The Ghetto » Battle.net 2.0: The Antithesis of Consumer Confidence

June 6th, 2010

Battle.net 2.0: The Antithesis of Consumer Confidence

Note A: This entry reflects a “current event”. Things change. So if I’m ranting that Pac-Man represents the technological heights of Reagan’s America, keep an open mind.

Note B: Took note of the complaints about the structure of the article and I agreed with you guys. I made a goof. Went ahead and fixed that up. Hopefully, this works out a bit better.

Note C: Noticed I got a nod on Reddit. And now Fark. Props to all the feedback. Always looking to get better at this, and comments (positive or negative) help me do that. I want to emphasize that Dustin Browder and company did an awesome, awesome job on the game itself. My qualms are with an interface I believe the game design team had little to do with. Just don’t want the achievements of Starcraft II lost in a combination of corporate politics and gamer rage.

Note D: For those of you who are too stupid to ever read forty-five-hundred words, I made a CliffsNotes version. Enjoy.

Note E: Blizzard is planning to amend some of the issues with Battle.net 2.0, keyword “planning”. As changes are made, the article will be edited accordingly.

I’m late to the Battle.net 2.0 Hate Party, but I brought a keg, so here goes.

I don’t get angry about video games. Passionate? Yeah, it’s pathetic. But no, not angry. Game developers are people, too. They got bills to pay. But Battle.net 2.0 makes me angry.

Starcraft II is excellence. It’s sensational. Dustin Browder knew this game was his legacy and his squad delivered. And it’s a fucking shame people are going to turn on this product for things Browder has no control over. Right now, the Battle.net Forums look like the Battle of the Somme and Starcraft fan site TeamLiquid is trying to disown the game. The internet has shat a brick. What the hell happened?

I wasn’t around for the “Atari owns the industry” days. But in my lifetime, nothing tops Activision-Blizzard, a corporate culture whose roots lie in four developers who escaped Atari’s corporate culture. I have never seen one company try so hard to tell me this is the product I want.

Battle.net 2.0 is supposed to be the future of online gaming. Instead, it is the antithesis of consumer confidence, a combination of corporate suits who don’t play video games and game designers who can’t do damage control.

Fine, tell me it’s wrong to assume an Activision corporate culture would impact its corporate partner. You know, where the President of Blizzard Entertainment answers directly to Thomas Tippl, an executive who answers to Activision C.E.O. Bobby Kotick. The Bobby Kotick who disowned projects that lacked “the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential”. The Bobby Kotick who stated he wants to “take the fun out of making video games.” Or you can see what happens when an online gaming service is not a game design decision.

—

The Battle.net 2.0 marketing approach has been simple: “We removed [function] because of [scapegoat].” It’ll sound good to the GameStop crowd, and Starcraft players will call bullshit. Since computer gamers have a habit of organizing boycotts on the grounds of crappy box art, the mainstream will throw up their hands and say “There they go again.” And then when Blizzard releases the game, computer fans will say “We told you so.”

Look at LAN. In June of 2009, Blizzard Entertainment revealed there would be none. The reason? Blizzard wanted to give its fans a quality product.

“While this was a difficult decision for us, we felt that moving away from LAN play and directing players to our upgraded Battle.net service was the best option to ensure a quality multiplayer experience with StarCraft II and safeguard against piracy.” – Bob Colyaco, Blizzard Public Relations Representative

That’s right: Battle.net 2.0 is going to be so awesome, you won’t need LAN. May surprise you: Many months ago, I defended it.

“Eliminating the ability to play Starcraft II through a Local Area Network does not mean you won’t be able to play the game through an equivalent. You can’t cut through a Battle Report or Q&A Batch or Dustin’s Terrible Terrible Blogspot without having it drenched in e-sport. Blizzard didn’t build the game for competition, for television, simply to decide we can’t fight it out latency free. This is the sequel to gaming’s biggest spectator sport.

“What we can say is that you will have to hook into the internet to play the game. This is a piracy thing, and the Steam approach appears to be the compromise being offered by developers. Ten years ago, a CD-Key was good enough. Today, Blizzard does not want to get snakebit by another case of Garena, where hundreds of thousands play Defense of the Ancients with illegal copies of Warcraft III. My guess is that Battle.net 2.0 will emulate Steam’s product. Players looking to LAN will log into Battle.net to verify the game’s legitimacy, and then proceed to play on an emulated equivalent.

…

“If you are playing somebody through Battle.net via a local network, you will have LAN latency, and you will not be disconnected from your local game if your internet connection dies on you. There. I just eased eighty percent of the concern.”

I made a mistake. Not just assuming “There’s no way Blizzard can be that dumb.” I thought LAN was about piracy. If piracy was the concern, it wouldn’t make sense to pass up internet-authenticated LAN. But piracy is an easy target. Especially when the real reason is a laughingstock in the Western World. Already discussed it in detail: The elimination of LAN creates a world where Blizzard is the unquestioned overlord of “Starcraft II: The Sport”. Read the Terms of Service lately?

“You agree that you will not, under any circumstances…use the Service for any “e-sports” or group competition sponsored, promoted or facilitated by any commercial or non-profit entity without Blizzard’s prior written consent;” – Starcraft II Battle.net Terms of Use, Current as of May 28th

Want to run a major Starcraft II tournament? Hope you got money. Blizzard wants a cut. Yeah, Blizzard isn’t tossing lawyers at your college tournament. And why bother? Saw what happened at the University of Central Florida? Where 100 gamers showed up for a tournament and found out Battle.net could only handle twelve university network users at once? And then Battle.net crashed during the round of sixteen and threw the legitimacy of the event into question? Blizzard isn’t worried. The company set up the system so you can’t compete with them. It just sells the message: “Thanks for making Starcraft a spectator sport, fans. Now fuck off.“

That’s why your game is region-locked. Got friends in Europe? Too bad. You can’t play with them. Blizzard has international Starcraft tournaments to sell. They can’t have Germany’s Dario Wunsch (TheLittleOne) and American-in-Korea Greg Fields (IdrA) playing each other whenever they feel like it. That’ll dilute the demand for Major League Gaming’s “Europe versus America” event, brought to you by Mountain Dew: Rainbow Seizure. Your “official reason” for the omission?

“Yes, when it releases on day one, if you want to connect with your friends in the US, get the US box or if you want to play with Koreans, then get the Korean box. However if you want to get the best experience out of your game here in South East Asia, you should get the local boxset. The latency, the community, those things are going to really define the experience, and you don’t want to miss out on that.” – Kevin Yu, Blizzard Community Manager

Blizzard Entertainment eliminated LAN on an implied premise that everyone has broadband internet and latency will not be an issue. According to the company, the game is region-locked because latency will be an issue. Starcraft features an internationally-diverse competitive gaming scene. According to the company, confining them to regional servers will foster community. Can’t make this stuff up.

Next? Battle.net 2.0 limits you to a single CD-Key per person. That’s it. That’s your sixty-dollar purchase. According to the company, this is because you are an asshole.

“Really good players, they don’t necessarily want to play themselves. They want to go beat up on the noob because that’s really fun.” – Rob Pardo, Vice President of Game Design, Blizzard Entertainment

Blizzard Entertainment paints smurfing as an ego boost. That Blizzard gamers were beat up in school and need a trauma bandage. Forget that smurfing is a necessity for learning off-races and honing gimmick strategies. I played Warcraft III. We don’t smurf because we enjoy it. We smurf because in 2004, the company’s matchmaking changes were designed to eliminate smurfing. Search criteria is configured for 2004′s player activity. 2004′s crappy Warcraft III players are now 2010′s crappy Defense of the Ancients players. Smurfing has evolved from a scapegoat to a necessity.

Consider Warcraft III Four vs. Four Random Team. “Top-level play” is dominated by posers, players who managed enough mediocrity to find games and max out their experience level. Elite players can’t find games. In my last season with substantial playing time, my Warcraft III record was 55-39. During the day? Hour search times. Night? Forget it. When all I want to do is play, it’s easier to make a new name and start over.

What Blizzard Wants You to Believe

Blizzard doesn’t care about a level playing field. It’s used game value. And the company didn’t get the memo the CD-Keys they popularized destroyed resale value. Remember why Blizzard included a “Spawn” function in Starcraft, where four players could use one copy to play over a Local Area Network? How that was advertising for a popular-but-fledgling Blizzard Entertainment? Well, they’re rock stars now. Want to play? Ruin your friend’s record, explain to his built-in friends list why “you’re back on Dave, I thought you quit”, or buy the game. No more “used game acts as a demo”.

Then you get to public chat rooms. (Note: Chat Channels are now in the planning stages.) Given Battle.net developer Greg Canessa worked on X-Box Live, it’s not a surprise they’re gone. That takes us to Frank Pearce, the Blizzard co-founder whose “Battle.net is shit, I admit it” interview may have been the most damaging moment in the Starcraft II beta cycle.

“You’ll be able to open up chats direct with your friends, and when we add clans and groups there’ll be chats for your clans and groups, but no specific plans for chat rooms right now. Do you really want chat rooms?” – Frank Pearce, Blizzard Co-Founder

Pearce is also the executive producer of World of Warcraft. Nobody plays this video game for the gameplay. They play it because chat rooms develop a sense of community. You meet people. You talk to them. Guess what happens? You join their guild. You raid with them. You embrace that community. The core of World of Warcraft’s addictive qualities are built on a feature that Pearce is burying.

You got rid of public chat channels to stymie elitism? Where people pick on others for being inferior at the game? Wait until people realize that post-game chatter will be limited “Wow, that kid was really good at the game, I should add him!” or “Wow, he sucked. I need to make fun of him!”

Getting rid of those chat channels and the ability to name custom games sure stopped spam, didn’t it?

Yes Mr. Pearce, we really do want chat rooms. Maybe your company’s annual investment report can explain why we’re not getting them:

“We are subject to risks associated with the collaborative online features in our games, such as World of Warcraft’s online chat feature, which allows consumers to post narrative comment, in real time, that is visible to other players. Despite our efforts to restrict inappropriate consumer content, from time to time objectionable and offensive consumer content may be posted to a World of Warcraft gaming site or the sites of other games or game services, such as Battle.net, with online chat features or game forums which allow consumers to post comments. We may be subject to lawsuits, governmental regulation or restrictions, and consumer backlash (including decreased sales and harmed reputation), as a result of consumers posting offensive content, any of which could harm our operating results.” – Activision 2010 Annual Investment Report

You thought Blizzard cared about your nine-year-old? They do. They don’t want him slitting his wrists and spraying “BLIZZADR MADE ME DO IT” with the blood of his dying breaths. (Credit to H4x for the reminder: There is no ability to ignore individuals. So Blizzard eliminated chat channels to prevent spam and harassment but neglected to add a /squelch command to stymie anyone who wants your juice money. Fun, huh?)

But maybe these communities were built on custom games. Mapmakers will rally the troops! Guess what? Battle.net 2.0 got cloud computing in your mapmaking. You’ll “publish” maps to Battle.net. And you’ll enjoy it.

Sound innocuous? In an internet where Google can supply seven gigabytes of storage for a free e-mail account, the Battle.net map publishing system gives you twenty megabytes for your five maps. And in a world where Defense of the Ancients uses extensive in-game Warcraft III models to cap its size at seven megabytes, your maximum map size is ten. Oh, and no dirty words in the map, either. Or various country names. Or adding “Suicide” in a map trigger related to Banelings.

Hey, can’t let custom games use the old model. That promotes piracy. “Any map you want to make” on a peer-to-peer Battle.net 2.0? Pretty much eliminates first-person shooters and action games. Too much lag. “Browser bombs” that lock your client and Rick Roll the hell out of you? Already in the wild. Oh, and maps aren’t universal, so enjoy when someone publishes your map on another server and takes credit for it.

But Blizzard has your back.

“User Content” means any communications, images, sounds, and all the material and information that you upload or transmit through a Game client or the Service, or that other users upload or transmit, including without limitation any chat text. You hereby grant Blizzard a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, paid-up, non-exclusive, license, including the right to sublicense to third parties, and right to reproduce, fix, adapt, modify, translate, reformat, create derivative works from, manufacture, introduce into circulation, publish, distribute, sell, license, sublicense, transfer, rent, lease, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, or provide access to electronically, broadcast, communicate to the public by telecommunication, display, perform, enter into computer memory, and use and practice such User Content as well as all modified and derivative works thereof. To the extent permitted by applicable laws, you hereby waive any moral rights you may have in any User Content.” – Battle.net Terms of Service

Or they can throw legalese at mapmakers. Where the community can be terrified the overseer will take credit for their work without their permission.

—

See, all these headaches create is paranoia. Activision-Blizzard made a series of decisions that were very unpopular. Now, people who aren’t “in the know” will read into other minor mistakes made by the company like they’re the fucking plague. “Blizzard was mum on LAN. They removed it. Blizzard was quiet on chat channels. They removed those. Mapmaking? It’s completely restrictive. They haven’t said anything about the Constitution of the United States…oh dear God.” Expansion pack pricing? Nobody expects anything below sixty dollars. Credit card? That’ll be mandated. You know, to “streamline premium content purchases”.

Enter Facebook and RealID. Because nobody’s had issues with Mr. Dumb Fucks lately.

Facebook is human hypocrisy. Remember what the internet was? A gathering site for outcasts? A gateway for wasting time on Everquest? The people who bashed the internet are now playing Farmville on Facebook, the social networking site where you can express your individuality by copy-pasting funny pictures someone else created.

But I don’t care if Starcraft II integrates it. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is one of my favorite games of this generation. It had Twitter capability. Never gave it a second thought. The difference? When Uncharted was reducing Twitter accounts to rubble, Naughty Dog toned it down. Blizzard wants me to marry Facebook.

Battle.net integrates Facebook alongside RealID. RealID friends will see your first and last name. It’s Blizzard’s way of giving internet enemies a reason to hack your account. Have a common name? Think they can’t discover your identity? Those other RealID names are just the missing puzzle pieces. Plan on using a fake name? When your account is compromised, good luck explaining to Blizzard why you can’t supply identification to prove you’re Michael Lowell from Plant City, Nebraska.

“And as is the case with previous Blizzard Entertainment titles, you can form friendships with other characters on Battle.net while preserving your anonymity.” – Battle.net 2.0 Preview, Starcraft II Web Page

The issue with RealID? It usurps functionality. On Battle.net 1.0, I could use “/f m [message]” to message every player on my friends list. Simple, easy, etc. In Battle.net 2.0, this function is replaced with the ability to “broadcast” messages. In order to use this, you must use RealID or Facebook. You have to render privacy a lost art to get something I had six years ago.

Back to paranoia. Blizzard used the tail end of the first beta-testing phase to curtail the ways a player can add regular friends to their tally. That is, modify the system as “RealID or bust”. This is presumably to gauge interest in the feature. If Blizzard said this was the case, I can’t find it for you. So the message won’t be “They’re testing RealID and Facebook out.” It will now be “Facebook integration and RealID are mandatory!!!”

And then you get a Blizzard that thinks it can conquer Russia without conquering the the fears of its fans. How? Strip down Starcraft II and sell it cheaper. Then charge a monthly fee. All to breach a country Hitler and Napoleon couldn’t conquer. To counter piracy. Should be an ominous footnote, right?

As of now, the game displays creepy messages. After a mid-May beta patch, the client proudly announced that “Play time has been added to your account! Game on!” So read the fine print: Monthly play is a Russian thing. Except for that part where the capability is clearly in every version of the game. No LAN? No chat channels? Now, “Starcraft II is going to be pay to play!!1″

—

Beta tests are not only designed to fix bugs. Beta tests generate hype. They convince people the finished product will be worth their time. Blizzard Entertainment believes this as well. In April of 2010, Blizzard Entertainment launched a Gamestop-Amazon “pre-order, get beta” promotion. One month prior, Dustin Browder stated their goal was to maintain approximately 10,000 concurrent beta testers. That was achieved very early. Companies don’t contradict their lead producer’s desires unless word of mouth and pre-order tallies aren’t matching expectations. And currently, the most common defense of Battle.net looks like this:

“I know that SC2 beta is having problems and u guys r talking about should we buy the game or not but this is just a beta and u are playing it for free! july is yet to come and they are still working on the beta to make it more stable so do not complain about this problem. When this happens after the beta that is the time u can complain about the lag and balance problems” – Typical idiotic Battle.net forums post.

Here’s the problem with Battle.net 2.0: 2002′s Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos is one of the most underrated video games ever created. And that’s before you learn its online apparatus is the foundation for modern matchmaking, where Blizzard Entertainment should get royalties every time you brag about your X-Box Live Trueskill rating. (Then again, I shouldn’t be giving Blizzard ideas right now.)

Here’s how Warcraft III matchmaking worked: Everyone starts at level one. The maximum level is fifty. You play players within six levels of your own. Win five games, gain a level. Lose five games, lose a level. The penalty for losing is reduced during levels one to nine. Thus, players who win half their games will become level ten.

It was simple and transparent. That was the hook, and people choked on it. It turned Warcraft III ladder play into what ICCUP serves for Starcraft players, a stomping ground so competitive that climbing the food chain gave you a shot at the guys who played for a living. That’s what a good online gaming system does.

In my “Blizzard gives me a blank check to develop Starcraft II” universe, Battle.net 1.0 was the fourteen-year-old beta test for Battle.net 2.0. If Starcraft II was packaged with the Warcraft III online approach, there wouldn’t be a single person who would be disappointed. Underwhelmed? Maybe. But they wouldn’t be burning cars in Starcraft message boards like they’re doing now. And right now, there is not a single attempted accomplishment of the Battle.net 2.0 service that draws upon its predecessor. All of the omissions play into a narrative where Activision-Blizzard “doesn’t care about their fans anymore”.

