map in the Patch 3.0 Editor in order to pick up the new Archon Mode variants, and then republish the map to Battle.net. The WCS 2.2 Observer Interface now shows the first four letters of each players’ names for each Archon team. Unit selection circles have been updated to better show which players are controlling which units when observing team and Archon Mode games. Archon Matchmaking and the Archon Ranked Ladder (including Archon Grandmaster League) will become available for Legacy of the Void players upon its release. The Search Panel/Countdown Timer has been moved from the top middle of the screen to the bottom left. The Chat system has been completely redesigned. Chat is now one persistent window in the bottom-right corner. Players are now automatically joined into General Chat upon logging in. Chat channels are now split into expandable/collapsible groupings on the right side of the Chat panel. The chat window can be expanded in height and pinned so that it stays on the screen even when out of focus. The maximum number of players in a chat channel has been increased from 100 to 200. Players who have been inactive for a set period of time will be removed from public chat channels. Additional chat display and filtering options have been added to the Options Menu under Options > Social > Chat and Options > Social > Chat Channels. You can now join chat channels by typing ‘/join [channelname]’. If a public channel or group channel exists, you’ll join that channel. Otherwise, you’ll join a custom chat channel. Many other ‘slash commands’ have been added, type /help for a list of primary commands. A full list of the new commands can be found in our blog. Brand new 3D scenes have been added to the background of every UI screen. Two new 3D backgrounds – Artanis and Space Clouds – have been added to the Home Screen. These can be accessed in Options > Graphics > Background Model. The Campaign screen has been redesigned with new 3D models to represent each chapter of the StarCraft II storyline. Challenges can now be found under Wings of Liberty. Friends List Your BattleTag is now shown on the top of your Friends List. Players Near You has been moved from the Home Screen into the Friends List. Recent party members are now displayed on the top of the Friends List. The Add Friend dialogue has been simplified. General performance of the Friends List has been improved. The Arcade has been redesigned. Players will be automatically joined into a public Arcade chat channel when entering the Arcade section. The Arcade experience is now organized around Join and Browse. In Join, Open Games is now the default viewing mode, showing all active lobbies. You can now link directly to a game lobby you are in by typing ‘[Lobby]’ into chat. Players who click on the link will be joined directly into the game lobby. Top Played games can be found in the Browse section. Learn more about the changes in our blog. Starter Edition Starter Edition players can now reach the maximum level for each race and earn their respective rewards. Archon Mode is available for play in Custom Games on official Blizzard-authored maps. All four 3D backgrounds on the Home Screen are available for use. 1vAI matchmaking is now available at all expansion levels rather than just with Heart of the Swarm. Multiplayer Loading Screens have been refreshed with updated art. Player levels have been removed. Portrait borders have been removed except in 1v1 matches. Wings of Liberty players can now earn experience and participate in the Leveling system (previously this was exclusive to Heart of the Swarm). FFA matchmaking has been removed, but is still available in Custom Games. As a result of this change, the FFA Gladiator, FFA Destroyer, and X Wins: FFA series achievements have been hidden unless already earned, and their associated achievement points have been removed. The “Competitive Zen Master” achievement has been updated to reflect the above removals. See the reasoning behind these changes here. Options Menu Changes The following Gameplay options have been removed and are now permanently enabled: Display World Object Tooltips Display Game Tooltips Display Hotkeys on Command Card Enable Starting Worker Rally Game Timer In multiplayer games, the game timer now shows real time instead of scaling the time based on game speed. Options > Gameplay > Display Build Grid is now enabled by default. In Options > Graphics: Background Model has been moved under Display. Texture Quality has been moved under Graphics and the Textures dropdown has been removed. A new tab has been added: Observer and Replay. The Voice tab has been renamed to Voice Chat. Replays All replays are now saved automatically, and the “Save All Replays” option has been removed from the Options Menu. The file size of each replay is now displayed in the Replays screen. The in-game “Load Saved Game” dialogue now defaults to the Recent tab. As a reminder, replays created prior to Patch 3.0 will no longer be viewable, but replays that are newly created in Patch 3.0 and onwards will continue to be supported in future versions of the game. See this blog post for more details. Gameplay
The worker count text will now turn red if your vespene gas worker saturation is higher than recommended. Slight adjustments have been made to flier separation when moving in groups so that flier units do not rapidly lose their velocity when attacking while moving. If you issue a new attack command when Carrier Interceptors are already deployed, they will now engage the new target instead of returning back to the Carrier first. Possible enemy locations will now pulse on the minimap for 10 seconds at the beginning of every game. Pressing Alt + <number> creates a new control group and removes units from other control groups. This works in all team games, including Archon games.