There are only a few thousand people to be jealous of and as some of them do publish reviews, you can have a sneak peek or visit YouTube to enjoy the game vicariously.  From most of those that did get a beta key for StarCraft II, the general consensus is that this game was designed with new players in mind.  Instead of the daunting learning curve of the original, especially when it comes to multiplayer.  Wired talks about the new Battle.net and how they will match you according to the skill level you pick as well as your performance in test games. 

At Legion Hardware they focus on the performance of the game at different resolutions.  Apparently Blizzard agrees with the idea that having better hardware is cheating, much like we have seen in BioShock or Dragon Rising.  The latter were target at those with widescreen displays and keyboards that would let you map leaning into the game.  In Blizzard’s case they have chosen to punish those who bought powerful graphics cards as no matter what resolution you choose, you will not see any more of the map than a person using a 15″ CRT display.  It will be crisper and more detailed, and the little zerglings might be easier to see individually.  Having playable frame rates from a 9600GT with maximum settings at 2560×1600 is fairly impressive if you are still using one.

Ars Technica’s focus was more on the feel of the game as well as the way that all of your matches are recorded for later viewing.   These movies are not limited, you can watch from the perspective of your enemy as well as yourself to learn the tricks the AI or other players used.  Some who like to keep their strategies secret will not like this feature but those who are learning the ropes should consider it a gold mine of information on improving their gameplay.
“Yesterday we woke up in a world where the beta for StarCraft 2 hadn’t been released yet, and we went to sleep in a world where about 1,700 people were playing it. Those aren’t tremendously good odds for getting into the beta, but we can only hope more players will be added as things move along.”

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