StarCraft 2 Will Soon Be Free To Play

Despite launching seven years go, StarCraft II remains one of Blizzard's most popular and successful titles, and those who have yet to play it or have since fallen out will soon be able to jump in for no cost at all. During BlizzCon's opening ceremony today, Blizzard announced that the real-time strategy game is going free-to-play.

Beginning November 14, PC players will be able to play through the entirety of StarCraft II's Wings of Liberty campaign for free. Players will also be able to access the ranked multiplayer ladder; in order to unlock it, you'll have to earn 10 First Wins of the Day in Unranked or Versus AI play. Additionally, all current and upcoming commanders will be free to play up to level five, while the co-op commanders Raynor, Kerrigan, and Artanis will remain free to level up as much as you want.

If you already own a copy of Wings of Liberty, Blizzard still has a free gift for you. Existing StarCraft II players will get the game's Heart of the Swarm expansion for free. Blizzard says you will need to log in between November 8 and December 8 in order to claim Heart of the Swarm.

BlizzCon is going on this weekend and still has plenty of announcements in store for fans. In addition to the StarCraft news, Blizzard revealed two more characters for Heroes of the Storm: Overwatch's Hanzo and Warcraft's Alexstrasz. Overwatch is also adding a new map and a character named Moira. We'll report all of the big news from the event as it is shared; you can see everything announced in our roundup of the biggest BlizzCon 2017 news.

This story has been updated.