Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void will be released soon, and Blizzard has revealed what they state will be a “taste” of what to expect with the user interface update that will be included in the 3.0 update across all Starcraft II games, including Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm.
For starters, the navigation pages will be a whole lot prettier as they will all feature 3D artwork and animation, as well as including an homage to Starcraft: Brood War with a new campaign selection for each of the three modules.
However, the buzzword for the 3.0 user interface is “streamline”. Everything has been made cleaner and simpler. All of the navigation has been reduced to buttons on the upper left portion of the screen. A hotkey list was also supplied for quicker navigation.
One of the major focuses was the lobby chat. ”We consolidated all of chat into one prominently visible window. This persistent chat window ensures players always have the ability to engage with other players regardless of what they’re doing in StarCraft II. We increased the maximum number of players who can be in a chat channel from 100 to 200 and added a function that will automatically remove inactive players from public chat channels. Lastly, every player that logs in will automatically be placed into a general chat, allowing them to instantly connect with the community,” stated the Battle.net blog. Of course, ”For those who really want chat to be prominent, we added the ability to make the window taller and to pin it on the screen so it will remain open, even when you’re not typing in chat.”
Blizzard also released a video explaining some of the UI improvements.
