I agree, I'm pleased to see a new game released with DRM that is acceptable. For some time now . . . every game release was an escalation of DRM . . . I may actually buy from Blizzard . . . again . . . if they keep this model. . . =)
Edit: STILL want the LAN play =P

I only want LAN, so there's a rather low chance of me buying this game at all. In the original game I mostly played LAN or CPU skirmish battles. Played the campaign for a while, but some maps constantly kept glitching up, so I never bothered to finish them.

I can understand the decision to force players to always go through Battle.net, although I suspect there was a hint of Activisionsauce in the making of that decision.
I'm not sure whether Blizzard have commented on the chance of seeing LAN play included at some point down the line or not.
Myself, I'm interested in ranked online, and I don't go to LANs anymore so that's fine with me. But I fail to see how including LAN could be a negative thing at all, so I choose to suspect that Blizzard have cut LAN play for now in order to focus on creating the best possible Battle.net service for the launch, and will then release an update with LAN support at some point in the future.
Good to see Blizzard continue with no DRM even after the intercourse with Activision.

Anyone knows why Incineration Zone was removed from the game? That was, and still is, my favourite map. :(

Sorry, I haven't been following this lately but do you mean removed from the beta or from the game? My knowledge is that at one point they stated that they'll remove some maps from the beta in order to playtest as many maps as possible and that the removed maps will be there in the final release.

Oh, sorry for the confusion, meant to say from the ranked games. The map can be chosen when playing custom games, but not when playing ranked games. I lost only once on that map, and then Blizzard decide that they need to remove the map. :(

I probably won't buy S2 either, I'm just being nostalgic as LAN was the reason I bought Starcraft. Remembering when Quake was on the company network and everyone stayed to play . . including the CEO. Course that can't happen these days. Several of us had servers and would have LAN parties at home with men against women, couples against couples, company against company etc.
On-line is an attempt to take home LAN to the next level and has done so quite well by most accounts. It is not the same as playing with people you've know all your life . . . in the same room . . where cheating would get you punched out . . . and verbal abuse was instant and relentless. Someone called you an SOB . . . you could be eyeball to eyeball in two steps. The only fee we paid was food and drinks etc, etc. . . =) . . . the HOURS we wasted . . .
At one point, it was incredibly important that the next game we purchased had LAN, no LAN, we looked for something else. We played Darkstone for months, not because we liked the game, we just liked the LAN play. Haven't played a good home LAN session in years . . .
Still it would be nice to round up the ol gang and plays some S2 . .

Update:
In the near future, we will be doing another full reset of the beta database in order to test new changes. This reset will wipe the following information for all players:
Character and identifier
Friends list
Profile
League placement
Ladder rank
Due to the amount of people currently participating in the beta, this database reset will allow us to monitor and test conditions similar to a game release (albeit smaller). We want to thank everyone for their patience and continued help and support in testing StarCraft II.

About B.net 2.0 criticism: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=129457
I mean, some of the choices they seem to have made about b.net 2.0 just completely baffle me. There is no logical way to justify the removal of chat channels aside from them either not knowing what they are used for or them just being too focused on other stuff to implement it. However, it really SHOULD be on top of their priorities list if they actually knew what it means to the community.
Right now, when I log on to SC2 I really do feel isolated. There is no way to make new friends (something I did constantly back in WC3) and that is just horrible. I don't know about you guys, but I know of maybe 2-3 people in my social circle who are even remotely interested in SC2 Ladder play. If I want to find practice partners etc, I currently have to resort to team liquid, irc and other third parties. That's just not the way it should be and hopefully Blizzard WILL realize that sooner rather than later.
Either way, I'm really curious to see how the beta will look after this upcoming hiatus. Here's hoping we'll see chat channels, a proper naming system and easier ways to track other players (like, say, the newly implemented Follow feature in Heroes of Newerth).
Also, LAN Latency would be nice. Just let the players set the latency like in BW, with 125ms being the default, with perhaps 50ms being the "low" setting. I mean, why the hell not?
Edit: Incineration Zone was probably removed due to Terran Mech completely obliterating Zerg late-game on that map. I've lost a couple of games where I was way ahead just because of positioning that made the Terran army pretty much invincible, on that map. Still, it was unique and hopefully they will re-introduce a slightly more balanced version in the future, I did have plenty of fun games on it regardless of balance issues.

The current phase of the beta ends tomorrow.
On another note, I finally finished the campaigns of the first game and its expansion. Really loved the story, and what it set for the second game.
[spoilers]
My prediction about the story of Starcraft 2:
Kerrigan, blinded by her greed for power and domination over the Swarm, doesn't realize that her biggest enemy is in fact Duran, who secretly works on combining the DNA of the Protoss and the Zerg, to merge the two races into one, one that was supposed to exist from the very start of the Universe, but for some unknown reason, the ancient Xel'Naga decided that they need to split this race into two separate ones.
Zeratul knows about this, Duran tells him his plans (if you play the Bonus mission you will find out). He will probably try to parley with Kerrigan to convince her that they are not the real enemies, but the Hybrids that are being evolved by Duran. She will probably not trust him, because he said that he will do anything to get his revenge. So Zeratul will try his luck with Jim, who still holds something dear about Kerrigan (and she does for him).
Jim will probably convince Kerrigan to help him out in his quest to find Duran and deal with the Hybrids before it is too late. But I see here the United Earth Terrans or something like that, interfering with their quest, and trying to take the Hybrids to study them, do some experiments with them, to learn how to control them (as they have done in the past). And because of this, everything will become one big mess...
Thats all I can think of right now.
[/spoilers]

Second this. I fear they're holding chat functionality back because they want to launch it at the same time as clan support, which really makes no sense, especially if they omit the ability to chat between friends. You should be able to do that both from the lobby and while playing a game if you so wish.

The lack of chat is really annoying. Also annoying is the custom game system, which prevents people from playing games that aren't in the highest 10 maps in terms of publicity.
IMO, the original Starcraft did both aspects better (although I do like having maps saved on their servers).

Theres a more maps button at the bottom of the list, the only annoying thing is it scrolls you back to the top of the list each time you press it. Also someone has had to at least made one instance of the game you want to play for it to show up on the custom games list.

Yeah, I know about that, but most other people don't know or don't care enough to click it. =(

New Update:
- Lack of Chat Channels
... and we just announced that Chat Channels are going to be in the game a few months after release.
- No Cross-region play
... and we just announced that cross-region play is definitely in our plans.
- No Unique ID
... And we just announced that every combination of nickname + 3 digit code will be unique and you will be able to add friends by using this combination.
- You need to give out your email address
... Which is not the case anymore, as adding Nickname.007 will be enough.