154-513: The MBCGame StarCraft League , also known as MSL , was a StarCraft tournament hosted by Korean television network MBCGame . The tournament started out in 2002 under the name of KPGA Tour , and in 2003 it was renamed the MSL. On February 1, 2012, MBCGame ceased operations and the MSL was discontinued. Throughout its lifetime, the MSL gave away the equivalent of over US$ 1.6 million in prize money. Note: Brackets are re-seeded according to KeSPA ranking in
308-796: A board game based in the StarCraft universe. Blizzard Entertainment also licensed Wizards of the Coast to produce an Alternity based game entitled StarCraft Adventures . In 2015, Blizzard released Heroes of the Storm , a crossover multiplayer online battle arena video game in which players can control over 15 characters from the StarCraft universe as playable heroes, such as Artanis, Kerrigan, Nova, Raynor, and Zeratul. The game features two StarCraft -themed battlegrounds, Braxis Holdout and Warhead Junction. Various soundtracks from StarCraft, such as Terran and Zerg Theme, are present as background music in
462-485: A conjunction of Jupiter and Mars in 1106 or 1107 as evidence. The Persian astronomer Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (1201–1274) in his Tadhkira wrote: "The Milky Way, i.e. the Galaxy, is made up of a very large number of small, tightly clustered stars, which, on account of their concentration and smallness, seem to be cloudy patches. Because of this, it was likened to milk in color." Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (1292–1350) proposed that
616-654: A radius of about 39.5 kpc (130,000 ly), over twice as much as was determined in earlier studies, suggesting that about 90% of the mass of the galaxy is dark matter . In September 2023, astronomers reported that the virial mass of the Milky Way Galaxy is only 2.06 10 solar masses , only a 10th of the mass of previous studies. The mass was determined from data of the Gaia spacecraft . The Milky Way contains between 100 and 400 billion stars and at least that many planets. An exact figure would depend on counting
770-603: A 2016 study. Such Earth-sized planets may be more numerous than gas giants, though harder to detect at great distances given their small size. Besides exoplanets, " exocomets ", comets beyond the Solar System, have also been detected and may be common in the Milky Way. More recently, in November 2020, over 300 million habitable exoplanets are estimated to exist in the Milky Way Galaxy. When compared to other more distant galaxies in
924-459: A Dominion colony and getting it off the planet as quickly as possible. As with its predecessor, Retribution does not include any new gameplay features beyond its single player campaigns and an abundance of multiplayer levels. The add-on was not well received by reviewers, and instead it was regarded as "average", but at least challenging. Retribution is similarly not widely available, and Blizzard Entertainment offers no comment regarding support or
1078-502: A Zerg cerebrate , Zeratul inadvertently allows the Overmind to learn the location of the Protoss homeworld, Aiur. The Overmind quickly launches an invasion to assimilate the Protoss and gain genetic perfection. Pursued by his own people as a heretic for siding with the dark templar Zeratul, Tassadar returns to Aiur and, with the assistance of Raynor and the templar Fenix , launches an attack on
1232-460: A campaign against the UED, recapturing Korhal. She turns against her allies, with Fenix and Duke both perishing in the ensuing attacks. Kerrigan later extorts Zeratul into killing the new Overmind, giving her full control over the entire Zerg Swarm. After defeating a retaliatory attack by the Protoss, Dominion, and the UED (consequently destroying the last of the UED fleet), Kerrigan and her Zerg broods become
1386-500: A development team led by Metzen and Phinney. The game debuted at the 1996 Electronic Entertainment Expo and used a modified Warcraft II game engine . StarCraft also marked the creation of Blizzard Entertainment's film department; the game introduced high quality cinematics integral to the storyline of the series. Most of the original development team for StarCraft returned to work on the game's expansion pack, Brood War ; that game's development began only shortly after StarCraft
1540-518: A dim un-resolved "milky" glowing band arching across the night sky. The term is a translation of the Classical Latin via lactea , in turn derived from the Hellenistic Greek γαλαξίας , short for γαλαξίας κύκλος ( galaxías kýklos ), meaning "milky circle". The Ancient Greek γαλαξίας ( galaxias ) – from root γαλακτ -, γάλα ("milk") + -ίας (forming adjectives) – is also
1694-456: A great deal of detail at +6.1. This makes the Milky Way difficult to see from brightly lit urban or suburban areas, but very prominent when viewed from rural areas when the Moon is below the horizon. Maps of artificial night sky brightness show that more than one-third of Earth's population cannot see the Milky Way from their homes due to light pollution. As viewed from Earth, the visible region of
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#17328730773841848-419: A last job, the assassination of Jim Raynor. A number of action figures and collectable statues based upon the characters and units in StarCraft have been produced by ToyCom. A number of model kits, made by Academy Hobby Model Kits , were also produced, displaying 1/30 scale versions of the marine and the hydralisk. In addition, Blizzard Entertainment teamed up with Fantasy Flight Games to create
2002-493: A lawsuit against Microstar for selling the add-on, arguing that as the product was unauthorized and created using StarCraft ' s level editing software , it was a breach of the end user license agreement . We believe that we must aggressively combat the sale and distribution of unauthorized add-ons associated with our properties. In our opinion, Stellar Forces meets neither Blizzard's standards nor our customers' expectations. As gamers ourselves, we feel obligated to prevent
2156-501: A leverage against her, keeping the location where he is imprisoned a secret, until she joins forces with the Hyperion to locate and rescue him. Seeing that she discarded her humanity after all the effort he took to restore it, Raynor rejects her, despite her confession that she loves him, and parts ways with her. Kerrigan turns her attention to Korhal and sends her forces to bring down Mengsk once and for all. During their showdown, Mengsk uses
2310-466: A measurement of the radial velocity of halo stars found that the mass enclosed within 80 kilo parsecs is 7 × 10 M ☉ . In a 2014 study, the mass of the entire Milky Way is estimated to be 8.5 × 10 M ☉ , but this is only half the mass of the Andromeda Galaxy. A recent 2019 mass estimate for the Milky Way is 1.29 × 10 M ☉ . Much of the mass of
2464-474: A new Terran Dominion . During the assault on Tarsonis, Mengsk allows the Zerg to capture and infest his psion second-in-command, Sarah Kerrigan . This betrayal prompts Mengsk's other commander, Jim Raynor , to desert him with a small army. Having retreated with Kerrigan to their primary hive clusters, the Zerg are assaulted by Protoss forces commanded by Tassadar and the dark templar Zeratul . Through assassinating
2618-942: A novel that was written by Graham McNeill which focuses on the origins of the characters in the Mengsk family. In January 2010 Keith R.A. DeCandido and David Gerrold authored the StarCraft: Ghost Academy to elaborate the training of Nova as an espionage agent and in September 2011, Simon & Schuster published the StarCraft Ghost: Spectres as a sequel to the novel StarCraft Ghost: Nova . Timothy Zahn released Starcraft: Evolution in 2016. In addition to these, Blizzard Entertainment authorized two short stories in Amazing Stories magazine, entitled StarCraft: Revelations and StarCraft: Hybrid . Revelations
2772-480: A number of StarCraft graphic novels . Two series were announced: StarCraft: Frontline , which is a series of short story anthologies that spanned four volumes, and StarCraft: Ghost Academy , which was written by Keith R.A. DeCandido and follows several characters, such as Nova, during their training as the psychic assassins called "ghosts". There was a Starcraft graphic novel released in 2010, produced by Wildstorm and DC Comics , which features outlaws working on
