Battle.net 2.0: The Antithesis of Consumer Confidence | Hacker News Reader

Battle.net 2.0: The Antithesis of Consumer Confidence

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107 pointsbinbasti39 comments

The article is pretty accurate. What I don't understand is this: In SC:BW, players responded to an inadequate Battle.net by moving competitive Internet play to private and emulated servers. It wouldn't have taken much effort to keep them on Battle.net -- just a few nice organizational and ranking features.

Obviously, Blizzard isn't a fan of this, since it bypasses their copy protection as well as being totally out of their control. That's why they removed LAN, why they go after emulation projects legally, and I naively thought it was part of the reason they were motivated to make Battle.net 2.0 better. I liked their initial statements about why LAN was gone, where they said things like "we want to make Battle.net so compelling that everyone will want to be on it for all their games." Right on!

However, it appears that now they've done exactly the opposite. Battle.net 2.0 appears so unusable for any form of community or competition that I guarantee an iCCup or bnetd equivalent will be up a year from now, and the whole "hardcore" scene will be using it, and anyone will be able to pirate SC2 and connect to it. Why would anyone want this? It's not a complicated chain of inference; whoever is in charge, I'm sure they can see this coming equally well. Who benefits?

"It's not a complicated chain of inference; whoever is in charge, I'm sure they can see this coming equally well."

Homo BigCorpManagerian might beg to differ. I suspect the reason of all this insanity is very simple - decisions are taken by mid/high level managers who don't really "get" gaming or Starcraft and just live in their Excel Spreadsheets and such. The post even refers to this possibility in the initial paragraphs

"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.”

It might be a legal issue- elsewhere, it's been mentioned that it is much easier to be in the clear operating private servers via existing LAN capabilities. Lawsuits have been sent to bnetd people and Battle.net 2.0 reversers.

Yeah, absolutely. They seem quite serious about preventing Battle.net emulation legally, and I'm sure that's a big reason why they eliminated LAN -- but if there's enough motivation, I doubt they can really succeed; nobody ever does. My opinion is that the best prophylaxis against private servers would be a really great built-in server.

>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.

You know, even with online-play only I might have been compelled to buy SC2, eventually after the price comes down.

But without international play I will have no choice but to schedule when I play around when other people are playing. I stopped gaming regularly when I entered college, and now it's something I do every once in a while, when I need to disappear from life for a while - it's not scheduled, and I don't want to have to worry about scheduling unless I'm scheduling a LAN party. - also an impossibility.

So no dice. I'd rather hack on 0 A.D. http://www.wildfiregames.com/0ad/

I started to skim after:

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.

SC2 is far from a marketing nightmare. Gamers are eager for a new Starcraft; Blizzard would have to screw up much, much more than online-only play for it to bomb.

Are gamers actually eager for a new Starcraft game? It's been my experience that Starcraft players are eager for a new Starcraft game.

I'm not much of a gamer at all and I haven't bought a PC game in forever but I'm seriously considering Starcraft. The lack of LAN play and the forced tie-in to Battle.net is a bit of an issue -- my wife likes to play as well but it's not worth another $60 copy.

Starcraft sold 9.5 million copies worldwide over the last 10 years. 1.5 million in 98 alone. (According to wikipedia at least) that is a lot of Starcraft players that could be eager for the new game. I know at least one person that pre-orded it two years ago when it was going for 45 bucks or so.

No, that is not a lot of StarCraft players. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (a game I have not interest in, personally) sold 4.7 million units in it's first day. That's 3 times as many units in 24 hours as the entire year of StarCraft sales you quoted. Over 5 million sales in it's first month in the US alone, compared to 9.5 million over 10 years worldwide for StarCraft. Was StarCraft a big deal in it's heyday? Sure, no one is trying to deny that. But compared to the modern gaming industry, it's a drop in the bucket. Modern Warfare 2 apparently has approx. 25 million unique players as of March 2010. We live in a world now where a video game release can outdo a major motion picture in openning weekend profits. StarCraft may have a venerable history and loud crowd of fervent fans, but they have a frighteningly small portion of today's gaming crowd, especially in the US and UK.

Note: Sales data from Wikipedia, which has links to the original articles with the results.

