Battle.net 2.0
08.09.2009 by Atahell - 8 CommentsPosted in Battle.net, Blizzard
As we all know LAN was canceled in Starcraft 2 and Blizzard is blaming piracy. Blizzard wants to offer us a much better Network instead of LAN or the “normal” Battle.net. They promised a new generation even if there are lots of opinions but let’s see if Battle.net 2.0 is worth it?
|Is it worth the loss of LAN play?
|Is it worth the delays?
|Is it really just a bunch of features 70% of players won’t even care about?|
I visited many forums and i have read many threads like this one on the battle.net ; the majority opinion about Battle.net 2.0 is negative and there is also the sc2 Lan petition that has almost 100.000 Total Signatures and it’s one of the top gaming petitions ever. Lan/Battle.net 2.0 or both is a BIG topic today. But let’s face it: Battle.net 2.0 has many new features. What for? What features? Is Battle.net 2.0 worth to delay SC2 Release?
“A true online destination platform, Battlenet will become the foundation for connecting the tens of millions of members of the Blizzard community in a social gaming network across all Blizzard’s future games. This will begin with World of Warcraft and Starcraft 2. To put Battlenet into context, it will be a service similar to Xbox Live and it will leverage the technologies, infrastructure, and expertise that Blizzard has developed over the last decade in multi-player play and social networking. And as Mike Morhaime will discuss later in the call, there is no better opportunity to launch this strategic initiative than through the launch of Starcraft 2.”
-Blizzard Robert Kotick
As we all know , Blizzard has ALWAYS high quality releases with millions of gamers. It is conceptional that Blizzard DOES NOT want to disappoint us but that’s a big dilemma in disappointing on the game quality or disappoint in waiting sooo long (Starcraft2 has a big Release Delay. It should be released 1 year ago like they said). So what’s the point? What’s the point in making the Starcraft 2 Beta a closed Beta? We could suppose that Blizzard doesn’t trust their fans. When Blizzard says “its become clear that it will take longer than expected…” that means they’ve got some revolutionary ideas on how to improve their product and its worth pushing back a release for.
But you know: It’s done when it’s done.
So let’s go back to Battle.net 2.0:
“Our vision for Battlenet is ambitious. As I have said before, we intend to make Battlenet the premiere online gaming destination. We view the next generation of Battlenet as strategically important to the future of our company. It’s the foundation for all future online games at Blizzard and will be the cornerstone of our community. In addition to supporting tournaments, rankings, and multi-player game matching for Starcraft 2 and future Blizzard games, the next generation of Battlenet will add social networking features, cross-game communication, unified login and account management, and more. Battlenet will bring together players from across all of our games including World of Warcraft, eventually allowing them to connect, communicate, and share experiences with each other through the service regardless of which Blizzard game.”
-Blizzard Mike Morhaime
So what’s the purpose? Connect the world with gaming? I foresee Blizzard buying Nokia to steal their Slogan:
“Battle.net – Connecting people”
So there are many ideas of twitter/facebook functions and associations with Battle.net. New functions like 3D Avatars and animations that should help to represent your identity on the Internet. But seriouly. Aren’t we spammed enough with myspace/facebook/twitter and many more. I don’t want to have 1337 accounts for all “communities” like this to be on this comedy that is called “internet”. Maybe one universal account on the Battle.net 2.0 could help me to interact with the “world” so the gaming will be more “face-to-face” like in the Reallife. But isn’t it ironic and paradox?
About 4/5 years ago there was a burning matter of anonymity on the internet. Now people are trying to get the opposite. Blizzard is of course in the position to make that management: “Blizzard manages the most popular game in the world (World of Warcraft) and 2 other franchises on top of that, both with new sequels in the works. That is a very large player base.” So why don’t use this to make a huge network? Even if it’s hard to satisfy every player Blizzard will make because they never gave up. We can just wait and hope.
In the meanwhile we can start with the Beta on 20~22 August and enjoy the BlizzCon 09 (also on starcraft2.pro)
Good luck and Have fun.
