The future of Battle.net Info (from Blizzcon presentation)

[A Black Falcon]

There's both good and bad stuff here. A lot of this sounds interesting, but... PAY download maps? Seriously? No, that's NOT a nice thing to do. They should all be free, without question.

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/49834/...tion-Recap

* History of Battlenet for various Blizzard games and what looks like a very brief glimpse of the UI for the upcoming version for Starcraft 2
* Launched originally with Diablo in 1996
* The world's first matchmaking service integrated completely into games, has been used with starcraft D2 and War3
* Battle.net actually has more players on it than WoW with 12 million players to 11.5 million for WoW
* Lessons learned from War3, The Good, great matchmaking, easy to play with friends
* Random teams feature was incredibly successful "if you're going to lose, you might as well lose with a teammate you can blame"
* Mod community was great too
* The Bad - disorganized chat, disconnected from the single player experience, wasn’t integrated at all, new players got pwned in a hurry, felt intimated, ladder system served only the most hardcore and elite
* Core values for Starcraft 2 BNet always connected experience...
* Battlenet and Star2 will be integrated into 1 unified experience
* Battle.net characters and persistent accounts, remember Diablo 2 how you had to play your toons for a certain amount of time or they got deleted? Not anymore
* Always connected to news, new content and friends (sounds like steam)
* Demo of Battle.net...
* Starcraft 2 login screen...looks like a sci fi version of the WoW Login screen, comes up when you first load the game, enter your battle.net account info and login
* Layout is very nice; top of screen has a single/multiplay option, top right has a profile pic of you, and what looks like achievement points?
* Main part of screen has a start campaign button, possibly saved games, right side has news
* In the campaign screen the main part of the screen shows the campaign, and on the right side you see options for skirmish and challenges
* Friends list is integrated into the game when connected, even when playing single player
* *cough* steam *cough*
* Demoing replay feature in single player, can play replays during single player
* Profile shows your achievements, your info, match history, etc
* Full achievement system in Star2, will get a pop up when your friends get achievements, achievements unlock player avatars (profile pictures), also unlocks decals, these decals show up on your units, structures etc
* Game will auto update
* Cloud system, can play some single player on one computer, go home and pick up where you left off (assuming you connect to Bnet)
* Competitive Arena For Everyone
* Improved match making, play options that all players can enjoy, casual, coop competitive or hardcore
* Ladder play not just for hardcore players anymore
* matchmaking lets casual players compete with casual players, as you play on the service you get put into different leagues
* Leagues range from practice, all the way to elite, in your league you are ranked against 100 players of your skill level, everyone has a chance to win their division in their league, there are end of season tournaments
* Casual Play Features - Practice league, co op skirmish, random teams, challenges, and custom games
* Different rules for casual players, friendlier, slow down game speed, anti rush, etc
* Party System - works like WoW, you get invited to a party, lets you join games together, party leader selects game types, after playing about 10 games you get placed in a league of your skill level
* Join a Custom Game screen - easier to find games with maps, game play types, and player skill levels
* Lots of filter options
* Game Lobby...can have a private lobby, invite friends, configure teams, and after you can then broadcast to the game list so that random players can join
* Very handy, lets you set up a game with your friends the way you want first prior to opening it up to random players to join
* Prevents Smurfing (experienced players creating a new account with a new profile to pwn noob players)
* Blizzard community - keep informed about all the games you are involved with
* You can keep informed of all Blizzard titles
* *seriously its steam*
* *but like all in game based and pretty, the features are just steam*
* Chat system is an IM style chat; bottom of screen has a windows like taskbar with all your different IM windows
* When in game PM's will pop up like IM's
* Connecting the Blizzard Community together
* Observations - people like to play with real life friends, real life friendships can be based on in game friendships... and stalkers
* *ok I added that last part*
* Players want to play with the same people in future games
* Discussing limitations of WoW, Xbox Live, Myspace/facebook, Google Talk community services
* Battlenet Real ID, see and communicate with friends based on how you know them
* Talk to friends cross game, and cross realm
* Achievement system that spans across games and characters
* Achievements will carry over from character to character, so you don’t have to redo them on every character you make
* Friend network stays intact for all future battle.net games
* Will be able to know who your starcraft 2 friends are in future games such as Diablo 3
* Can keep in touch with friends from one game to another, for instance, in WoW can tell someone from starcraft 2 to come and raid in WoW
* The friends list changes are happening in WoW as well, this functionality is on top of the existing friends list on WoW
* Battle.net real ID has to be mutual, can’t just add people as friends without them acknowledging you too
* Parental controls and choosing what information you wish to share will be present
* One more announcement... :-( not the beta
* The big huge one more announcement is... the custom map community, warcraft 3 custom maps were more popular than the original games, ie. Defense of the Ancients
* Starcraft 2 map editor more powerful than Warcraft 3, map publishing, you can publish your maps onto the service so everyone can find it easily
* SC2 Marketplace, easy to find and browse maps
* Able to rate maps, free and premium, yes free maps and premium maps
* Portion of the revenue goes to the map creator
* Doing this for mod creators to be able to create bigger and better content
* Plan to have a lot of free content though