2926-410: A range in mass, as large as 4.5 × 10 M ☉ and as small as 8 × 10 M ☉ . By comparison, the total mass of all the stars in the Milky Way is estimated to be between 4.6 × 10 M ☉ and 6.43 × 10 M ☉ . In addition to the stars, there is also interstellar gas, comprising 90% hydrogen and 10% helium by mass, with two thirds of
3080-403: A short but flattering review, describing it as having "definitely been worth the wait" and also drew note to the cinematic cut scenes, stating that they "actually feel like part of the story rather than an afterthought." IGN stated that Brood War ' s enhancements were "enough to enrich the core gameplay without losing the flavor" while GameSpot noted that the expansion was developed with
3234-577: A single game, StarCraft II was split into three parts during development, one for focusing on each race. The base game, Wings of Liberty , follows the Terrans, while two expansion packs, Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void , have been released to complement Wings of Liberty and further the story from the views of the Zerg and Protoss, respectively. The story of Wings of Liberty continues from four years after
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#17328730773843388-517: A solid following around the world, particularly in South Korea , where professional players and teams participate in matches, earn sponsorships, and compete in televised matches. By June 2007, StarCraft and Brood War had sold nearly 10 million copies combined. StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty and its sequels obtained similar praise, and also sold very well. By the end of 2017, the franchise's lifetime revenue totaled over $ 1 billion. In addition,
3542-797: A successful pro-gaming scene . Pro-gamers in South Korea are niche media celebrities and StarCraft games broadcast over three television channels dedicated to gaming. StarCraft has won numerous Game of the Year awards, is often described as one of the best real-time strategy games made, and is widely credited with popularizing the use of distinct and unique sides—as opposed to sides of equal ability and strength—in real-time strategy games. Although Insurrection and Retribution were not particularly well received, StarCraft: Brood War generally received very positive reviews, with an aggregate GameRankings score of 95.00%. The magazine PC Zone gave Brood War
3696-413: A sudden attack by Kerrigan and the Zerg swarm. After obtaining the exact location, he departs to an ancient Xel'Naga temple where he has a vision of Tassadar, who prompts him to claim the artifact in possession of the Terrans. Zeratul returns to warn Artanis of Amon's return, but he decides to proceed with his plans of leading his army to reclaim Aiur. Amon awakens on Aiur and takes control of the majority of
3850-415: A treatise in 1755, Immanuel Kant , drawing on earlier work by Thomas Wright , speculated (correctly) that the Milky Way might be a rotating body of a huge number of stars, held together by gravitational forces akin to the Solar System but on much larger scales. The resulting disk of stars would be seen as a band on the sky from our perspective inside the disk. Wright and Kant also conjectured that some of
4004-451: A variety of tasks consisting of programming and design for levels, visuals and audio effects. In 2001, StarCraft: Ghost began development under Nihilistic Software , with the aim of releasing the game for the Xbox , PlayStation 2 , and GameCube during late 2003. Unlike previous real-time strategy StarCraft titles, Ghost was to be a tactical third-person action game. Although the press
4158-513: Is March 29, 2016. At the same time, Blizzard has announced that new commanders are planned to be added to the Co-Op mode in Legacy of the Void as a DLC, with Karax to be the first addition given for free. The success of StarCraft spurred the creation of two authorized add-on titles to StarCraft , as well as one failed attempt at a deviation into a genre other than real-time strategy . Insurrection
4312-428: Is a disk of gas and dust called the interstellar medium . This disk has at least a comparable extent in radius to the stars, whereas the thickness of the gas layer ranges from hundreds of light-years for the colder gas to thousands of light-years for warmer gas. The disk of stars in the Milky Way does not have a sharp edge beyond which there are no stars. Rather, the concentration of stars decreases with distance from
4466-405: Is a ring-like filament of stars called Triangulum–Andromeda Ring (TriAnd Ring) rippling above and below the relatively flat galactic plane , which alongside Monoceros Ring were both suggested to be primarily the result of disk oscillations and wrapping around the Milky Way, at a diameter of at least 50 kpc (160,000 ly), which may be part of the Milky Way's outer disk itself, hence making
4620-584: Is an intense radio source known as Sagittarius A* , a supermassive black hole of 4.100 (± 0.034) million solar masses . The oldest stars in the Milky Way are nearly as old as the Universe itself and thus probably formed shortly after the Dark Ages of the Big Bang . Galileo Galilei first resolved the band of light into individual stars with his telescope in 1610. Until the early 1920s, most astronomers thought that
4774-537: Is approximately 890 billion to 1.54 trillion times the mass of the Sun in total (8.9 × 10 to 1.54 × 10 solar masses), although stars and planets make up only a small part of this. Estimates of the mass of the Milky Way vary, depending upon the method and data used. The low end of the estimate range is 5.8 × 10 solar masses ( M ☉ ), somewhat less than that of the Andromeda Galaxy . Measurements using
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4928-449: Is called the Zone of Avoidance . The Milky Way has a relatively low surface brightness . Its visibility can be greatly reduced by background light, such as light pollution or moonlight. The sky needs to be darker than about 20.2 magnitude per square arcsecond in order for the Milky Way to be visible. It should be visible if the limiting magnitude is approximately +5.1 or better and shows
5082-522: Is celestial. This idea would be influential later in the Muslim world . The Persian astronomer Al-Biruni (973–1048) proposed that the Milky Way is "a collection of countless fragments of the nature of nebulous stars". The Andalusian astronomer Avempace ( d 1138) proposed that the Milky Way was made up of many stars but appeared to be a continuous image in the Earth's atmosphere, citing his observation of
5236-456: Is designed to be unobtrusive in order to allow the player to focus, with only the music that attaches to the cinematic interludes permitted to become more distinctive. Brower has also pointed out that certain musical themes in StarCraft II become associated with certain characters, a technique borrowed from composers such as John Williams and Richard Wagner . Brower has said that most of
5390-529: Is estimated to contain 100–400 billion stars and at least that number of planets . The Solar System is located at a radius of about 27,000 light-years (8.3 kpc) from the Galactic Center , on the inner edge of the Orion Arm , one of the spiral-shaped concentrations of gas and dust. The stars in the innermost 10,000 light-years form a bulge and one or more bars that radiate from the bulge. The Galactic Center
5544-472: Is inclined by about 60° to the ecliptic (the plane of Earth's orbit ). Relative to the celestial equator , it passes as far north as the constellation of Cassiopeia and as far south as the constellation of Crux , indicating the high inclination of Earth's equatorial plane and the plane of the ecliptic, relative to the galactic plane. The north galactic pole is situated at right ascension 12 49 , declination +27.4° ( B1950 ) near β Comae Berenices , and
5698-579: Is set in a distant sector of the Milky Way galaxy. A Mac OS version of the game was released by Blizzard Entertainment in March 1999. A Nintendo 64 port including StarCraft , Brood War , and a new secret mission "Resurrection IV" was released in the United States on June 13, 2000. The game's story revolves around the appearance of two alien races in Terran space and each race's attempts to survive and adapt over
5852-434: Is significantly smaller than the Andromeda Galaxy's isophotal diameter, and slightly below the mean isophotal sizes of the galaxies being at 28.3 kpc (92,000 ly). The paper concludes that the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxy were not overly large spiral galaxies, nor were among the largest known (if the former not being the largest) as previously widely believed, but rather average ordinary spiral galaxies. To compare
