When you look at the classic genre-defining franchises in gaming, most have fallen by the wayside. The ‘Gold Box’ RPG’s don’t even evoke a reaction from most modern gamers; Fallout has been transformed into a story-lite console action-shooter romp; Baldur’s Gate has been reimagined into Dragon Age; Doom sort of faded away after the third game failed to live up to the hype; Marathon became Halo, and so on.

Then there is Starcraft.

While Total Annihilation was the first 3D RTS (Real Time Strategy) game, and actually beat out Starcraft in GameSpy’s 2004 ranking of ‘best all-time RTS games’, Total Annihilation has also faded into the dark shadows of history. It has been replaced by its own ‘spiritual successor’, Supreme Commander.

All the while fans all around the world have continued playing StarCraft. The game is available for Mac or PC, has three expansions (now typically sold as a ‘battle chest’), a series of novels, and just a huge mass following around the world.

So now we have StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. The release has been hotly anticipated, there were midnight release parties and so on, and now the game is widely available.

Here are some details:

Basic overview:

What type of DRM does it use?
- Starcraft II ties your game to your Battle.net account. This means you don’t need your DVD to play.
- Obviously you need to be online for multiplayer.
- For single player, you need to do a one-time online activation after installation.
- Because the game is tied to your account, you cannot sell/trade/give away the game.

What game platforms are supported?
- Windows PC
- Apple Macintosh with Intel Processor
- *NO* Console Versions

What are the system requirements?
- For Microsoft Windows
* 2.6 GHz Pentium IV or equivalent AMD Athlon processor
* 1 GB RAM (1.5 GB required for Windows Vista/Windows 7 users)
* 12 GB hard disk space
* 128 MB NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT or ATI Radeon 9800 PRO video card or better
* Windows XP/Windows Vista/Windows 7 (With the latest Service Packs) And DirectX 9.0c.)

- For Apple Macintosh
* Intel Processor
* 2 GB RAM
* DVD drive
* 12 GB hard disk space
* NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT or ATI Radeon X1600 or better
* Mac OS X 10.5.8, 10.6.2 or newer

What versions are available?
- Standard Edition
- Collector’s Edition

How much will it cost you?
- $59.99 standard edition
- $99.99 collector’s edition

What extras does the Collector’s Edition include?
* The Art of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, a 176-page book featuring artwork from the game
* An exclusive 2GB USB flash drive replica of Jim Raynor’s dog tag, which comes preloaded with the original StarCraft and the StarCraft: Brood War expansion set
* A behind-the-scenes DVD containing over an hour of developer interviews, cinematics with director’s commentary, and more
* The official StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty soundtrack CD, containing 14 epic tracks from the game along with exclusive bonus tracks
* StarCraft comic book issue #0, a prequel to the comic series
* A World of Warcraft mini Thor in-game pet that can be applied to all World of Warcraft characters on a single Battle.net account
* Exclusive Battle.net downloadable content, including special portraits for your Battle.net profile, decals to customize your units in-game, and a visually unique version of the terran Thor unit

Where to buy?
- Battle.net (Blizzard site)
- Amazon.com (Standard Edition, Collector’s Edition)
- NewEgg.com (Standard Edition)
- Buy.com (Standard Edition, Collector’s Edition)
- Gamestop.com (Standard Edition, Collector’s Edition)

So those bleary-eyed folks at your office today? Chances are they hung out at their local GameStop grabbing a midnight-opening package of StarCraft II. And of course, after all of that they couldn’t just leave the box sitting around!

Personally, I tried to pre-load the client last night since I’m buying direct from Blizzard (cut out the middle-men!) … but the server was getting pounded so it was still <70% done when I left for work this morning! And on a line where we routinely get ~10MB/sec downloads, seeing 2 hours for 2GB … that once again tells me Blizzard is throttling downloads!

What about you? Are you planning to buy and play StarCraft II? What are your favorite StarCraft memories?