I think the hype originates in the millions and millions of people who played sc1 and enjoyed it immensely. You don't need to be watching televised SC1 matches from Korea to be a fan of the game and willing to pay $60 for the next release.

Sometimes it's nice to auto join a match with someone at your skill level, play for 20 minutes and log off.

It's the same type of change that went into WoW with the double XP gain bar. For every hour you're logged off, you get an hour of playtime where you earn double xp.