I've decided to try something new on Kotaku, writing a story that is pure supposition based on my conversations with industry insiders, sources and legitimate fact. In other words I'm going to create a rumor, but I'll be calling it a best guess.

This first time around I spent some time digging into the Blizzard news that's set to come out next week. What we know for certain is that Blizzard is announcing something at the end of their Worldwide Invitational in South Korea. That announcement will be made to a crowd of pro-gamers in South Korea. I'm being deliberately repetitive here to drive home a point. What do pro-gamers in South Korea care about? Yeah, StarCraft.

I spent much of last week up to my eyeballs in analysts, developers and fellow game journalists and was able to get a good sense of what most people are thinking on this issue.

First, I, and almost all of the insiders I spoke with, are convinced that the announcement will be about StarCraft not World of Warcraft or some other (Diablo) franchise.

Second, no one thinks this is going to be an MMO announcement. Why not? Because World of Warcraft is doing so well. Not only does Blizzard not need the added expense of operating another MMO right now, there's a good chance at least a small portion of their WoW players would migrate from one to the other and Warcraft still has plenty of life in it, so the timing just doesn't make sense.

What the general consensus is, is that Blizzard will indeed be announcing StarCraft 2. The timing would be excellent, the recent release of a number of high-profile real-time strategy games appears to be reinvigorating the genre, but none of them have blown people away. (Well, at least they haven't blown me away.) Also, I can't think of a more receptive audience than Korean pro-gamers. And, of course, Blizzard has been very clear that they haven't given up on the game. So it's coming eventually, we know that.

While this isn't totally me talking out of my sitting side, keep in mind this is a WHOLE LOTTA conjecture. I have lots of sources telling me this is probably what the announcement will be, but I don't feel nearly confident enough to post this even as a rumor. So consider it guess work and come back at the end of the week to congratulate or mock me. Brian Crecente