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Blizzard's official StarCraft II web site got a new update earlier this week with the posting of a new short story titled Collateral Damage. The short tells the tale of an assault by a advanced prototype of one of the Terran faction's more powerful units, the mech-like Thor. There's also a new gameplay trailer showing the unit in its multi-gun action.

In related news, AT&T has announced that it has expanded its previous agreement with Blizzard. AT&T's Internet Data Centers will be used to host Blizzard's online games for not just StarCraft II but also World of Warcraft and current and future games in the StarCraft and Diablo game franchises. The agreement was labeled a "multimillion dollar multi-year, multi-services contract" but specific financial terms were not disclosed.

Gallery: StarCraft 2 Screenshots

While should companies like Microsoft and other PC hardware groups have all the fun. More and more, it appears that phone companies with their already existing infrastructure want to enter the PC gaming business, at least in a behind-the scenes fashion. IndustryGamers has a new chat with AT&T's Executive Director of Gaming Glenn Broderick about their plans.

AT&T already hosts severs and networks for such companies as Blizzard and they have plans to revamp their gaming section of their AT&T.net web site. They also plan to sell downloadable games via a web-based service. Broderick also says the current cloud computing trend for games "will take off in the next 5-10 years" and AT&T wants in on that kind of streaming game service similar to what OnLive is trying to do. AT&T won't comment on how much money they are putting into their gaming services but Broderick stated, "It's more than a million and less than a billion."

In related news, Verizon announced today plans to offer their FIOS and regular Internext customers in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New York a way to download and play over 1,000 PC games for a $9.99 monthly fee (similar to the GameTap service).

You might not associate AT&T with gaming but if you play World of Warcraft you are playing on a server that has hosting and network support from the massive telecommunications company. Today AT&T announced they have renewed their long-standing agreement with Blizzard to continue their hosting and networking services for two more years.

AT&T has been hosting Blizzard's network infrastructure for the past nine years, including their Battle.net service and World of Warcraft servers in the US. The new two year agreement will likely see even more activity as Blizzard will almost certainly launch StarCraft II during that time period. A new version of Battle.net is likely to be launched alongside the sci-fi RTS game. Blizzard also has Diablo III on deck which will also use the Battle.net service.

We have reported earlier this month that two major cable ISPs, Time Warner and Comcast, are testing in select markets some type of metered Internet usage. The moves have prompted consumer groups to cry foul, stating that most customers are unaware of their own Internet usage. This also could threaten the growing use of the Internet to deliver large multimedia files, including games. Now AT&T is saying that some kind of meter Internet usage is coming whether we like it or not.

According to an Associated Press story (via Google) AT&T spokesperson Michael Coe is quoted as saying, "A form of usage-based pricing for those customers who have abnormally high usage patterns is inevitable." As with other ISPs, Coe states that 5 percent of their Internet customers use nearly half of their bandwidth. He stopped short of saying when AT&T will begin their metered usage. Once again since some PC games offered via download are several gigabytes in size such a new pricing system could restrict what many are calling the PC game industry's major hope of staying afloat.

[Via Shacknews]