STARCRAFT II BABY!!!!!!!!! I have been waiting for this so long and it is finally here! The trailer had Blizzards usual awesome cinematic quality, and even though I knew it was coming, it was still such a rush to finally see the name StarCraft II fade in at the end of the trailer. The gameplay footage blew me away even more.

But once I got beyond the initial joy that comes from my inner (and outer) Blizzard fan, there were details I was very pleased to see. From all that I've read and seen so far, it looks like there won;t be any introduction of a new race, which I am very happy about actually, because the Terran-Zerg-Protoss balance that the original StarCraft acheived was perhaps the most complete balancing of any RTS EVER. However, even from the get go, Blizzard is showing us lots of new units within those already existing factions, meaning that they (and we) won't get stuck in complete reverance for that old balance. This is going to truly be a sequel, not just StarCraft with updated graphics (Speaking of that, doesn't this announcement render that StarCraft WarCraft III total conversion mod kind of a moot point?). The new units mentioned for each faction are all listed in GameSpot's article, but I'm excited enough to relist them here anyway:

Terran:

Reapers: Infantry with jetpacks (was I the only one who thought of Dawn of war when i read about these?)

Protoss:

The Collosus: A war-of-the-worlds like machine with lasers (you can see one coe in from the left in the gameplay footage I think)

The Mothership: Uber-powerful unit with a time slowing and shield dropping power (all in one!), and massive firepower.

The pheonix: can overload other flying units.

The warpray: A ship with a laser. Wheeeee!! (Though the more damage with a longer focus seems really key).

Immortals: Uber-tanks. With shields.

Stalkers: have blink ability, remind me of huntresses from Warcraft III.

Zerg:

Zerglings can now turn into suicide units (I will probably find this really annoying when I get pwnt by it the 4th time...what could be more pathetic than losing to a "suicides" rush?

And while in the gameplay footage and in the article it's clear that many old units will be returning, I'm gald to see that there will be new abilities incorporated (like the zealot's rush atack they mentioned), making even those old "friends" something new to discover and play around with.

Hopefully we'll get mroe info soon, but overall this has been an AWESOME and extremly smart announcement from Blizzard (I mean, where else to announce StarCraft II than South Korea?)

Edit: There's been an additional article released which confrims only the three factions, and additionally says thet Kerrigan, Zeratul, and Jim Raynor will appear in the game's story. Check it out here.

Also, It doesn;t look like Blizzard is going to carry over any hero units stuff from WarCraft 3. Has anyone heard anything else about that?