StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed and released by Blizzard Entertainment for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. A sequel to the award-winning 1998 video game StarCraft and its expansion set Brood War, the game was released worldwide on July 27, 2010. It is split into three installments: the base game with the subtitle Wings of Liberty, an expansion pack Heart of the Swarm, and a stand-alone expansion pack Legacy of the Void.

The game revolves around three species: the Terrans, human exiles from Earth; the Zerg, a super-species of assimilated life forms; and the Protoss, a technologically advanced species with vast mental powers. Wings of Liberty focuses on the Terrans, while the expansions Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void will focus on the Zerg and Protoss, respectively. The game is set four years after the events of 1998's StarCraft: Brood War, and follows the exploits of Jim Raynor as he leads an insurgent group against the autocratic Terran Dominion. The game includes both new and returning characters and locations from the original game.

StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm

StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm is an expansion pack to the military science fiction real-time strategy game StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty by Blizzard Entertainment. Heart of the Swarm is the second part of the StarCraft II trilogy, with the final part Legacy of the Void.

The expansion, released on March 12, 2013, includes additional units and multiplayer changes from Wings of Liberty, as well as a continuing campaign focusing on the Zerg race, following Sarah Kerrigan in her effort to regain control of the swarm and exact her revenge on the Terran Dominion's emperor, Arcturus Mengsk. On July 15, 2015, Heart of the Swarm was made a standalone title, allowing play without having first purchased Wings of Liberty.

Gameplay

The game has 20 missions in the campaign (plus seven evolution missions which allows the player to upgrade its units), and continues the story from Wings of Liberty. The player plays from the perspective of Sarah Kerrigan, recently returned to her human form by Jim Raynor. Similar to Wings of Liberty, the briefing room is replaced with an interactive exploration of the Leviathan, an enormous zerg breed which functions as a Bioship. Kerrigan and her allies are located in the nerve center, she has a personal chamber for altering her abilities, and there is an evolution pit where she can upgrade her units and perform evolution missions with the evolution master Abathur.

StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void

StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void is a standalone expansion pack to the military science fiction real-time strategy game StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, and the third part of the StarCraft II trilogy developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The game was released on November 10, 2015.

The expansion includes additional units and multiplayer changes from Heart of The Swarm, as well as a continuing campaign focusing on the Protoss race. The campaign concludes the Starcraft II trilogy and focuses on Artanis as its protagonist. Blizzard launched its invite-only beta testing of the game on March 31, 2015. The beta testing closed on November 2, 2015, a week before the November 10th release date.

The pre-order of the game was announced and made available for purchase on Battle.net and major game retailers on July 15, 2015. Pre-ordering the game granted immediate access to the multiplayer beta and a set of 3 prologue missions titled Whispers of Oblivion, which was made available to all players following the StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm 3.0 update at October 6, 2015.

OS X

OS X (pronounced /oʊˌɛsˈtɛn/, oh-ess-TEN; originally Mac OS X) is a series of Unix-based graphical interface operating systems (OS) developed and marketed by Apple Inc. It is designed to run on Macintosh computers, having been pre-installed on all Macs since 2002. OS X is the fourth most popular general purpose OS; within the market of desktop, laptop and home computers, and by web usage, OS X is the second most widely used desktop OS after Windows.

OS X was the successor to Mac OS 9, released in 1999, the final release of the "classic" Mac OS, which had been Apple's primary operating system since 1984. The first version released was Mac OS X Server 1.0 in 1999; a desktop version, Mac OS X v10.0 "Cheetah" followed on March 24, 2001. All consumer releases of OS X up to 2013 were named after big cats; for example, OS X v10.8 was referred to as "Mountain Lion". However, with the announcement of OS X Mavericks in June 2013, this was dropped in favor of Californian landmarks.

OS X, whose X is the Roman numeral for 10 and is a prominent part of its brand identity, is built on technologies developed at NeXT between the second half of the 1980s and Apple's purchase of the company in late 1996. The 'X' is also used to emphasize the relatedness between OS X and UNIX. UNIX 03 certification has been achieved for versions 10.5 for Intel CPUs, and versions 10.6 through 10.11.iOS, the mobile OS for the iPhone, iPod Touch,iPad, and the 2nd and 3rd generation Apple TV, shares the Unix-based core and many frameworks with OS X. An unnamed variant of v10.4 powers the first generation Apple TV. Apple also formerly issued a separate line of editions for server use.

Blizzard Entertainment

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher founded February 8, 1991, under the name Silicon & Synapse by three graduates of the University of California, Los Angeles,Michael Morhaime, Frank Pearce, and Allen Adham and is currently a subsidiary of American company Activision Blizzard. Based in Irvine, California, the company originally concentrated primarily on the creation of game ports for other studios before beginning development of their own software in 1993 with the development of games like Rock n' Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings. In 1994 the company became Chaos Studios then Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. after being acquired by distributor Davidson & Associates.

Shortly thereafter, Blizzard shipped out what would become their first breakthrough smash hit Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. Blizzard then went on to create several other successful video games, including other Warcraft sequels, the Diablo series, the StarCraft series, and also in 2004 the popular MMORPG World of Warcraft. Their most recent projects include: the first expansion for Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, the online collectible card game Hearthstone, the fifth expansion for World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor, the "Hero Brawler" Heroes of the Storm and the third and final expansion for StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void. There are two titles that are currently in development: Overwatch, an upcoming multiplayer first-person shooter first announced at BlizzCon on November 7, 2014 that entered beta testing in the third quarter of 2015 and the sixth expansion for World of Warcraft: Legion. It was announced on August 6, 2015 at Gamescom 2015 and its beta testing phase is upcoming in 2016.