During the event, Sigaty discussed the new Battle.net system that will exist from the moment StarCraft II is installed on your machine. The non-linear gameplay of the single-player campaign, along with the details of the personal customization for the player's profiles were reiterated on as well. He also replayed the footage presented by Dustin Browder at BlizzCon of the custom scenarios that the Galaxy Editor can create and the extent of the tool's abilities. However, he turned to the Q&A session and after talking about a potential first-half 2010 release date, he said that the beta will be seen only next year as well.

In retrospective, Blizzard opened the beta opt-ins on May 6th, 2009 and promised a summer release. The summer release never came about and it made people believe that it would arrive around BlizzCon 2009. BlizzCon came and went and everyone was left in the dark. Now, we are told that the beta will actually begin in 2010. Assuming that Blizzard is able to hold to their word this time around, we can expect to see the beta only a few months before the actual release of the game. In 2008, the Wrath of the Lich King beta began only about three months before the game was actually released. If Blizzard holds to their schedule that has been used with their World of Warcraft franchise, we can expect to see the same results with StarCraft II.

Source: GoHa.ru