6006-637: Is the Large Sagittarius Star Cloud , a portion of the central bulge of the galaxy. Dark regions within the band, such as the Great Rift and the Coalsack , are areas where interstellar dust blocks light from distant stars. Peoples of the southern hemisphere, including the Inca and Australian aborigines , identified these regions as dark cloud constellations . The area of sky that the Milky Way obscures
6160-405: Is the traditional Welsh name for the constellation Cassiopeia . At least three of Dôn's children also have astronomical associations: Caer Gwydion ("The fortress of Gwydion ") is the traditional Welsh name for the Milky Way, and Caer Arianrhod ("The Fortress of Arianrhod ") being the constellation of Corona Borealis . In Western culture, the name "Milky Way" is derived from its appearance as
6314-486: Is visible as a hazy band of white light, some 30° wide, arching the night sky . Although all the individual naked-eye stars in the entire sky are part of the Milky Way Galaxy, the term "Milky Way" is limited to this band of light. The light originates from the accumulation of unresolved stars and other material located in the direction of the galactic plane . Brighter regions around the band appear as soft visual patches known as star clouds . The most conspicuous of these
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6468-478: Is written from the viewpoint of a Confederate marine during the early stages of StarCraft . The first four novels, including the e-book Uprising , were later re-released as a single anthology entitled The StarCraft Archive in November 2007. A fifth novel entitled StarCraft: Queen of Blades was published in June 2006. Written by Aaron S. Rosenberg , it is a novelization of the second campaign in StarCraft from
6622-489: The StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm expansion, which was released in March 2013. The third and final StarCraft II installment, Legacy of the Void , was released in November 2015. In 2016, a single-player nine-mission pack, Nova Covert Ops , was released in form of DLC . The original game and its expansion have been praised as one of the benchmark real-time strategy games of its time. The series has gathered
6776-474: The Solar System , with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth : a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye . The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy with a D 25 isophotal diameter estimated at 26.8 ± 1.1 kiloparsecs (87,400 ± 3,600 light-years ), but only about 1,000 light-years thick at
6930-489: The Very Long Baseline Array in 2009 found velocities as large as 254 km/s (570,000 mph) for stars at the outer edge of the Milky Way. Because the orbital velocity depends on the total mass inside the orbital radius, this suggests that the Milky Way is more massive, roughly equaling the mass of Andromeda Galaxy at 7 × 10 M ☉ within 160,000 ly (49 kpc) of its center. In 2010,
7084-522: The light-gathering power of this new telescope, he was able to produce astronomical photographs that resolved the outer parts of some spiral nebulae as collections of individual stars. He was also able to identify some Cepheid variables that he could use as a benchmark to estimate the distance to the nebulae. He found that the Andromeda Nebula is 275,000 parsecs from the Sun, far too distant to be part of
7238-597: The magnetic fields of the Milky Way were reported. The Sun is near the inner rim of the Orion Arm , within the Local Fluff of the Local Bubble , between the Radcliffe wave and Split linear structures (formerly Gould Belt ). Based upon studies of stellar orbits around Sgr A* by Gillessen et al. (2016), the Sun lies at an estimated distance of 27.14 ± 0.46 kly (8.32 ± 0.14 kpc) from
7392-440: The nebulae visible in the night sky might be separate "galaxies" themselves, similar to our own. Kant referred to both the Milky Way and the "extragalactic nebulae" as "island universes", a term still current up to the 1930s. The first attempt to describe the shape of the Milky Way and the position of the Sun within it was carried out by William Herschel in 1785 by carefully counting the number of stars in different regions of
7546-460: The solar apex , is the direction that the Sun travels through space in the Milky Way. The general direction of the Sun's Galactic motion is towards the star Vega near the constellation of Hercules , at an angle of roughly 60 sky degrees to the direction of the Galactic Center. The Sun's orbit about the Milky Way is expected to be roughly elliptical with the addition of perturbations due to
7700-507: The Babylonian national god , after slaying her. This story was once thought to have been based on an older Sumerian version in which Tiamat is instead slain by Enlil of Nippur , but is now thought to be purely an invention of Babylonian propagandists with the intention to show Marduk as superior to the Sumerian deities. In Greek mythology , Zeus places his son born by a mortal woman,
7854-676: The Blizzard studios, performed by musicians such as Laurence Juber (formerly of Wings ) and Tommy Morgan . The soundtrack also contains John Bacchus Dykes and William Whiting's hymn Eternal Father, Strong to Save (1860). The orchestral music for Heart of the Swarm was likewise recorded in Marin County, again with the services of Kurlander and Noone, with 80 performers from the Skywalker Symphony Orchestra. Brower stated in an interview in 2013 that he intended to continue
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#17328730773848008-563: The Galactic Center is about 180,000 ly (55 kpc). At this distance or beyond, the orbits of most halo objects would be disrupted by the Magellanic Clouds. Hence, such objects would probably be ejected from the vicinity of the Milky Way. The integrated absolute visual magnitude of the Milky Way is estimated to be around −20.9. Both gravitational microlensing and planetary transit observations indicate that there may be at least as many planets bound to stars as there are stars in
8162-519: The Galactic Center. Boehle et al. (2016) found a smaller value of 25.64 ± 0.46 kly (7.86 ± 0.14 kpc), also using a star orbit analysis. The Sun is currently 5–30 parsecs (16–98 ly) above, or north of, the central plane of the Galactic disk. The distance between the local arm and the next arm out, the Perseus Arm , is about 2,000 parsecs (6,500 ly). The Sun, and thus
8316-399: The Galactic spiral arms and non-uniform mass distributions. In addition, the Sun passes through the Galactic plane approximately 2.7 times per orbit. This is very similar to how a simple harmonic oscillator works with no drag force (damping) term. These oscillations were until recently thought to coincide with mass lifeform extinction periods on Earth. A reanalysis of the effects of
8470-569: The Milky Way contained all the stars in the Universe . Following the 1920 Great Debate between the astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Doust Curtis , observations by Edwin Hubble showed that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies. In the Babylonian epic poem Enūma Eliš , the Milky Way is created from the severed tail of the primeval salt water dragoness Tiamat , set in the sky by Marduk ,
8624-405: The Milky Way is "a myriad of tiny stars packed together in the sphere of the fixed stars". Proof of the Milky Way consisting of many stars came in 1610 when Galileo Galilei used a telescope to study the Milky Way and discovered that it is composed of a huge number of faint stars. Galileo also concluded that the appearance of the Milky Way was due to refraction of the Earth's atmosphere. In
8778-446: The Milky Way is approximately 220 km/s (490,000 mph) or 0.073% of the speed of light . The Sun moves through the heliosphere at 84,000 km/h (52,000 mph). At this speed, it takes around 1,400 years for the Solar System to travel a distance of 1 light-year, or 8 days to travel 1 AU ( astronomical unit ). The Solar System is headed in the direction of the zodiacal constellation Scorpius , which follows
8932-449: The Milky Way is the glow of stars not directly visible due to Earth's shadow, while other stars receive their light from the Sun, but have their glow obscured by solar rays. Aristotle himself believed that the Milky Way was part of the Earth's upper atmosphere, along with the stars, and that it was a byproduct of stars burning that did not dissipate because of its outermost location in the atmosphere, composing its great circle . He said that
