StarCraft II dated for July

Long awaited real-time strategy game StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty will be released on July 27, 2010 according to developer Blizzard.

The simultaneous international release will also see customers able to purchase the game directly from Blizzard "shortly after the retail launch".

"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," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and co-founder of Blizzard.

"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."

The subtitle of the sequel refers to the single player campaign, which focuses on the human faction in the game. Subsequent instalments of the game will feature single player campaigns for the other two factions.

The release of the game will also coincide with a new version of Blizzard's Battle.net service, which will be the first time the service is supported natively by a game. As a result it will become the only way to play the game in multiplayer mode, with no LAN support offered.

The original 1998 game is still widely played, particularly in South Korea where it remains the lynch pin of the country's profession gaming scene.

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