Details on Clan Support for StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm dropped

Blizzard is continuing their trend of revealing more on the reworked Heart of the Swarm user interface, and I have to say, it's looking pretty sick. Though you may be thinking "Hey, shouldn't this already be a feature?" it hasn't been in StarCraft 2 at all, though it has been a long requested feature. This essentially creates a "guild chat" that you can easily message members from, as well as add them to games. Not so different from the current chat room system, except that it lets you add a tag in front of your name based on your team.

Let's check out what's in store, via Battle.net:

  • Anyone can create a clan.
  • Clan names must be 3-24 characters long, and will be case sensitive, allowing spaces, numbers, periods, apostrophes, and commas.
  • Clan Tags must be 2-4 characters long, and are also case sensitive, allowing spaces, numbers, periods, apostrophes, and commas.
  • Clan names and Tags must adhere to standard name policies.
  • The Clan Tag is automatically pre-pended to a player’s name.
  • There is a limit of 50 members per Clan.

This will be a huge boon to eSports teams, who previously had to just set up chat rooms that didn't really feel special at all, in addition to having to buy new licenses every time a given player changed teams just to change their team tag. No longer, thank heavens. And of course, it'll be nice for casual players too.

Dustin Steiner is GameZone's eSports Editor! Follow him on Twitter @GZSteiner and check out Video Gaming Hard Corps, where he is a local tournament organizer for the S. FL. Fighting Game Community.