9086-428: The Milky Way seems to be dark matter , an unknown and invisible form of matter that interacts gravitationally with ordinary matter. A dark matter halo is conjectured to spread out relatively uniformly to a distance beyond one hundred kiloparsecs (kpc) from the Galactic Center. Mathematical models of the Milky Way suggest that the mass of dark matter is 1–1.5 × 10 M ☉ . 2013 and 2014 studies indicate
9240-404: The Milky Way". Viewing from the north galactic pole with 0° (zero degrees) as the ray that runs starting from the Sun and through the Galactic Center, the quadrants are: with the galactic longitude (ℓ) increasing in the counter-clockwise direction ( positive rotation ) as viewed from north of the Galactic Center (a view-point several hundred thousand light-years distant from Earth in
9394-510: The Milky Way's galactic plane occupies an area of the sky that includes 30 constellations . The Galactic Center lies in the direction of Sagittarius , where the Milky Way is brightest. From Sagittarius, the hazy band of white light appears to pass around to the galactic anticenter in Auriga . The band then continues the rest of the way around the sky, back to Sagittarius, dividing the sky into two roughly equal hemispheres . The galactic plane
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#17328730773849548-526: The Milky Way, and microlensing measurements indicate that there are more rogue planets not bound to host stars than there are stars. The Milky Way contains an average of at least one planet per star, resulting in 100–400 billion planets, according to a January 2013 study of the five-planet star system Kepler-32 by the Kepler space observatory. A different January 2013 analysis of Kepler data estimated that at least 17 billion Earth-sized exoplanets reside in
9702-438: The Milky Way. The ESA spacecraft Gaia provides distance estimates by determining the parallax of a billion stars and is mapping the Milky Way with four planned releases of maps in 2016, 2018, 2021 and 2024. Data from Gaia has been described as "transformational". It has been estimated that Gaia has expanded the number of observations of stars from about 2 million stars as of the 1990s to 2 billion. It has expanded
9856-437: The Milky Way. In November 2013, astronomers reported, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars and red dwarfs within the Milky Way. 11 billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting Sun-like stars. The nearest exoplanet may be 4.2 light-years away, orbiting the red dwarf Proxima Centauri , according to
10010-475: The Overmind and ultimately sacrifices himself to kill the creature. In Brood War , the Protoss are led by Zeratul and Artanis . They begin to evacuate the surviving population of Aiur to the dark templar homeworld of Shakuras under a fragile alliance between the two untrusting branches of the Protoss. On Shakuras, they are misled by Kerrigan into attacking the Zerg to advance Kerrigan's quest to securing power over
10164-601: The Protoss race through the Khala, the telepathic bond that unites all emotions for the Khalai faction of the Protoss. Only Zeratul and the Nerazim, the Dark Templar, are immune due to their lack of connection to the Khala, and the Nerazim proceed to save as many Khalai as they can by severing their nerve cords, which connect them to the Khala, with Zeratul sacrificing himself to save Artanis in
10318-1005: The San Francisco Symphony and Opera and recorded at the Skywalker stage at the Lucasfilm Ranch in Marin County, California, under the name "Skywalker Symphony Orchestra", conducted by Eímear Noone . Brower also recalled the use of a 32-voice choir in Seattle, Washington. Both these recording sessions were mixed by John Kurlander, who had previously worked on Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings and The Beatles' Abbey Road . The Terran country and blues pieces were recorded at Dreamland studio in Woodstock, New York , and performed by members of Peter Gabriel's band, including bassist Tony Levin and drummer Jerry Marotta . Remaining pieces were recorded at
10472-501: The Solar System, is located in the Milky Way's galactic habitable zone . There are about 208 stars brighter than absolute magnitude 8.5 within a sphere with a radius of 15 parsecs (49 ly) from the Sun, giving a density of one star per 69 cubic parsecs, or one star per 2,360 cubic light-years (from List of nearest bright stars ). On the other hand, there are 64 known stars (of any magnitude, not counting 4 brown dwarfs ) within 5 parsecs (16 ly) of
10626-411: The Sun's transit through the spiral structure based on CO data has failed to find a correlation. It takes the Solar System about 240 million years to complete one orbit of the Milky Way (a galactic year ), so the Sun is thought to have completed 18–20 orbits during its lifetime and 1/1250 of a revolution since the origin of humans . The orbital speed of the Solar System about the center of
10780-412: The Sun, giving a density of about one star per 8.2 cubic parsecs, or one per 284 cubic light-years (from List of nearest stars ). This illustrates the fact that there are far more faint stars than bright stars: in the entire sky, there are about 500 stars brighter than apparent magnitude 4 but 15.5 million stars brighter than apparent magnitude 14. The apex of the Sun's way, or
10934-422: The Swarm , which had a GameRankings aggregate score of 86%. The standalone expansion pack sold 1.1 million copies within the first two days of its release on March 12, 2013, and was the best-selling PC game in that quarter. StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void , the third expansion pack, was similarly well received, having a GameRankings aggregate score of 88% while selling more than 1 million copies worldwide within
11088-469: The Swarm , the Dominion discovers where Raynor and Kerrigan are hiding and launch an attack on them. Kerrigan manages to escape, but is cut off from Raynor and upon hearing news that he was captured and executed, she returns to Zerg territory to retake control of the swarm and exact revenge on Mengsk. During her quest, she has an encounter with Zeratul, who advises her to travel to Zerus, the original homeworld of
11242-464: The Void. In a short epilogue after the end of Legacy of the Void , Kerrigan calls for Artanis and Raynor's help to confront Amon inside the Void to defeat him once and for all. In the occasion, they meet Ouros, the last of the Xel'Naga who reveals that to confront Amon on equal terms, Kerrigan must inherit Ouros' essence and become a Xel'Naga herself, as Ouros himself is at the last of his strength. Assisted by
11396-408: The Xel'Naga artifact, which they sell to the enigmatic Moebius Foundation in order to fund their revolution. Soon after, Zeratul delivers a psychic crystal that allows Raynor to share visions involving an ominous prophecy where Zerg-Protoss hybrids and an enslaved Zerg swarm wipe out the Terrans and the Protoss. The vision reveals that only Kerrigan has the power to prevent the eradication of all life in
11550-413: The Zerg race. It spans 27 missions (20 main missions and 7 side missions). The saga of StarCraft is ultimately completed with StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void , which was released on November 10, 2015. StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void is a stand-alone game in which new units are added to all three races as well as changing existing units, and also makes groundbreaking changes to the economy-aspect of
11704-404: The Zerg, Terran and Protoss forces, the empowered Kerrigan vanquishes Amon, before disappearing without a trace. Two years later, Kerrigan appears before Raynor in human form and he departs with her to never be heard from again, while the Zerg, the Terran and the Protoss civilizations begin to rebuild in an age of peace and prosperity. The StarCraft series includes a core set of titles that carry
11858-448: The Zerg, where she regains her powers as the Queen of Blades, returning stronger than ever, and learns that a fallen Xel'Naga named Amon was responsible for making the Zerg what they are: a warring swarm, bound to a single overriding will. After confronting a legion of servants of Amon, including a breed of Protoss-Zerg hybrids, Mengsk informs Kerrigan that Raynor is still alive and uses him as
