Despite having a hefty launch, there was still one curious omission from the Starcraft II experience, the ability to jump into an in-game chat with friends. However, don’t fret; Blizzard has announced that the chat feature is “something that will be added in a patch” sometime in the near future.

“The system will be based around groups, where you will be able to join public channels that are based around your interests. Also the system will include private chat channels (in plans for release in the first few months after the release), where you will be able to connect with your friends,” said a Blizzard community manager, reports Kotaku.

It seems that video game developers and publishers, after a bit of an hiatus, are beginning to “re-open support” to Apple’s operating system, Blizzard reveals that a beta for StarCraft II is in the advance stages of development and that they do plan to release the beta next month on Mac operating systems.

A Q&A panel on the Battle.net gives Apple owners hope: “We are currently working on a Mac version of the beta and hope to release it sometime in April,” the post states. “Hang in there.”

Though it’s currently planned for release on both PC and Mac platforms, only PC owners have been able to take part in the game’s beta, which began about a month ago. The beta is expected to end in late spring, making the two month gap for a Mac release a pretty substantial chunk of available time.

This news comes straight out of Blizzard’s voice actors panel at BlizzCon. Blizzard has revealed that Battlestar Galactica’s Tricia Helfer will be playing Sarah Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades, in StarCraft II. Along with that, several returning actors will be lending their vocal talents in the game, including Robert Clotworthy and James Harper, reprising their roles as Jim Raynor and Arcturus Mengsk.

“It’s certainly fun to try and find the small differences — how do you bring Sarah Kerrigan into the Queen of Blades, without completely changing it?” said Helfer at the outset of her introduction to the crowd at BlizzCon. “Sarah is more innocent, and the Queen of Blades is just fun.”

“It’s intimidating to come into a game and do a job that you don’t really know the history of it, I’m kind of a video game virgin in terms of playing. Personally I’m not technologically savvy,” Helfer continued. “At the time, I didn’t know what Zerg and all these things were. It was fun to find out all these little differences.”