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Speculation is running rampant as Blizzard announced that they will be giving away a beta key to BlizzCon attendees for "an upcoming Blizzard game". Now, while Blizzard probably has several games in development, I almost guarantee that the beta key will be for Starcraft 2. Why? Most likely because there were early beliefs mentioned by Blizzard that they could get the game out by Christmas 2007 which would meant that they would have to be in beta by August which is exactly when BlizzCon takes place (BlizzCon takes place in early August).

In other Starcraft 2 news, there was an interview with Blizzard's Cinematic Creative Director, Nick Carpenter, where he talks about making cinematic tools used to make certain images available to users with the Starcraft 2 release. I find this pretty interesting and should allow for users to create some pretty nice fan content.

In an interview with MSNBC, Blizzard's Vice President Rob Pardo announced that Starcraft 2 would not be released in 2007. At first, he stated that some inside Blizzard thought that they could have Starcraft 2 released by Christmas 2007 so I have to imagine that they are pretty deep in the development cycle. When you think about Starcraft 2 and the fact that much of the gameplay and how a unit works, etc. has already been done, most of the work that needed to be done was with the 3D engine and the Battle.Net enhancements.

I admit - I'm crying a little inside right now.

Blizzard announced an early Christmas gift for gamers around the world when they confirmed the existence of Starcraft 2. The Official Starcraft 2 website has launched and actually holds a lot of important information concerning the sequel. Starcraft enthusiasts learned the following pieces of info:

1. There will be no new 4th race and we will still have the Zerg, Protoss and Terran as the 3 races implemented in Starcraft 2. For years people speculated that there would be a 4th race, but Blizzard has kept the original's integrity and kept the racial balance simple.
2. While there will be a new 3D engine powering the game's graphics, if one was to look at the screenshots you will see that while units have much greater detail, the engine still remains somewhat simplistic probably to not sacrifice network performance.
3. Many of the unit names will stay the same; however, from the screenshots, you can see such units as battleships and other air units have been dramatically redesigned.
4. At this time, I don't see any Brood Wars related units mentioned on the site.
5. While only the Protoss profile has been completed by Blizzard, you can see the inclusion of new units such as the Immortal, Stalker, Phase Prism and Gateway/Warp Gate.

One note from their site that is slightly disappointing is that Blizzard will be selling a limited edition statue for the whopping price tag of $250 USD. I mean, does Blizzard think that Tychus Findlay is going to be the next ceramic hummel?

Most importantly - there is no scheduled release date for Starcraft 2 at this time. Blizzard has always released quality games and they take their time during the game creation process. Now, from a business perspective, I would guess that Blizzard is going to hold onto Starcraft 2 and release he game as they start to witness the downward decline of World of Warcraft subscriptions. There would be no feasible business reason to encroach on their WoW franchise until absolutely necessary. Therefore, if you're a Starcraft and Blizzard fan, you can put money on the fact that you won't hear anything about a Starcraft 2 release date until WoW has run its finanically successful course.

Starcraft 2 will be the only game I will play in the near future.