Blizzard’s Korean community manager Kicho has hinted of a possible open beta, saying StarCraft II will be available for “all fans of the franchise”, not just press and VIPs.

“We know that all of you are very curious about the development of the Beta with the release of many Starcraft 2 Beta Testing related news across various news portals,” Kicho said in a message to the community. However, the specifics of beta testing have not been finalized yet and Blizzard is not yet ready to give out details. The team is apparently doing what it can to introduce StarCraft 2 as quickly as possible, something we have reported on previously.

“I can definitely say that the Beta test will not just involve industry experts and other VIPs but rather will involve all fans of the franchise,” he said. This would in effect mean an open beta period.

The question is of course if this implied open beta will start after the promised closed beta, or if all the beta keys given away so far effectively have become worthless. An alternative is that it just means the fans so far already having received keys for various reasons.

Stay tuned for more info as we get it.

Source: IncGamers

The new update contains a new HUD and "devastate".

There we are again. A little comeback here with a new update on the Tower Defense. As you can see we have a new GUI/HUD and another new function (requested by the community):  The “Devastate” Button. This helps you defeat a chosen unit. For example if a unit with 20 hp is escaping and another unit has about 2000 hp the towers may shoot at the 2000 one. With the devastate button (which requires some kind of micro) you can force your turrets to kill this unit. This unit will be literally devastated by all towers in range. You can also just double-click the unit instead of pushing the “devastate-button”. There are also some balance fixes and engine updates. So enjoy the new Update and feel free to give us feedback in the forum.

On Wednesday the 10th of February Blizzard releases their 2009 results calendar and will also hold a conference call that will be broadcast over the Internet(!). This broadcast was stressed out.A good sign? We won’t know for sure until the week after next. Ofcourse there are a lot of different speculations about this. Optimistic and pessimistic ones. What will be the news? The “realist” Kennigit from TL.net wrote:

Let’s just leave this for what it is – standard financial report/conference call that is going to be broadcast….Does it really seem reasonable that they would announce beta during that call? No. It’s going to be like CEO/CFO/COO, Bobby “dolla dolla bills” Kotick and a couple bankers sitting in
talking finances for investors.

That seems logical of course but why would they broadcast it then? Other people are speculating about: “SC2 canceled”?,”No Beta in 2010″? or something like “”I’m probably going to do terrible, terrible damage to the mic by saying this…but IT’S BETA TIME!”. We hope that Blizzard won’t approve our mistrust in them again and awaiting good news.

Check out the sources to read the speculations:

Gosugamers.net

TL.net (speculations)

PRnewsWire (original)

We don’t. The version of the game you are playing now is actually a beta version. We were testing our balancing techniques and caught bugs. So everything is going smooth and we are making the Zerg race now to add to the game. Our guys went crazy about the Zergs so we decided to tease you a bit. Here is the Zergling model that was done recently. Soon we will open the Zerg part of the website and you will be able to see all models there.

By the way. Do we have hallucinations or it is better than Blizzard’s, huh?

At the Russian game convention “Igromir 2009″ [literally means "Gamesworld"] where Blizzard

is represented,Chris Sigaty answered  some questions in the panel.

One of them is related to the Beta Start

Q: When will StarCraft 2?
A: Tomorrow (laughter). Usually Blizzard we’re not talking about dates.

While we plan for next year to do a beta test.
As soon as we feel that the game is finished we will release it soon.

This is an indirect but explicit  announce that controverts Mike Morhaimes words:

“I’m confident the beta will start this year,”

At this rate we can pre-order Starcraft II for our grandchildren.

Source