Even without these issues, Starcraft II is a marketing nightmare. It is the sequel to a twelve-year-old computer game, a beacon in the forgotten era of Deus Ex and Baldur’s Gate. Why forgotten? “Computer gaming sucks ass. It’s true, the video game industry told me it! If you aren’t playing Modern Warfare 2 (latest in a series popularized on computers) on your X-Box 360 (manufactured by the producer of Windows) on X-Box Live (Battle.net, Yahoo! Games, The Zone, etc.), you’re a fucking pussy!” Console gamers have spent the last decade hearing just that.

The greatest test of skill in video games: A niche market.

So what market does Starcraft II fill? Remember the last hardest-of-the-hardcore competitive gaming to hit market? Come on, we’re not that removed from Street Fighter IV. Considerable hype? Check. Universal respect amongst gamers? Check. Sensational review scores? Check. Sales tally? In sixteen months, Street Fighter IV has sold three million copies. Modern Warfare 2 did that in twelve hours at retail. There is no guarantee Starcraft II shits money.

The company wants a real-time strategy game that appeals to your mom’s bridge club. I see a game that needs its “base” to succeed. In the grand scheme of things, Starcraft II is not just a video game. It’s an attempt to consolidate a competitive gaming scene under the banner of its creator. It’s another effort to consolidate control of what you can do with a computer game. And to do this, Activision-Blizzard needs the people who will create the next Defense of the Ancients, who scour Youtube for shoutcasts, who rattle off the CJ Entus roster like it’s their Dallas Cowboys. And you ain’t sold Battle.net 2.0 to us. You ain’t got our confidence. Instead, all we’ve gotten is an Activision-Blizzard that appears doomed to repeat its own history.

The company’s marketing contradicts the body language. It’s phony. Game designers are built to create really good video games. Right now, Blizzard game designers are being required to sell decisions to the public that they had no say in. So every time Dustin Browder, Greg Canessa, or Frank Pearce goes to bat, gamers are doing a collective “Okay, I can buy it, well, maybe, wait, uh…you’re full of shit.”

There’s precedent for this failing. We already got one “upgrade” on the traditional server model. Don’t remember that heavily-hyped, Activision-Blizzard-published sequel to a beloved game? Say hello to Modern Warfare 2 and IWNet.

Most computer-based shooters use dedicated server technology. Players connect to a server that handles the flow of game data. IWNet employs peer-to-peer matchmaking where one player becomes a “host” and data duties fall on his crappy broadband connection. This isn’t a problem on the similarly-modeled X-Box Live because thumbsticks don’t provide the same precision. Now saddle mouse-and-keyboard play with peer-to-peer latency. Remove the ability for players to purchase round-the-clock (i.e. dedicated) servers for clan warfare. Then tell them IWNet can handle a maximum of eighteen players, rather than the sixty-four they were accustomed to. I think we found the problem.

Infinity Ward’s damage control was pure insanity. A week prior to the launch of Modern Warfare 2, Best Buy hosted a developer chat where lead developer Mackey McCandlish turned the thing into a George Bush press conference. Why did the ability to “lean” (peek around walls) get the axe? McCandlish stated “[t]he game is not balanced for lean”. Is the computer version of Modern Warfare 2 a direct port of the X-Box version? Nope. McCandlish rightfully noted “PC has custom stuff like mouse control, text chat in game, and graphics settings.” (Knowing now that IWNet is a direct port of X-Box Live, this is even more hilarious.)

Modern Warfare 2 For The PC: Where Reconnect To X-Box Live Happens

Lead developers don’t say these things unless somebody is playing puppetmaster. So nobody was surprised when Activision said “We’re going to storm your headquarters with private security!” and Infinity Ward countered with “Pay us the royalties you owe us first!” Blizzard public relations is now the deer in the headlights for the Activision corporate strategy.

—

In August of 2009, it was announced the beta-ready Starcraft II would be delayed. Because of Battle.net 2.0. A couple of weeks later, Battle.net 2.0 developer Greg Canessa alluded that pseudo-LAN would make the cut. Perhaps Blizzard was listening to the angry mob? An extra year to prep New Super Battle.net Steam? The only questions remaining were “How could Blizzard possibly top the original Battle.net?” and “How many kittens and rainbows will this service shit?” Our confidence in this system’s ability to bring utility-and-or-enjoyment to our lives was immeasurably high.

And then we got this:

Someone on the internet does with one picture what it took me four-thousand words to explain. Maybe I should take note.

Air out of the balloon. Losing your horny. Crowd-killing three-pointer. The metaphor doesn’t matter, Blizzard put up an air ball. Blizzard Entertainment is protecting both children and company profits from the pedophiles, liberals, and pro-gamers that inhabit the internet without understanding they have just given all the incentive they need to anyone who wanted to jailbreak this game. And the company can’t sell the reality with a straight face.

Battle.net 2.0 reminds me of that episode of The Simpsons where Bart goes to Kamp Krusty. The warning signs were there. Bart trudged through sweatshops, imitation gruel, and death marches on the premise that Krusty would come. And then he did. But it was Barney Gumble in a clown suit. And Kamp Krusty burned. *sniff*

Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve been to Yahoo! Games, The Zone, and X-Box Live, and I can say without hyperbole that this is a million times worse than all of them put together.

Wrong game to to play games with. Blizzard needed core consumers. Our confidence. You ain’t got it. To quote Icesong of the Battle.net forums: “Battle.net was fucking name brand. Battle.net wasn’t some fucking trash service you should be lucky to even have working, like ESO or The Zone, it was the fucking standard. We had Braums, they promised to give us Blue Bell and made us wait a year, and then gave us Kroger brand and called it gourmet.”

How depressing. I could go for some ice cream right about now. The way I want it.

Return to the main page.

Special Thanks to Teamliquid.net, whose devotion to the game wrote a healthy portion of this article.

This update was just so much better than Patch 13 in every way.

Comment by PIES on June 7, 2010 at 3:58 am

a month ago i was ready to pre-order the game and both expansions.

right now i’m planning on skipping SC2 and hoping MSL/OSL keep playing SC until someone else steps up. but who is even making decent RTS games any more?

Response: As far as I know, you’re limited to Company of Heroes. Everything else in the last decade or so really hasn’t caught a hold with anyone.

Comment by joe on June 7, 2010 at 4:25 am

You didn’t even get into the handling of the Blizzard & Korean pro gaming issues, and the mess that that is. But, this article is just about Battle.net, so I suppose that can be forgiven, haha.

There is a lot about these proceedings that have scared me for a long time, a lot that has made me unhappy.

Honestly, I don’t know what to do or think. Blizzard has made a laundry list of things that people don’t want to see, and then did them all. Honestly, I think they need to fire their PR guys.

Response: I’ve actually given my input on that already:

http://www.the-ghetto.org/content/kespa-vs-blizzard-why-i-cant-root-for-either

My links were out of whack. Made it tough to find that article.

The thing is: How do you fire the P.R. guys? They’re the guys making the game. :\

Comment by Radivel on June 7, 2010 at 5:03 am

Thanks for consolidating the info, now I have one source I can point to when people ask “Why?” when I say Starcraft 2 is currently a trainwreck.

Response: Thanks. People need to understand the conflicting signals. We’re not angry because we’re spoiled. We’re angry because we follow the hype. And the hype is sending mixed messages.

Comment by Hrungnir on June 7, 2010 at 11:38 am

ghetto already did a thing about Blizz and KeSPA though.

Comment by PIES on June 7, 2010 at 3:51 pm

Your age of control rant reminded me of Metal Gear Solid 4. WHERE IS OUR SOLID SNAKE? I think Blizzard is going Lucas. Flashy gimmicks and graphics wasn’t what made Star Wars great. Star Wars was great because it had a hero you liked with a compelling story. Starcraft has no hero, no story and is so pretty you get seizures.

Response: Eh, I dunno if Star Wars is the appropriate comparison. It sounds to me like George Lucas was the guy who made up his mind to sell out the series, rather than outside suits. Or at least Lucas wasn’t in the mood for negative feedback.

Comment by peonus on June 7, 2010 at 3:57 pm

So this is what 14 years of experience boils down to. Interesting, good to know i’m no longer planning to buy this. What has happened to the computer gaming companies ffs.

Response: That’s what makes it so dumbfounding. If they botched it by trying to reinvent the wheel, I suppose it wouldn’t be so bad. No. They just scrapped the old one and called it premium. And when your name is tied to the Activision that’s pretty much pissing off everyone right now, that’s not a good idea.

Comment by Abue on June 7, 2010 at 6:12 pm

I’m sounding like a broken record here, but I really cannot wait for ICCUP 2.0. Oh man, will that be GLORIOUS.

Response: I get that companies believe in the “two-week window after release where piracy can totally screw us over”, but securing that two-week window doesn’t recognize the company needs to come back to us two more times for our money. And how fundamentally different can cracking the game become with the release of two expansion packs?

Comment by Acritter on June 7, 2010 at 7:06 pm

Blizzard has changed.
It’s no longer about gamers, customer satisfaction or quality.
It’s an endless series of monetizations, incorporated by executives and corporates.
Blizzard, and it’s consumption of life, has become a well-oiled machine.

Blizzard has changed.
ID tagged gamers carry ID tagged accounts, use ID tagged forums. Real ID info inside their accounts are exchanged with shady Chinese phishing scammers for profit.
Account control.
Ladder control.
Map control.
Game control.
Everything is monitored, and kept under control.

Blizzard has changed.
The age of chat channels has become the age of Facebook.
All in the name of averting competition from 3rd party servers like iCCup.
And he who controls Battle.net, controls history.

Blizzard has changed.
When Battle.net is under total control, greed, becomes routine.

Response: Damn nanomachines.

Comment by PIES on June 7, 2010 at 9:16 pm

It’s is an abbreviation of it is. Its is the possessive form of it. Besides that, I agree.

Comment by Acritter on June 8, 2010 at 1:57 am

Orrrr… disregard that. Misread it. So I completely agree.

Honestly, I wouldn’t be too upset with the game if the game itself took a dive in quality. But the game itself is wonderful, and it’s going to be lost in the controversy. We should not have to pick fights with the company over the inevitable private servers. It’s a shame.

Comment by Overlord on June 8, 2010 at 2:42 am

I hoped the primary point of the Star Wars/Star Craft analogy was a total misread by the the director/developers on what made Star Wars/Star Craft. They decided to go for a prequel/sequel to make more/MOAR money. They added/took out things that were critical to making the first ones extremely successful and memorable and took out/added stuff that was essentially useless. The point is is that Star Craft 2 is pretty bad. I pray Diablo III will not be.

Response: I’m not opposed to the idea of releasing a follow-up in the name of the dollar. They just did it in a fashion that simply won’t be tolerated by PC gamers. Maybe PC gamers have been spoiled. But it speaks volumes of the current gamer base if “knowledgeable about the product” and “calls companies on their bullshit” is spoiled.

Comment by peonus on June 8, 2010 at 4:20 am

Reading this has completely transfigured my opinion of Blizzard Entertainment’s near, and utterly bleak future. I find the fact of how I wasn’t informed of these circumstances almost harrowing, especially as a former Blizzard fanatic.

Although this is black news indeed, I thank you for enlightening me on such a situation. I’m going to have to spread the word on this to every Blizzard fan I know, as I’m positive they’ll be just as disappointed by this new antithesis policy as I am….

Well done, Ghetto. Although it isn’t much coming from a newbie such as myself, you’re blogging includes great amounts of insight and unique information that I originally wouldn’t have thought twice about. I certainly hope Blizzard takes these ideals into great consideration, as they are, or at least were, truly the apex of our community’s gaming experience.

Response: I don’t think the company is quite aware of how much power individuals in the Starcraft community wield. In-fact, I think Starcraft may be exclusive in that regard. Look at Husky. Dude pulled 300,000 visits for his “State of Battle.net 2.0″ video in a single week. And that’s not including Tasteless, DayNine, HDStarcraft, Moletrap, Violetak, and the rest of the shoutcast crew. People say “Oh, the game will sell millions.” But a video like that is hundreds of thousands of viewers who potentially spread word of mouth that the online gaming service ain’t what it’s cracked up to be.

I actually wrote this article as a look at the public relations element. It seems to be picking up more steam as a general disdain for Battle.net 2.0. And perhaps it isn’t that surprising (given how much time I invest in reading up on and playing Blizzard products), but I was shocked to see what kind of “market” was out there for an article like this. I figured a good chunk of the potential Starcraft II audience knew about this.

Comment by Bobreeda on June 8, 2010 at 5:03 am

Blizzard are pretty evil, you can see what they did with wow, how they managed to suck out every single penny one way or another, seems very predictable they are gonna do the exact same thing with sc2. Sad thing is i LOVE this game..

Someone talented out there will make a cracked version for all of to play lans or even over the internet im sure, thats what Blizzard gets for being dodgy

Response: There’s no denying a cracked version of the game is going to happen. This ain’t Modern Warfare, where people are content to either playing the game on a console or stick out Call of Duty 2 or 4 for the computer. I wouldn’t say Starcraft II is a replacement for Starcraft, but it’s removed enough from the predecessor to say “This is the new age. Buy in.”

Comment by tys on June 8, 2010 at 8:04 am

so after reading this i am on the fence about buying the game at all. and that scares me, because growing up all the games i knew and loved where from blizzard. all the warcrafts, and diablos, and starcraft was my fave. i will say that u are right in some places about why people play wow, is for the community. however i disagree in ur saying that that is the only reason why people play. how about the fact that it has endless hours of gameplay, and hey how about story completion/continuation of warcraft? i personally am a player of wow because of those reasons. now this isnt about wow, its about battle net 2.o.
yes it has its flaws, but i challenge u to find a popular game that released without any issues in its core gameplay. good luck, im not sure ull find one. ill say that i hate the current integration to facebook. i hate that system of networking. it is extremely fake and it dilutes the power of starcraft. on another note, i have noticed alot of movement from blizzard to make their products more accessible to every player. in wow they introduced what has become known as “welfare gear” because any sap can get it. this is the only defense i have to some of their additions to bnet2.0 is that they are simply trying to get moar people to buy their product, and hell why not? when wow was released i said, it wont do well, and it will kill the lore of the original games, everyone i talked to about it was sad to see it come out and shared my feelings. we where wrong. it went sky high and blew the roof off everyone expectations. maybe blizz is trying to look at what made wow so big and implement those things into sc2. i have not had any issues with latency on bnet2.0 at all, nor have i had any problems with anything else from it, except the random disconnects that i would associate with a BETA. and to me, beta’s arnt about creating hype, sure maybe in part, but BETA’s are used mainly to find bugs in the system and ultimately release a balanced game. and BALANCE is important. yea im on the fence, but you have to remember its not 7-27-10 yet, so stuff the complaining and just pray they fix it to all our standards.

Comment by wowfanatic on June 8, 2010 at 4:02 pm

and personally, if ur worried about playing people in korea, or china, or even that there are no chat capabilities, i think ur not playing the game right. when i play im not chatting with my friends, im playing the game. if a friend is in the game im in, i talk to them. i dont need a chat room as im playing the game and that has a chat function. i could care less about an out of gameplay chat room as its not necessary for the game to function. thats one persons opinion, take it for what its worth.

Response: As far as the “it’s not for hype” deal, consider that this article has gone viral in some capacity and a chunk of the feedback is summarized as “Well, not buying this game.” Chat channels? They’re necessary for organization. Preventing one from the ability to create public channels makes a mess for e-sports organizers and any group of non-guild-related friends who use a regular outpost as a hub. I completely disagree with you on region locking. If anything, if you’re not going out of your way to engage players in Korea, China, or wherever the best talent resides, you’re playing the game wrong.

The company is welcome to make a game that appeals to casual gamers, and I actually give them a bit of credit in creating a core multiplayer game that’s so unapologetic. But you can’t layer Battle.net 2.0 with a sunshine and lollipops approach. You’re just going to end up pissing off both demographics of gamers, core and casual.

Comment by wowfanatic on June 8, 2010 at 4:15 pm

After reading your post and playing the Starcraft II Beta for a few months, I can say with complete confidence that you’re 100% correct. Firstly, I must say that Activision’s excuse for disregarding consumer wants/needs for chat rooms is absolutely unnecessary and ridiculous, considering protecting themselves from consumer slander could have been accomplished with a clause in the user agreement that they would not be held responsible for any actions of the consumer. Secondly, I would like to discuss with the people reading this post my gaming history to understand my credentials and to realize I am not a ranting baddy. My name is Brad Kimber, and I am currently in law school. I started my online gaming career playing Desert Strike (PC) and Diablo/Starcraft. I played Starcraft religiously; one of the great things about the game was being able to HOST your own maps with CUSTOM game names and then meet up with friends afterwards in your private chat room to discuss various things. After playing Starcraft, a friend got me into a game called Counter-Strike, which I played professionally for MANY years as a CAL-Invite participant in Clans ranked in the Top ten Around the World. One clan, notably called Ascension, was ranked Fourth in the world while I was ingame leading. I have too many other notable clans to list, but after Counter-strike I lead the number one guild wars guild for almost a year. Guild wars got me into World of Warcraft, which I was leading a top 500 World Wide ranked Guild. Of course, World of Warcraft didn’t last too long. I am a hardcore gamer, although that does not mean I don’t like most casual games. However, when gaming companies try to take out any competitive aspect of a game I feel the main essence of the game is destroyed. After WoW I went to Dawn of War 2 and was ranked #1 on the ladder on the 3v3 ladder with team members Nanayashiki and Kxing. World of Warcraft tries too hard appease to the masses, like the OP said…. Kids who play Call of Duty 2 and think it’s the best thing since sliced bread. Sorry to say, but I would rather plug in my Nintento 64 and play Goldeneye or the original smash brothers than waste my time with a pathetically construed multiplayer experience that people only play because they THINK it’s what they SHOULD be doing (because every other game suxkzz dizxk).

