It’s been nearly three months since Legacy of the Void warped into the hands of millions of players around the world. Since that time, we’ve all begun to understand how genuinely different StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void is than its predecessors.

The maps of Legacy of the Void are meant to be no exception. In a recent Community Feedback Update, Lead Multiplayer Designer David Kim explained how Legacy of the Void maps are meant to open up new strategic opportunities, instead of encouraging the same “main” strategies on each map. With that in mind, we’d like see what creative angles our community map makers might be able to bring to light.

For the upcoming season in Legacy of the Void, we’re giving all map makers the opportunity to have their creation become part of the official ladder map pool. We’ll be using at least two maps from all those which are sent to us; to have your map considered for the upcoming map pool, all you have to do is send it to us for review and it will be considered along with all other maps we receive. We’ve already seen a number of quality maps published to Team Liquid, Reddit, and our Battle.net Forums, and we want to see even more. Check below for entry guidelines.

Submission Guidelines

Details:

• Maps must be created by the person submitting the entry
• The maps must be published online in at least one region for consideration
• A limit of up to 5 entries per person
• All entries must be submitted at the same time

Submissions must include:

• Map maker name
• Map file
• Link to the online version of the map
• Short description of the map
• “Bird’s Eye” or isometric screenshot (720p+ preferred)

What we’re looking for:

• Creative maps that push for new and interesting strategies
  • We will not be considering maps from the community that are standard. Consider maps such as Ulrena or Prion Terraces when deciding if your map has at least one distinguishingly creative factor.
• 2/3/4-Player maps

There are also some design restrictions that we’d recommend maps follow:

• Normal bases always have 8 normal mineral patches and 2 normal geysers
• High yield bases always have 6 high yield mineral patches and 2 normal geysers
• Retain the default values for Neutral units (Xel’Naga towers, destructible objects, etc.)

We’d also recommend ensuring that the submitted map(s) perform well on a variety of hardware configurations. To help with this, we’d recommend the following:

• Avoid excessive use of water
• Avoid weather effects like falling snow, snow drift doodads, etc.
• If using the Ice tileset, avoid using the CliffGlacier* doodad series
• Avoid excessive stacking/overlapping of doodads in concentrated spaces
• Excessive use of decals, custom decals
• Excessive use of doodads that produce dynamic shadows
• Doodads under the terrain
• Clusters of large/complex doodads

Closing Thoughts

In the coming days, we’ll also have a guide of best practices you can utilize to get these (or any) maps in ship-shape before sending them out to the world! Once again however, creativity is the prime driver in selecting maps in this particular submission.

When you send us your maps, we’ll present your creations to the Balance Team where they’ll test and review various maps to see what maps might make the cut to be used in the Ladder for 2016 Season 2 in Legacy of the Void.

In the future, we’ll continue to run more map contests like we have in the past. However, for this first venture into community-made maps for Legacy of the Void, we wanted to create an environment where map makers can feel free to experiment to heart’s content. So please send us your unique and unorthodox maps by submitting them in an e-mail to SC2CommunityTeam@Blizzard.com by February 10, 11:59 PM PST.

Thanks, and we’re looking forward to seeing your creations!