Today marked the official launch of the Starcraft II closed beta testing period, and we here at Modern Day Pirates just got our key.  Matt will be testing the game out for the next few days and you can look forward to a series of impressions, videos, and recaps to follow.

After a series of delays, Starcraft was rumored to be in a beta-ready state as early as Fall of 2009.  However, pending upgrades to the Battle.net online multiplayer framework prevented Blizzard from opening up the beta testing until they were complete.  Blizzard made an announcement back on February 10th that these updates were ready to launch, and with the Beta announcement coming quickly on it’s heels, we take that as confirmation of the rumors that StarCraft II has been in testing for quite some time.  Hopefully, this will help solidify the 2010 release date, and lead to a well-balanced game.

In the period prior to beta, Blizzard had provided fans with a series of battle reports and videos, showing matches between members of the development team, which we highly recommend viewing.    We also hope that the needed upgrades to Battle.net will grant some smooth sailing to the launch of Diablo III, the forthcoming entry to Blizzard’s famous dungeon-crawling action RPG, slated to be released sometime in 2011.