Blizzard has turned every game, which once brought happiness and endless fun to the masses, into shit. After playing the Starcraft 2 Beta, of course I think the game is good. However, I can confidently say that it isn’t even remotely close to the multiplayer experience of the original. There are no channels, no hosting of games, people botting to bump their maps to top popularity, and hardly any good custom maps compared to the original. Not only that, but they took out some of the best units from the original. Yes, I understand you can make units do what those units once did by creating triggers or what not…. But I fail to see why firebats, medics, lurkers, wraiths, and a majority of all of the air units are not in the game. As far as what they added to the game…. I don’t see anything worth mentioning. All they did was TAKE away from the original starcraft experience without giving us anything new worth mentioning in return. Facebook Integration? Yes… I have a Facebook…. Do I play Starcraft 2 to talk to people on Facebook? Who the fuck would? A nerd? If I want to talk to my friends I wouldn’t be in a video game called Starcraft 2. Sorry Blizzard, I was a loyal fan since the original warcraft, Diablo, and starcraft, but what. The. Fuck. Are. You. Doing. World of warcraft has turned to shit, Starcraft 2 looks like it’s following suit, and Diablo 3 is probably trash (just saying, it’s hard to be optimistic at this point).

Game that are being released now a days have forced me to download old Nintendo and SNES games. I have more fun playing games made many… many years ago than playing Call of Duty 2 MW and Starcraft 2. I’ve yet to have an experience relative to Goldeneye, Counter-Strike, and Mario. Gaming companies don’t push bars…. They push profits. It’s a sad generation for gamers.

Response: Thanks for the input. Wish I had the talent to reinforce my opinion with a top-level gaming acumen, but instead, I have to settle for being a good writer. ><

If I’m reading into your comment about Starcraft units correctly, those will be in the game in some capacity. And I presume given the playstyle Zerg is shaping up to require, Lurkers will definitely hit the core multiplayer in the future.

I could support your comment with a diatribe about the game industry that would run for pages. I just know the last time that corporate culture tried to get so invested in the video game industry, they almost destroyed the American market for video games. As far as I’m concerned, the quality of the games themselves are still very, very good. It’s very difficult to reinvent Mario into something new. THAT SAID, video games require too much of a time investment that even casual gamers will eventually see through bad games. And that’s why Activision is pulling something very dangerous with their “ANYONE can make a Call of Duty game” approach.

Comment by Brad Kimber on June 8, 2010 at 4:27 pm

Sorry for any typos. I didn’t feel like proof reading my post considering its summer ^_^

Original poster, I wanted to reinforce the fact that I really enjoyed reading your post. TTYS.

Comment by Brad Kimber on June 8, 2010 at 4:32 pm

Fire their PR guys? What they need to do is fire Bobby Kotick. Preferably out of a cannon… into the sun.

Response: I don’t think they’ll let us do that. :\

Comment by Sotanaht on June 8, 2010 at 6:24 pm

The issue is it takes about 5 years for people like you to actually get moving, even though you have some writing talent and solid gaming background. But like many others you were probably too busy a few weeks/months ago telling everyone to “calm down” because “my dear Blizzard will fix it” (and you’ve probably spawned quite a few mindless followers). Being in such slimy love with a fucking company is pathetic, and I don’t care if they usually make good games.

See, if a guy like you takes this long to come to terms with the blatantly obvious (crapple.net 2.0) I’m pretty sure we’re fucked, and that you’re part of the problem.

Other than that, good post.

Response Thanks for the feedback. I actually was cautious at first. I presumption is that Blizzard was a company built by the quality of their games and wouldn’t risk getting too greedy.

Damn, was I wrong about that…

Comment by the issue on June 8, 2010 at 7:15 pm

Basically, by the time fanboys who love Blizzard more than they love the fucking games themselves realize something is wrong, Sc3 is already in production. No wonder PC gaming is getting shittier by the minute.

Response: Companies don’t want to develop computer games for one reason: When you’re trying to establish a definition of software piracy to include “every download is a lost sale and millions of downloads harm us for millions of dollars”, how do you convince shareholders developing games for the personal computer is a good idea?

Comment by the issue on June 8, 2010 at 7:22 pm

Fucking hell… Well, I pre-ordered the collector’s edition. Yes, I knew they had login-to-play functionality, but never thought Blizzard could be THAT stupid and I play mostly single-player. Bobby Gollum Kotick got my money, but that’s the end of it – I’m not ever again buying a Blizzard-Activision game. This is just unacceptable.

Response: It’s a shame. I really don’t want Browder and company to take the fall for this. Their overlords are putting them in a very precarious position.

Comment by Mo6eB on June 8, 2010 at 7:54 pm

P.S. I apologise to Christopher Tolkien for comparing one of his father’s beloved characters to Bobby Kotick.

Comment by Mo6eB on June 8, 2010 at 7:57 pm

An outstanding and passionate article which was an absolute joy to read. Aside from a couple of typos it was very, very illuminating.

Having met a few Blizzard folks over the past twelve months I’m not sure whether Battle.net 2.0 is suffering from a PR problem, I just think Blizzard are trying to do too much, too quickly,

What is clear is that many gamers are upset, but until that starts costing Blizzard revenue ultimately they won’t mind.

Response: Based on my internet carousings, most of the Blizzard staff (as with most game devs) seem to be pretty stand-up people. It’s a tough business. Very passionate fanbase, little pay compared to jackpot some games create, backstage politics. But I feel it’s pretty clear the public face of the project is defending things they can’t really defend.

I think the backlash to this game is going to be very interesting. Many storylines here (“Hurrah for the old-school RTS?”, “Blizzard finally goes to consoles?”, “Activision-Blizzard takes a financial punch in the mouth?”, “Finally the game to wipe out PC gaming as a core platform?”).

Comment by Andy Griffiths on June 8, 2010 at 9:11 pm

Just wanted to say thank you for that wonderful piece of writing. As a none-pro or anything close to a pro gamer I didn’t think much of battle.net 2.0 (good or bad), but after reading your piece I can really see the holes and it frustrates me. Its like having this brilliantly designed car that drives superb, looks spectacular and everyone wants it from the average joe to the professional race car drivers, but when people test drive it, the owner only allows you to drive it around the neighborhood with a restricter plate capping how fast you can go. To the average driver its fine cause they are driving this amazing car, but to the professional driver they want to take it out and use the full potential of this beautifully designed car, but they cant, so its frustrates and angers them.

At the end of the day as an average Joe gamer, I don’t think ill have very many problems with battle.net 2.0, but it really sadness me that they didn’t do all they could to reach out to there true loyal fan base and for what seems to be just money.

Response: Thanks for the feedback. I get the vibe they brought in Greg Canessa with some belief that X-Box Live is the face of online gaming in the modern era. Unfortunately, X-Box Live would be lacking as an online gaming service even if it was free-to-play. And introducing it to a crowd that puts the original Battle.net in a shrine? Forget it.

There was an excellent post on the Battle.net forums about what “Battle.net 2.0 could have been”. Here’s a re-post, the original thread is long toast.

Comment by Austin Price on June 8, 2010 at 9:21 pm

Something to consider is that most corporations have three major stages. I’m only going to refer to gaming companies, because those are what we’re talking about. In the first stage, the company is getting its legs, and makes some promising games of good quality. All its decisions are based on making a name for itself. The second stage is when it’s hitting or has just hit the big scene, and makes FANTASTIC games. These games are made with long-term consumer confidence in mind. In the third stage, investors take note of the company’s success and buy it out turn it into a cash cow. Bad sequels are made, and the company is slowly driven into the ground, at which point the investors hop out all the richer. During the first stage, Blizzard made such games as Warcraft 1&2. During the second, it made Starcraft and Diablo 2, and Warcraft 3 in the later part. It has just recently entered the third stage. I am desperately hoping that Starcraft 2 will be Blizzard’s swan song, along with Diablo 3, as they started production during phase 2. The only alternative is that Warcraft 3 and WoW were the last good games Blizzard made.

It’s not a happy reality, but it’s what’s happening. I hope some other company can take the reins for making great RTS games.

Response: Funny you mention that, I wrote an article on my previous blog detailing the life cycle of video game franchises, i.e. the cycle of sequelitis. Very similar to how you put it, although it was in a less business-oriented light. Definitely going to adapt that over to this site in the future.

Comment by Acritter on June 8, 2010 at 10:06 pm

I just came to this site from the front page of reddit.com. You’ve made the big-time, GO!

Great article like normal…

Response: Still coming to terms with it. Feels awesome to have more than a dozen people give a shit about what I have to say. <3

Comment by DarkChrono on June 8, 2010 at 10:09 pm

Hello!

I just wanted to take a second and leave my thoughts.

I am a college student at Indiana University. I have been involved with the Computer Gaming Club at IU for several years now, having served as president for two. I am also an outspoken advocate for PC gamer integrity.

I wrote many posts on my Facebook about the PC gaming community losing its spine when Modern Warfare 2 came out and spit in our collective faces. I need not reiterate the points you made in the article, so I won’t, but the takeaway is that I spoke candidly and openly about my protest of the game and of Activision in general. I believe that if a company is going to royally fuck over the consumer fan base that made it what it is today, it shouldn’t be supported. Still, there were tens of people on my Steam friends list playing MW2 in the weeks after its release, and I sighed a heavy sigh for the future of PC gaming.

If “the fans” aren’t going to stand up for themselves, then who will? Who will have the integrity to NOT support practices that, in the end, screw over the consumer? What I have been trying to say in regard to MW2, Battle.net 2.0, and similar services, is perfectly embodied in this article, and I just wanted to say thank you for doing such a good job of saying what I wanted to. I am proudly linking this article to my friends and posting it on forums I visit.

And, as an aside, I personally know the guy who runs the UCF gaming club, and I remember the Steam message he sent me on the day of that LAN. The LANs we run up here at IU are about the same size as theirs, so I am pretty worried about any future events we have and SC2′s functionality therein. Ruh roh, Raggy.

Good work!

Response: Thanks for the comment. Allow me to stress that I’m not calling for a boycott, per se. I never got the vibe boycotts worked because too many of these morons just download the game instead of sticking to their guns and refusing to play it outright. Activision still gets my money for Modern Warfare 2 if I get a reliable way to play on dedicated servers. I just want people to be more informed about the product. I’m not interested in watching video games become movies, where games win on substance alone. And if people read this article and decide they’re no longer interested in putting down money for the game, I guess I have to live with that.

Comment by Chris "Hamstar" Roberts on June 8, 2010 at 10:12 pm

Great read.

Comment by phez on June 8, 2010 at 10:18 pm

First, I have to say that it was very fun to read, and I didn’t know all this shit before, although I don’t play much competitively, I do get annoyed from IWNet, and I can only imagine how you guys (x-fans of SC2) feel. A good game that got crippled due to piracy. right…

I started as any other kid with a computer, and downloaded anything I could get my hands on. Music, games, and software. Fast forward 15 years, although I still download, and probably more than before, Movies (I got 6tb of them), music, games, books, audiobooks, and sometimes software, I pay as much as I can for software, when it’s reasonable, and I’m not cheap. I go to watch movies in theaters, a lot. I buy books, and buy audio versions of them too sometimes. I work with the all new CS5 products, and I payed for it at least 5 times now (on various companies I worked), so yea, I have an illegal copy at home, but that one illegal copy I had for all those years, payed for at least 5 licenses in the long run. I buy music, although I can download (which I also do).

The point is, I guess, although I’m a pirate, arrrrrgh, I still bring some cash to your table, and if I don’t (I am a pirate, after all), and none of you do (admit it, you are pirating something), then how the fuck are those companies still making shitload of money?

But that’s not what I wanted to say.

This is: I think it’s time for the pirates, crackers, hackers, p2p, and the scenes to make a stand.

Hack, crack and recode the game the way you think is right, and release it across the internet, let everybody know, that *THIS* is the game they want, and if they pay, they will get an inferior product. This time, you shouldn’t pay.

Make the Starcraft 2 the best game of the year with the least copies sold EVER.

Blizzard put out a lot of money on that game, we should hurt them where it really hurts, and don’t just rant about the inferior product your getting, this time you can show them that customer has the final word. and you expect them to think about us first, and how to safe-gaurd their balls second, that is if they want our money.

Make Blizzard and Co suffer, they won’t die, but next year, when Starcraft 3 will come out, you will get the game you want, with the features you want, and without all the crippleware that they are selling us as you have described in the article. And you WILL buy the next game, because you know that they won’t mess with you again, and you do want them to continue.

To Blizzard and Co: We buy your shit, although we can always crack you. You get our money, and you also get future customers thanks to piracy. now stop whining.

Response: I’m not a guy who pirates software on the premise that it will hurt their wallet. Simple logic: If people claim downloads don’t hurt a company, then why download the game to “stick it to them”? You can’t twist each step to fit another body of logic.

That said, I think the market for this game is going to force Blizzard to re-evaluate their approach anyway. I’m hearing estimates that Starcraft II will sell five million copies this year. That seems generous to me.

Comment by Eli on June 8, 2010 at 11:13 pm

Damn, I’m overwhelmed by the feedback. I’ll get around to replying in a while. <3

Comment by Overlord on June 9, 2010 at 12:48 am

While most of your post is just off-topic blabbing that makes no real point, let me tl;dr the parts of your actual argument:

1) Concerns about Activision-Blizzard and corporate greed.

- Understandable concern. However, remind yourself that Blizzard, having made such a library of wildly successful games, is hardly in any position to be pushed around. And you agree, at least in terms of raw gameplay. SCII plays very well. Its fun, its engaging, its tightly balanced, and the very early offerings of UMS games are showing some real promise, too. Instead, you claim that the greed is surrounding the core game, in the form of BNET 2.0. Lets read on…

2) “The company wants a real-time strategy game that appeals to your mom’s bridge club.”

- I really can’t believe I just read that. I hope you aren’t talking about the gameplay itself. I hope you are talking about e-sports appeal to non-gamers. And in that case, how is wanting a wide audience to enjoy watching the sport a bad thing? As long as gameplay isn’t sacrificed, who cares?

3) Having no LAN isn’t just for piracy, its for control over e-sports.

- I don’t actually disagree on your assertion itself here. However, I do disagree with your assertion that it is wrong to do this. SCII is a huge game, and such a monstrosity costs a phenominal amount of money to create. Every year, the costs of game development go up. Hundreds of developers and designers have to be paid for years on end with the hope that the investment will be worth it. I’m sorry, but its Blizzards fucking IP, and if they want to charge royalties for it during tournaments, then so be it.
Plus, we have already seen the alternative. Its just a company like KESPA getting a stranglehold on the market and doing the same damn thing you are worried about. But its worse, because Blizzard isn’t seeing a dime. Instead, some completely unrelated company is making huge profits off of someone else’s hard work.
You can’t compare this to other sports. Did basketball take 6 years of development and millions of dollars to make? I highly doubt it. Getting paid for your IP isn’t a bad thing. Its what makes the software world work.

4) Running a tourney isn’t as good as it was in SC1 since BNET 1) limits connections and 2) might crash.

- I agree on this. Blizzard needs to implement fixes/alternatives to this. Here’s to hoping its fixed for release.

5) Seperating the gateways to BNET is bad.

- Since, for the most part, the defined regions don’t even speak the same language, I don’t see how this is really a big deal. Professionals will likely own an account in all regions anyway. Besides, I was tired of having a bunch of GOSU koreans in USWest destroying me, or a slew of game names (map names in SC2) in a language I can’t read.
It does suck for people that have friends in Europe, I’ll agree, but I think Blizzard is doing this because it benefits more people than it hurts.

6) I can’t smurf anymore.

- Lets get the obvious out of the way and say that people do smurf and they do it to win games. Not all people, no, but people do it. Limiting this is something we want to obviously do. As far as doing it while learning a new race, I agree and will note that Blizzard has expressed interest in implementing something for this need. Lets hope they pull through.

7) No public chat channels.

- I know that for myself, as a player in D2, I would avoid the public channels like the plague. The constant barrage of botspam or just normal people-spam was a pain. And not just spam in the channel, but private message spam, since once you entered the channel, they have your name. Once they made chat optional upon entering bnet, I only used it so that I could message my friends. Do you think maybe this decision was backed by the data they have seen from past games like D2 or WCIII? They aren’t just removing it to be mean…

Map makers forfeit their rights to the map upon uploading.

- This I can agree with. I’d like to see more legal power in the hands of the map makers.

9) Facebook integration is terrible.

- This really isn’t as ‘in your face’ as you make it sound. Either use it or don’t. I have a friend or two that is on facebook and has it linked up. Its been very easy to re-add them to my friends using FB integration every time they keep wiping the DB. This isn’t something to get worked up over.

10) RealID is invasive.

- RealID is meant for people that already know your name anyway. If you don’t want them to know it, don’t add them that way. Maybe I’m wrong, but you can still add non-realID friends in-game by right clicking on their tag. However, it does seem like they removed the ability to simply add a given tag by entering it in. If that is what you are annoyed about, I can only agree, though I’m not sure if they just moved it or actually removed it.

11) ‘Playtime expires’ is proof that bnet is going to be pay-to-play.

