StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is a science fiction real-time strategy video game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment.

The game is set four years after the events of 1998's Brood War, and follows the exploits of Jim Raynor as he leads an insurgent group against the autocratic Terran Dominion.

[4] In the Terran campaign, the original StarCraft briefing room is replaced with an interactive version of the battlecruiser Hyperion, with Jim Raynor, a bitter and hard-drinking mercenary captain, as the central character.

[10][11] The Wings of Liberty campaign contains several missions with unique features, such as lava that floods the battlefield every five minutes, forcing the player to move their units to high ground before they are destroyed.

Lead producer Chris Sigaty has stated that the editor gives players the ability to create role-playing, Hero-type units and structures resembling those from Warcraft III.

In StarCraft II, players revisit familiar worlds, like Char, Mar Sara, and Tarsonis, as well as new locations, such as the jungle planet Bel'Shir and New Folsom.

Valerian Mengsk, a character introduced in the novel Firstborn, will play an important role in Dominion politics, due to his position as heir apparent to the throne.

Meanwhile, Jim Raynor, whose role in the events of StarCraft and Brood War has been marginalized by the media under the Dominion's control, has become a mercenary who spends his free time drinking in Joeyray's Bar.

Chris Metzen, Vice President of Creative Development at Blizzard, has emphasized that by the events of StarCraft II, Raynor has become jaded and embittered by the way he was used and betrayed by Arcturus Mengsk.

There, Artanis, a former student of Tassadar, is trying to unify the Khalai Protoss and the Dark Templar, who have nearly separated into warring tribes as a result of centuries of distrust.

Zeratul, tormented over the murder of his matriarch, has disappeared to search for clues to the meaning of Samir Duran's cryptic statements regarding the Protoss/Zerg hybrids in Brood War's secret mission "Dark Origin".

With Tychus acting as the middleman, the Raiders embark on a series of missions to find the remaining pieces of the Xel'Naga artifact, which they sell to the enigmatic Moebius Foundation in order to fund their revolution.

Along the way, they meet with Gabriel Tosh, a rogue Dominion psychic assassin known as a Spectre, and Ariel Hanson, a researcher on the Zerg and leader of a small farming colony.

Finally, Zeratul sneaks aboard the Hyperion to deliver a psychic crystal that allows Raynor to share visions involving an ominous prophecy where Zerg-Protoss hybrids and an enslaved Zerg swarm wipe out Humanity and the Protoss.

Valerian, intending to show himself as a worthy successor to his father, asks Raynor to help him invade Char and use the artifact to restore Kerrigan's humanity, thus weakening the Zerg.

[59][60][61] Removing LAN requires players to connect through Blizzard's servers before being able to play multiplayer games, causing gamers to voice their dissatisfaction online.

The company originally explained that Australia and New Zealand servers would be located in Southeast Asia, pitting them against combatants from Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand.

However, starting from patch 1.1.0, it was announced that the Southeast Asia/Australia/New Zealand version of the game would not be strictly region-locked, with gamers able to play on both the SEA/ANZ servers and the North American ones.

[64] As of March 2010, Blizzard had stated that the new platform was being tested outside the beta and was planned for release in early July 2010,[65] for both StarCraft II and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, with a later upgrade for Diablo III.

[73] The change was in line with Blizzard's vision going forward: supporting the game with microtransactions such as Skins, Co-op Commanders, Voice Packs, and War Chests, which already proved to be successful.

[citation needed] The financial strategy appeared to be ineffective and in the October of 2020 the company stopped producing new for-purchase content although season rolls and balance fixes remained.

The original score, composed by Derek Duke, Glenn Stafford, Neal Acree, Russell Brower, Sascha Dikiciyan and Cris Velasco was released on CD as well as on the iTunes Store.

[78] The collector's edition comes with an artbook, 2 GB flash drive modeled after Jim Raynor's dog tag with the original StarCraft and Brood War expansion preloaded, behind-the-scenes DVD, soundtrack, comic book, unique avatar portraits, a unique model for the in-game Thor unit in multiplayer, and a World of Warcraft pet.

[82] Several gaming and technology sites reported an "overheating bug" with StarCraft II that in some cases resulted in permanent damage to video cards.

[87] In response to the reports, Blizzard's Public Relations Manager, Bob Colayco said: "There is no code in our software that will cause video cards to overheat.

[96] Giant Bomb echoed this view while also noting the Hyperion portion between missions, finding it to have "more depth of character, more believable pathos, more surprise twists—than I honestly expected out of the story".

[103] IGN however noted that "no doubt franchise fans will eat it up, but newcomers may be wondering what all the fuss is about while going through the early missions that lack the kind of urgency you would hope when the fate of civilization is in peril.

[110] Matt Peckham of PC World also noted that some buyers expressed dissatisfaction with the absence of LAN-based multiplayer gameplay, the lack of cross-realm play and the campaign being limited to the Terran race.

[112] In a separate article, Ars Technica vigorously supported StarCraft II against a series of 1-star ratings given to the game on Amazon.com in protest against the lack of LAN play.

[116] Blizzard entered into a co-marketing agreement with Korean Air that lasted for six months, in which two of the airline's airplanes on both domestic and international routes prominently displayed StarCraft II advertising featuring Jim Raynor on the fuselage.