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Starcraft 2 kicks off its second season of ranked play for 2014

• Egon Kilin
• April 14th, 2014

A new season has begun for all Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm players climbing their way up the ladder. Bonus pools and standings have been reset, and 2014 Season 1 milestones have also been awarded. The new season doesn’t bring any big changes to the game, however Blizzard did make a free name change available on all accounts. So if you came up with a badass nickname lately now’s your chance to show off.

The 1v1 map pool for this season has suffered quite a number of modifications, with four of the maps from last season being replaced by four new ones. Polar Night, Yeonsu, Daedalus Point and Heavy Rain have been removed from the game.

The additions to Heart of the Swarm 1v1 ladder are:

– King Sejons Station LE: this map is currently used in Proleague and is considered balanced by players.

– Overgrowth LE: a standard two-player map created by GSL which features High Yield expansions near the watchtowers.

– Merry Go Round LE: the first three-player map to join the ladder. Its asymmetric style could be useful for players planning to expand a lot. However, the advantage will only be noticeable fairly late game.

– Waystation: large map with cross-spawning positions, offers the possibility for more macro oriented games.

2v2, 3v3 and 4v4 map pools have also seen a few changes, although not quite as extensive as the 1v1. A total of ten new maps have been introduced for this season. All of them have already been added to the Custom Games mode so check them out before going into ranked. For more info on the map changes Blizzard has made for Season 2 take a look at the original post on Battle.net.