StarCraft II coming Jul 27; next "modern" Call of Duty on Nov 9

May 4th, 2010

Activision dropped bombs this weekend. Two in fact. Specifically, the company will release the highly anticipated StarCraft II worldwide on July 27 (exclusively for PC), followed by Call of Duty: Black Ops-the follow-up to Modern Warfare 2-on November 9.

As for the first game, one that's sure to implode the entire country of South Korea upon its release, Blizzard Entertainment's Mike Morhaime had this to say: "Thanks to our beta testers, we're making great progress on the final stages of development, and we'll be ready to welcome players all over the world to StarCraft II and the new Battle.net in just a few months."

If you'll remember, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is the sequel to 1998's venerable StarCraft, widely regarded as one of the top real-time strategy games of all time. Maintaining the same isometric graphical perspective of the original (ahem, if it ain't broke, don't fix it), StarCraft II once again pits competing groups of space marines against each other as they jockey for extraterrestrial positioning on faraway planets.

As for the second game, not even a messy break-up can slow down the Modern Warfare juggernaut. Developed by Treyarch-the same studio that brought you Call of Duty 3, World at War, and Nazis vs Zombies-Black Ops takes place across modern-day Cuba, the Arctic, and Vietnam among others. A teaser trailer can be seen here.

Of course, these two high profile games arrive this year alongside Cataclysm, the third expansion to the World of Warcraft series.