StarCraft II Due July 27 (or How I’ll Spend My Summer Vacation)

While I wasn’t looking, Blizzard announced the drop date for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. You know, the game I (and about ten million other people) have been waiting for for three years.

It may come as a shock to some readers that I play video games, since I haven’t talked about it much here. That’s because: A.) I’ve been busy, B.) I don’t have a dedicated gaming console, and C.) there hasn’t been a “must-have” title that runs on my home machine (a 24″ Core-2 duo iMac) for a while. (I avoid MMORPGs because I know what huge timesinks those would be, and I prefer not to see my writing productivity drop to zero.)

But the Warcraft and Starcraft RTS games are among the ones that I played fairly fervently in their previous installments. Also, Blizzard’s commitment to quality control means that they’ve avoided releasing half-backed “shove it out the door” games the way many other developers have.

So I expect that I will spend a significant portion of the summer killing Protoss and Zerg.

Casual gamers may not be aware of just how big StarCraft is in South Korea. How big? “Professional leagues competing in custom-built arenas for spectators” big.

There are two versions of the game being sold: a regular edition going for $59.99 (the standard price-point for A-list titles these days), and a collector’s edition. The collector’s edition has a pretty nifty array of special features:

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty Collector’s Edition Features:

  • The Art of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, a 176-page book featuring artwork from the game
  • An exclusive 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
  • A behind-the-scenes DVD containing over an hour of developer interviews, cinematics with director’s commentary, and more
  • The 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
  • A 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

I can see that being tempting, especially if you play WoW. (I don’t; see above.) Unfortunately, the current price for the collector’s edition is more than a little breathtaking: $299. Now, I’ve bought more expensive books before, but not many (I’m guessing about 20 or so), and they tend to hold their value better than a collectible video game box. (I’m not an expert, but looking at eBay, I didn’t see any “collectors” editions selling for more than cover price, and certainly none over a few years old.)

And Blizzard: You might want to update that FAQ.

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