Want to get in on some competitive gaming while you're at BlizzCon? We're hosting several community competitions at this year's convention, including the first-ever StarCraft II Community Tournament. Other events include Defense of the Ancients (based on Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne) and World of Warcraft Battlegrounds tournaments. BlizzCon attendees can sign up in advance here or enter on site during show hours at the community tournament area.

Learn more about StarCraft II's main characters and their complex intertwining stories in the character biography of Jim Raynor, the first installment of our StarCraft II character biography series.

Players searching for a new StarCraft experience need look no further than StarCraft: The Board Game, published by Fantasy Flight Games. In this game, players take control of the Protoss, Terran, or Zerg, and battle across multiple worlds. True to the StarCraft legacy, each of the three races features a unique play style, and the inclusion of two distinct factions for each race allows up to six players to compete for galactic dominance at a time.

Join our Community Team going behind the scenes to experience the world of Blizzard game making in the first installment of our new Blizzard Podcast - BlizzCast. In each episode we'll be interviewing your favorite Blizzard developers and staff, giving you a glimpse of what it's like from their perspective to make the games you love.

To kick off our BlizzCast series, we've decided to begin where every great Blizzard idea begins, at the concept level. To speak with us we have Samwise Didier, our Art Director and concept artist for many of the popular Blizzard icons you've grown to love, such as the Pandaren, Fel Orcs, Dark Templars, Zerglings, and many more. We'll be chatting with Samwise on how he came up with the characters he did, as well as what it is like to work on both the Warcraft and StarCraft franchises.

Check out the new BlizzCast page here.