12012-530: The Zerg. This deception comes after she reveals that a new Overmind has entered incubation. Meanwhile, Earth decides to take action in the sector, sending a fleet to conquer the Terran Dominion and capture the new Overmind. Although successfully taking the Dominion capital Korhal and enslaving the Overmind, the UED's efforts to capture Mengsk are thwarted by a double agent working for Kerrigan, Samir Duran . Kerrigan, allying with Mengsk, Fenix, and Raynor, launches
12166-648: The activities of three species in a part of the Milky Way known as the Koprulu Sector. Millennia before any of the events of the games, a species known as the Xel'Naga genetically engineer the Protoss and later the Zerg in attempts to create pure beings. These experiments backfire and the Xel'Naga are largely destroyed by the Zerg. Centuries before the beginning of StarCraft in 2499,
12320-488: The artifact to immobilize her, but Raynor appears to protect her, and Mengsk is ultimately killed by Kerrigan. With the Dominion under control of Mengsk's son Valerian, Kerrigan bids farewell to Raynor and departs with the Zerg Swarm to confront Amon and his forces. In Legacy of the Void , Zeratul invades a Terran installation under control of Amon in order to pinpoint the exact location of his resurrection, taking advantage of
12474-530: The artificial intelligence behavior was modified, new graphical tilesets for terrain were added, and the game's level editor received improved scripting tools to facilitate cut scenes with the in- game engine . The expansion received critical praise for fixing various balance issues with the original game, development attention on par with that of a full game, and for continuing with single player campaigns that were heavily story-driven. In April 2017, Starcraft received its first update in over 8 years, and Brood War
12628-454: The availability of the add-on despite authorizing it. StarCraft: Ghost was intended to be a tactical stealth game for video game consoles developed under the supervision of Blizzard Entertainment. Announced in 2002, the game was constantly delayed due to various issues, including a change of development team from Nihilistic Software to Swingin' Ape Studios in July 2004. As updates about
12782-534: The beginning of development for Diablo . The development was led by Chris Metzen and James Phinney, who also created the game's fictional universe . Using the Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness game engine as a base, StarCraft made its debut at E3 1996 . The game's success led to the development of two authorized add-ons, which were both released in 1998. However, neither of the two add-ons were particularly well received by critics. StarCraft also marked
12936-401: The beginning; the former was released in 2013 and the later was released in 2015. All the games in the main series are real-time strategy games , where the player views the events as a military commander for each of the three species. In addition, two spin-off titles have been released; these are authorized expansion packs to the original that focus on other characters and settings based at
13090-406: The behavior and mentality of the Terrans, the Protoss remain hidden to examine the humans, while protecting them from other threats without their knowledge. The Zerg, however, target the Terrans for assimilation to harness their psionic potential, forcing the Protoss to destroy tainted Terran colonies to contain the Zerg infestation. StarCraft begins days after the first of these attacks, where
13244-478: The center of the Milky Way. Beyond a radius of roughly 40,000 light years (13 kpc) from the center, the number of stars per cubic parsec drops much faster with radius. Surrounding the galactic disk is a spherical galactic halo of stars and globular clusters that extends farther outward, but is limited in size by the orbits of two Milky Way satellites, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds , whose closest approach to
13398-427: The conclusion of Brood War and revolves around Jim Raynor's struggles against the Terran Dominion. StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm is an expansion pack to StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty and was released on March 12, 2013. It is part two of the StarCraft II trilogy. The expansion includes additional units and multiplayer changes from Wings of Liberty, as well as a continuing campaign focusing on Kerrigan and
13552-589: The conclusion of the original game. It starts with the Protoss' struggle to ensure the survival of their species and continues with the intervention of the United Earth Directorate into local Terran affairs. The livelihood of both the Protoss and the previously silent Earth government is then threatened by the ever-increasing power of Sarah Kerrigan and her Zerg broods. In addition, the expansion introduces new features and improvements. A total of seven new units with different functions and abilities are included,
13706-686: The debut of Blizzard Entertainment's film department. Previously, cinematic cut scenes were seen as simply gap fillers that often deviated from the game, but with StarCraft and later Brood War introducing high quality cinematics integral to the storyline of the series, Blizzard Entertainment is cited as having changed this perception and became one of the first game companies to raise the standard regarding such cut scenes. StarCraft ' s success also inspired third-party developer Microstar Software to release an unauthorized add-on, entitled Stellar Forces , in May 1998. Blizzard Entertainment consequently filed
13860-493: The development of the game became less frequent, and the graphics and game mechanics became more outdated, suspicion began to grow that Blizzard would cancel the game. Finally, on March 24, 2006, Blizzard indefinitely postponed the game's development. The story of the game is about Nova , a Ghost agent of the Terran Dominion . Frequently used as an example of development hell , in 2008, Blizzard Entertainment refused to list
14014-465: The direction of the constellation Coma Berenices ); if viewed from south of the Galactic Center (a view-point similarly distant in the constellation Sculptor ), ℓ would increase in the clockwise direction ( negative rotation ). The Milky Way is one of the two largest galaxies in the Local Group (the other being the Andromeda Galaxy ), although the size for its galactic disc and how much it defines
14168-541: The dominant power in the sector. However, Zeratul secretly uncovers a plot by Duran to create Protoss-Zerg hybrids and learns that Duran is a servant of not Kerrigan, but a "far greater power". Four years later, in Wings of Liberty , Kerrigan and the Zerg vanish from the Koprulu Sector, allowing the Protoss to once again take on a passive role in the galaxy. Meanwhile, Raynor forms a revolutionary group named Raynor's Raiders in order to overthrow Mengsk. On Mar Sara, Raynor liberates
14322-469: The ecliptic. A galactic quadrant, or quadrant of the Milky Way, refers to one of four circular sectors in the division of the Milky Way. In astronomical practice, the delineation of the galactic quadrants is based upon the galactic coordinate system , which places the Sun as the origin of the mapping system . Quadrants are described using ordinals – for example, "1st galactic quadrant", "second galactic quadrant", or "third quadrant of
14476-534: The first campaign, Terran colonists attempt to defend themselves from the Zerg invasion of the sector as well as from a rising insurgency . The second campaign has the player directing a Protoss task force sent to clear the Zerg infestation of the colony by any means necessary. In the final campaign, the player assumes the role of a Zerg cerebrate, whose goal is to crush all opposition on the surface. The expansion contains 30 new campaign missions and over 100 new multiplayer maps, although it does not include new content in
14630-594: The first day of its release. Since the release of StarCraft II a number of tournaments have been hosted in Korea and elsewhere, such as the GOMTV Global StarCraft II League (GSL). In December 2018, an artificial intelligence system by Google's DeepMind (called "AlphaStar") beat professional players in StarCraft II for the first time. Milky Way The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes
14784-446: The first forty eight hours of release, which breaks the record of best selling strategy game in the history of the gaming industry. It received very positive reviews with an aggregate GameRankings score of 93%, and was nominated as the "Best PC Game of 2010" on GameSpot. By the end of 2012, Wings of Liberty had sold more than 6 million copies. This success continued with the release of the first expansion pack, StarCraft II: Heart of
