If you don’t have Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm, you’re in luck because Starcraft’s new feature called Spawning can help. Spawning is similar to back in the days when RTS players who owned a game gave the disc to a friend and let them join in on the fun without them actually owning the game.
Anybody can go to Blizzard.com, make an account and download a free starter edition of Starcraft 2. Which is amazingly great in itself, but if you want to play the game for free with a friend, well, you will need that friend to have bought the Heart of the Swarm (HOTS) edition of the game. Or at least Wings of Liberty (WoL) edition. If you’ve got that friend, you’re doing pretty well because he can add you to a party and your Starcraft edition is upgraded automatically to whatever edition they own, be it WoL or HOTS.
Also, as long as you’re in there party you can have almost all the features of that edition and play with your friend online in multiplayer or co-op based games. Up to 14 Starter edition level players can be spawned from one HOTS or WoL level player at one time.
Plus, they added an achievement with a sweet new Portrait for anybody who spawns in new players. So Starcraft 2 players grab your friends, and have fun letting them play a game for free! You might even get them to pay you for it. Everybody likes free, right?