- Blizzard has already said this was for trial accounts. Maybe something like SC1′s spawn, but for BNET? Maybe you are right and Blizzard does have a plan for pay-to-play. It still doesn’t give you an argument until it is known. Don’t claim that you know what it is until you are sure.

12) Ladder system is going to suck compared to WCIII:ROC.

- Maybe, but we can’t say for sure until its fully live. Part of the beta was for Blizzard to get the kinks out of their new system.

To me, all the BNET 2.0 hate has a few legit merits, surrounded with a lot of fluffy BAWWWWWWWWing. Yes, it isn’t perfect, but quit acting like its the biggest piece of shit since the dawn of time.

Response:

2) The core gameplay is fairly unapologetic, but the game doesn’t need an “everybody wins a trophy” matchmaking system to make consumers by in. The original game sold over ten million copies. What market could they possibly expand to that won’t punch their monitor the sixth game in a row they die to a Reaper rush?
3 & 4) Blizzard needs the LAN-free apparatus to stranglehold the tournament scene. We’re probably not getting anything along those lines in the near-future. I imagine “Can companies prevent the broadcast of their video games?” is a question that will be decided in the courts very soon. It sounds like an open-and-closed case here in the states, but Korea doesn’t go by our legal system. It’ll be interesting to see how it plays over there.
5) It’s ridiculous that players have to drop down the price of Rock Band simply to get access to the major gaming scenes. And what about amateurs? Starcraft is like other sports: You get better by playing the best people. You can’t deny them access to that competition.
7) As I mentioned in a previous comment, public chat channels are necessary for some level of communication between newer players, and are integral for clan and tournament organization. Not everybody in a group of friends is going to share the same channel. I would be willing to compromise on clan channels that could be toggled to allow public users.
8-11) I was making those arguments to stress that people who don’t follow the game as much as I do will end up drawing false conclusions that will hurt the company’s sales.

Ultimately, compared to what Blizzard had, it’s very easy to make the case Battle.net 2.0 is doing it wrong. “It’s a beta” doesn’t do it for me.

Comment by Triggerhappy on June 9, 2010 at 12:54 am

Send Greg Canessa a message on facebook; http://www.facebook.com/gcanessa

Comment by Brett M on June 9, 2010 at 1:30 am

lol did blizz delete your thread on b-net?

Comment by half on June 9, 2010 at 1:32 am

also just saw you on reddit lol. grats .

Comment by half on June 9, 2010 at 1:36 am

Yeah, Blizzard banned me for linking the post (they had already deleted it once). Think I’ll frame the ban description on my wall.

Props to everyone who gave a damn about my opinion. I’ll try and reply to comments tomorrow. Don’t quite have the energy for it at the moment. And if you have any recommendations for a future article, lemme know. Wanna try and keep the next topic current.

Comment by Overlord on June 9, 2010 at 3:12 am

Completely agree won’t be buying it though i may still play it

Comment by True-Saber on June 9, 2010 at 3:43 am

You make some decent points, and some terrible ones as well:

Points I agree with:
1. Removing chat channels to remove spam is a terrible idea and won’t work at all. Hopefully Blizzard reconsiders this. I had a very popular custom game that I made in the top 5 custom games on US for a decent amount of time, so I can really agree that having it knocked down because of spammed BS games is annoying. But a bigger problem with custom maps is that they don’t auto update when I publish a new version, I’m assuming this is going to be fixed though .
2. The handling of MW2 was awful. Removing dedicated servers and capping player amounts in games etc is really a shame.
3. The RealID system and friends list functionality in Bnet 2.0 is a step backward. I agree, it is only harder now to talk to friends, organize games, and meet new people.

Points I really disagree with that you made:
1. “PC Games are shit.” I couldn’t believe you wrote that, and then said that WC3 was one of the most underrated games of all time. There have been so many legendary PC games that were critically acclaimed, loved by fans, and sold millions of copies. Blizzard wouldnt be the god it is now without PC games. Steam wouldn’t exist.
2. “People don’t play WoW for the gameplay.” Really now? It’s only for guilds at chat channels? Then why don’t they go play Aion? Or Runescape? Or just go to AOL chat rooms? You’re wrong. Millions of people pay 15 dollars a month to play WoW because it’s an addictive, well made, balanced, generally glitch free, fun MMO with a company behind it that everyone knows won’t stop development and has a good track record. A perfect one at that. WoW has it’s problems as every MMO does, but it has less. Far less. It is friendly to non gamers, but great for super competive gamers and typical MMO players that need to sink 10 hours a day into grinding. A game that covers all those bases isn’t just a glorified chat channel.
3. “SC2 is pay to play in Russia, therefor it will be pay to play in the US.” This is the classical slippery slope argument. And it’s complete BS.
4. “Blizzard doesn’t care about a level playing field.” I guess all the leagues and practice mode games and showing who is favored is for no reason then? I’ve already played more even and close SC2 games online than in WC3 and SC combined. This system in particular is miles better than before, and anyone who claims otherwise is so filled with Blizzard-Activision hatred that they won’t even take the time to compare it to SC1 or WC3.

My final statement: Cry all you want about Activision, they have the past blunders and awful decisions on their track record. But don’t assume just yet that they have tainted Blizzard and SC2 is going to be utter trash because of an iffy Beta so far. Betas aren’t only for judging hype. They are forming the game and feeling for want fans want. Blizzard so far has a 100% perfect track record according to critical acclaim, fan reception, and general sales. So give them a chance to prove they still know what they are doing.

1) I was being sarcastic. Even though I thought it was pretty obvious, I reworded it to avoid any more confusion. Can’t have people pulling a “stopped caring there” on my article because they weren’t in on the joke.
2) Would be willing to throw down good money that says most people will have issues quitting the game because of the community aspect, moreso than the investment they put in their character and the gameplay.
3) That’s the point I was making. It’s innocuous. But people will construe it to be an affirmation of pay-to-play.
4) I have absolutely no problem with the matchmaking. The matchmaking itself is excellent. The ranking system? Still on the fence.

Comment by RainGame on June 9, 2010 at 4:04 am

“Think I’ll frame the ban description on my wall.”

Was it amusing enough to post on the site or on the forums?

Response: Standard fare stuff. “Permanently banned…” followed by the post.

Comment by PIES on June 9, 2010 at 4:16 am

[This sentence has been deleted by a power-hungry moderator.]

The entire article is correct 100% and what they are doing with bnet2.0 is a tragedy, especially since the game itself is probably the best RTS ever made.

If they “pay to play” I will take my pre-order and break it into a thousand pieces. The integration of facebook and realID is stupid, useless, and not something I want in a fucking video game. The lack of chat channels (though not really affecting me much) is stupid as well; going to random channels for trivia bots used to be entertaining even if it did violate EULA. The fact that you cannot host individual custom games with special names//passwords (I’m hoping they fix this) is nearly a deal breaker, and would be if I were more heavily devoted a custom map fan.
Etc etc I agree with this entire article, and everyone that disagrees with it is a mindless sheep fucktard that deserves to have their brain removed.

Response: The game has potential to be one of the best products ever. Talking top ten or fifteen in the medium. If the game followed suit with Battle.net, I wouldn’t be as disappointed as I am right now. Who knows? Maybe the currently-viral fan backlash will get Blizzard to think twice.

Comment by Burd on June 9, 2010 at 4:27 am

Thank you for consolidating all the flaws with this new pile of crap known as bnet. Sometimes its hard to piece together all the points people make from across numerous websites and forums but they were all gathered and clearly written here. I 100% agree with you. However, you owe me a glass of chocolate milk as that is what I was drinking when I scrolled down to the rock vs. bnet picture and it shot out all over my desk via laughter.

Response: Yeah, I’m shocked. Figured somebody at TeamLiquid would have beaten me to “Battle.net 2.0: Why It Doesn’t Get The Job Done”.

Oh, and I didn’t make the picture. Dunno who did. That’s why I used the caption to imply that. <3

Comment by Jmo on June 9, 2010 at 8:39 am

Hi there… try “The Spring Project” instead – a community driven RTS.

Response: Anything in the vein of Warcraft II? I’d definitely be interested if there’s a Blizzard-style RTS on crack.

Comment by vitaminx on June 9, 2010 at 8:51 am

And still, all the fanboys will buy it. They won’t be happy with it, but Blizzard doesn’t need to care, once they got all teh moneys. Sad but true.

Response: Honestly, I don’t know about that. Sad as it may sound: Call of Duty has a hell of a lot more selling power than Starcraft does in 2010.

Guess we’ll have to see.

Comment by randomT on June 9, 2010 at 9:19 am

Excellent read, things i didnt even notice until brought up here and makes the game almost a total nogo for me, I allready got spooked from buying GTA4 Release because of all the misshaps and such.

Well, Blizzard, Activision, and/or whoever else planned this titanic of a gameservice. We’ll see you at the bottom then.

Response: Dunno, I just have a solid sense of when things don’t sound right. Said it in a previous article: “That famous television judge was right: ‘If it doesn’t make sense, it’s not true.’”

Comment by Akronym on June 9, 2010 at 9:49 am

[...] Awesome. Read: Battle.net 2.0: The Antithesis of Consumer Confidence [...]

Pingback by Activision-Blizzards continue their Fuck-You-Customer policy « Kissaki Blog on June 9, 2010 at 9:50 am

Made my day ! You are so 100% right.

Response: Glad I could help you out with that. <3

Comment by Hades on June 9, 2010 at 9:57 am

[...] [...]

Pingback by starcraft 2 beta - Postpla.net - die Forum Community on June 9, 2010 at 10:45 am

Excellent read! Thanks for that. Allthough I’m not into playing Starcraft and didn’t plan to buy it the article shows what goes wrong with the gaming industry. All they want are pansy little FarmVille fans that can click the mouse twice in 10 seconds and don’t think for themself. Way to screw up competetive play and ruining a (well more 2) perfect brand(s).

Response: It’s a game that definitely appeals to the hardcore audience. I just don’t like the idea of playing dress-up with it to make the game seem like something it’s not. A lot of people are going to be in for a very rude awakening.

Comment by gurkenwasser on June 9, 2010 at 11:36 am

[...] Battle.net 2.0: The Antithesis of Consumer Confidence Veröffentlicht in: [...]

Pingback by Verstärkung « Senior Gamer on June 9, 2010 at 12:03 pm

Someone should make a youtube video out of this.

Response: If you’re not referring to Husky’s kitten rant, I actually had something in mind. Gonna try and do it soon.

Comment by aintan on June 9, 2010 at 1:17 pm

I have spent the last month watching far too many Starcraft 2 videos on youtube (BlizShouter, SaharaDrac, SCLegacy, Husky and HD) and the anticipation for the game has been building a huge amount in me. I almost pre-ordered the game just to get access to the beta. Then I saw that Husky video on the state of Battle.net 2.0. Well, I haven’t bought the game and after reading articles like this I really don’t intend to. I have loved damn near every Blizzard game made. Playing Warcraft 1&2 and Starcraft on a LAN with friends are to this day my best gaming memories. I’m just outraged that all this bs has to be involved now. Frankly I am going to boycott any Activision game. People have to use the only power we have and don’t let this bs lead to obscene amounts of profit (I’m still cringing after buying a broken almost unplayable game in Modern Warfare 2, a game that made hundreds of millions of dollars in a week yet hasn’t been patched to remove glitches and unbalanced mechanics that should have been sorted out during testing).

Great article. I share in your rage and frustration. I have to believe the rot begins and ends with Activision and someday the employees that have been crushed under their corporate filth will rise with new games that real gamers can be proud of.

Response: Yeah, I really hope the article doesn’t give the impression I’m some jaded fanboy. I don’t get upset with game-related issues. Usually laugh most of them off. But this one just got under my skin. I don’t like seeing potentially-top-fifteen games shredded by corporate over-reach.

Comment by chris on June 9, 2010 at 1:22 pm

Thanks for the roundup.

I just cancelled my preorder, no need for another Street Fighter IV on my bookshelf.
Let’s wait and see what’s actually in the box first…

Response: Thanks for the feedback. I’m actually curious to see how the game review outlets are going to respond to this title now. Eh…they’ll praise it, regardless.

Comment by onitake on June 9, 2010 at 2:51 pm

[...] Lesenswert: The Ghetto [...]

Pingback by [Sammelthread] +++ Der Starcraft 2 - Sammelthread +++ - Seite 36 - Forum de Luxx on June 9, 2010 at 3:14 pm

Well, I hope the pvpgn crowd will develop a server that is compatible with battle.net 2.0 and address the problems indicated in this piece. It works great for my sc1 and diablo2 games and can function as a lan!

Response: I’m not particularly familiar with Battle.net’s model, but it’s probably going to take a couple of months for someone to get something stable running. It’s much harder to reverse-engineer a service than to emulate a Local Area Network.

Comment by chris on June 9, 2010 at 3:35 pm

Hey big thanks for the hard work u put in the article. Over the last years I have heared of alot of the new and awesome Battle.net 2.0 Features … but I nearly forgot about all of them so now I´m really happy to stumple upon your post. I will definitely not buy SC II or D III until Blizz-Activ. is going to change their “CrappyNet 2.0″.

I´m going to spread your article among my guildmates and other ppl playing old SC or are interested in buying it. It´s a good contrast to the PR Bullshit you get from every company today … where are the good old days when gaming was about fun .. *sigh*

Response: Blizzard wasn’t much at the public relations spiel prior to this debacle. I wrote the article so people can understand what we’ve been reading for the last year, so when we say “we’re not playing this game”, people can understand why we’re “spoiled”.

Comment by nimmersatt on June 9, 2010 at 3:50 pm

I was on the fence, thanks for the summary. I’ll skip this game. Maybe pick it up when its in the bottom of a bin, covered by copies of Half Life 3.

The only sad thing is that I have a horde of friends who don’t know the first thing about the topics you covered. All they know is ‘new blizzard game, must buy.’

Response: I’m still shocked how few people knew about this. I figured this was out in the wild for anyone that was following the game. Of course, I’m also a nerd with no life, so maybe that had something to do with my bubble.

Comment by Aaron on June 9, 2010 at 3:58 pm

Wow, I smelled the bullshit when LAN play went away. I’ve recently canceled my WoW account because its clear Blizzard doesn’t care about the game anymore and it is rife with problems. Thank you, you saved me $60 (or was that $180? Greedy bastards…)

Response: I did find it hilarious that World of Warcraft account owners have been complaining about the price of Starcraft II. At least we can pull delicious irony from this problem.

Comment by Chris on June 9, 2010 at 4:17 pm

S2Games did a way better job than blizzard with their online platform.for Heroes of Newerth.

and they are an indie company!!!
S2Games > Blizzard

Response: I’m definitely going to look into the Heroes of Newerth online service. From what I’ve read, its efficiency stems from a client-server prediction model, which is unfeasible for a game with as many moving parts as Starcraft II. But as far as functionality, Battle.net 2.0 could take the hint.

Comment by HoNFanboi on June 9, 2010 at 5:12 pm

the problem is that Blizzard is so quiet about this, that everyone’s view on this issue, even this well written article, is based on a lot of assumptions. There was a blizzard post stating that they plan on releasing an official statement in regards to the concerns we, the fans, have for Battle.net 2.0 pretty soon. I feel than any conclusion made before this event is rather premature.

Response: If Battle.net 2.0 comes back from the downtime with the core issues rectified, I’ll be willing to give them credit for it. In the meantime, I have a video to make.

And of course it’s based on assumption and observation. Unfortunately, I don’t quite have the apparatus to James O’Keefe this crap.

Comment by derp on June 9, 2010 at 7:04 pm

Reminds me of other long awaited sequels. Think Quake4. All those Quake3 players were waiting for it. Not even 3 weeks after the release most of them were back in IRC. Single player mode finished after a few hours and online/LAN playing just not possible correctly. A big fat and slow graphics engine demo. Back with Quake3 as all the tournament/competition features you were used to for _YEARS_ were just missing (which were coded/integrated by volunteers in their spare time – not the game company or publisher which obviously not even cared to have a look). Tournaments online or in LANs were just not possible in comparison to ALL previous versions of quake – even quake1 was better suited. Quake4 could’ve been a big hit for all those that were used to quake3 and loved it for its simplicity vs. skills needed; that it was possible to just get better, join the community in public IRC channels for chats or pickup games and improve until you play versus more advanced players from all over the world while watching live games using inbuilt tv clients or streams…

Those game companies need to focus on features people want. On fun in gaming. Unobtrusive gaming. No forced registrations or copy protection mechanisms known to be broken within hours anyways. Quake3 became a classic as its gameplay was balanced in a ‘noobfriendly’ way where even complete noobs could get a frag and have some fun/thrill by it – while more advanced players just entered their own leagues skillwise (in comparison)…

Seems with StarCraft2 there are years of development being wasted by implementing a (nowadays state-of-the-art) marketing/financial/patronizing strategy that drives long time customers away with the risk of the whole company brand being burned with them.

Response: Has the id Tech 4 engine made any video game better? I played Doom 3 and that was also a bloated nightmare.

And yes, Blizzard is making a very dangerous mistake here. I touched on it in the article I wrote about KeSPA and Blizzard that companies are trying to expand their vulnerable models by tapping every source of profit imaginable. And eventually, that’s going to dry up.

Comment by quake4_vs_quake3 on June 9, 2010 at 7:11 pm

Dear sir,

I’m writing this as a formal complaint of the utmost severity. Your comparison table of a Rock to Battle.net 2.0 was dreadfully misleading and deserves nothing short of a full reprimand.

I’ve handled many rocks in my years and can with full confidence attest to the rock’s ability of providing “Fully Customizable Games”. As youths we would throw it, sling it, drop it, smash it, stand on it, even fasten it to sticks and create an entirely new categories of games, and so forth. There was only ever one account of a lad getting served an Abuse of License lawsuit for his creative uses of Rocks, and it turned out to be a misunderstanding anyway and the whole affair was dropped.