14938-459: The form of units and graphical terrain tilesets. Insurrection was criticized by reviewers for lacking the quality of the original game, and is not widely available. Although the add-on is authorized by Blizzard Entertainment, they offer no comment on support or availability of the game. Retribution is the second of the two authorized add-on packs released for StarCraft . The add-on was developed by Stardock and published by WizardWorks . It
15092-496: The game as cancelled . It was not until August 23, 2014, in an interview with Polygon , that Chris Metzen confirmed that StarCraft: Ghost was indeed cancelled. Blizzard still has yet to produce an FPS game based on StarCraft . In summer 2019 there was a 2nd project called StarCraft: Ares that was cancelled when Blizzard focused on developing Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV instead. Blizzard Entertainment began planning development on StarCraft in 1995, shortly after
15246-446: The game began in 2003, shortly after Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne was released. The soundtrack for the original StarCraft was provided by Glenn Stafford, Jason Hayes, and Tracey W. Bush. The soundtrack for StarCraft II was provided by Derek Duke, Glenn Stafford, Neal Acree, and Russell Brower . Brower, Blizzard's Director of Audio, has suggested that the music of StarCraft serves two functions: The music heard during gameplay
15400-562: The game by Carbot Animations, the producers of multiple Blizzard-related parody animations, including their first and longest-running one, the StarCrafts series. As a graphical overhaul, its effect applies to all game modes and menus in StarCraft: Remastered . A port of the StarCraft and StarCraft: Brood War campaigns was released in 2011 as a fan-made mod for StarCraft II under the name "StarCraft: Mass Recall". The mod includes
15554-566: The game was leaked online in 2021 before being taken down due to a request by Blizzard. StarCraft II was announced on May 19, 2007, nearly a decade after the original, at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in Seoul , South Korea. StarCraft II was being developed, under the codename Medusa , for concurrent release on Windows XP , Windows Vista and Mac OS X . Blizzard announced a release date for July 27, 2010. Development on
15708-414: The game. Heroes of the Storm originated as a custom map called "Blizzard DOTA", as a part of the arcade feature for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty . The StarCraft series has been a commercial success. After its release, StarCraft became the best-selling PC game for that year, selling over 1.5 million copies worldwide. In the next decade, StarCraft sold over 9.5 million copies across
15862-459: The game. The story of StarCraft is concluded by following the Protoss Race in their quest to reclaim their homeworld and for Kerrigan to ultimately slay the greatest threat to the entire universe. The game is divided into a 3-mission prologue, a 19-mission main story campaign, and a 3-mission epilogue that wraps everything up. At BlizzCon 2015 , during the "Future of StarCraft II" presentation, it
16016-415: The globe, with 4.5 million of these being sold in South Korea . Since the initial release of StarCraft , Blizzard Entertainment reported that its Battle.net online multiplayer service grew by 800 percent. StarCraft remained one of the most popular online games in the world ten years after its release. After its release, StarCraft rapidly grew in popularity in South Korea, establishing
16170-436: The godlike Xel'Naga creator race—in a distant part of the Milky Way galaxy known as the Koprulu Sector. The series debuted with the video game StarCraft in 1998. It has grown to include a number of other games as well as eight novelizations , two Amazing Stories articles, a board game , and other licensed merchandise such as collectible statues and toys. Blizzard Entertainment began planning StarCraft in 1995 with
16324-520: The hardline international government of Earth , the United Earth Directorate (UED), commissions a colonization program as part of a solution to overpopulation. On the way, the computers automating the colony ships malfunction, propelling the Terran colonists far off course to the edge of Protoss space. Out of contact with Earth, they form various factions to maintain their interests. Intrigued by
16478-409: The hydrogen found in the atomic form and the remaining one-third as molecular hydrogen . The mass of the Milky Way's interstellar gas is equal to between 10% and 15% of the total mass of its stars. Interstellar dust accounts for an additional 1% of the total mass of the gas. In March 2019, astronomers reported that the virial mass of the Milky Way Galaxy is 1.54 trillion solar masses within
16632-527: The infant Heracles , on Hera 's breast while she is asleep so the baby will drink her divine milk and become immortal. Hera wakes up while breastfeeding and then realizes she is nursing an unknown baby: she pushes the baby away, some of her milk spills, and it produces the band of light known as the Milky Way. In another Greek story, the abandoned Heracles is given by Athena to Hera for feeding, but Heracles' forcefulness causes Hera to rip him from her breast in pain. Llys Dôn (literally "The Court of Dôn ")
16786-436: The isophotal diameter is not well understood. It is estimated that the significant bulk of stars in the galaxy lies within the 26 kiloparsecs (80,000 light-years) diameter, and that the number of stars beyond the outermost disc dramatically reduces to a very low number, with respect to an extrapolation of the exponential disk with the scale length of the inner disc. There are several methods being used in astronomy in defining
16940-421: The local population from Dominion control and also discovers a component of a mysterious Xel'Naga artifact. The Zerg reappear and overrun Mar Sara, forcing Raynor to arrange an evacuation to his battlecruiser, the Hyperion . The Raiders embark on a series of missions to undermine Mengsk, stop frequent Zerg infestations on Terran worlds, gather psychic individuals for military assets, and find the remaining pieces of
17094-409: The main storyline. These games were released in chronological order, with each new title following on from the events that are depicted in the previous title. A full second game, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty , was released in 2010, taking place four years after the end of Brood War. Two expansions, Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void (both currently stand alone games), were planned from
17248-526: The measurable volume of space by a factor of 100 in radius and a factor of 1,000 in precision. A study in 2020 concluded that Gaia detected a wobbling motion of the galaxy, which might be caused by " torques from a misalignment of the disc's rotation axis with respect to the principal axis of a non-spherical halo, or from accreted matter in the halo acquired during late infall, or from nearby, interacting satellite galaxies and their consequent tides". In April 2024, initial studies (and related maps) involving
17402-518: The milky appearance of the Milky Way Galaxy is due to the refraction of the Earth's atmosphere. The Neoplatonist philosopher Olympiodorus the Younger ( c. 495 –570 AD) criticized this view, arguing that if the Milky Way were sublunary , it should appear different at different times and places on Earth, and that it should have parallax , which it does not. In his view, the Milky Way
17556-426: The music for the original StarCraft series was produced on keyboards. The original material for the Wings of Liberty soundtrack spans approximately four hours. Brower has said in interviews that his team was consciously seeking a film-score feel for StarCraft II . In a short commentary provided for Blizzard, he recounted that the orchestral music for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty was performed by 78 members of
17710-573: The nature of the Milky Way, spiral nebulae, and the dimensions of the Universe. To support his claim that the Great Andromeda Nebula is an external galaxy, Curtis noted the appearance of dark lanes resembling the dust clouds in the Milky Way, as well as the significant Doppler shift . The controversy was conclusively settled by Edwin Hubble in the early 1920s using the Mount Wilson observatory 2.5 m (100 in) Hooker telescope . With