You are comparing a game that came out in 2005 for seven platforms - counting mobile - with one that came out in 98 for PCs/Macs. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty_2) I think the game market in general was smaller then. A better comparison would have been Starcraft vs Counterstrike.

Starcraft II will have the same advantage that the Wii did by pulling in many adult gamers that spent hundreds and hundreds of hours playing the original game. I concede the point that the first person shooter Genre has always had a larger user base than the real time strategy genre but I still think that perhaps there could be a lot of demand for the RTS genre that has been marginalized in recent years as things have moved towards MMOs and the more modern FPS games. It will be interesting to see how it plays out and how blizzard is able to leverage their huge (paying) user base to market the this new release.

Fair point (though those numbers only include Xbox360, PS3, and computer, not the myriad of mobile incarnations). There could be a lot of RTS players out there who have been quiet over the years, just waiting for this opportunity. But the same way the post brings up Street Fighter 4 (a non-FPS modern sequel to original old school game with "big" following) and it's ability to parley huge buzz and vocal fanbase into decent but not great sales, I have major doubts about how StarCraft II can stack up against the current industry standards of success. Even more so if they are alienating their core demographic by removing cherished multiplayer features.

Maybe this will find success not through the older generation that remembers the original, but instead by giving rise to a new generation of RTS players who never even knew what they were missing in this FPS and MMO dominated world.

I agree that many gamers are keen for StarCraft II - but I think that the OP was describing StarCraft as a "disaster" in the context of how Activision usually approaches marketing its games. There is a new Call of Duty almost every year - keeping mass interest in the series alive continually. Thus to Activision - for whom the marketing cycle is almost annual and built on continual release so to speak - the original StarCraft could definitely be considered difficult to market in the sense that there haven't been StarCraft releases in the last few years.

Despite this, I agree with both you and the OP - few games have as much "cred" as StarCraft and I think Activision Blizzard have done a poor job marketing it despite huge anticipation. It will probably still succeed though since the game itself is actually quite good.

That article was horribly written. It went off in a thousand different directions and had no storyline. Also, the valid criticisms are entwined with misconceptions and inaccuracies that undermine them. I appreciate getting a read of the current sentiment but it was really hard to read.

This comment was horribly written. If there's a thousand different directions and no storyline, why don't you point out how things aren't necessary to your summary of the actual story? Point out misconceptions and inaccuracies?

Your comment is arguably less worthwhile than a factually incorrect comment- at least there's a point there to allow for a discussion to ensue. You just serve to quash discussion with a fiat "yeah, not up to my standards, pointy knees, you know."

This is a request to raise the level of the discourse. If the original is lengthy, directionless, and inaccurate, post something concise, direct, and accurate.

(I'd also note that somehow, when you essayed some actual thought (that I also replied to), you didn't get anywhere near the number of upvotes. Any thoughts? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1417708)

Maybe it was horrible. At least it was short.

If brevity dominates your desire for quality, you may be misplaced.

I started to lose track of the narrative somewhere between Modern Warfare and Tiger Woods. I scrolled down and got the battle.net vs stone graphic, which seems like a nice summary, but I don't see how it relates to "the antithesis of consumer confidence".

There should be a third column with Battle.net 1 and all ticks.

The article is off base. Starcraft 2 is fun. The hardcore community accounts for a small portion of the sales, just like in anything. If you listen to the rabid fans you hurt the regular players.

This is the battle.net expierence to a normal player now:

* Login

* Optionally start a group with some friends (who can be conveniently imported from Facebook)

* Choose 1v1 2v2 3v3 or 4v4

* Wait for the match to start

* Play a game

* Repeat or Logout

It's quick, it's fun, and starcraft 2 is going to sell because blizzard is a golden goose until proven otherwise.

I think a lot of folks are quick to marginalize the hardcore community, which indeed accounts for a fairly small portion of sales.

However, why do you think SC2 has the amount of hype that it does? Why do you think that, ten years after release, the Starcraft Battle Chest is still #2 on Amazon's PC strategy sales rank (holy shit!) [1]

My guess is that the great majority of the word-of-mouth that keeps games like this afloat after the initial 6 months or so comes from hardcore players. This seems even more pertinent for SC2 in particular, since Blizzard plans on releasing it in three parts. If it can't hold people's attention for a couple years, they're going to be missing out on potential sales soon. They shouldn't throw away their loudest evangelists.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/StarCraft-Battle-Chest-Pc/dp/B00001IVR...