Kindest regards,

Eustus Wilford McStodgyBottom II (Mrs)

Response: I have consulted my lawyers and they agree with your opinion. All future uses of the Battle.net vs. Stone internet meme will be disclaimered with “No disrespect meant to rocks. You break car windows very well.”

Comment by Matt on June 9, 2010 at 7:16 pm

So, back to the classic games.

Comment by quake4_vs_quake3 on June 9, 2010 at 7:20 pm

Ghetto,
I know you’re not the biggest fan of dota, but i suggest that you try heroes of newerth just to see what bnet 2.0 should have been like.

s2 did an amazing job there. amazing job.

I really urge you to try it out. your post generated a lot of interest in the HoN forums: http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=134641

Response: Feedback is definitely noted. The audience doesn’t seem too thrilled with my claim that Battle.net was the standard, but for all intents and purposes, it really was. The developers of Heroes of Newerth did a very smart thing by recognizing DotA is closer to a shooter than a real-time strategy game and went with the client-server model.

Hope I got that right. o.o

Comment by Cookie on June 9, 2010 at 8:11 pm

You all say how great game play is, but IMO its only okay.

A lot of the time it felt like I was playing CnC Tiberium Wars, especially with the protoss.

I was disappointed. And I agree completely with the BNET 2 bashing.

Response: On face value, the game plays very similar to Starcraft. And seeing as Dustin Browder worked on the Command and Conquer series, it’s not surprising the game would have that feel. But I still think people are discounting how intriguing the emphasis on positioning is going to make competitive play. If the game evolves into something special, it should look something like blitz chess.

Comment by JM on June 9, 2010 at 8:17 pm

When I was in high school, Blizzard was basically the company you could count on. It didn’t matter what the subject matter, story, or premise of a game was- if it had the Blizzard Logo on it, you knew that you were in for a solid gameplay experience. And I didn’t mind the delays- you knew that when that game came, be it next month or next year, it was going to be tight.

Starcraft II is the first Blizzard Game that I have had absolutely no desire to purchase. It feels kind of bad, but then again, I never really expected 15 years of my consumer confidence to get flushed straight down the hole.

Response: Believe me, Blizzard wasn’t perfect in the old days, either. Go look up Starcraft: Retribution and Starcraft: Insurrection if you want to see a nineties-styled Blizzard money grab. But the company did it with a smile. I don’t know if they’re capable of doing that in their three-thousand-employee incarnation.

Comment by Geoff on June 9, 2010 at 8:18 pm

Dear Sir,

this is the best i’ve read online for about.. lets say some years.
I think you cant imagine how good it feels to know there is somebody with the talent to write a person which i dont know but thank alot.
Starcraft was as written before, more than a game; Nothing on TV? No friends with spare time? – No problem, lets watch some great replays with the BIG names in it, the heros a game must have to be more than a game to become the thing you enjoy most atm.
A few years later and no spare second left anymore (still checking every few days on news, tournaments and which race is hot atm in korea (scbw of course)), my old friends and ppl i meat are talking about this new great game, this SC2. I tried so hard so many times to explain them that it cant be as great as the prequel was, but now i found words and arguments here to tell them, to explain them, to make them believe, thanks.

Korea and the progaming changed starcraft, in a good way. But how could this happen again without LAN, or the allowance to esport? It wont.
The most important things a game needs to become more than just a game are:
Balance and Heroes (humans playing it on a awesome, unbelievable, unreachable lvl of skill).

Response: The culture may not be mainstream, but the Starcraft culture is definitely fleshed. And yes, that’s precisely what they’re going to end up undoing if they put it all under the banner of one company.

Let’s just stress something: If Blizzard takes the next couple of weeks to start addressing our concerns and go back the other way, I’ll be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. If not? Then…guess I got Rock Band 3 waiting for me.

Comment by Xylol on June 9, 2010 at 8:58 pm

I have been trying to explain to my brother what this article is talking about. Today, I linked him the article as you a far better job than I do.

As you said, Starcraft 2 is a phenomenal game. The game itself is brilliant. All those dumbasses saying that MBS and automine are making the game bad are not seeing the picture. These are the people that say splitting your workers is a skill at the start of a match… really what a pathetic skill to have! Blizzard is still the same Blizzard it was 10 years ago. They still have those same great guys who make beautiful, passionate, and finely tuned games. These people don’t care about the money they make. They just want to share their cool ideas with the rest of the world and be a part of new projects.

However, now games are a big deal. People everywhere are playing them and they are a lucrative market. The people in the suits got a hold of shit, and they pay these passionate people well and give them job security and tell them to do their thing. Let us worry about marketing and selling it as well as major decisions like Battlenet 2.0. As long as the passionate creators have the resources they want to create great things and do new stuff, they are satisfied. Frankly, the game industry isn’t the only one succumbing to this disease ( it happens with scientists and research all the time), but its really fucking sad.

Response: Let’s keep sight of one thing: For the most part, video games have been the business of video games. It took less than ten years for Atari to go from a fledgling company behind Computer Space into a Warner Communications behemoth. And it took them around six years to implode. That’s what concerns me about this. The prior precedent for mammoth corporate entity is there. And the last time it happened, the video game market nearly died with it.

Comment by Uthgar on June 9, 2010 at 8:59 pm

An excellent read. Just thought I would add to those who agree with this article, or at least share some of the sentiment as the author. The strongest thing you can do as a consumer is to not buy. The masses answer with their wallets. And ultimately, you will decide what is a great item, and what isn’t.

Take it from me. I’m in the advertising business….

Response: I have a feeling the word about this game is now getting out and it will be better for it. If not? Should be an interesting sales cycle.

Comment by ExileOC on June 9, 2010 at 9:05 pm

well guys, hi there

Im one of those wacky “old-school” gamers, i played wc3 before 2004, and i think a little time later. in my really old days i was the personification of a gamer, already got always newest stuff and so on, was informed about every game that call himself “good”. well i remind the days where a self written vb script did kill mephisto in d2 endless times a sleeptime. Jeah, i was one of those, i “survived” the “1.10 release” but the game got boring (some sayin *hey it gots better than ever* – guys im talkin bout gamers – not hardcore single game nerds). Piracy of course – but Everygame wich I did call good, did i buy. And the list is awesome long.

Then there came a break, money did run off, didnt got the money for acceptable hardware nor a console… uhm i became a linux-gamer that says all lol.. Blizzard got some shiny karma in this time since their games did run amazing in wine. (Best Karma 4 Bioware )

Today, gotten back to the roots , i own some consoles, a pc wich is capable to run some really good “new” games (thoose f2p games from ea a.e) but im not really informed about games. I even dont pirate anymore, since my harddisks are fucking small compared to the seize of actual titles. So i got not many games, goin to some events, some cool stuff but nothing big – casual gamer thing ehehe…

SC2 was one of the titles i waited for, but before i will buy it – i thought bout good ol times – Ok its Blizzard, gotten famous for WOW (i never played) and its glourious Battle.net – but why i leaved d2? Cause they started to say us how to play OUR game. They even removed stuff they gave us wich made fun for lot of players (cows!). The nice people leaved and the cheaters and spammers stayed, hell who the fuck didnt had a 6 jeweled max WF in this time? Hard time for d2 as long i remind… But the harder you get confidence, the easier you loose it. So i started to read about the sequel of a loved title from me, from a corporation wich i remind to build damn amazing sequels.

And its not good what i read, my memories why i got away from blizzard did came back – also ive seen many cats running the same way, in the same direction, crossing the same street, the last time (jeah and that never alone :X).

Okay, Blizzard is a company, need to make money, ok for that you have WoW and the other useless crap a “real” gamer (i dont f**kin care if you agree to that or not) never touched, i thought it would be a title finally made for us gamers, as an excuse how they kicked us in the ass. The Hope was there after that developing time… But okay Blizzard, done when its done blah blah blah…

Well good to know it isnt, all is said, thanks from germany (sry 4 bad english)

Response: Thanks for the comment. Objectively speaking, Blizzard gives the best customer support of any company going right now, but they have a habit of fixing things that don’t need to be fixed. If you’re interested, one of my readers wrote an article talking about this. I don’t happen to know Diablo or World of Warcraft’s gameplay very well, but definitely got the gist of Blizzard’s issue with “normalizing” builds.

Comment by Jesus on June 9, 2010 at 9:05 pm

Number one hands down reason I want to see LAN play? DEPLOYMENTS! Yes I know that other people do not have this issue, but I spend 7 months every two years in a third world country with NO repeat NO Internet connection. I spent a good 3 months of my last one playing Starcraft along with half my shop. Seems stupid to me that I will have to download a damned crack to be able to enjoy a game I payed for with some friends because I dont have DSL in f-ing Afghanistan. Thanks Blizzard. Assholes.

Comment by Marine on June 9, 2010 at 9:44 pm

So where you told about the sky falling to?

Response: It’s “were” and “too”.

Comment by ChickenLittle on June 9, 2010 at 10:11 pm

Nice article and I agree with most of what you’ve said.

StarCraft 2 and Bnet 2.0 reminds me of the awesome chick you marry and the terrible Mother-in-law she comes with.

The game itself is great, I’ve been playing beta for a month now and it’s just so much fun.

Bnet, however, is very very disappointing. My fondest memories of StarCraft were actually sitting in our group chat channel after/before a game discussing the game and everything else in the world. If we met cool people we’d invite them to our channel to hang out and game with us.
That kind of interaction is so clunky and forced now. I just can’t see our community sticking with sc2 for very long at all because of this.

Also regarding smurfs, I liked the ability to go anonymous and mess around but rarely used it. I did feel it was somewhat cheesey to completely stomp on new or low level players. However we usually did keep our Guild monikers in our names and this new bnet would make it impossible to do that.

Response: The only time I never felt bad about wailing on low-level players was beating down on cocky Random Team players. They completely deserved to be annihilated.

Comment by ahz on June 9, 2010 at 10:21 pm

Well, if S2games does a good job finishing HoN’s editor, ex-WC3 modders might be able to do a little something on that. They’re a good company, at least.

Comment by void on June 9, 2010 at 10:25 pm

What’s sad is that half a year ago, Blizzard was right up there with Valve as one of the “last grand bastions” of PC gaming, companies that produced quality titles and backed them with enough customer service, support and dedication to truly make the titles worthwhile.

Now it seems that Blizzard is shifting out of that position entirely and falling in with EA following the “more capital gains, less wasted resources on consumer interaction” plan of pumping out games based on sales quotas more than on actual community interest.

Comment by S0L on June 10, 2010 at 12:50 am

[...] Re: Starcraft II What's your guys thought on this, is some of those stuff even true? The Ghetto Battle.net 2.0: The Antithesis of Consumer Confidence [...]

Pingback by Starcraft II - Page 30 - DotA Forums on June 10, 2010 at 1:17 am

This is absolute FUCKERY! There was a petition that had 251,740 signatures for them to redo the fucking match making, and EVERYTHING lan, etc. Blizzard is now a bunch of suits who want to fill their pockets at the cost of the gaming communities happyness. In my un-professional opinion this is what they did

Developers: “Starcraft two? Well the first was good! so let’s make another for the fans!”
Suits: “Fuck that. We want money. GG.”
Gamers: “WTFUX!!! NO0BZ! IT RUINZ IT! STUPID FUCKING SUITS!”

Yea. Pretty much. I just read this article. And freaked 100% balls. I have posted this on my clan website and everyone there will probably not buy SC2 now. you just lost 30 + customers Blizzard, or should I say
“blizzard/activision” Faggots.

There is only one sentence to sum this up

Greedy mother fuckers ruin the world, and now they ruin the escape from the real world, the internet.

GG gamers. Give up on blizzard, boycott the current SC2, sign the petition. Chances are at this rate D3 will be just as bad.
http://www.petitiononline.com/LANSC2/petition-sign.html

It took them 10 years to perfect the original starcraft. remember when spawning pool was 150? and tank range was godly? and psi storm did so much damage?

That was the developers, showing they cared. They fixed it. But now the developers hands are tied and can’t do Jack McAIDS about it.

Blizzard/activision PR’s are absolute Fuckheads, and I KNOW everyone here agrees. God. What the fuck is blizzard thinking? really? I would love to see one sit down conversation with a blizzard PR and get in his mind. I want to know why they want to ruin the gaming community. because if they didn’t want to ruin it, they would avert all this pay to play, fucked up match making, no chatroom bullshit. If you don’t want responsibility for player deaths due to some fucktard going Anhero over some stupid internet troll… try a little something like in your terms of service.

“Blizzard has no liability for self injury, pain and suffering, loss of life or any other medical results of playing on battle.net”
Etc etc.

We’ve all seen it in the backs of video game cases, in ToS and EULA type shit. Why can’t they do that here? Chat rooms are a necessity or it will just alienate the community from the game itself, as previously stated. It will destroy the idea of clans and friendship. It only increases internet rage, and E-Peens because they can’t determine the cause of the loss, or even say “Gg” after the game in a lobby, or be like “come to this channel for clans! WOO!” Nope.

Now it’s just “okay. We play.. and on gay maps… and… wait what? No fuck that.” -leaves-

The lack of chat rooms to vent your frustration will probably lean towards self injury, or loss of machinery. Aka punching the screen until it breaks. Lol. To be honest, if a player can’t hate on another player, and have that hated player be able to squelch, or ignore, then the system is already headed down hill. They might as well go bankrupt and sell off their stock. (that’s a little over zealous.. but.. Still.) Starcraft has set the scene for so many RTS. None that I have played came close accept for War, and 40k. They were the only other ones that were decent enough to invest money and time in.

What blizzard is doing is absolutely fuckish. they will lose money and sales on this by the hundreds of thousands. Hopefully they will delay the game and put out a MAJOR update and alleviate the pain of taking a shit sideways down the gaming communities throat and calling it a funky brownie that is better then the original. If it looks like shit, and smells like shit… Well then. You know the rest.

GG blizzard, you’re all FAGGOTS and you should FEEL BAD.

I am sorry that such dedicated people such as the development team has to deal with such anally retentive people in their company. This is why hit-men are so popular in foreign countries. Because of fucking idiots like you.

Hey Devo-Team! I THINK SOME SERIOUS FALCAWWWNN PAWWNNNCHHH!!! IS IN ORDER!! ;D

Chris Dean~
Happyglade1@aol.com

Please email me. I would like to talk more about this.

Comment by Chris Dean on June 10, 2010 at 1:22 am

Lots of crying in this article and comments =/

Comment by Syl on June 10, 2010 at 2:28 am

I personally blame Activision for all of this. The greediness of its CEO its making Blizzard push aside quality to bring a larger profit in. This is not happening only with battle.net 2.0, its also something seen in wow. Lately a lot of things that developers said that were not happening ever, are happening and with a high price.

Comment by Jofe on June 10, 2010 at 2:35 am

I recently installed WC3 and cant help but notice that it seems more innovative than SC2. Funny.

Comment by Aleksey on June 10, 2010 at 2:55 am

Well, Battle.net 2.0 is still in its infancy. We’ll see if they will add those featured the fans would like to have in the future. The game is not even out yet and you are already yelling and screaming.

I will keep giving Blizz feedback and ask to bring back ChatRoom/Lobby and custom game creation.

And I hope we can switch server from Korea, to Europe, to USA, and also hopeful for DB/match history reset.

Regarding LAN, I don’t think it is any issue. Playing SC2 on Bnet 2.0 under the same house under the same network = LAN. Try it. I have tried it with 7 of my friends, We play 4v4 and it is almost lag free or LAN Latency.

Comment by enslaved on June 10, 2010 at 3:02 am

You are a genius for writing this.

Comment by Samantha on June 10, 2010 at 3:12 am

Ok, so great argument and everything but the first half of your argument is summed up to, “Well damn, I can not pirate the game because Blizz found a way to stop it.” Sorry, but I find this to be really weak. 10+ years every SC fan has waited for this. Blizz has worked really hard on this game and what I can see, will be a great gaming experience. Help a programmer/code monkey and buy the game. Also, be thankful that they are not making us pay for the “online experience”. Do you know how much it costs to run Battle.net with all the bandwidth usage and sever stuff (maintenance, upgrades, electricity)? I have no idea personally, but I can imagine it is up there in costs.
You forgot to talk about the 3 different campaigns though that will be released and how each one is assumed to be as much as a regular game (in the US $50), which I kind of have a split stance on and from the community as well.
Also with the whole LAN thing, yeah it sucks, but really, when can you not find a WI-FI signal these days? This isn’t 1997 where we are plugging telephone cords into our computers, and if you are… I am so sorry… need a hug?:(
Also this statement made me cringe, “I have never seen one company try so hard to tell me this is the product I want.” Wait what? I have not seen an Ad at all. Maybe I am blind? But everyone is pumped about this, or at least was when they released the teaser +3 years back. 10 years of waiting tends to make people want to go bat shit insane and tell everyone and everything they know. Lets not forget the reaction people got when they also came out with the diablo teaser and what tidal wave of fan excitement came from that (including a rainbow with unicorns and some other crap).
So, yeah, I guess we don’t see eye to eye very much. But thank you for not pinning this so much on Blizz as much as Activision. I am sure Blizz didn’t want this, but they are ultimately not the ones calling the shots, Act is.

Comment by Dave on June 10, 2010 at 3:23 am

Played SC since it was a beta that my cousin showed me. Played Blizzard games for over 12 years, and finally stopped when I quit wow 2 years ago..

