The day of reckoning has finally arrived! Blizzard announced today that the highly-anticipated sequel of ever-popular Starcraft will be released on July 27th this summer! The game will see retail availability worldwide in the United States, Canada, Europe, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Mexico, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.

According to Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment, "We've been looking forward to revisiting the StarCraft universe for many years, and we're excited that the time for that is almost here." "Thanks to our beta testers, we're making great progress on the final stages of development, and we'll be ready to welcome players all over the world to StarCraft II and the new Battle.net in just a few months."

Starcraft II takes place after Starcraft: Brood War, with 29 singleplayer missions and of course, online multiplayer. Two expansions will follow; Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void, which will focus on the Zerg and Protoss races respectively. Wings of Liberty follows the series' Terran race, specifically the exploits of "marshal-turned-rebel-leader Jim Raynor".

Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty will be available in a standard and collector's edition.

Blizzard's checklist for the Collector's Edition:

• The Art of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, a 176-page book featuring artwork from the game
• 2GB USB flash drive replica of Jim Raynor's dog tag, which comes preloaded with the original StarCraft and the StarCraft: Brood War expansion set
• Behind-the-scenes DVD containing over an hour of developer interviews, cinematics with director's commentary, and more
• Official StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty soundtrack CD, containing 14 epic tracks from the game along with exclusive bonus tracks
• StarCraft comic book issue #0  (a prequel to the comic series)
• World of Warcraft mini Thor in-game pet that can be applied to all World of Warcraft characters on a single Battle.net account
• Exclusive Battle.net downloadable content, including special portraits for your Battle.net profile, decals to customize your units in-game, and a visually unique version of the terran Thor unit

Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, is currently in closed beta. The Collector's Edition will run $99.99 with the standard edition at $59.99 for PC and Mac with a digital release coming after the retail release. Pre-ordering today will get you a Beta code!

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If you've been putting off pre-ordering Starcraft II, Gamestop and Amazon have sweetened the deal for you. By pre-ordering Starcraft 2, you can receive a beta code for the closed multiplayer beta. For Amazon, the code will be emailed within 5 business days of the pre-order. The promotion is limited to one per customer, and valid for a limited time only.

Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, is currently in closed beta (both PC and Mac). The Collector's Edition will run $99.99 with the standard edition at $59.99 for PC and Mac with a digital release coming after the retail release. The details of when the official release will be is expected in a couple of weeks. You can pre-order today by clicking the Amazon link below.

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Blizzard announced that Starcraft II will be shipping in both standard and collector's editions on its release sometime this year. The collector's edition will come with an art book, a copy of the original StarCraft, a behind-the-scenes DVD, a comic book, and other items.

According to Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime, "We've been looking forward to revisiting the StarCraft universe with our players for over 10 years, and we wanted to offer an epic collector's edition that commemorated the occasion. This special version of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty -- easily our biggest collector's edition to date -- does just that, and we think StarCraft II gamers will really enjoy all of the exclusive contents."

Blizzard's checklist for the Collector's Edition:

• The Art of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, a 176-page book featuring artwork from the game
• 2GB USB flash drive replica of Jim Raynor's dog tag, which comes preloaded with the original StarCraft and the StarCraft: Brood War expansion set
• Behind-the-scenes DVD containing over an hour of developer interviews, cinematics with director's commentary, and more
• Official StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty soundtrack CD, containing 14 epic tracks from the game along with exclusive bonus tracks
• StarCraft comic book issue #0  (a prequel to the comic series)
• World of Warcraft mini Thor in-game pet that can be applied to all World of Warcraft characters on a single Battle.net account
• Exclusive Battle.net downloadable content, including special portraits for your Battle.net profile, decals to customize your units in-game, and a visually unique version of the terran Thor unit

Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, is currently in closed beta. The Collector's Edition will run $99.99 with the standard edition at $59.99 for PC and Mac with a digital release coming after the retail release. The details of when the official release will be is expected in a couple of weeks. You can pre-order today by clicking the Amazon link below.

