Blizzard announces digital downloads, now you never have to leave the house

My major point of excitement when I heard the news that Blizzard had launched their digital distribution store had nothing whatsoever to do with their time gobbling MMO, World of Warcraft. No, what I was thinking of was all the times I had misplaced or lost my Diablo 2 or Lord of Destruction expansion keys and in desperation had driven to Target or Wal-Mart late in the night, desperate to find a copy of the Battle Chest so I could replay the glory of stabbing hundreds of thousands of little enemies over and over. Sound familiar, anyone?

Although the store only launched with three titles (the StarCraft Anthology, Warcraft III, and the WarCraft III Frozen Throne expansion), the beloved old dungeon crawler is sure to soon follow. In the meantime, you can register your CD keys on the site and add selected titles to your library at anytime for free. I've stared at many an empty case wondering where the game made off to, so this ought to be handy for those of you that tend to lose things as well.

In addition to the new store, a beta lottery program has been added which auto-adds registered users to a drawing for beta access. This would be exciting if there were any games open for beta right now, but there aren't...although fans awaiting Starcraft II will likely be able to get a chance at a beta slot this way when the game is ready for that.

Check out the full list of titles that can be registered and/or downloaded after the jump.

[Via Shacknews -- Thanks, Jonathan]