I thought it was dead certain that I would buy this game, but after reading this review I’ll have to give it some serious. Serious. Serious. Thought.

SC was great because the UMS maps. I played Zone Control, Evolves, LOTR maps, whatever. I loved them more than the actual game itself. Starcraft itself could never have kept me as interested as the possibility of new and different maps that I could play at will. Seems they’ve taken that away and well, I guess they lost me as a customer.

Damn.

Comment by Mark on June 10, 2010 at 3:57 am

You know, considering I’m going to be deployed when this comes out, and there’s no LAN support, I now have completely no motivation to buy this game. Sandland is NOT known for having great internet connections.

Comment by Jonathan Crawley on June 10, 2010 at 4:17 am

[...] Today, 05:01 AM #13 New addition : not from the same author, but it's just more Bnet 2.0 bashing, so I figure we stick it all in the same thread : The Ghetto Battle.net 2.0: The Antithesis of Consumer Confidence [...]

Pingback by The Lengthy Bnet 2.0 Rant - Page 2 on June 10, 2010 at 4:56 am

Excuse me, but a stone DOES have fully customizable games.

-WM

Comment by W Maur on June 10, 2010 at 5:01 am

Excellent post. I’ll still buy the game when it comes out. Well, actually I won’t, because I get a collector’s edition free from a friend at Blizzard. But I loved it enough in Beta to play it when it goes live. But you’re ABSOLUTELY 100% CORRECT about Battlenet. It’s been several thorns in my side since I was first exposed to it. Connectivity sucks, RealID sucks. Chat windows/rules suck. Matching system sucks. Single key restriction sucks. No access to EMEA servers sucks. No LAN really REALLY sucks. It’s too bad too because I’ve been waiting somewhat patiently for this game for 14 years, have demoed it at the 2007 and 2008 Blizzcon (and loved it) and did beta for four months (and with the exception of what I noted above, loved beta).

I’ll still play, but Blizzard really REALLY let me down here.

Comment by Jason on June 10, 2010 at 5:11 am

This is SO dead on. Thing is WoW since the last expansion has been exactly the same. Lots of promises and talk to keep people happy but every decision clearly comes down to how many people they can keep playing and how much money can they make.

Comment by Sir K on June 10, 2010 at 6:35 am

Thank you for writing this article. I had pre-ordered the collectors edition because I was so hyped for this game. Warcraft 3 is my most played game ever due to the custom games and the ability to play with my Australian friends (I live in the U.S.). After reading this article I immediately canceled my pre-order. It’s disappointing that this is what Blizzard has become. Anyway, thank you for saving me 120$.

Comment by Gintoki on June 10, 2010 at 7:05 am

[...] Hier hat mal einer ziemlich detailliert zusammengefasst, was ihn am bnet 2.0 stört: http://www.the-ghetto.org/content/battle-net-2-0-the-antithesis-of-consumer-confidence [...]

Pingback by Lars' Blog » SC2: Beschwerde über das battle.net 2.0 on June 10, 2010 at 7:19 am

Thx for this article. There were a lot of aspects mentioned, I did not realize yet.

Comment by Chron2 on June 10, 2010 at 8:15 am

This.

I am to the cod series what most of you are to the star craft series.
A hardcore FPS gamer who pretty much gave up on Act/Blizz after their lousy mw2 release. It sickens me to see what they are trying to do with gaming and I wont buy any of their games until they change policy. Mw2 had the potential to be the next big Fps competitive gaming icon and it failed. I fear that these changes could cause Sc2 to lose alot of the competitive scene it could have had. At this point I feel like youve spit in my face Act/blizz and I regret giving you a dime of my money. I hope your games get pirated and I hope we find a way to get by without you.

Forget the people
who actually use the products and services. Forget everything except
the bottom line. Forget your employees names they are numbers and
Forget their needs they will find a way. Forget your customers for
there are others somewhere else. Forget the present unless the future
…holds more wealth. Forget the many, for I am rich myself.
-Act/Blizzard

Comment by Athl33t on June 10, 2010 at 8:52 am

The best way to do something about it – to vote with your money. Just don’t buy it…

Comment by Andrew on June 10, 2010 at 10:35 am

You certainly raises good points. The scrapping of LAN is an atrocious backhand to every PC owner out there and the removal of the chat rooms seems like the start of stifling any sort of creative thought on the internet.

However, to just focus on the shitfest that is Battle.net 2 seems like an affront to gamers who, unlike your article states, do care about the gameplay. I know that I haven’t been playing Final Fantasy games for 10 years simply because I enjoy interacting with the NPC’s. After playing the beta for a month or so, I agree that B.N2 is in need of a complete overhaul but I think people should be focusing on the actual gameplay, rather than the platform it is on. Personally, I’m looking forward to the campaign of SC2 more than anything.

Blizzard are now part of a money making giant. There is no denying that. Just look at the insanity that is the “Celestial Mounts” on WoW. But really, I still trust them to make good, well rounded and balanced games. And while B.N2 has its problems (like all major gaming networks… Did you use XBLA when it first started? *Shudder*), I don’t think it will lessen my enjoyment of the game at all. I play Blizzard games because they are always extremely polished affairs and I will continue to until they stop making such games.

By the way, I hated the WC3 matchmaking system. This may have been because I completely sucked ass at it but nevertheless, I feel it isn’t the perfect model for a matchmaking system.

Comment by SilentPanda on June 10, 2010 at 10:40 am

Quality writeup, made things a bit more clear for me. Unfortunately, I don’t know if I can stop myself from buying SC2 because I like the gameplay too much

Comment by myopia on June 10, 2010 at 2:46 pm

I’d love to continue responding to every single comment, but it’s chewing up way too much of my time. I am reading every single comment and definitely taking advice and feedback into consideration. Your comments are not for nothing. Sorry if I didn’t get to you. I had absolutely no idea this article was going to be the catalyst for a shitstorm, and thanks a ton for giving a damn about my opinion.

Comment by Overlord on June 10, 2010 at 5:35 pm

Nice men, i like your article!
Gonna have to wait for AlterBattleNet

Comment by Ruben on June 10, 2010 at 7:16 pm

I always know sc2 is for short brain midget fucks, no heroes just cheese and cheese and cheese.
Wc3 for life.

Comment by Wcrwarrrior on June 10, 2010 at 8:11 pm

Good read, i think i will wait now to purchase this when it hits 19$ in the discount section of wal-mart. No reason other than killing some of the features i most liked about the game: LAN, Custom maps, Requiring Facebook???

Comment by BricK on June 10, 2010 at 8:47 pm

Thank you for writing this.

I’ve always thought that the main reason behind shitty DRM, microtransactions, and so on, is simply control (not piracy). The more control the publishers have, the more they can earn. The things you’ve described with B.net 2 basically show that Acti-Blizz just wants more control. We’re getting less, but paying more. I only wish that more people would vote with their wallet. I never had any plans of buying SC2, but since I did (initially) intend to buy D3, B.net 2 is kind of a big deal ©. However, D3 is looking more like WoW clone, and B.net 2 is looking more like…well not B.net!

Comment by dfn on June 10, 2010 at 8:58 pm

#83 – Fuck you.

Comment by kurec on June 10, 2010 at 10:05 pm

I hope you have the respect to not tamper this message or publish my email.
However the game isn’t even out yet and people are already exploring possibilities on making money off of a Blizzard product, namely tournaments, sponsors and trying to make it a spectator sport, and you blame blizzard for wanting to protect it’s IP?

Paying 60$ + a chunk of change doesn’t entitle you to go make endorsement and sponsorship deals that could theoretically make you millions, and even then, current Intellectual property laws of just about any country would agree to having exclusive rights to things you are creating for at least some period of time.

It might not always be in the best interest of the “sport” but IP rights when it comes to products you create is what leads the developers to make the game in the first place. So while they don’t have the rights to tell you how you should have fun with it’s product, they have every damn right to decide how you are going to try and make money off it’s game.

If you are still not happy with that… Go make your own game to try and make a sport out of it, or go run a chess tournament since last I heard copyrights on Chess is pretty much expired =P

As for functionality of Bnet 2.0, I’m aware it’s not perfect, but I see some things which to me, point towards a battlenet much more intuitive and fun than any other version in the past, they just need to work in functionality and there is ZERO doubt in my mind that they have people working on that, and that the only real failure from there part (and I quote Sean Plott on this) is more from a PR perspective since alot of press time was given to things gamers might not particularly need (Facebook integration and Real ID).

You’ll have to apologize if I don’t go to your hate party, since to me, Blizzard has been a game that time and time again have given me dozens of times the value of my dollar in entertainment and don’t think they deserve any of the hate or mistrust.

Comment by Furycrab on June 10, 2010 at 10:41 pm

I’m not worried about the long term outlook. If Blizzard takes the route where they think they can control their customers “because they have to come through us,” then that kind of philosophy will not be successful for them. In the end, if their lawsuit fears, desire to squeeze money out of StarCraft/Blizzard fans, and desire to remove reasonable rights from tournament organizers and mapmakers keeps everything close to the way it is now, SC2 will only fade away all the sooner (and SC3 will be a shitty console game). Such motivations cannot lead to success in a free market.

For me, I’m concerned about the curious gameplay choices and the design of the game itself. To the degree this aggressive CEO bullshit causes this gameplay experience to suffer, that’s makes me angry, but only for the sake of the potential excellence being trampled, not any fear about the community. People can form communities at any time about anything, and there will be other games. Excellence and customer loyalty will find a new home.

Comment by Tiptup on June 10, 2010 at 11:06 pm

@ 104, you can’t have success in a free market as a creator/artist without some IP rights, they don’t want to control the customers, they want to control the people trying to make money off the product. So obviously there is going to be some impass at some point where the organizers feel they are entitled to all the sponsorship money even though they are clearly claiming money by using somebody else product.

You can disagree, but if I make a SC2 Tournament and try to make money via viewers and sponsors, blizzard should have a hand in that money.

Comment by Furycrab on June 10, 2010 at 11:41 pm

@105,

Then, by your reasoning, Blizzard owes the owners of a lot of other intellectual properties a lot of money. Let’s start with Warhammer and Warhammer 40k, alright? Then how about we move on to Westwood and their Dune game?

If nobody has the right to do anything original with something that someone else created, then nobody is the owner of anything, Blizzard included. The traditional standard of copyright law is the novelty of what a person creates with what already exists. The mere presence of another property doesn’t justify copyright infringement. Blizzard can try to overstep that reasonable, traditional standard with “user agreements” and hold people to that, sure, but it’s still unreasonable and won’t help Blizzard or StarCraft 2 be as successful as they could be. :\

Comment by Tiptup on June 11, 2010 at 12:24 am

@105
“So obviously there is going to be some impasse at some point where the organizers feel they are entitled to all the sponsorship money even though they are clearly claiming money by using somebody else product. ”

By this logic, wouldn’t you have to pay a cut to, say, Adidas every time you played a game of football (soccer) with a cash prize using one of their balls? Or, in a more realistic example (not many people outside of professional football play it for money), poker and card manufacturers.

I really see no reason why a program should be treated so incredibly differently than a physical object.

Also, “impass” is spelled “impasse”. Kinda counter-intuitive, but hey, blame the French.

Comment by Acritter on June 11, 2010 at 3:07 am

[...] enough to give Duke Nukem Forever a run for it’s title. However, based off the info I found on this article, the anticipation and the money are probably going to be [...]

Pingback by Blizzard drawing gammer aggro | Geek Tragedy Podnotes on June 11, 2010 at 4:22 am

@ 107, Except Adidas doesn’t have the Patent rights to the Ball or the Game of football. Texas Holdem and most poker games are over 100 years old which is well beyond the protection given by copyright laws of most countries (US copyright law can be a little fuzzy in terms of how long you can claim protection). Even then, any attempt to make money is against the end user agreement.

They obviously won’t go against every little offender since Lawyers are kinda expensive, but what makes me cringe is that even in the most liberal interpretations of copyright law, people are expecting blizzard to be cool with being robbed of tons of sponsor and ad revenue, from Day 1.

Comment by Furycrab on June 11, 2010 at 4:28 am

Pingback by Frank Pearce: Chat Rooms, Cross-Server Play, Changing Account Names Unnecessary - Page 2 - Fires of Heaven Guild Message Board on June 11, 2010 at 4:36 am

@109

Obviously we want Blizzard to be able to have a share in any large revenues generated by tournaments. However, the worry is that they’ll go too far and hurt robust private competition. And with custom maps they’re already ensuring that there’s no IP protection for map creators I can’t see how that would help.

I for one don’t know if the writer of this article is correct or not in his assumption concerning interference from corporate management. He makes a good case but it could also be harmless-but-shortsighted design decisions on the part of the actual game designers; we don’t know for sure. However, Blizzard has always been in a position where it could strangle the life out of the StarCraft community if it wanted to and it’s scary to see some evidence that it might want to. For instance, requiring fees and who knows what else from every little community event, should Blizzard choose to do so, would be a mess that won’t help Blizzard in the long run. I hope they are intending to allow small competitions to thrive, but we’ll have to see.

Comment by Tiptup on June 11, 2010 at 9:39 am

There are games that have come out much more recently, like Magic: The Gathering, that still have copyright on them. You can host a private Magic tournament for money without having to pay Wizards a penny. Whether you view Starcraft as a product or a game, Blizzard’s draconian control is still absurd and against consumer rights.

Comment by Acritter on June 11, 2010 at 1:14 pm

It’s a shame none of this will make a difference, they are blinded by the dollar sings in their eyes.

Comment by Simon on June 11, 2010 at 1:47 pm

Well if the game/service suck in the eye of the average person SC2/Bnet2 will be Blizzards doom. In less then 2-3 months we should know.

Comment by AngryNerd on June 11, 2010 at 2:16 pm

The sad thing here is that SC2 is now being used as a way to measure the pulse of PC gaming. With SC2 PC gamers will be screwed no matter what happens, if it sells well many will fall for Bnet2 and only encourages Act/Bliz to do more shit like that, if it doesn’t sell enough we’ll hear the usual doomsayers saying PC gaming is dead woe woe woe and a few more PC gamers will flock to consoles.

No matter what happens, PC gaming will lose and I honestly can’t even tell what the lesser evil between the two options is.

Comment by Bit8 on June 11, 2010 at 9:20 pm

I feel like the only thing that could restore my confidence would be if Kenan Thompson stepped in during a press conference with Canessa, Browder, and Pearce all standing behind him, and yelled, “We FIXED IT! It has been FIXED” a few dozen times.

Comment by Cock Robin on June 12, 2010 at 2:42 am

I’m not much of (and by “much of”, I mean “not at all outside of WoW”) a PC gamer, but I still found this all very interesting as I’ve got deep concern for all the ways gaming companies seem to be finding these days to screw their customers.

But, I have to say it… it’s “Xbox”, not “X-box”. For as many times as you reference the console, and its online service, that mistake shouldn’t be made. I know, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not all that important, but it would be like me talking somewhere about “that Star-Craft II thing”.

Comment by shidoshi on June 12, 2010 at 4:26 pm

I’ve followed SC2 a little, and I heard that it was a wreck. “Ok”, I said, “I’ll get it when it comes out anyways. It couldn’t be THAT bad.” After this, though, I’m fairly sure I’m going to stick with good old SC. All the tags and restrictions and petty BS moves are gonna make playing SCII like bowling with the bumpers up.

I just hope my favorite stations like GOMtv decide to stick with Starcraft for most of the competitions – I’d rather for them to not have to put up with Blizzard’s bullshit.

F*ckin’ game industries – how do they work?

Comment by Boozel on June 12, 2010 at 5:09 pm

You guys really need to go outside more. Bitching about a beta? Saying wow has gotten worse with time? You mean the wow that have tons of useless talents/talent specs and where fixed? How bout having those o so fun kill x of monster y? They have slowly been working away from that each expo and guess what? They are doing a hell of a job and cata is gonna kick ass I really don’t know what to think about you guys. You guys are faux blizzard fans at best they have always acted like this just shut up and let them work their magic. No public chat channels you know why? Cause HERP DERP! they are totally correct. Give me private chat rooms and clan ones it will be all ill ever need. You mock blizzards choices yet they are the ones that make great games not you. Pre world of warcraft I doubt anyone would admit to playing an mmo and now I actually hear people talking about em. To bad I don’t know you fools irl cause I would love to gloat when blizzard makes you eat your words.

Comment by baby on June 13, 2010 at 4:17 am

Also do you people actually believe yourself when you say shit about WAH WAH CAPITALIST GREED IS DESTROYING MAI VIDYA GAMS. The call of duty series was mediocre in the first place it only got more interesting once activision picked it up. Map packs might be alittle greedy but ive never seen another game as popular come out with as many quality maps at that speed. Money does have an affect on video games but its not the kind you nutjobs are talking about

Comment by baby on June 13, 2010 at 4:22 am

@ baby, fitting name you crybaby. Why dont you go back to your mmo-champion forums and insult your fellow wow gamers for not wanting pay to play pets and mounts.

We don’t just think it will be bad because the beta is is bad, we know it will be bad becaus blizzard themselvs are saying that bnet2.0 wont have most of the features that made bnet1.0 so great and that sc2 will not have Lan. The guy to whom blizzard has to answer even talks about DLC content and how to exploit a trademark so they can bring out a titel every year( seperating sc2 in 3 parts and voila you have a titel for the next 3 years). Would be really funny if the Expansionpack would also be seperatet in 3 parts…

You like to pay 15$ for (5) 2 new maps? well congratulations to you but i wan’t a community with fan made maps and mods or even skins. “ive never seen another game as popular come out with as many quality maps at that speed.” what? so your like new to the PCgaming world?

