Not even a month after Blizzard were praising themselves for the longevity of World of Warcraft, a band of fans have revealed that they're bringing the same kind of MMO flair to the popular StarCraft 2 universe. Aptly named StarCraft Universe, the game will be an unofficial mod supported on the battle.net systems, and will be playable by anyone who owns a retail copy of StarCraft 2.

Inspired by the gameplay, quests, and challenges of World of Warcraft, StarCraft Universe intends to allow up to five players at a time to clash online after selecting species, class, and character. Fans familiar with World of Warcraft will no doubt recognize the iconic gameplay styles featured in the debut trailer, which popped up on the internet a few days ago and has garnered massive interest from fans of Blizzard.

Let's take a peek into the galaxy for ourselves:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mmUbSsHmiQ&feature=iv&annotation_id=annotation_646726

While most modifications of StarCraft 2 maps tend to just modify existing data, the StarCraft Universe team will be adding hundreds of custom objects, weapons, and pieces of loot throughout each map. For those wondering if characters are finished at the end of each fight on battle.net, fear not -- character data (you can have up to three) will be saved for the next login, allowing players to grind their hearts away against rat-zerglings.

According to the official log of completed items, StarCraft Universe already includes fully implimented quests, rewards, rezzing, achievements, and most of the classes. While things like maps and characters are still in development, it's encouraging to see how far this mod has come already.

As for the storyline of the mod, players will find no new, fan-made events within the game. The creators are focusing on reliving battles from the original StarCraft, StarCraft 2, and several of the books based on the series. Given that fans would be annoyed if an alternate universe suddenly sprung up in which Kerrigan was a protoss pylon -- or something likely less ridiculous -- it's probably a good decision not to stray from the actual timeline of events.

You can check out the mod for yourself on the official StarCraft Universe website, and we'll keep you covered as the mod approaches its release. As we said before, you won't be required to purchase anything to play the game beside your actual copy of StarCraft 2.

What do you think about StarCraft Universe? Would you try it out if you saw it?

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Source: StarCraft Universe