I loved the original SC soo much.  I was in the original SC beta but wasn't invited to be in SC II beta.  I doubt I will be buying the new one though because I have so many games now that I don't play.  I need to finish them before I start a new one.  I hope everyone enjoys it though.

As for no Lan play, I guess that is done to make it harder for people to hack the game and play online without going through Bnet.  Its all about the money, shamefully...

That shouldn't be the case honestly. Oceania is officially being lumped in with SEA for Battle.net by Blizzard. If you get it from their site it should auto-detect your region and give you the proper version. If not you can change it to whichever region you want.

@Damned
What is shameful about them making money? This is a for profit game development studio. If they don't make money then we don't get games.

Does anyone know when the Zerg and Protoss missions are coming out?

There is nothing wrong with them making plenty of money on it.  From my understanding Blizzard has put 100million into it so they should get all they can out of it.   And if the game is good I hope they make tons of cash, that would only mean more SC.

But when they start taking features away primarily due to a pirating issue, this is where I take offense.  Most of these people who would put a hacked version on their computer would probably never purchase the game to begin with any way.  So the only thing they are actually doing is limiting the paying customer out of a feature that many want.

Besides, I would be willing to bet that eventually someone will figure a way of playing multiplayer without using Bnet anyways.  Probably within the first 6 months or less.

I'll guarantee you its not a piracy issue. Pirating will be common with or without lan. Hell people cracked the beta to pay off-line and I can't imagine Blizzard didn't notice that given how openly it was discussed. Removing it does allow Blizzard to maintain control over large tournaments, which they lost with Starcraft. Essentially they are blocking other companies from running private tournaments and making a fortune off of their product, which is fair if you ask me. KESPA kind of forced their hand here. Anyone who heavily advertises using the cracked server open themselves up to DMCA and other avenues for lucrative lawsuits.

All that said there will be a "tournament patch" coming up. I am cautiously optimistic they will adress it in some form. Most likely by letting local players cut out the constant back and forth to the server, and just limiting it to authentication checks. That is just wishful thinking though until they formally announce what will be in the tournament patch.

auto detect? is this confirmed? totally sure? and i can change the region? is that sure too?

i like my chicken grilled

Yes, if you buy it from their website it should automatically give you the correct regions game. Once you buy it though you cannot change it later. You can choose to purchase the game for a different region though.

Wings of Liberty is now on sale for 38,99€ on Amazon Germany!

http://www.amazon.de/StarCraft-II-Wings-of-Liberty/dp/B000R5DU6E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1280063644&sr=8-1-spell#productPromotions

I also got my copy today, didnt get it sent to me, someone just broke street date!

I was also very very happy to find out that Australian/NZ player can play on the NA servers and wont be region locked to our tiny tiny regoin, although it does mean that we have to download the NA client and install it.

Blizz said that they will have all of it ready within 60 days of launching!