Comment by CrazyBerzerk on June 13, 2010 at 9:14 am

I feel sorry for the people I know that was set to buy this game only to encounter bnet 2.0. Oh the game will sell thats definite just like MW2. But I have to wonder how long will its fame last. Its predecessor is still alive and kicking and despite the fact that I’m no fan of Star Craft I have to give it credit for being so appealing for so many. I may not agree with how the game works but its system of play sold a heck of a lot.

Yeah I’m no fan of Star Craft meaning I never intended to buy the game in the first place but I know a lot of my friends are going to. (My reasons for not liking Star Craft is utterly personal and well lets just say its not my kind of game… bought the first one, played the heck out of it and well still enjoyed the likes of C&C more). SC2 got my attention because I was hoping for a new system of RTS play but of course we all know its rather similar to the way th first one worked so my hopes were shattered then and there for that game. But then I had friends who were so fixated on Star Craft 2 complain. So that brought me back to looking into Star Craft 2 and what the heck happened that causes an uproar and low and behold I found this. Now since I never really cared for SC2 in the first place my concern isn’t for the game itself, rather its that the same crap that came a long for Modern Warfare 2 is now hitting another big game for the PC.

So what does this mean? Are we actually seeing a new trend on how gaming interfaces for the PC will be? I sincerely hope that isn’t so because that virtually kills the fun out of games. I’m one that avoids playing competitively and would rather enjoy casual friendly games away from net a-holes who treat games like a damn job. I play multi-player casually and usually do so because its a convenient way to enjoy games beyond what their single player has to offer. Lately however there have been trends that set that convenience off.

The day valve launched Steam was a one of them. Now I’ve come to terms with Steam now and well try to look at its good sides and other conveniences to offshoot the crap it requires me to do just to play a game. My issue with Steam is that it makes me feel like I don’t own the copy of the game I just purchased because it requires me to be online to play the games on it. Now that might not be an issue with most folks but where I’m from internet is expensive and unreliable. We have regular disconnections and crap going on so much times that when that happens we cant play. Yes there is an “offline” mode to steam but it requires some cookie file authentication that sometimes slips especially when steam doesn’t log off properly which happens a lot here due to unstable connections. Now there are some companies that also opened up programs like steam ex. Impulse so yeah though it may have some hassles and inconveniences it also has its conveniences like on access updates and you game its virtually available in any computer you log into with your account. Then IWnet pops up. A more restrictive system and brings PC down to the same limitations the console has. Given the bad rep it got I didn’t think something like this would pop up again but then came the news about Bnet 2.0.

Now I mentioned I didn’t like net a-holes playing with me. You might say that these systems with all their match making magic should help me avoid them. Well theoretically yes but in my case NO. I met more a-holes and people who were no fun to play with in such match making systems. DOW2 did it, IWnet did it, heck even Battlefield Heroes did it. So now whenever I play online I only do so with friends I personally know who lives near me. Oh they removed LAN thats right. Now I have to go through the hassle of finding them online which some of these interfaces don’t make it easy to do so. Then theres the issue with the fact that the internet in my country has no one integrated gateway that my connection to other countries like Japan or the United States or heck even Germany is better than my connection people living in the same country as I am. Hooray for 890ping… Now back to the point why I’m this concerned even if its about a system for a game I don’t even like. Well if it is a trend its bound to hit some of the games I might like in the future and well that would suck. While it is still confined to the company Activision it doesn’t mean another company will not adopt a similar system especially if they see that Activision still gains from this.

On your post though I have to say its one of the more in-depth I have read around the net. Good Work.

Comment by Domslayer on June 13, 2010 at 2:38 pm

The sad thing is that SC2 will be a great commercial success and will be new industry standart.

Comment by .GL. on June 14, 2010 at 9:54 am

So, i’ve already formed this same opinion with a whole host of friends of mine… since we’ve been playing, singleplayer against modified (some would argue better) AI’s than what the SC2 Devs have conked out in the beta release, since 3 days after it’s release. there’s a major community of people who have come to the same realisation, or similar realisations, as the author of this article, and are choosing to use their democratic right to -not- purchase this game.

for 12 years we waited for this game. even by blizzard’s considerably sluggish standards, the drag on for this game has gone on for too long.

even as we speak, people are realising that with phishing, their emails are being accessed and hacked from overseas and chineese goldfarmers, thanks to the roughshod control-gasm that is World of warcraft. i’ve had friends contact me having lost all of their toon-gear and gold, and only to find 2 days later, thanks to the “upgrades” to battle.net, their emails were hacked, their credit cards accessed, and their online banking sites throttled to the dark ages by botnets.

it’s time for blizzard to be brought out back and shot like the sick puppy or the busted legged horse it has become. i won’t cry a tear for you. i’ll play my old copy of Blackthorne on my 486, and remember the good old days when you were a small upstar company full of ideas, but i will not greive your loss.

for in your wake, a better, smaller company with flourish, and create the next generation of game, one that’ll bridge

Comment by .SCpwn. on June 14, 2010 at 7:08 pm

the gap between consumer and company, in a fair and balanced equilibrium.

goodbye blizzard/activision. from humbe beginnings to corrupt end, i can say i’ve survived your era.

Comment by .SCpwn. on June 14, 2010 at 7:10 pm

Thanks for a good read, this definatly puts me at the fence to wether or not I will buy this game. I loved SC, WC1/2/3 Diablo1/2. I liked how Battle.net was a part of the experience, but not a requirement. I also liked the fact, no I loved the fact, that I could connect to different world servers to play with my international friends.

So if I can’t do any of that, nor play LAN. Why should I buy this game? Ah well, playstation 2, here I come.

Comment by waZp on June 16, 2010 at 12:14 pm

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/110/1100747p1.html

take a look at the arrogance of Activision. its staggering. he implies angry gamers who hate the mindless products they put out are in a minority and dont know what they are talking about, and basically turns his back on the most loyal demographic in gaming.

Comment by carl r on June 21, 2010 at 11:48 pm

This article just saved me the $70 I’m sure this game will be priced at. While I am sure the game itself is awesome I cannot spend money knowing that it will promote this kind of behavior from these companies.

I’m not going to lie. If a crack does come out I will most likely pirate this game just for the campaign and thats it. I’m not proud of saying this either because I LOVE the games that Blizzard has put out in the past. However I cannot justify supporting what Kotick has done here. I know damn well its him because the real Blizzard would never have done this shit.

Comment by Juice Nuggets on June 22, 2010 at 4:46 pm

transport the develops just finishing starcraft 1 forwards in time – i wonder what they would say about this game

Comment by Peter on June 22, 2010 at 4:55 pm

This was a fantastic article. I provides stark contrast to some other developers, like the valve TF2 team. Here’s a company that allows full control to be in the player’s hands, and the development team listens to the blog requests of its player base. Its interesting, the gaming community as a whole really only wants to shell out to honest developers, (except console idiots). I for one won’t be buying this game just because of the lack of care blizz-acti has shown towards its consumer base.

Comment by some guy on June 23, 2010 at 1:28 pm

God I miss the simple days of Ridley Scott-ish Starcraft. The development of this game sure is interesting but not in the ways I expected it would be a decade ago!

Comment by Kj on June 23, 2010 at 2:30 pm

I’m buying Starcraft 2 but I agree with the majority of this article. They really failed to see what the playerbase expected and wanted, or they knew what we wanted and ignored us/made up excuses. It’s sad.

Comment by MB on June 24, 2010 at 9:58 pm

this is truly a sad day. before reading this I fully intended to purchase SC2, but now I regret putting down the $5 deposit for the game. I have no doubt the game is awesome, but battle.net 2.0 is severly lacking. There are new and better features, but most of the great 1.0 features are completely gone.
The fact that bliz-activ could care less about our input is the reason why I won’t purchase this game. I don’t think the quality community will be playing it and regardless If i did purchase it I wouldn’t be able to use half of the features without exposing my real Identiy to eveyone I come in contact with in the game.

The sad thing is poster 132 and many like him still plan to buy this game and will continue to allow bliz-activ to ignore the fan base. They will see a drop in sales, but won’t change anyhting as long as they still make money from it. I have played nearly every game blizzard has made even one from the SNES counsole.
I Love their games, but I feel the diablo 2 team split, the rise of WoW, and the purchase of Bliz by Activision hath doomed these games. I was looking foward to both SC2 and D3 but now I’m not sure If I will play either.

Comment by sss on June 26, 2010 at 8:29 pm

What I find amazing is that Blizzard is trying so hard to fight piracy.

The game will be cracked.
It will be released to the online community for free.
Probably within 24 hours of the game launch.

And yet they try so very hard to stop piracy, or so they claim.

I stopped planning on buying the game the second I heard the game would be split into 3 and that each one would cost me 60 $. I flat out stated I was not buying this game. After so many years of loyal fans and customers, because lets face it, I think everyone bought the starcraft battle chest at least once… They still manage to shit on their fans. What happened to you blizzard ? Ever since Activision came in, I feel something is different.

Battle.net 2.0 seemed weird to me even during the beta phase for Starcraft 2. RealID seemed like an un-necessary weight tossed onto the players and also seemed to cause more weird issues than good.

I will not buy battle.net 2.0

Comment by Noctem on July 5, 2010 at 2:42 am

Well, over the years I have bought Reign of Chaos three times and The Frozen Throne four times. A few times my CDs broke in my computer (shattered– a complete bitch to clean out) so I just bought the games again. Frozen Throne is quality and I responded many times. Anyway, it’s nice to have the game installed on a few computers all connected to battle.net 1.0. Hosting a room with a bot is great. Hosting games on a server where people from Europe can connect is also great. I can also invite friends to play at my house on my machines without hassle is also great. SC2 completely shits on this. I’m very disappointed. And to know that I cannot have multiple CD keys for Starcraft II? What the hell?

You’re right when you said Warcraft III is the most underrated game. It is. It’s the most underrated game of the last decade. Throw in DotA and it’s like icing on that cake. Mmmmmm mmmmmm it’s very goood. Oh wait we can’t have quality games like DotA for SCII. Not even the potential… shame.

LAN is essential for college get-togethers. Games like DotA almost require a LAN connection if you’re playing competitively; it levels the playing field a little more because some people’s connectioin’s aren’t all reliable. But a LAN tourny solves this because everyone’s latancy is the same. Last-hits aren’t hampered by random lag spikes.

$60 for part 1 of 3. Throw in all the complaints and that’s $180 Blizzard won’t be receiving from me.

Comment by jjcz75b on July 5, 2010 at 12:59 pm

I’m glad I stumbled across this while I was googling SC2 at work… Frankly I’ve been too busy to keep up with the details of what’s going on and that bothers me… I’m an avid gamer I’ve just been really slammed by life and what not so it has kinda thrown me off my ‘game’ so to speak.

So I was just about to go pre-order my special box of happy juju’s so I have at least a receipt to embrace at night for those special dirty feelings… My wife despises me for that but she needs to make room in the bed for Starcraft! She’ll get her attention later after I’ve spent my personal time with SC.

So you have some idea how badly I’ve been awaiting this game despite not being able to break away from work long enough to research it. Today however I was going to get off work at 3:30 and go pre-order and pay in full as I usually do. Then after I read this article first I was shocked and started digging around for more info on the matter. I am infuriated to say after all I’ve found out about my personally most awaited game in over a decade I will no longer be purchasing it! And this really really upsets me! Makes my wife happy though…

I was to the point where I decided it wasn’t worth buying before I even got to the part that it’s being released as three seperate parts. But that issue right there is singularly the most epic fail thing I’ve ever seen any company ever do. So even if they do manage to fix everything else they screwed up I will not purchase the game so they can price gouge me.

My history as a pirate is worth noting. I consider myself a more responsible pirate. I purchase music, movies, games and then because I seem to have some genetic flaw with remember where I put things I always lose them. So after buying something I feel I’ve purchased my rights to the content and in the event my software becomes damaged, lost or whatever I will go ahead and pirate it the second time around. I never pirate things I haven’t paid for. Admittedly I used to in the beginning days of pirating but then after stopping myself for a moment and thinking about my actions I realized I was depriving myself of ethical claims I had often held to in the real/physical world. (Worst thing I’ve done in my life was steal a small package of now-and-laters from my vice-principle in 3rd grade for telling me I couldn’t have any because I was a bad kid, never stole again). So I made a personal decision not to pirate without first purchasing; now it may still be illegal but I’ve purchases Starcraft battle chest more than 10 times because I lose the the CD-Key or the CD itself so I just got damn tired of paying for something I’ve already bought! I don’t know if that’s a legitimate argument but it makes moral and ethical sense to me… I pay my dues and then I ensure I have access to what I paid for despite the condition of the software. But at least I can say I PAY my dues before I steal! I guess that’s what I’m getting at.

So despite being a moral or ethical thief?… lol. if they fix all the problems with battle.net 2.0 I MAY considering buying one of the parts of SC2 and I’ll most likely find a way to pirate the other two. It doesn’t make sense to me to conduct myself morally and ethically while the morally bankrupt and ethically deprived profit off my personal code of conduct while I’m hoping to save up money just to take my wife on a nice vacation for once in our lives!

Legally is that wrong? Yes absolutely and I will confess to my wrong-doings. But I believe there needs to be some guidelines in the way we behave and treat one another… like some unwritten aggreement not to screw each other over just to get ahead so you can have everything you want at the expense of others. Because if we co-exist peacefully and properlly we all benefit from this better world… like some kind of… I dunno what to call it….like a SOCIAL agreement or maybe a community CONTRACT of behavior and co-existance. If only someone wrote an article or essay or something about that.

Hey can we set something up here? Maybe someone go buy the game while obviously most gamers boycott it and then they give us all a peak into SC2 live through youtube or whatever so we can see if they’re actually going to work on these issues or not? Cuz I’m all for sticking it to them when they try to stick it to us but I can see the point of those guys that say it is just the beta. So I’m saying we all hold the line and stay strong and get someone to purchase the game and post on youtube showing the gamer community whats been fixed and what hasn’t. I wuold offer to do it but…. read above comments about being busy.

Comment by Jason on July 7, 2010 at 3:40 pm

[...] that posting on Blizzard boards will now require your real identity. This is in addition to all of the issues that have plagued this game’s prerelease so far. The controversy surrounding this game and [...]

Pingback by John Harrison on July 7, 2010 at 7:35 pm

[...] after the whole debacle of no Lan play in retail copies of Starcraft 2, as well as the other numerous complaints about Battle.net 2.0 changes coming in, this RealID debacle has killed my faith in Blizzard. Whether it is true or not, I now honestly [...]

Pingback by Lost an eighth » Disappointed in Blizzard (the RealID privacy disaster and more) on July 8, 2010 at 5:53 pm

And now battle.net 2.0 and RealID is blowing up in the face of the WoW developers, as ATVI announces they will force the use of real player names onto the WoW forums. Making this announcement during the “burnout” phase at the end of an expansion is going to be very unfortunate timing for them.

Comment by Paul on July 9, 2010 at 11:24 am

Hey Ghetto,

It’s Jesus Teh 1337 | On Wheels from the warcraft 3 general discussion forum. Just posting to congratulate you on this article and all the hits you’ve been getting. I’ve been keeping up with your blog since you’ve started and it’s great to see you getting the kind of attention you deserve from a wider audience. Ironically you should be happy that blizzard’s incompetence continues to give you material to write about. You’ve become quite the expert on their failures over the years and I think this ‘historical knowledge’ makes you the ideal writer to comprehensively describe their latest and greatest mistake.

I have no doubt that blizzard will absolutely fuck up this battle net system and they will not fix it. You know how bad the ‘new’ AMM is in warcraft 3 and despite its obvious failures all calls for reform are ignored. You describe yourself in some of these comment responses as previously holding some faith in blizzard to rise up to a higher standard, but for me I think the old WAR3 AMM was my final straw. Such a joke.

Funny looking back at the old war3 forums, still the same people there, although more boring than ever, lack of game content doesn’t help. How do you find it? I don’t think anyone there would remember me anyway. What do you think?

I’m devastated about how the map making community will be affected by sc2. More important to me than the ladder game.

Comment by JesusTeh1337 on July 10, 2010 at 7:57 am

[...] Nachdem Onli zur Präsidentenwahl und Starcraft 2 (einen Verweis zu einem weiteren Rant hier) schon alles geschrieben hat, was ich auch schreiben wollte, will ich einfach nur ein [...]

Pingback by Bilder und Videos | WeltenWandel on July 13, 2010 at 8:19 am

I want to thank you personally for writing this article. I’ve too been an Blizzard fan since Warcraft – Orcs & Humans. I’ve been playing Online since the start of Quake 1. That was a fun little game back in the days but what really was a blast was Diablo 1. It introduced Battle.net and since than I became an Blizzard fan. I used to defend em in almost in every turn and way. From games on Battle.net like Starcraft to Diablo 2 to finally Warcraft 3. I did also play or I should say USED to play WoW. So this former Blizzard fan is saying that WoW was pretty tight and some of the instances had an steep learning curve. You suck, you should go home crying to your mommies and I loved it. Even raiding that that too. Than BC came along and some of the best dungeons rocked people socks and it enforced crowd control and the if you suck go cry home to your mommies. Than WotLK came and well I started to doubt BLizzard after removing Crowd Control, make everything too easy, Welfare epics and finally trying to appeal to the Facebook crowd instead of the loyal fans who been paying your coffers. I am saying WotLK made me quit WoW and I was saying at least we have Starcraft 2.

