A hum of anticipation has surrounded StarCraft II since Blizzard revealed they were working on the sequel at 2007's Blizzard Invitational event in Korea. At BlizzCon 2008, the developer announced the game would be split into three chapters - one each for the Terran, Zerg and Protoss campaigns. More recently we heard that the game has slipped from its expected Christmas 2009 release back to 2010.

At today's StarCraft II Battle.Net discussion panel we learned some interesting new factoids about the online multiplayer service - key ones being that the game will have a semi-LAN mode where only the host needs an internet connection, and that in future (after launch) Blizzard will be adding an SC2 Marketplace where the community can sell their maps and mods and take a share of revenue.

[10:28] Found a chair, waiting for things to kick off.

[10:32] Rob Pardo and Greg Canessa have taken the stage.

[10:34] They are going over the Battle.Net backstory. It has 12 million players - compared with WoW, which has 11.5 million.

[10:35] Blizzard has been learning lessons from WarCraft III - great matchmaking, easy to play with friends, and random teams (PUGs) works well.

[10:36] Also good: icon system for character avatars and huge mod community. The bad: chat system is disorganised, disconnected from single-player experience, new players get pwned.

[10:37] The ladder system only serves the elite, you can't find a custom game other than DotA.

[10:39] Blizz wanted to make Battle.Net 2 the "always connected experience" - Battle.Net 2 and StarCraft II will have a close interaction, interwoven into one experience. Uses concept of Battle.Net accounts and persistent characters, all tied in via email.

[10:40] The login screen is being shown on screen... It looks like WoW but with a space theme. Has SC2 news features, single-player and multiplayer screens.

[10:41] Players can play as 'guest' in offline modes for SC2... so only one machine would need to be connected to the net to auth and start a LAN game, the rest could connect to the server without an internet connection.

[10:43] Battle.Net now incorporates a rewind feature (the audience applauds!).

[10:44] Achievement system integrated, "you and what army" = build 100 marines. You and your friends get notifications about achievements, achievements are how you get avatars and decals within the game, these are unlocked. Decals show up on units themselves.

[10:45] Games will be patched automatically. Cloud storage enables play from home or work without transfering files, this includes saved games.

[10:48] Battle.Net 2 will provide a competitive arena for everyone - with improved matchmaking, better ladder play. Blizz wants to make players compete within large leagues, pro, platinum, gold, silver, bronze, copper, practise. You're ranked against 100 other players of your skill level. Everyone has a chance to win their division, participate in end of season tournaments.

[10:49] Continuing the "competitive arena for everyone" theme - casual games can have less rush-orientated maps to encourage beginners.

[10:52] Party invites - very much like WoW, leader can select game types in the lobby. Custom games - sorted by map names, filtered by genre, type, speed. Can create a game, leave it private and invite your friends, then make it public so others can join.

[10:53] Battle.Net accounts prevent smurfing - you can't make a heap of new Battle.Net accounts to stomp on newbies, as the game is tied to your Battle.Net account.

[10:55] Chat is now more IM in nature. It looks like MSN.

[10:57] They're about to announce something to do with connecting communities together. Stay tuned.

[10:59] Blizzard looked at WoW, Xbox Live and MySpace to see how to do friend systems, as well as Google Talk...

[11:00] You'll get something called a Battle.Net RealID - allows you to see and communicate with friends based on how you know them. Can talk to your friends cross-game and cross-realm. Achievements will span across games and characters. Your friend network stays intact for all future Battle.Net games.

[11:02] This will span across all Blizzard games - WoW, SC2 and D3 will have integrated friends lists, so you can see who is playing what at any time.

[11:05] This means you can play SC2 while you're waiting for a guild raid to start in WoW. Your friends list in WoW will show someones name, then underneath "playing SC2".

[11:06] Privacy and parental controls will be updated and expanded, you choose what info to share.

[11:06] One more announcement... it's not the beta, he says they're not talking about that today.

[11:08] It's about the custom map community. StarCraft II will have a fantastic map editor, they reckon.

[11:09] Map makers can publish maps directly to Battle.Net, and players can browse all maps on the service.

[11:11] They're now talking about more map stuff that won't be available at launch, but will be later - SC2 Marketplace, free maps and premium maps. A portion of the revenue goes to the map maker!

[11:12] Blizz says this will be really significant - basically it means they're talking about paying you so you can hire dev teams to make maps & mods for SC2 - effectively just using SC2 as the engine. Blizz will add achievements to the most popular ones designed by the community.

[11:15] Panel has ended.

[11:20] Q&A time - not much interesting being asked, but there was one question posed about NZ/AU solutions for latency on Battle.Net. Blizzard folks say they're "looking at it", but no more details at this time.