Addendum: Plus, remember that "hardcore" players of WC3 basically spawned off an entire genre (DotA) in their spare time -- it's not likely that anything of the sort would be produced on Battle.net 2.0 with the mapmaking restrictions outlined in the article above.

I agree. Hardcore players build maps, build websites, make clans, write reviews, organize competitions, write tactics guides, build mods, make funny youtube videos. They are the difference between a product you play for 30 hours before discarding and one you play nightly for three years constantly demanding that all your friends play with you.

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

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

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

I'm more worried that expectations are simply too high for them to meet this time.

I have no doubt that they'll see an initial rush of sales. That's just to be expected based on hype. The real question is whether it has any staying power or not. I'm leaning towards the "it can't possibly meet expectations" side, but I could be wrong.

What's important to point out here is that you not just "Play a Game". You are playing a game based on what probably is the most advanced matchmaking algorithms ever made. It seems that after the critical mass of about 30k players during beta, every single game was a long and thrilling match against a fully equal level opponent. When the beta started I got matched into copper league (the rock bottom) and when the beta was over I played in Diamond league (the top) and it was all made possible by simply hitting a play button and playing against the perfect opponent so that I learned something every game.

This article was horrible. It was reminiscent of when Valve first unveiled Steam. Back then everyone hated the idea of Steam constricting their games. There was a huge mainstream petition going around to prevent Steam from being released. Even I didn't want to accept Steam. But I think Steam is a huge success, I buy all my games off steam. I have all my friends on Steam and I know what they are playing and can jump into their games whenever I like. While BNet2.0 won't have the large scale digital distribution system that Steam does. I see a similarity.

Also, in this article the author focuses solely on Starcraft II. BNet2.0 encompasses ALL BLIZZARD GAMES. Even World Of Warcraft is getting updated in the new Expansion to support some of the BNet2.0 features. The idea is to build a platform that connects all Blizzard gamers to all Blizzard games. At Blizzcon 2009 on of the VPs of Blizzard gave a demonstration of BNet2.0, talked about the vision, and where they plan to go with it. They are trying make a quality system that will be useful.

Lastly, BNet 2.0 will introduce a kind of Map Store. SC II's game editor is very robust and allows you to create some very nice custom maps, campaigns, etc. Map editors will be able to sell their maps on this store. I think this may appeal to some people on HN more than the article itself.

When Steam first came out, people didn't just hate the idea of Steam constricting their games, they hated the actual implementation of the client. The client was bloated and unstable, and the Counter-Strike community in particular was upset by the fact that Steam was being forced on them even though it didn't confer any significant advantages over WON. During the first week, people had authentication issues with the client not allowing them to play games that had previously worked fine. At one point, someone cracked the exe to not use Steam and the result was better game performance, which was further evidence of how poorly the client was implemented.

The main thing that people like about the Steam client now, as you mentioned, are the client's community support features. People also like the Steam store's frequent discounts. Steam community integration didn't exist until late 2007, and 2007 was also the first year that they did a major holiday sale. Before that point, most people were either neutral on the system, or disliked it because the client was a waste of resources. Its memory footprint was big enough to make a significant performance impact on older machines, which is significant when you consider that Counter-Strike, the most popular game on Steam at that point, was a game from 1999.

People eventually came to like Steam, but that wasn't until Steam began functioning as a service that added value to a product, rather than an impediment that devalued a product. The Battle.net 2.0 is plagued with many of the problems of the original Steam client, and it confers very few of the benefits that the present-day Steam does. People don't just hate the idea of it, they hate the very client itself and will continue hating it until Blizzard does something to fix it. Forcing it on the playerbase when it is still in its current unpolished state is making a lot of people very upset, and reasonably so.

Steam didn't disable LAN play.

Also: He focused on the Starcraft 2 features of Battlenet 2.0 because that was, you know, relevant to an article on Starcraft 2.

