14 DAY TRIAL // Blizzard launched the StarCraft II beta during last week and it seems that a small cottage industry is quickly developing around it. There are announcements on the online auction site eBay that offer beta keys for the long awaited real-time strategy for those who are interested in handing at least 300 dollars for the privilege of being among the first gamers to set eyes upon StarCraft II.
There are bids, which go up to 300 dollars for StarCraft II beta keys but there are some people using the “Buy It Now” system, where the highest price appears to go up to 1,000 dollars.
Also, some are selling full Battle.net accounts, a part of them complete with fully leveled up World of Warcraft characters. The keys on sales seem to be both of the variety, which Blizzard recently sent to lucky gamers via e-mail, some offered way back in 2008 at Blizzcon.
Buying such a key offered for sale does not guarantee access to the beta stage of StarCraft II. The whole service is delivered by Blizzard itself through Battle.net, which it wholly controls so the company has the ability to ban all accounts that seem to have been traded around. It's probably not worth dropping upwards of 300 dollars for a key, which might turn unusable in a few days and lead to a ban from Battle.net.
Blizzard has said that it plans to out the first chapter of the StarCraft II saga this year but has not specified a clear date. The beta stage of the real-time strategy game will be used in order to get extra feedback from players and make last minute changes to the balance of units and to some game mechanics. StarCraft II is seen as one of the biggest PC-only launches of 2009.