Blizzard had already detailed the Clans system for StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm, and not they’ve also given some details on the Groups system. Blizzard says that while Clans are catered for more hardcore players of SC2, groups are more for a casual audience.
“The Groups feature is a way for you to meet and interact with other StarCraft 2 players who share common interests,” Blizzard said. “ccordingly, 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.”
People can invite “near limitless” people into groups, as opposed to 50 people per each clan, and each character is allowed to join 20 groups, while he or she can only be part of one clan. However, groups too will have their very own channel, news feeds and rosters.
Blizzard says that since Clans and Groups are so similar, people will probably use them interchangeably. “We anticipate that some people will use them interchangeably at first,” says the dev. “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.”
The features will be out with StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm’s beta’a patch 2.0.2.
Heart of the Swarm comes out on March 12 next year for PC and Mac. Stay tuned for more info.