Blizzard has been vague - perhaps even "dodgy" - about when the StarCraft II beta will begin. Don't worry, though - there hasn't a horrible accident at the Blizzard Factory or something. The game's coming along nicely.

A developer post on the Battle.net forums explained why Blizzard had released no dates for the game yet. "Our target dates are not something we hit more than half the time. Putting those out there would be pretty close to lying to the fans. We are not going to do that. We want to be able to give good info, not info that we know is suspect. We'll give target dates when we think it is very likely that we will hit them."

As if to reassure everyone, the post ends with this: "Hang in there. We're in the final stretch." Well, we knew that - the burning quest is how long that final stretch is going to be. StarCraft II will be released in three installments, each with a single-player campaign devoted to one of the playable races. The first up is entitled Wings of Liberty and will contain the Terran campaign.