So with less than two weeks to go before release, Blizz decides to email me a beta key.
This kinda makes me do a /sigh for being so late with an invite but I guess they’re sending mass invites out when the launch is very close. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to get a Beta Key for SC2 and I think it’s helped push me to buy a copy. Only the Multiplayer aspect is included in Beta but I’ve played enough now to know I’d at least like to do the Campaign bit with the actual game.
My previous experiences with games of this genre was pretty much limited to Microsoft’s Rise of Nations along with some Warcraft III play time. (Although I did not play Warcraft III until after being a part of World of Warcraft.) Starcraft (original) was before my time, you could say so playing StarCraft II is really new territory for me.
One of the very cool features released in World of Warcraft’s latest patch was the new Battle.net integration of RealID. A summary of this feature is that your RealID friend can talk to on whatever server, faction, or character you’re currently playing. It’s like a dynamically updated friends list populated with all the characters on your friend’s account, under one contact.
Where it gets really interesting is that this new Battle.net communication system is cross-games as well! (Very much similar to Valve’s Steam in that sense.) Thus I can talk to my friends who are playing WoW while I’m testing out my SC2 Beta and once the game is live/released July 27th then it will also still work in the same way.
Here’s what this looks like from the StarCraft II main screen (real names are fuzzed out):
