Starcraft 2 news » What You Need to Know About Patch 1.5.0

StarCraft II patch 1.5.0 is on the horizon and it’s bringing a number of changes to your StarCraft II Battle.net experience, including an entirely new custom game experience with Arcade, tons of new additions and improvements to the StarCraft II Editor, and streaming downloads to make patching even faster.

We’ll provide a more detailed guide about what’s in the patch, including the Arcade, soon. In the meantime, since all these big changes are coming, we wanted to provide a little guidance so everyone is prepared and able to get into the game quickly!

Getting the Patch

The patching process for patch 1.5.0 will be a bit different from previous StarCraft II patches, and will occur in two stages. First, to prepare your copy of StarCraft II to ‘migrate’ over to the new streaming version of the client, a small tools patch will need to be downloaded and applied.

Once it’s installed, a box will appear asking you to migrate your build of StarCraft II to a version that will support streaming. This is big news, because once your client is updated to support streaming, you’ll no longer have to wait for an entire patch to install before you can start playing.

Once you click ‘Begin’, the new StarCraft II streaming launcher will appear and ask you to wait while it reconfigures game files. That’s a process that will take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour or so, but whatever the wait is, it’s important to stick it out and not cancel the process, since that can cause issues with patch installation.

Then, once your game client migration is done, Patch 1.5.0 will begin downloading and being applied simultaneously. If you’ve already played Diablo III or World of Warcraft, then you’re probably already familiar with how this looks - there will be a progress bar at the bottom of the patching window that lets you know when enough data has been downloaded to allow you to play the game.

Please keep in mind that if the progress bar isn’t full when you begin playing, then that means that the patch hasn’t been fully applied and there may be some gameplay hiccups. That’s normal, and you can wait for the progress bar to fill completely if you’re concerned about performance. If you’ve generally experienced no issues downloading StarCraft II patches through the launcher in the past, or if you’ve played the Arcade Beta, then this process should go well.

Patching Smoothly

There are some steps you can take before you start download the patch to help make sure that patching proceeds without any issues. It’s important to make sure that your computer is configured to allow for downloads or changes to existing programs. Your firewall, antivirus, security programs, and/or router may be blocking downloads, and it might be necessary to ensure that they’re configured to allow downloads. Also, your operating system and your antivirus or other security programs may try to protect StarCraft II from changes. It might be necessary to temporarily disable or alter settings to allow these changes. It’s also important to make sure that you’re configured to patch properly, since, with the advent of streaming patches, standalone patches will no longer be available.

These links cover some of the details regarding how to prepare your computer for patching, as well as trouble-shooting steps for common issues:

• StarCraft II Patch Troubleshooting (PC) (Mac)
• StarCraft II Connection Issue FAQ
• Mac OS X Support Update

As always, if you’re still experiencing issues, you can get in touch with Technical Support.

Replays

Older, nonessential patch data is included in the tail end of the streaming patch update. That’s a good thing because you can start playing before the patch is finished, but it also means that if you do, then when you try to load a replay from an older version, your copy of StarCraft II will now automatically perform a one time stream of that older patch data. Don’t panic! Once you’ve streamed in that version, you won’t have to do it again when you load another replay from that same version. It’s also worth mentioning that if you allow your copy of StarCraft II to patch completely then the old patch information will already be installed, and the streaming dialogue won’t appear at all.

Shame-free Self Promotion

The new Arcade will allow game creators to promote their work in entirely new and powerful ways. When browsing the Arcade, each game will have a Game Info screen that includes a description of the game with screenshots, instructions, patch notes, reviews, and more. If you are a game maker and have published custom games to Battle.net, it’s a very good idea to gather information and screenshots to be prepared to tune up your map so that it can take advantage of all the new features of Arcade, and get the audience it deserves. Also, if haven’t already participated in the Arcade Beta and published your map there, there’s no time like the present to jump in and familiarize yourself with the coming changes.

Stay tuned, as more information will be coming about the new features in 1.5.0 when the patch is released. Until then, GL HF and we’ll see you on Battle.net!