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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