Co-op Missions

"Join the battle with a friend in an open-ended cooperative experience. Choose a powerful commander from your favorite race and fight in diverse scenarios with dynamic, campaign-style objectives. Level up your commander to gain access to new units, abilities, and customization options for your army. The time is now. The theater of war awaits, commander."

- Mode summary

Co-op Missions, formerly known as Allied Commanders, is a two player gameplay mode featured in Legacy of the Void.

The mode was created to provide a more accessible multiplayer mode for StarCraft II, as the developers believe that the standard multiplayer has a reputation for being inaccessible and time consuming. It is intended for players mainly interested in singleplayer, but provides a more open-ended and social experience than a standard campaign.

More maps and commanders will be added to the mode post-launch.

The mode is distinct from the Arcade.

Overview
In Co-op Missions, players take on the role of various commanders from the StarCraft universe, each of them possessing unique abilities and upgrades and bestows special bonuses on their armies. Players are able to battle through a series of special scenarios together, leveling up their commanders’ capabilities as they progress. New abilities and units are unlocked as one progresses through the mode, along with gaining experience. Which missions are played can be chosen or randomly determined for bonus experience, and the computer opponent will utilize different strategies in each mission. Each race is available for each mission.

Difficulty can be adjusted in the mode, and a matchmaking system is utilized.

Each commander gains experience independently. Upon completion of a mission, a commander will gain experience&mdash;the harder the difficulty setting, the greater the level of experience gained. As each commander levels, they will unlock additional units to call forth into battle as well as upgrades to existing abilities or traits.

The mode features its own achievements that give players portrait rewards. Karax was released for free December 15th, 2015, but future commanders will require a purchase.

Terran

 * Jim Raynor
 * Rory Swann

Zerg

 * Sarah Kerrigan
 * Zagara

Protoss

 * Artanis
 * Vorazun
 * Karax

Future or Datamined Commanders

 * Matt Horner (beta data only)
 * Alexei Stukov (beta data only)

List of Missions

 * Void Thrashing
 * Void Launch
 * Oblivion Express
 * Rifts to Korhal
 * Temple of the Past
 * Lock & Load

Development
The mode was originally called "Allied Commanders." It was changed to "Co-op Missions" in order "to better communicate the design intent."

When designing a mission in the mode, map layout is the first issue addressed. As two players are involved in a mission, the map size must reflect this. Adapting a mission from the game's singleplayer, base size is increased, expansions added, and the paths of choke points are generally widened. Once the layout has been solidified, enemy unit placement and composition are looked at. The main issue is making sure the enemies are strong enough to deal with the power of combined player armies and commander abilities. Finally, the developers spend a ton of time implementing and tuning the main and bonus map objectives as well as the attack waves. When choosing which maps to import from the game's campaign, the mechanics that would be well suited to the mode are looked at first.