17864-405: The number of very-low-mass stars, which are difficult to detect, especially at distances of more than 300 ly (90 pc) from the Sun. As a comparison, the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy contains an estimated one trillion (10 ) stars. The Milky Way may contain ten billion white dwarfs , a billion neutron stars , and a hundred million stellar black holes . Filling the space between the stars
18018-551: The occasion. After escaping the planet with an ancient vessel, the Spear of Adun , Artanis reclaims the artifact as Zeratul suggested and gathers allies among the many Protoss tribes scattered across the galaxy in order to remake his army and launch another assault on Aiur. Using the artifact, Artanis' forces restrain Amon's essence, time enough for the other Khalai Protoss who were still under his control to sever their nerve cords and banish Amon to
18172-433: The old population of the galactic halo. A 2020 study predicted the edge of the Milky Way's dark matter halo being around 292 ± 61 kpc (952,000 ± 199,000 ly ), which translates to a diameter of 584 ± 122 kpc (1.905 ± 0.3979 Mly ). The Milky Way's stellar disk is also estimated to be approximately up to 1.35 kpc (4,000 ly) thick. The Milky Way
18326-499: The ones in the Milky Way, and modelling the relationship to their surface brightnesses. This gave an isophotal diameter for the Milky Way at 26.8 ± 1.1 kiloparsecs (87,400 ± 3,600 light-years), by assuming that the galactic disc is well represented by an exponential disc and adopting a central surface brightness of the galaxy (μ 0 ) of 22.1 ± 0.3 B -mag/arcsec and a disk scale length ( h ) of 5.0 ± 0.5 kpc (16,300 ± 1,600 ly). This
18480-461: The original units, campaigns, and hidden missions, but uses the StarCraft II engine including the AI mechanics, which makes the game notably more difficult than the original. It was completed in 2019 and has since received minor technical updates. StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is the official sequel to StarCraft released for Windows and Mac OS X by Blizzard Entertainment on July 27, 2010. The game
18634-465: The others. The player assumes three roles through the course of the three campaigns: a Confederate colonial governor who becomes a revolutionary commander, a Zerg cerebrate pushing forward the species' doctrine of assimilation, and a Protoss fleet executor tasked with defending the Protoss from the Zerg. StarCraft soon gained critical acclaim, winning numerous awards, including being labelled "the best real-time strategy game ever made" and being ranked
18788-474: The perspective of Jim Raynor . This was followed in November 2006 by StarCraft Ghost: Nova , a book focusing on the early origins of the character of Nova from the postponed StarCraft: Ghost game. Written by Keith R.A. DeCandido , the novel was meant to accompany the release of StarCraft: Ghost , but was continued despite the postponement of the game. In 2007 Christie Golden , an author whose previous work included novels in Blizzard's Warcraft series ,
18942-522: The photographic record, he found 11 more novae . Curtis noticed that these novae were, on average, 10 magnitudes fainter than those that occurred within the Milky Way. As a result, he was able to come up with a distance estimate of 150,000 parsecs. He became a proponent of the "island universes" hypothesis, which held that the spiral nebulae were independent galaxies. In 1920 the Great Debate took place between Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis, concerning
19096-568: The predominant Terran government, the Terran Confederacy, falls into a state of panic as it comes under attack by both the Zerg and the Protoss, in addition to increasing rebel activity led by Arcturus Mengsk against its rule. The Confederacy eventually succumbs to Mengsk's rebels when they use Confederate technology to lure the Zerg into attacking the Confederate capital, Tarsonis. In the consequent power vacuum, Mengsk crowns himself emperor of
19250-478: The process of associative musical themes in Legacy of the Void . The StarCraft series is supported by at least 12 novelizations and an anthology, all published by Simon & Schuster , two short stories, and two graphic novels. At BlizzCon 2007, Chris Metzen stated that he hoped to novelize the entirety of StarCraft and Brood War into a definitive text-based story. The first novel, StarCraft: Uprising ,
19404-418: The quarterfinals. StarCraft StarCraft is a military science fiction media franchise created by Chris Metzen and James Phinney and owned by Blizzard Entertainment . The series, set in the beginning of the 26th century, centers on a galactic struggle for dominance among four species—the adaptable and mobile Terrans, the ever-evolving insectoid Zerg , the powerful and enigmatic Protoss, and
19558-400: The relative physical scale of the Milky Way, if the Solar System out to Neptune were the size of a US quarter (24.3 mm (0.955 in)), the Milky Way would be approximately at least the greatest north–south line of the contiguous United States . An even older study from 1978 gave a lower diameter for Milky Way about 23 kpc (75,000 ly). A 2015 paper discovered that there
19712-412: The release of the first two add-on packs, Blizzard Entertainment announced the official expansion pack to StarCraft , entitled Brood War . Most of the team at Blizzard Entertainment responsible for StarCraft returned to work on Brood War . Development on Brood War began shortly after StarCraft ' s release, and Blizzard Entertainment were assisted by members of Saffire , who were contracted for
19866-574: The root of "galaxy", the name for our, and later all such, collections of stars. The Milky Way, or "milk circle", was just one of 11 "circles" the Greeks identified in the sky, others being the zodiac , the meridian , the horizon , the equator , the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn , the Arctic Circle and the Antarctic Circle , and two colure circles passing through both poles. The Milky Way
20020-411: The sale of unauthorized add-on products that do not add value to the StarCraft experience. In November 1998, Blizzard Entertainment won the court case against Microstar Software. In the settlement, Microstar agreed to pay an undisclosed amount in punitive damages and to destroy all remaining copies of Stellar Forces in its possession, as well as to formally apologize to Blizzard Entertainment. After
20174-454: The same level of care as the full game. In 1999, Next Generation listed Warcraft and Starcraft as number 32 on their "Top 50 Games of All Time", commenting that, " StarCraft took it all a step further, with an innovative campaign structure and fantastic game balance for endless hours of multiplayer fun." The release of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty performed very well commercially and critically, selling 1.8 million copies within
20328-434: The same time as the main storyline. Like the main series, these two titles are also real-time strategy games. A spin-off, StarCraft: Ghost , which was to be a third person action - stealth game , was in development, but has been placed on indefinite hiatus . StarCraft , released for Windows on March 31, 1998, is the first video game in the StarCraft series. A science fiction real-time strategy game, StarCraft
20482-602: The sector and beyond. After collecting more artifact pieces, the Raiders forge an alliance with Valerian Mengsk, Arcturus' son, who is their secret benefactor from Moebius Foundation. After recovering the final artifact piece, Valerian and Raynor work together to invade the Zerg world of Char and use the artifact to restore Kerrigan's humanity, thus weakening the Zerg at the cost of much of the Dominion fleet. An agent of Arcturus makes an attempt on Kerrigan's life, and Raynor defends her and takes her in for medical examination. In Heart of
20636-658: The series was awarded a star on the Walk of Game in 2006, and holds four Guinness World Records in the Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition of 2008. On March 27, 2017, Blizzard announced StarCraft: Remastered , a remastered version of the original StarCraft , with the core updates being up-to-date graphics and revised dialogue and audio. As of 2017, the original StarCraft , its Brood War expansion, and StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty are free to download and play from Blizzard's website. The story focuses on
