There are pacing problems, too. The game is built to play fast but not loose. If the default pace is too much for you – and it's going to be way too much for casual RTS players – you can play at slower speeds that allow you to appreciate the unit interaction and special abilities. But this will draw out the already drawn out early stages where the hardcore players are scouting, feinting, and carefully micromanaging their opening moves. Again, this is their game. Not yours.

But the reason Starcraft II just might work for casual RTS players is the immaculate packaging I mentioned earlier. Not the box. Those are so analog. So 20th century. Packaging is now digital. It's the front end where you arrive when you boot up the game, on the way to the actual game. It's the screens you pass going to a match. It's the sense of progress you get for playing matches or finishing the story. It's the online community and your friends list. It's the achievements. It's your profile, with your choice of unlocked portrait and a favorite emblem stamped at the base of your command center when you're playing the game. This demanding old-school RTS is wrapped in a slickly welcoming package that greets you with a swell of stirring music every time you log in. It's part and parcel of the new battle.net and it's wonderful. Utterly wonderful. Cool blue, attractive, thorough, and functional. It almost upstages the very game inside. I shudder to think how hooked I'll be when Blizzard folds Diablo 3 into this lovely online box.

A crucial part of this packaging is the way online games are presented. The tab for multiplayer games is just as big as the tab for single player games. And they're side by side, not one on top of the other, which is as important a decision as seating dinner guests. Clicking on multiplayer brings you to a big panel for quick matches, which are tied into league play. This might sound daunting and very e-sports, but Blizzard has done their level best to make it friendly and non-threatening. After dinking around with optional placement matches, match-making voodoo drops you into matches appropriate for your skill level. Then leagues with divisions track your progress like customized leaderboards. After matches, a replay is happy to let you see exactly what the other guy did. (By the way, other developers really need to take a cue from Blizzard for how to do replays. It's not a helpful replay if I'm just watching the graphics. I need to see exactly what the other guy is doing and how he's doing it so I can do it to the next guy I play against. That's how casual players transition into harder core players.)

So far, the league play system has worked great in the first week. But of course it's going to work great in the first week, when so many of us are just getting warmed up. Will the skill level of the player base rise and leave fewer options for casual players? Will Starcraft II be popular enough to maintain a population of folks who don't regard it as an e-sport? Will it be a game you can play online once a week with random opponents? It's certainly not a game you're going to be playing on a LAN with your friends. Blizzard has abandoned the LAN culture they once helped cultivate. In a month, in six months, or next year, will you find a suitable online game if you don't keep up with the latest build orders, macro strategies, and micromanagement muscle memory? Or, like every other RTS, will this turn into another Halo, populated by a viciously optimized player base? We'll see. But it's a grim irony that our best hope for a thriving community of casual RTS players lies in an RTS this traditional and demanding.