Personally I’ve waited almost like seven years for Red Alert 3, when it was out, No LAN coop campign was a big disappointment.
I was thinking ok, Blizzard will soon release Diablo3, LAN Parties YAY.
But then no LAN on Diablo 3 nor will SC2.
Are all gaming companies trying to get their fans disappointed?
Killing all LAN parites. Piracy or not, its not like it worked with WoW, alot people started figuring it out and started private/free servers.
Removing LAN feature wont limit piracy, actually it makes it go further to even developing patches and whatever. Some guys hiding in their basement will figure out how to do it someday and people would start getting their own pirated version, instead of the geniuine version cause both will be the same.
No Lan is removing the multiplayer feature for 70% of the world players, since not everyone has high speed internet.
Really Blizzard you have not disappointed your fans like most companies.
Please don’t start now.
I totally agree with you LazyGeek.
But the problem is a bit larger. Yes, no LAN parties, no LAN games is a terrible lost.
But one of the main problems with LAN games that Blizz had was ‘Garena’…that’s actually like battle.net, but through LAN.
And a lot of players, even pretty well known, are playing their, instead of b.net, and you don’t need a cd-key to play.
So Blizz did a good thing, making b.net better (it was needed long time ago), and they disabled LAN, to completely take away this way of playing…
BUT…like LazyGeek said, some guys in their basement will find out how to overpass the security, how to make LAN, or even worse(better) start their own b.net, own server. servers like garena will appear again and will get more supporters
And SC2, without LAN, divided in 3 parts (add-ons may come???) that’s a big risk, they want to suck out a lot of money from players, that’s very disappointing
Sure but they’re in the position to “suck money” of their fans.
They do it about 5 years with WoW and it’s pretty expensive too.
So the fans will buy/pirate it anyway. This can’t be avoided.
I don’t think that Blizzard will have losses in any view.
they’ll not lose money, but they will just become one company like many others…
I always had 4 companies that i admired
Westwood, for giving us Dune & C&C, the father and mother of all RTS
that became Petroglyph now that continued doing incredibly innovative games
CCP, for EVE online, that is in my point of view, FAR better MMORPG than WoW, in world details, gameplay, economy system, possibilities and much more
StarDock for their game manifesto
And Blizz for great games, and a lot of care for players
I’m just afraid that i’ll have to exclude Blizz from the list
Well i won’t exclue Blizz from the list.
I’ll just stop support them (go on piracy) if this’ll go on that bad like now( D3/SC2 = No Lan + 3 sc2parts + D3 May Be ONLY Online like WoW and so on)
But their Games are still one of the best ☺
I think that its already too late to stop this. Just look at Wc3, they blocked every single 3rd party program (programs we use to kill the lag/delay). THEY REALLY WANT MASSIVE DELAY OMFG
Srsly… Taking away LAN might give them a few extra dollars, but so what? They will be hated for it and, like you guys said, people will figure out new ways of playing.
If you plan on removing something thats very, VERY popular/useful/great then at least provide some alternatives. Now they just threw it away…
Starcraft 2 with out LAN is like a fish out of water. The very thing that made Starcraft great was its great gameplay and strategy that one gets to show off with friends and other organized groups in the neighborhood. Taking LAN away and simply limiting it to Blizzard’s Battle.net will take away that in-your face gaming. No LAN Party?! That will totally suck. And I can definitely say that I won’t get Starcraft 2 if there won’t be LAN Functionality. It will be useless anyway since this back-water country that I’m in -Philippines- has too low a bandwidth too support me and my friend on the net. We have played in Battle.net with WC3 and we decided to keep having LAN parties simply because the connection here suck so bad that we can’t even finish a game with out anyone getting disconnected.
And by the way, YES I Support Blizzard’s Campaign to stamp out the new bane of society – Piracy – but the true solution for that problem is not removing LAN but having an innovative way of stopping piracy, like for example a genuine check, or better yet an online registration to unlock the game.. Or somethings like that.
exactly.. i totally agree with Leosun…
so will i later ☺
also … honestly i can say:
The Blizzards games are the only ones which i did NOT pirated… i really bought it