Long story short folks, I got into SC 2 beta by the Gamestop Promotional system. When I got in I was heavily disappointed. Blizzard basically bended over Battle.net and raped it like the that one guy from Deliverance did to the fat guy. They got rid of chat rooms because of Spam bad move, Got rid of LAN beacuse of piracy bad excuse, they made custom map making a total nightmare, you can’t create your own custom games like you did in Battle.net 1.0. What is worse in my mind is that your Real Life Names are posted in your profile thanks to the Evil Patch 13 and around that time was the Facebook deal. I’ll post my reply on that more. Anyways they turned something excellent into something crap. I hate to say it Starcraft 2 Wings of Liberty will be my final game from Activision Blizzard. They fucked up a good thing and it’s a sad day. It will sell millions and in an monkey see-monkey do industry people will see more of that.

The only way to stop this is to stop buying from Activision-Blizzard. If people started doing that than Blizzard will shape up and try to do things they used to do. I’m no longer an fan of Blizzard but instead an old man trying play the games that’s fun. Thank you Ghetto for writing your articles lately. You just need to get more people on board and more people started to see the light or else we will have our future games with features that’s left out on purpose in the name of profits. That my friend is a sad day.

Comment by Vendetta on July 15, 2010 at 4:03 am

Guys, thx 4 posting this, i used to be a huge Blizzard fan since Warcraft II came out, but now i can see the ugly truth. This has to be acknowledged with some ppl i know and were supossed to buy the game blindy.

Comment by tenchi_pioneer on July 16, 2010 at 12:56 am

I generally agree with your article. I also have that same trouble finding a game in warcraft 3, my rec is 62-32 lol – i spend like 6 hours searching for a game(obviously im doing something else in the meantime). I was thinking of playing WoW again, but the game jus seems like its not my thing anymore and since they banned me twice before – once for selling gold which okay rightfully so but the problem was it was too easy to make gold i was level 40 or something and had 500 gold i couldnt do anything with – cant blame me for wanting to sell it ; but got banned pretty quickly. I started up again later on, got to level 50 and kept my 500 extra gold this time in which case i got banned for reasons still unknown to me – i somehow broke the user agreement stating i cant have two people playing on an account( i dont know how this happened i have no friends who play wow sooo…. i guess i got hacked so i get banned SWEET DEAL!).

Didnt mean to talk about that but i jus started ranting because its so silly to me. I was going to buy starcraft 2 – i was skeptical about the gameplay more than i was with bnet2.0 and im very glad i read this article because i was about to preorder it. I can live without starcraft 2. It woulda been nice to have a fresh commmunity with an upgraded starcraft 1, but starcraft 2 isnt giving me what i want to pay for…. and part 1 of 3 how ridiculous is that?

What really concerns me is how Diablo 3 is going to be implemented with no chat channels? It seems like the communities that they created through Battle.Net and its chat channels is going away, great idea – way to try to sustain that strong community considering chat channels can only benefit you – lawsuits lol you must be joking.. why not just remove chat all together.

I will also add that i do somewhat agree with blizzard taking steps to make sure they get their payed dues for outside activies involving their games – i don’t see why people are so upset by this.

I don’t know if down the road ill end up buying starcraft 2 but as for right now im going to wait to see what the sales are like and customer feedback says.

Also i find it funny the people who say were being ridiculous for bashing bnet 2.0 when it isnt even out yet… it comes out in a few weeks and yes i can see the date you posted your response. WE SHOULD KNOW WHAT WERE BUYING BEFORE WE BUY IT, stupid american mindframe lol(yes im american) – its 2 weeks away lol damn people are dumb.

I read every post here because my summer job requires nothing but staring at a computer screen so ive been doing a lot of research on trivial stuff like video games etc etc. and it seems like blizzard because of activision will never be the same again, its sad because there are very few gaming companies you could rely on.

Wonder if Diablo 3 will be $80 and have 6 parts…. im sure activision likes that idea.

Comment by bmwiley on July 16, 2010 at 1:48 am

MY name is Robert, and for atleast 10 years, I have been a wanderer of B.net, a man who has plumbed the depths of it’s community and seen the filth that dwells in it’s darkest corners. And honestly? I’d take the mind-numbing disgusting hole over what Blizzard is doing now.

B.net was not perfect in any regard. It was easy to hack most games, it was commonplace to find people using maphax for DotA and other WC3 maps, or to go on D2 and see someone using so much modded gear that it glitched aspects of the game like picking up items. And of course there were so many trolls lurking in the chat rooms, it sometimes felt like 4Chan was on a constant raid of this place.

But you know what? I still loved it. Why? Because it was a haven, a place I could disapear in for a few moments to chat with old friends and make new ones. Where I could go to be amazed at the skill used in some of the most amazing maps ever made. DotA is among those and has become such a phenomena that it has sparked new video games independent of WC3.

But now, that is gone. Like an anime from japan brought to america by 4Kids, everything that was good has been gutted from it and replaced with excrement, fresh from their Anus-Mouths.

Until I read your blog, I was ignorant of these facts. And I was going to buy the game, if for no other reason then to enjoy B.Net 2.0. Now, I don’t even know what to think. Blizzard was great. It was a wonderful comany. But not, they’re nothing to me.

I’m not a Christian or anything, but I hope those who made this lusterfuck of retarded shit possible have a special place reserved in Hell for them, righ along side The Nazis.

Enjoy your Ass-Pineapples, Blizzard

Comment by Ratos on July 17, 2010 at 4:13 am

[...] Raw Anger [...]

Pingback by homebr00d - Starcraft 2 on July 21, 2010 at 12:45 pm

No changes have been made since this article was written? is SC2 being released with Bnet 2.0 unchanged? can you please update what is going on once it is released? i really enjoy SC2 but your article has pointed out so many things that make me not want to buy it. Thanks for your information

Comment by JcDz on July 23, 2010 at 12:08 am

I plan on doing so. In-fact, I’m going to go ahead and disclaimer the article right now.

Comment by Overlord on July 23, 2010 at 2:48 am

[...] in 1998, but it’s mostly because Battle.net 2.0 repulses me. If you want to know why this is, go here and read this excellent article summarizing everything that’s wrong with Battle.net 2.0. You may retort that his point of view reflects only that of high level players (among which I [...]

Pingback by tempest in a teacup » Random thoughts on recent happenings on July 26, 2010 at 8:40 am

I’m not buying anything of Blizzard’s until this RealID thing gets canned. I don’t really have anything to hide, but I don’t like the idea of giving up anonymity. It’s something I’ve grow way too accustomed to over the years. I like having the ability to play on an account that my friends don’t know about. I like having the ability to play without fear of someone breaking down my door. Lastly I like most Blizzard games, but they’re turning into something I don’t want to see.

Comment by Jacob on July 26, 2010 at 10:27 pm

So…what if StarCraft II is really good? Like, who gives a fuck about Battle.net and Blizzard.com and all that? Why not just play the damn singleplayer and then hop online and just try and have fun and play your friends on the weekends? I never really cared for the intricacies of the old Battle.net when I played SC1 or Diablo 2, all it meant was a way of playing SC or Diablo with my friends instead of against the computer. Battle.net 2.0 seems to be able to do that, so all the other BS doesn’t actually matter for the time being.

That being said, I’m not buying SC2 until december-ish mainly because my laptop doesn’t have enough RAM.

Comment by Dan on July 27, 2010 at 1:34 am

[...] like to get the game. First article is a easier read, 2nd link is more collection of the sources. The Ghetto Battle.net 2.0: The Antithesis of Consumer Confidence Blizzard: "No plans for chatrooms, crossrealm play" Actually you probably want to keep [...]

Pingback by StarCraft2 Is Here - Who's got it? - Page 5 - StrafeRight Forums on July 28, 2010 at 4:26 am

A great article, a bit revealing and enlightening, thank you for sharing. I can’t do anything else rather than supporting those serious issues, as Blizzard ( what ever remains of Blizzard dream team ofcourse ) not only let down it’s hardcore funs, it completely turned a handy decent internet service (b.net) into a police state control machine.
No chat rooms/channels, no Clan making mechanisms, no tournaments, no map-editing publishing, anonymous games in game lists, account contol, IDreal contol, stupid facebook integration and a load of crap for reward system in personal avatar account are some of the radical new changes that the so called battle.net 2.0 had and disappointed me.
Battle net remind me a regime control device rather than an internet ingame service, think about it.

Comment by Michael Varelias on July 28, 2010 at 10:22 pm

I really wished I read this before I shelled out $60. I like the game but hate the multiplaying and Real ID. It sucks. Plus they were very vauge with the character naming and now I’m locked in with a simple name and cannot change it to what a real gammertag should be. Unless they fix this and other aspects I will NOT buy any more Blizzard games. EVER!

Comment by Rafy on July 30, 2010 at 11:11 pm

I enjoyed your article muchly, it pretty much summed up exactly what I’ve been telling people for months now, and then some. I think it’s sad that bliz has gone so far downhill. I remember when they were awesome. I remember when they CARED about us. I remember when i was so hyped for this game, and couldn’t imagine deciding to not shell out the money for it.

Blizzard DOES have a habit of fixing that which isn’t broke, reminds me of some of the original SC patches that fixed glitches that weren’t really that big a deal, that in some ways had become PART of the game (take for example zerg unit stacking, for anyone who remembers the good old days of stacked hydras and lings. ). Battle.net 2.0 is definitely in this category. In a lot of ways, there wasn’t that much wrong with 1.0, and it’s sad that they’ve trashed it. I blame activision.

Comment by NeonFlame on July 31, 2010 at 4:27 am

Thank you for this in-depth commentary. I think games are going down the shitter because of greed like that and as long as they are going to continue making money doing it, they are going to keep doing it.

What will help is encouraging studios like stardock and Relic who are making efforts to make games worth playing and without these crazy schemes to dominate the universe.

I hesitated today in front of the SC2 box, but bought Red faction: Guerilla instead. Reading this article, im glad i did. I knew Activision/Blizzard was tilting toward bad policies but getting all the details here, im very glad i didnt buy SC2.

Comment by Eric Francis on August 1, 2010 at 3:06 pm

Unfortunately I wandered out and bought this game without doing my research first.

In my opinion, Blizzard has always been a has been, second place finisher. The good studios come up with the great ideas and Blizzard swoops in an steals them.

XCOM, Dune, Dune 2, Warhammer, Total Annihilation, CnC, Red Alert, Rome, AoE,Civilization.

These are the real big boys of strategy gaming. Blizzard is a joke, don’t take this the wrong way Starcraft fans. I played for a while but it was never as great as the “originals”. Always felt like a knock off of the great strategy games of the day.

I am extremely angry that I have purchased Starcraft 2. I was pressured into it by my Blizzard fanboy friends who all said “I’m pretty sure it has LAN, it would be stupid to take that away.” Well, now look where we are. If I had some type of video camera, I would be recording the burning of my Starcraft box and DVD and sending it to Blizzard.

Yes, I am that angry by this. I’ve been had. Duped. Tricked. Lied to. Betrayed.

I haven’t bought a single game this decade because of the direction the industry was moving in with the DRM and control. I have always voted with my wallet and gone and done other things if a game does not meet my criteria for purchase. I do not pirate games. I do not even consider myself a gamer anymore due to this garbage the industry is spewing out. I don’t even have a windows machine anymore.

Overlord, thanks for your insight – though I don’t see how anyone with half a brain couldn’t have seen this for themselves, no offense of course. The sad reality is that the way games were once played is not how it will be in the future. You can either accept this and continue to be led to slaughter, or you can walk away from these meaningless time wasters and apply yourselves to an actual purpose in life as I have chosen. My gaming experience goes all the way back to Ultima, yes that one. No, not UO, no not Ultima VII. But “Ultima: The First Age of Darkness”. The original. Go look it up, I doubt any of you would even know what it is. Oh and when you do look it up, take note of the release date. Point is, My gaming history goes back a long way.

This industry has been moving in the wrong direction for way too long. There is no way to stop it. The machine is coming. Either get in or get out of the way. I choose to get out of the way.

Comment by Anonymous on August 2, 2010 at 9:06 pm

No Chat Rooms? You have got to be kidding me. LAME.

Comment by Anonymous on August 3, 2010 at 2:33 am

[...] First off this is basically going to be a summary of http://www.the-ghetto.org/content/battle-net-2-0-the-antithesis-of-consumer-confidence [...]

Pingback by Bnet 2.0 Explained: The Logic Behind Blizzard’s BS | Badle.net - Chronicles of the Fallen on August 4, 2010 at 2:27 am

Blizzard was one of the few game companies I really, truly respected. I looked up to them. And I bought every single one of their games since Warcraft 2. Expansions included.

But this is just too much. I was so hyped up, hoping to get something like Warcraft 3′s brilliant gaming community. Custom maps, more than anything else.

I only wish I had read this article before buying the damn game. I simply trusted Blizzard. Pre-order was a must, no point in reading the news. I’ll get it anyway, I thought. Not like I have a lot of time to read the news anyway.

Valve. That’s currently the only company I still kind of trust. And I say “kind of” because they also do have a lot on their minds. But at least they give me something of real value for my money. Even with all it’s downsides, I love Steam. And I love Half-Life, Left4Dead and Portal. Simple and easy, just like it should be.

Blizzard, please turn back. Don’t follow the path of the wolves.

Comment by CrazyB on August 5, 2010 at 12:16 am

I’ve bought into the hype and even though I haven’t played the original SC I went a head and got my self the collector’s edition.

Since them I am enjoying the game very much but I must admit it diddnt felt right when I tried to get a match and couldn’t find the chat rooms to see if someone wanted to play. Of course there are none…. I could not understand this, even WoW allows chat, what the heck.
This alone pisses me off the scale, and the Real ID thing what a pile of steaming crap.

Gratz, blizz you have sold me a game in which I cant decide on who to play with. Why would anyone want only to play random people. Sure I could add “friends” wich I would have to find trough the forums and them expose my name….

This all feels very wrong, WoW is nothing like it used to be and SC2 is lacking severily in the Bnet department.

I dont regret buying the game by all means but I will feel much better as soon as someone releases a crack for lan play.

Just yesterday the servers had problems and I couldn’t get a match. I hope Blizzard can understand that they are severely damaging their reputation with those of us that in 10 years will still be playing SC2 and not those who in 6 months will have moved onto some other stuff but still represent the majority of buyers.

I love gaming and I just keep getting sadder.

Comment by Oak on August 5, 2010 at 10:14 am

Blizzard’s death started in December of 2007 when they announced they would be merging with that hated of entities, Activision. Once the money men take over all that is good about something is sacrificed for the money that can be taken from it. The moment I heard that SC2 was going to be split up into 3 parts and sold separately I knew that Kotick was calling the shots for Blizzard and the company I knew and loved, which had created some of my favorite games of all time was dead. I have been buying, and playing, Blizzard games since Orcs and Humans and have never played a bad game. I trusted the games that were made and more importantly the company that made them, not so now.
The problem I have with things like RealID and BNET2.0 isn’t the inch they take but the mile they will eventually take. I have never seen such actions be the limit of what happens. There is always more to come and you will see more of this behavior in the future as it is no longer about the game or the gamer just the profit that can be made from them. I don’t buy games from EA, Activision and now Blizzard games because of the distrust I have for such companies.
The saddest thing for me is the talented developers that used to work for a great company like blizzard and now have to work for Activision. I hope they will find better jobs at better companies as I expect you will start to see them leaving soon.

Comment by EvilArchie on August 8, 2010 at 7:56 pm

[perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, paid-up, non-exclusive, license, including the right to sublicense to third parties] Blizz is preventing what happened with DotA on their move on to Heroes of Newerth (which is a great game btw)

Comment by Geleia on August 9, 2010 at 11:36 pm

I’ve just bought this game and to be really honest,I don’t see the need for this online activation.Have been playing it for about 6Hours(without using the internet at all) and it’s an OK Game,but I’ve played better.The cut scenes look great but I want to play the game not watch it.It’s been overhyped and a lot of the gameplay has been done before.I have played other Blizzard games that are a lot better and maybe it’s time for them to try something different.I’ll probably play this for a little longer and then put it on hold.Then I can play it again when i’ve nothing else to play.My advice, wait till the price drops or when it goes to Budget.Like it’s been said the Gaming Industry is all about money now and it’s such a shame.I have been playing computer games since Win 95 and on various consoles before that.Loyalty don’t seem to count for much nowadays.Money Men have ruined everything and their constant greed for more will cause a lot more in the future. Grandad 64 and still gaming.Life is like a box of chocolates,you can buy them but your not allowed to eat any.

Comment by GRANDAD on August 19, 2010 at 5:31 pm

You may be interested in this blurb that was at the bottom of patch 1.1, released 8/28. It seems to bring good news regarding channels and custom games:

“And Beyond…

We are reading your posts on the forums and creating lists of features and bugs to address in future patches. We have mid- to long-term plans to further evolve the Custom Game experience, and soon, enhance our social features with the addition of chat channels. We will be sharing more specific information in the coming weeks. As with all of our previous games, we will support StarCraft II for many years to come. Your feedback and participation is critical in making this not only the best game it can be, but also the most engaged gaming community in the world. We look forward to the implementation of patch 1.1, as well as sharing our plans for our future gameplay and Battle.net features.

We’ll see you online!”

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/692221

Comment by Jon on August 30, 2010 at 4:00 am

Sorry, patch hasn’t actually been released yet, and the post about it was made on the 27th not the 28th… Must be half asleep.

Comment by Jon on August 30, 2010 at 4:02 am

I don’t have internet at home and I live in South Africa where broadband is expensive. Thank Blizzard for making a wonderful useless game.

Comment by NV on August 30, 2010 at 6:26 am

167 Responses to “Battle.net 2.0: The Antithesis of Consumer Confidence”

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