There are question during QA and Interview talk about this. They said that users can create their own Battleground (maps) that can be played. Even though there are certains things users cannot make right now (The pirate ships for example). User created contents is a big part of making this game happen and they want to help support it in this game. There are no mentions of links between HotS and SC2. Everything they tried to show it being a standalone game even though what they showed heavily hinted the game running on the SC2 engine.
Here's my guess based on the whole situation. There will be a modified editor made specifically for HotS that will be otherwise identical to sc2's editor. The main functionality will be limited to terraining and inserting certain standardized waypoint/spawn point and units etc... Triggering will be limitied. The game client will be standalone but is the sc2 engine.
We're all hoping that everything links together to make storm a mod of sc2. That's the best case scenario but I highly doubt it. Everything is just a plan right now and the game is still in a very early stages.
It could still happen if they plan some major change to the arcade that support standalone mod in the future. One can hope :)
Thanks for your information, Progammer.
Really hope it would be allowed to change anythings as we did in SC2 maps.
Thanks for your information, Progammer.
Really hope it would be allowed to change anythings as we did in SC2 maps.
The only thing I actually care is 'Is HotS a public mod or not'.
Could we create custom maps based on HotS? I think this is the most important question for the map making scene.