One of the most anticipated games of the year, Starcraft 2 - Wings of Liberty, has finally been released to the masses. This latest installment of Blizzard’s award winning Starcraft franchise comes after 12 long years since its predecessor. No doubt a well developed game, Starcraft 2, like all other PC games to be released so far, is not perfect – judging by the mails we have received , there seem to be at least some people who are having trouble getting the game to run. As usual, here’s our routine troubleshooting article for Starcraft 2 – we hope to address common issues players around the globe seem to be having with this immensely popular title. Note that this article is a work in progress – more fixes will be added as they are discovered and note that some of the mentioned solutions may not work for all hardware configurations.
Cannot install StarCraft 2 or can’t load the game
Some folks have run into various issues when trying to get the game to launch. It some times won’t install, the installer will exit with an error or may hang during the installation process. Even if you do get the game to install, sometimes you will have trouble trying to launch it. The game will simply do nothing after the main exe is clicked. Here’s a workaround you can try to solve similar issues:
- Create a new folder in your hard disk drive.
- Go to computer->Organize->Folder and search options->View and make sure ‘Show hidden files and folders’ is selected.
- Copy all files from the Starcraft 2 DVD (either from mounted image or physical drive in tray. If you are using Daemon Tools and can’t see all files, try opening the image with WinRAR) in to the folder you just created.
- Run the SC2 installer from the copy in hard disk drive.
Note that on certain hardware configurations, the installer will take a long time to complete.
Save issues – Cannot load savegames
The games save system does not appear to be working for some. From what I have seen, this issue is common on various pirated copies of SC2 that are floating around in file sharing networks. There is however a workaround for the saved games loading issues.
- Navigate to your Documents directory and locate the Starcraft 2 subdirectory.
- Navigate to the save directory.
- Here you will see a list of saved games files. Double click on any of these files and the game should launch and start loading the particular save you clicked on (SC2 save files which have .SC2Save extension are associated with the game executable).
Unable to create a Battle.net account
I’m not sure if this is fixed yet but Blizzard’s online registration pages for Battle.net seemed to experience issues a while ago. The last step in reg process appeared to be broken and apparently some people have got random errors when trying to submit. If you encounter such issues, the problem is really at Blizzard’s end and you’ll have to wait for a fix. However, you can try to bypass the issue by filling all fields in the last page, including fields that are not marked mandatory and submitting the form again.
No single player campaign or skirmish mode, black screen errors, etc
Again, these problems are commonly seen in the leaked, pirated version of the game that’s floating around. The release by group LIBERTY does not actually circumvent the copy protection built into the game. It appears to use a built in function in the Starcraft 2 patching framework to launch the game, bypassing the authentication screen. This is not a great approach and may be a cause for unstable behavior.
If you are a pirate playing the leaked build (single player), you still need to have a very stable connection to Battle.net servers. If you don’t have internet connectivity, if your internet connection is unstable or if you have blocked access to battle.net by any means, the game might crash or black screen issues will materialize.
Note: this article is a work in progress. More fixes will be added as they are discovered.
Note: Please do not post links to torrents or cracks here
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