When we first discussed the Clans feature coming in Heart of the Swarm, we also revealed that we were working on support for Groups, a feature similar to Clans. The Groups feature is for players who want to associate casually and in larger numbers. We’re pleased to announce that this feature is now ready for testing and will be introduced soon, in Beta Patch 2.0.2. Here’s a first look.

Like Clans, each Group has a designated chat channel, a News tab where stories can be posted, an Info tab where officers can post a brief description of the Group, and a Members roster. While you are only able to join a single Clan, you can join many different Groups. Additionally, a nearly unlimited number of players can join a Group. The table below illustrates the similarities and differences between Clans and Groups.

The Groups feature is a way for you to meet and interact with other StarCraft II players who share common interests. Accordingly, when you create a Group, you'll select a category that best describes the type of Group you are creating. These categories include topics such as BarCraft for Groups that are interested in finding and keeping in touch with friends they’ve made at BarCraft events, Strategy and Coaching for Groups that are looking to share their favorite strategies and helping others improve their play, and many more. Once the Group is created, others will then be able to search for the Group by name or browse through the Groups by category.

When a Group is created, you will also be able to designate whether you want the group to be open to the public or private, requiring an invitation to join. Private Groups won’t appear in search results.

Here are a few more notes about Group functionality in the beta:

• Group names must be 2-32 characters long, and will be case sensitive, allowing spaces, numbers, periods, apostrophes, and commas.
• Group names must adhere to standard name policies.
• Characters can be in a maximum of 20 Groups.
• Characters can only own a maximum of 2 Groups at a time.

Currently, Clans and Groups are similar in functionality, so we anticipate that some people will use them interchangeably at first. Moving forward, our development focus on the Clans feature will be to add more competitive features, whereas Groups will remain geared around casual social interactions. We encourage you to keep these things in mind when creating a Group or Clan. How you choose to use these features will be completely up to you!

Like other new features being tested in the beta, Groups is a work in progress. It’s hot off the presses and we’re looking to polish it up, so please take some time to test it and share your feedback.