Blatant cash-grab. Ironic from a company that can trace it’s success to a business model that provided FREE (at the time a costly gamble) server access and support to the original Starcraft title. The model gambled on their confidence in the game, and that gamers would respond in kind. The NEW business model is designed to try and rake in as much cash as possible as a return for a 12 year project that delivered a game that is essentially the same as the original (a bit more lip gloss and blush, but there are no revolutionary or exciting changes or features).
The company knew that they had a huge and loyal fan base from the original game that they had kept salivating for the past 12 years waiting for the sequel, but the company was also so worried about the potential for huge disappointment and poor reviews that would lead to poor sales, so they decided to shut out any possibility of independent reviews PRIOR to the sales launch… and left themselves a scape goat (they have announced that a major patch will be released within a week or so of launch) to address battlenet issues (in other words, if the game does not work properly, and receives bad reviews because of that, they can claim that those reviews were premature). All in all – nothing really addresses the fact that they are releasing a 12 year old game that has been “renovated” and broken into 3 parts in an attempt to increase sales three fold.