StarCraft 2 Heart Of The Swarm Beta Invites Coming Soon

Blizzard promised to hold the StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm beta this summer and it looks like they might be able to deliver. They say that the game is almost done and beta information will be sent out soon.

"There's some [beta invite] waves coming," producer Kaeo Milker told Polygon. "I think very soon here we'll have a bunch of information on Starcraft2.com with various ways to get into it."

Milker added that SC2's development is in its "final stages." To be fair, they've been saying that for awhile. Director Dustin Browder said in June that the game is 99% complete, with the last 1% being polish. Hopefully two months of polish was enough to get the game up to beta quality.

Heart of the Swarm, the first of two planned expansions to SC2, features an all-new campaign starring Sarah Kerrigan. Kerrigan must reunite her broods and embark on a quest for revenge on Arcturus Mengsk and her other enemies. The campaign is accompanied by a revised multiplayer with new units for all three factions.

Blizzard hasn't announced a release date for Heart of the Swarm yet. Their beta for SC2 itself was about five months long. While testing for the expansion probably won't take that long, it seems unlikely the expansion will arrive until the last days of 2012, if not later.