On Monday the 21st day of September, Blizzard sent out the very first email of what would be an 8 and a half million email barrage sent to every email account across all of their databases. Seconds later the email arrived in the inbox of avid Starcraft fan, Alvin Scott, who had been anxiously awaiting this day for several long, impatient months.

Naturally, Alvin was in front of his computer awaiting that familiar new email sound. He could practically see the email before it even arrived, and opened it as quickly as he could. He couldn’t believe it. He was in the beta for Starcraft 2. The client weighed in at a hefty 12.5GB but he wanted that game badly. He immediately twittered his elation, facebooked his excitement and blogged his amazement. His friends from across the globe began checking their own emails, finding the same email sitting there, waiting…

In an unprecedented move, Blizzard had invited everyone they had on record.

Meanwhile, Alvin had eagerly sat through the download which had seemed to take an agonisingly long time. The progress bar ticked slowly to 97%… 98%… 99%… the sweat gathered on Alvin’s brow as he steadied his hand over the “Open” button, ready to start the install. Ready to become the world’s first player of Starcraft 2 Beta.

100%! Alvin clicked with all the speed his SC1 trained reflexes allowed. Another progress bar and then… a glorious ToS. Never had Alvin been so happy to see a ToS screen. He quickly clicked his way through the installer, stopping at nothing, accepting all the defaults – his carefully organised hard drive be damned! Finally, the installer had done its task. The Starcraft 2 Beta was installed and ready to fire up. Alvin held his breath and in tandem with millions of people across the globe he double clicked the icon. The hard disk whirred into action, millions of HDD LEDs flickered in harmony as everyone’s monitor went black – the dark before the dawn as the introductory cinematic loaded. In that moment on millions of computers around the world, a beautifully crisp high definition video began to play and Rick Astley began to sing Never Gonna Give You Up.

It was Monday, September 21st, 2009 – the day Blizzard rickrolled the entire world.

SC2 will never be released