The team wants to encourage gamers to try out the multiplayer

Dec 17, 2012 08:54 GMT  ·  By

Mike Morhaime, the leader of video game developer Blizzard, says that his team has added a new Artificial Intelligence guided training mode to the upcoming Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm in order to prepare gamers for the challenges of the multiplayer section of the game.

The developer tells PCGamesN that, “We want to make the game more accessible to players that aren’t necessarily ready to jump into a highly competitive scene. A lot of players never make the transition from the campaign to matchmaking - to playing against people they don’t know.”

“A lot of people do feel intimidated, at least at first, in playing in ranked play. Unranked matches are a big step in that direction,” he adds.

The new mode will train the player by gradually pushing difficulty up, while the game talks the player through a number of strategies that might work depending on the situation in the match.

After training is complete, gamers will get a chance to play an unranked match against the A.I. before jumping into multiplayer in order to face other humans.

Blizzard wants to make Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm more accessible to players in order to get those who have traditionally tried out just the single-player campaign to also play the multiplayer.

The new real-time strategy title from Blizzard will focus on the Zerg faction and on Kerrigan and players will get access to new units that will lead to new multiplayer-oriented strategies.

Blizzard is trying to convince players who are currently playing Wings of Liberty competitively to move to Heart of the Swarm when it is launched by expanding support for eSports in the new game.

Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm will be out on March 12 of next year exclusively on the PC, both via retail and Battle.net.