Although it’s probably not going to be much of a surprise to the majority of Starcraft fans – although it will be a big disappointment – the sequel to one of the most popular RTS games of all time has been delayed until the first half of 2010. Of course, Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty was never actually given a release date in the first place but people were still hoping that we would see it sometime this year, mainly through comments made by staff working for Activision Blizzard.

Apparently the delay is due to the relaunch of Activision Blizzard’s Battle.net service, which handles all the online gaming across their range of games. It will also play a large part in the online aspects of Starcraft II, especially as LAN support has been pulled from the game. One of the development team had this to say;

“Over the past couple of weeks, it has become clear that it will take longer than expected to prepare the new Battle.net for the launch of the game. The upgraded Battle.net is an integral part of the StarCraft II experience and will be an essential part of all of our games moving forward. This extra development time will be critical to help us realize our vision for the service.” - Source

Activision Blizzard had previously stated that Starcraft II will need a four to six month beta period, which obviously made a 2009 launch seem very tight to begin with. We still have no idea when a beta will actually take place, so in the meantime you will have to be satisfied with the Battle Reports that the developers have posted on the game’s official site.

The delay will also affect Activision Blizzard’s revenue expectations for this year, lowering their estimate from $4.3 billion to $4.05 billion. It’s not all doom and gloom though, as Diablo II is also expected to be released in 2010.

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