GIF: Starcraft Remastered Most people already own a copy of the original StarCraft. But if you don’t, or you’re looking for some oldschool RTS action, the original game is available right now.
Update: Brood War version 1.18 has been released on the Battle.net forums for all regions now, not just the PTR server, and you can download it here. Note that you’ll want to run the game with administrator privileges the first time around.
StarCraft will be officially free once patch 1.18 drops, a move made by Blizzard ahead of the release of StarCraft Remastered in the winter. The patch is expected either today or early tomorrow, but for now the developer has made a build available for the game’s public test server, which you can download from the Battle.net forums.
You’ll need to make a PTR account if you want to play StarCraft 1.18 online, but the campaign can be enjoyed without any such hassles. The whole download is just over 1.5GB, according to the file on my HDD, and it comes with support for UPnP, compatibility for Windows 7, 8.1 and 10, an observer mode, customisable keybindings (oh my God yes), and support for windowed or borderless fullscreen/windowed fullscreen mode.
If you’re interested in the full list of patch changes, the Battle.net post has them all. The main heads up is that if you do want to play multiplayer, you’ll be doing so on a server in California (as that’s where the PTR server is based). The full public release will have support for servers much closer to home, but if you just want to relive the Terran, Zerg and Protoss campaigns, this works just fine.
Just unzip the Starcraft folder to somewhere of your choice and run Starcraft.exe to enjoy. (And for those playing on Mac, don’t worry: another update is coming out in a few days with support for OSX.)
Comments
15 responses to “The Original StarCraft Is Free From Today”
Guess I won’t need this burnt copy my friend lent me back in year 8 and never took back any more!
Or those 40 floppy discs I’m sure my Dad has hiding somewhere in his study
I still have my original StarCraft and Brood War CDs from when they were first released. But my gaming PC has no optical drive so no dice.
Will this be available from the Blizzard (nee Battle.net) app, or will it be a separate download like their other older games?
the originals will probably show up in your account if you log in. kind of like how Warcraft 3 is there when you log in currently along side your paid stuff
the remaster is going onto the launcher
You can take your CD keys and add them to your blizzard account, and be able to download the game from their website. None of that will be necessary in the near future though, so oh well.
I never knew that – DII may still be around somewhere too
i love this patch note tho; Improved gameplay responsiveness during multiplayer by increasing turn rate to match LAN speeds over Battle.net.
LAN over WAN???? DRM added?
I’ve found a few instances now of peer to peer networks being referred to as lan although they are over wan
I’m tired and can’t tell if you were just poking fun at the wording or found it genuinely confusing, but in case it’s the latter it’s saying battle.net turn rate has been increased to match LAN speeds.
So it’s sold out. How does a digital distribution sell out?
Somebody needs to fix the broken link in this article.
I was a Warcraft 2 kid, so bear with me:
‘Original Starcraft’ in this instance means vanilla + expansion (ie Brood War), right?
This is indeed different to the upcoming Remastered one coming out soon, I take it?
Will Remastered be free? I don’t expect it will be but I was so unsure of what was going on here.
Will Warcraft 2 be remastered?
Will Warcraft 3 be remastered?
Will Warcraft 4 be announced any god damn time soon?
I got Starcraft 2 for the campaign. The Wings of Liberty stuff was great as it helped me get back into my RTS groove.
I got Heart of the Swarm, I fell off it though. This is when I started dabbling in SC2 multiplayer too.
I haven’t had the time to get back into the game, do I need to get Legacy of the Void first and foremost though?
The original storylines might be what I need to get back into it.
Remastered won’t be free, but the player-base won’t be fragmented; original Brood War 1.18 players will be able to play alongside SC: Remastered players.
If you just want to play more SC2, don’t bother buying anything for now. Simply download the game client and play the prologue of the LotV campaign which is free, if you want to check it out before you pay anything. The arcade and custom maps are also free, as are 3 co-op commanders, and multiplayer ranked ladder matches if you party up with someone who owns a copy of the game.
1. Yes
2. Yes.
3. No.
4. No.
5. Hopefully, but they haven’t said anything yet AFAIK.
6. There’s no getting off the WoW Train!
7. Legacy of the Void utterly concludes the Starcraft 2 story. And the Starcraft 1 story, I Guess. Don’t know about the multiplayer aspect to your question though.
And here I was buying games like a jackarse. I should just wait the 20+ years till they are free. Now what to do with all this free time I suddenly just discovered…
can I play patch v1.18 + without the use of battle.net? even if I have the original discs?