Nearly three years ago Blizzard made the announcement fans had waited a long time to hear: a full fledged sequel to StarCraft. Since then, the developer has teased us with press event that featured playable versions of the game, revelations about the game itself including the fact that the entire single player campaign would be split into three separate StarCraft II titles, with the first focusing on the Terran faction (with a brief Protoss mini-campaign).

Now Blizzard is finally letting us take at least a portion of StarCraft II for a test drive with the launch of the game's multiplayer beta test. In a sense, there's actually two separate betas taking place here; one for the game itself and the other for Battle.Net 2.0, the first major revamping of Blizzard proprietary online matchmaking system since the original Battle.net launched in 1997 with the first Diablo game.

After playing the beta for a few hours, it's clear that the game is already highly polished . For most developers, the beta process works as both a final game demo in addition to fixing bugs and improving the game's balance. The fact that the game looks almost release ready shows that Blizzard continues to be a stickler for not releasing games until they are good and ready for the public to access them.

One of the most striking changes is how the user interface is tied into the new Battle.Net 2.0 service. While only a fraction of the service's planned features are active in the beta, it's still pretty impressive. Players can choose to go into a quick match (1v1 and 2v2 battles are supported in the beta as is free-for-all) and the service will attempt to match you up with players according to skill level. There's also support for players to launch custom matches with their choices of maps, number of players and more. Those custom matches are not ranked by Battle.net. You can also use the custom match feature to play against AI enemies if you don't feel like fighting against real humans.

The service also supports multiplayer ladders and you can also invite buddies to join you in matches through the game's party system. Your profile summary gives you some stats about the number of matches you have participated in, wins and more. You can even check full replays of your matches once you are done There are quite a few things about the beta that are not working, such as achievements, award and third party downloadable map support. However the Battle.Net interface in StarCraft II is still among the best we have seen in a game of this type.