Additionally, how is Battlenet 2.0 going to "connect" Starcraft 2 to World Of Warcraft? How does your Starcraft 2 rank matter, at all, in World Of Warcraft? This is a genuine question, since I haven't played either game.

> Additionally, how is Battlenet 2.0 going to "connect" Starcraft 2 to World Of Warcraft? How does your Starcraft 2 rank matter, at all, in World Of Warcraft? This is a genuine question, since I haven't played either game.

The only tie-in I've heard of deals with SC2 Collectors Edition. Purchasing it gives you a rare "Mini-Thor" pet in World of Warcraft.

The connection is actually not very metaphorical; it's being able to chat across the two games.

The use case is that you can jump into SC2 and invite your 2v2 teammate to play with you even if they're playing some WoW character you don't know and you don't even have a WoW account.

I think this is an accurate commentary about what's happening: http://xkcd.com/743/

Well, the SC2 beta phase one ended two days ago. With all this feedback, I wonder if Blizzard would make any changes to Battle.net 2.0 before the official release date (7/27). Usually Blizzard is very receptive to the feedback of the fans, but I think it's too late and too much work to get Battle.net 2.0 to a state where the author would be satisfied before the release date.

In any case, I expect Blizzard to refine their products after release until they are perfect, just like they always have. Hopefully, they will continue to refine Battle.net 2.0 as well.

That's the thing- B.net was at a "perfect" point, relative to the current implementation, about 8 years ago.

I've played Blizzard games for years and years. All the Warcrafts, Starcraft, both Diablos. When I was younger I played them more obsessively, these days my gaming has been rather casual.

I've been in the beta for a couple months. SC2 is great. The matchmaking is fantastic. The loss of LAN play doesn't seem that big a deal (to me) when compared to all the gains.

However, I feel that not being able to create a custom chat room for you and your friends to chat is a big miss. The chat feature of Battle.net 1.0 is probably the biggest reason why the Starcraft / Warcraft X / Diablo X community is so strong and so persistent. It is the various custom chat lobbies (friends, public, clan, special interest, etc.) that created the community in the first place. Facebook integration simply cannot compensate (and, in fact, seems rather silly).

My concern is that Activision-Blizzard is doing THEMSELVES a great disservice by eliminating chat rooms (well, that and the fact that I enjoy the community aspect). The reason I'm concerned is that I want the company to continue to thrive and make more good games. (That and also because I own a bit of their stock in my ROTH.)

Additionally, I think the lack of LAN play and aggressive legal pursuit of alternate servers is currently aimed more at getting Activision-Blizzard a slice of the eSports pie than preventing piracy. Anti-piracy is probably as solved as it's going to get.

So this article was a wild ramble, but I like that there's interest. Let me sum some things up about SC2 and battle.net, completely unofficially and without inside information.

StarCraft II is trying some new things. They are taking control over more of the experience than they did before. That cheeses off a lot of people, but they have the opportunity and technology to do it and want to improve the experience in lots of ways instead of just the core game, which of course will be great.

The front end has been a mess by Blizzard's standards, I think. But it will evolve and get much, much better than its beta incarnation. StarCraft is a game that has held up for ten years plus and that is totally the intention on SC2. Blizzard released a patch for Diablo II earlier this year, so it helps to think about the long term.

And finally, Battle.net is an emerging network that's also in beta in its current incarnation. You can't serious if you think that it's not going to grow hugely in usability and capability in the next few years. And it's not like they're going to be supporting dozens of titles. Battle.net has got to be their avenue to making money off of non-MMO games, so they are very motivated to make it great.

“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.

In what way does requiring people by force of law to do things a certain way "improve the experience in a lot of ways"? How would the experience be diminished if Blictivision acted less dickish?

Had a hard time reading this. Seems like you need to understand the problem ahead of time to really get what he's driving at - too many tongue-in-cheek references to really follow. Also, .main p{line-height: 18px;} should be removed.

I was in the Beta since the very early versions, probably patch 4 or 5, not sure. To be honest, I'm not a super hardcore player. I play every day, and I play a lot, but I'm not all gungho on clans and stuff. To me, Battle.net was just a clever way to keep piracy under control.

The game is still super fun, and I still will buy it when it comes out.

If I wanted a more social game, I'd play an MMO.

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