Starting today, you may notice that your game launcher will begin downloading data upon running StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. This is in preparation for the Heart of the Swarm launch on March 12, as well as a very important Wings of Liberty patch, which will be released in the coming weeks. We will soon provide a more detailed guide to the patch, but in the meantime we wanted to offer a little information so everyone understands how today’s download will work.

First and foremost, this update does not require that we bring down the Battle.net service, and will not make any changes to game features or balance. You will be able to play StarCraft II as normal, and your in-game experience will remain unaffected by the download.

Please keep in mind that your copy of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty must be up-to-date with the latest patch in order to begin today's download. Once the update begins, your game launcher will start downloading data even though your progress bar appears completely full.

The download will be around six gigabytes in size, and will continue to pick up data so long as the game launcher is running. You can always check the progress of your download by clicking the "Info" button at the top of the launcher, then selecting "Connection Information" from the drop-down menu. If you wish to complete the update later, simply click the "Play" button at any point to pause the download and run StarCraft II, or close the launcher. Unlike some of our other games, no background downloading will occur while StarCraft II is running. Data will resume downloading the next time you run the launcher.

That’s all there is to it! Stay tuned over the coming weeks for more information about the impending patch. Until then, we'll see you on Battle.net.