20790-414: The seventh best game of all time by IGN in both 2003 and 2005, and the eleventh best game in 2007. StarCraft: Brood War is the official expansion pack for StarCraft , developed by Blizzard Entertainment and Saffire . Released for Windows and Mac OS in the United States on December 18, 1998, the expansion directly continues the events of StarCraft . The expansion's story continues only days after
20944-512: The size of a galaxy, and each of them can yield different results with respect to one another. The most commonly employed method is the D 25 standard – the isophote where the photometric brightness of a galaxy in the B-band (445 nm wavelength of light, in the blue part of the visible spectrum ) reaches 25 mag/arcsec . An estimate from 1997 by Goodwin and others compared the distribution of Cepheid variable stars in 17 other spiral galaxies to
21098-538: The south galactic pole is near α Sculptoris . Because of this high inclination, depending on the time of night and year, the Milky Way arch may appear relatively low or relatively high in the sky. For observers from latitudes approximately 65° north to 65° south, the Milky Way passes directly overhead twice a day. In Meteorologica , Aristotle (384–322 BC) states that the Greek philosophers Anaxagoras ( c. 500 –428 BC) and Democritus (460–370 BC) proposed that
21252-527: The spiral arms (more at the bulge). Recent simulations suggest that a dark matter area, also containing some visible stars, may extend up to a diameter of almost 2 million light-years (613 kpc). The Milky Way has several satellite galaxies and is part of the Local Group of galaxies, which form part of the Virgo Supercluster , which is itself a component of the Laniakea Supercluster . It
21406-512: The stellar disk larger by increasing to this size. A more recent 2018 paper later somewhat ruled out this hypothesis, and supported a conclusion that the Monoceros Ring, A13 and TriAnd Ring were stellar overdensities rather kicked out from the main stellar disk, with the velocity dispersion of the RR Lyrae stars found to be higher and consistent with halo membership. Another 2018 study revealed
21560-504: The universe, the Milky Way galaxy has a below average amount of neutrino luminosity making our galaxy a " neutrino desert ". The Milky Way consists of a bar-shaped core region surrounded by a warped disk of gas, dust and stars. The mass distribution within the Milky Way closely resembles the type Sbc in the Hubble classification , which represents spiral galaxies with relatively loosely wound arms. Astronomers first began to conjecture that
21714-399: The very probable presence of disk stars at 26–31.5 kpc (84,800–103,000 ly) from the Galactic Center or perhaps even farther, significantly beyond approximately 13–20 kpc (40,000–70,000 ly), in which it was once believed to be the abrupt drop-off of the stellar density of the disk, meaning that few or no stars were expected to be above this limit, save for stars that belong to
21868-478: The visible sky. He produced a diagram of the shape of the Milky Way with the Solar System close to the center. In 1845, Lord Rosse constructed a new telescope and was able to distinguish between elliptical and spiral-shaped nebulae. He also managed to make out individual point sources in some of these nebulae, lending credence to Kant's earlier conjecture. In 1904, studying the proper motions of stars, Jacobus Kapteyn reported that these were not random, as it
22022-671: Was announced at the Worldwide Invitational in South Korea on May 19, 2007, with a pre-rendered cinematic cut scene trailer and a gameplay demonstration of the Protoss. Further demonstrations regarding the game's new features have been showcased at subsequent BlizzCons and other games conventions. The game incorporates a new 3D graphics engine and adds new features such as the Havok physics engine . StarCraft II also incorporates DirectX 10 level effects in Windows. Originally envisioned as
22176-422: Was authored by series creator Chris Metzen and Sam Moore, a Blizzard employee, and was featured on the cover of the 1999 spring edition with art by Blizzard's art director Samwise Didier . Hybrid was written by Micky Neilson and again was accompanied by artwork by Didier; the short story was published in the spring edition of 2000. At New York Comic-Con in 2008, TokyoPop announced that they would be producing
22330-505: Was believed in that time; stars could be divided into two streams, moving in nearly opposite directions. It was later realized that Kapteyn's data had been the first evidence of the rotation of our galaxy, which ultimately led to the finding of galactic rotation by Bertil Lindblad and Jan Oort . In 1917, Heber Doust Curtis had observed the nova S Andromedae within the Great Andromeda Nebula ( Messier object 31). Searching
22484-481: Was brought in to write a trilogy entitled the StarCraft: The Dark Templar Saga . The trilogy acts as a link between StarCraft and its sequel StarCraft II . The first installment, Firstborn being published in May 2007 and Shadow Hunters , the second novel, being published in November 2007. The final part of the trilogy, Twilight was released in June 2009. I, Mengsk was publish in 2009,
22638-412: Was positive about the video game console direction taken by Ghost , the game was consistently delayed, and during the third quarter of 2004, Nihilistic Software discontinued their work with the project. Blizzard stated that Nihilistic Software had completed the tasks it had been contracted for and that the game would be delivered on time. The game was never released, although footage purported to be from
22792-411: Was released for free to both PC and MAC. A remastered edition of the game, StarCraft: Remastered , released August 14, 2017, preserves the gameplay of the original while adding support for ultra-high-definition graphics , Blizzard's modern online features, and re-recorded audio (soundtrack and sound effects). On July 10, 2019, Blizzard released StarCraft: Cartooned , a graphics overhaul pack for
22946-445: Was released for the PC in late 1998. The game is set during the second campaign in StarCraft , revolving around the acquisition of a crystal of immense power connected to the Xel'Naga . Divided into three campaigns, the game has the player assuming the roles of a Protoss fleet executor, the commander of a Dominion task force, and a Zerg cerebrate, all tasked with retrieving the crystal from
23100-456: Was released. In 2001, StarCraft: Ghost began development under Nihilistic Software . Unlike the previous real-time strategy games in the series, Ghost was to be a stealth - action game . After three years of development, work on the game was postponed in 2004. Development of a true RTS sequel, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty , began in 2003; the game was announced in May 2007 and was released in July 2010. StarCraft II continued with
23254-471: Was revealed that Blizzard will release additional mission packs to keep players engaged with StarCraft II. The first pack is called Nova Covert Ops , and will center around the character Nova . The mission pack consists of three episodes, with a total of nine new missions. It did not require the purchase of StarCraft II and could be played with the Starter Edition. The release date for the first episode
23408-482: Was the first StarCraft novel to be released in paperback . StarCraft: Shadow of the Xel'Naga , published in July 2001 is the third novel, written by Kevin Anderson under the pseudonym Gabriel Mesta . It serves as a link between StarCraft and Brood War . The fantasy author Tracy Hickman was brought in to write the fourth novel, StarCraft: Speed of Darkness , which was published in June 2002. Speed of Darkness
23562-399: Was the first add-on pack released for StarCraft . Although developed and published by Aztech New Media , it is authorized by Blizzard Entertainment. It was released for the PC on July 31, 1998. The expansion's story focuses on a Confederate colony during the course of the first campaign of StarCraft . As in StarCraft , the player takes control of each race in three separate campaigns. In
23716-513: Was written by Micky Neilson, a Blizzard Entertainment employee, and originally released only as an e-book in December 2000. The novel follows the origins of the character Sarah Kerrigan . The second novel, entitled StarCraft: Liberty's Crusade , serves as an adaptation of the first campaign of StarCraft , following on a journalist following a number of the key Terran characters in the series. Written by Jeff Grubb and published in March 2001, it
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