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It was revealed earlier this month that the Starcraft II closed beta would begin, and begin it has! Invitation codes were sent out to approved applicants for this highly anticipated beta which could be redeemed as early as yesterday. The beta is only open to multiplayer aspects of the game including a number of ranked multiplayer modes: multiplayer ladder quick match - which has 1v1, 2v2, and free-for-all (FFA) modes. Testers will also be able to play unranked custom matches. Beta players can choose to play against the computer AI or other players.

Blizzard has not announced how long the closed beta would run, nor how many lucky players would get the chance to join,  but did announce that a Mac beta would be available later during this test period.

The minimum PC requirements were also released for the beta:

PC Minimum Requirements:
• Windows XP SP3/Vista SP1/Windows 7
• 2.2 Ghz Pentium IV or equivalent AMD Athlon processor
• 1 GB system RAM/1.5 GB for Vista and Windows 7
• 128 MB NVidia GeForce 6600 GT/ATI Radeon 9800 PRO video card
• 1024x768 minimum display resolution
• 4 GB free hard space (Beta)
• Broadband connection

There is an extensive FAQ posted on the Battle.net forums: http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=23214531243&sid=5010

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Starcraft II will enter beta sometime this month. Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime revealed in a presentation to investors today that the closed beta for highly anticipated Starcraft II would be available this month.

Morhaime also confirmed that SC2 was on track for a mid-2010 release, previously put around June. The beta news comes at the heel of an extensive look at the new Battle.net which has been tailored to take on the newest Starcraft. No other details regarding the beta are available, stay tuned for updates!

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Blizzard's upcoming Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty will feature a treat for Protoss fans in the single player mode: a mini-campaign. Single player play in Starcraft has almost always been totally dominated by Terrans, which is still mostly true for the upcoming sequel except for a Protoss mini-campaign featuring the sons of Aiur.

Blizzard's Stefanie Gwinner confirmed this on the Battle.net forums, writing: "This part of the campaign mode is of course way shorter than the Terran part, but it is very fun to have a very different play style to add even more variety to the game. I am sure every Protoss fan will love this part of the Campaign! That being said, the Protoss mini-campaign will not prepare you for the multiplayer as Protoss, you won't be using all units or getting to know buildings and upgrades. In general, even for Terran, it is not the objective of the single player to show how to play the game effectively, it is to tell a story and do a lot of fun things, that would not be possible in multiplayer."

Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty is expected out sometime in 2010 and will utilize 3D graphics in a new game engine that will run in an updated Battle.net environment.

All of the SC enthusiasts who were up in arms about the lack of LAN support can lower their hackles...a little. Blizzard stated during Blizzcon that they were looking into working on a LAN-like solution while still being connected to Battle.net.

Battle.net developer Greg Canessa told Shacknews during the event that Blizzard was looking into a way to bring a LAN-like experience to users providing low ping peer-to-peer play while still being connected through Battle.net. When asked whether that would be some sort of "pseudo-LAN" where it switches from an initial Battle.net connection for authorization to a standard LAN connection, Canessa replied ""Something like that. Maintaining a connection with Battle.net, I don't know if it's once or periodically, but then also having a peer-to-peer connection between players to facilitate a very low-ping, high-bandwidth connection... those are the things that we're working on."

Excitement building and a beta so close you can almost taste it, Blizzard announces that LAN will not be supported for its upcoming Starcraft II.

In order to further push and promote battle.net, Blizzard rep Bob Colayco states, ""We don't currently plan to support LAN play with StarCraft II, as we are building Battle.net to be the ideal destination for multiplayer gaming with StarCraft II and future Blizzard Entertainment games.While this was a difficult decision for us, we felt that moving away from LAN play and directing players to our upgraded Battle.net service was the best option to ensure a quality multiplayer experience with StarCraft II and safeguard against piracy."

While Starcraft was a staple of LAN parties, Starcraft II may be one of the games to bring an end to this gaming delight.