The moment you've been waiting for is finally here! Starhawk's public beta is live, and with it comes update 1.2.1. Many of you have been asking what will be changed or added in the public beta; well, here's your answer!

Host-Migration:

During the Private BETA many players were playing games simply to be presented with a black screen that read "The Host has left the game". This happened whenever the player who hosted the game quit. As of this 1.2.1 Update, the host will now "migrate" to another player if the original hosting player quits. While Starhawk is selecting a new host, players will experience a short period of game inactivity. This occurs as Starhawk "migrates" the world state to another player and updates the server connections.

You should also be advised that if you are playing in a game that's experiencing long delays in network communication with the host (approx. 10 seconds), a bit of orange text will be displayed in the upper right of your screen that reads "Network Stall". If bad network conditions persist, Starhawk will deem that host no longer viable to host a game of acceptable quality and host-migration will automatically be triggered.

The last point about host-migration is that it is a server option that is defaulted to ON. We know that some players like to host special games for set time periods or with special names, and this option is for just such occasion.

Classic Warhawk Arcade Flight Mode:

Due to very popular demand, we have brought back the original Arcade flight mode from Warhawk. You can select this new option from the Settings menu under "Flight Mode". Please know that this flight mode still requires some tuning as it's current implimentation is exactly what we developed for Warhawk and does have a much higher top-speed than Starhawk's Advanced and Normal flight modes. We fully anticipate that both Advanced and Normal flight modes will have their speeds increased and the new Classic Arcade mode will have its speed reduced a bit -- but we wanted to get player's opinions first.

Also a reminder that since Classic Arcade Mode is exactly what we developed for Warhawk, you will need to double-tap R2 for afterburner and a press-and-hold of R2 is for fast flight.

Please also understand that the parameters for the Classic Arcade Mode's organic missile dodging will be getting a balance pass during a future update.

13 New Languages Supported:

The Starhawk Public BETA will be a true global beta with players from around the world able to play against each other. As a result, we have added the following languages to Starhawk: English, Finnish, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish.

LightBox has also added a Build & Battle control panel to the Sniper Tower, and fixed the bug that was preventing player stats from posting. What do you think? Be sure to let us know how you feel about the additions!