Praise the Queen of Blades! As of today, it's been five whole years since the release of the original StarCraft II. And now you feel a little old, right?

Blizzard is commemorating the special event in several different ways that will make any StarCraft fan look up and pay attention. There was a special blog post on Battle.net today (via VG247), in fact, that explains what the hubbub is all about. And there's a lot of it, given how spectacularly popular StarCraft and StarCraft II actually are.

If you log in to play a game from July 27 (obviously yesterday has already passed) through August 3, you'll be given a special in-game character portrait. And you know how annoying those things are to try and collect when you don't have time to play online much competitively! That's not all, though. When you kill some units, they'll explode into confetti, much like the "Grunt Birthday Party" skull effect we saw back in Halo 3. You know you never got tired of that silliness.

There's a big round of physical prizes coming out as well, and if you can't wait for those you can mosey along over to the media section of Battle.net, where Blizzard is giving away new wallpapers that you can use as well.

Personally, I'd say if you want to celebrate five years of StarCraft II the right way, you could do worse than reading up on the series lore and some of the excellent novelizations it's spawned over the years. StarCraft II: Flashpoint is a great place to start, taking you from the end of the Wings of Liberty campaign to the Heart of the Swarm expansion, so you've got an idea of what's going on between the two timeframes. Then you could skip over to StarCraft II: Devil's Due, an intriguing tales that follows Jim Raynor and Tychus Findlay during their time as members of the Heaven's Devils, a special Confederate marine unit that the two men find themselves having broken apart from.

If gaming is more your speed and you don't much care for universe expansion, then don't forget about the upcoming Legacy of the Void expansion, which explores the Protoss events of StarCraft II much like Heart of the Swarm does with the Zerg and Wings of Liberty for the Terrans. It's currently in beta right now. Or go and check out some heated matches archived on Twitch and get into watching the competitive StarCraft II scene. It'll blow you away, especially if you're still struggling to perfect a Zerg rush. They'll absolutely blow you away.

However you decide to celebrate, wish StarCraft II a happy birthday and let's hope the series has hope for a third "true" entry someday.