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Battle.net 2.0 Article Series >> Rumoured Battle.net 2.0 Additions >> Pg 1 | (Pg 2) | (Pg 3)
References Galore
Here are the other two articles in the series, which also uses quotes from this page:
- Battle.net 2.0 - The Next Generation Gaming Network - 4th August
The introduction to Battle.net 1.0, and the feats of Blizzard, hints at the future. Know your Battle.net history! - Definite Battle.net 2.0 Features - 1st September
The biggest list of known changes to Battle.net on the web. Confirmed by Blizzard and puzzled together for a coherent picture.
This is the last page of the last part of this series, and is all about the sources and quotes. As for the ‘blues’, they die so fast, it’s even a source on its own for it. If you find any typos here, it’s a quoted typo! This is the source for all the three articles, and should be a majority of all quotes relating to Battle.net 2.0. Enjoy the read!
Blizzard’s keeping details about the new B.net under tight wraps, but I was talking with a rep and he said that there is a “chance” that the new b.net servers for SC2 and D3 might be on a different server schema than original b.net… meaning that they would have no interactions with older game clients. (i.e. they won’t have the same channels and couldn’t whisper each other—essentially an entirely seperate b.net)
Just giving you guys a heads up.
I’ve lived in Austin for almost 2 years and Blizzard has a small outpost of operations here. I have made friends with some of the managers for Blizzard and found out the following:
When D3 comes out, Blizzard will be making major changes to battle.net. All players will have a universal battle.net account for all games. They will start selling a $6 key chain with a digital face that updates every 10 minutes or so with a new 11-digit number. That 11-digit number will be your password. This will make it nearly impossible to keylog or bruteforce accounts.
The programming that is going into D3 is totally different than D2. They are not updating from D2-D3 like they did from D1-D2. They are rehashing the entire underbelly of the game and using many of the things they’ve learned from WoW to make it more secure. Duping items is going to be impossible. The way it was explained to me was: “It’s going to be a game with WOW architecture but with a D2 skin.”
I asked, but don’t have any word on weather or not it will be pay-to-play. With security measures like the keychain-code, I’m sure it will be.
There are additional plans to streamline item-sharing between different characters, one suggestion being to allow items to be traded or sent through whispers.
[...]
Pricing for the game is still being decided, but don’t expect to pay subscription fees for access to Battle.net. Sure, there’s always the possibility that different membership tiers will be introduced later on, but nothing we heard during our chat suggested that the team has anything other than a free-to-play model in mind for Diablo III’s online play.
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| 1UP: Can you talk about any specific Battle.net changes that will be made for Diablo III?
RP: Battle.net is in constant evolution; for each game we really add a lot of features to Battle.net. And right now we’re really focusing on the Battle.net features for StarCraft II. But we definitely have been keeping Diablo III in mind also. I think probably sometimes towards the end of the year, we’re going to really start talking about the new Battle.net features as they pertain to StarCraft 2, and a lot of those features will carry over to Diablo III. |
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| Diablo 3 Wiki Competitive play seems to get the focus when you talk about mp games, and it’s awesome and we’ll have some, but we’re not talking about yet. But co-op was our focus. And it’s a key to why Diablo has done so well. Play over Battle.net, join your friends at any time. We have a lot of improvements to Battle.net. Whole newer version of it. It’s going to premiere with sc 2. you can be sure everything Starcraft 2 uses we’ll take advantage of and many more cool features. It supports easy communication and connection with other players. Matchmaking. Get online, find friends, have a good time quickly. More co-op battles, and a game that supports that. On the multiplayer side, Battle.net isn’t ready to premiere yet, but we’ll have more about that in the coming months. |
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| Onlinewelten With World of WarCraft you have a subscription-base MMO, however, in the past StarCraft and Diablo 2-players used the Battle.net for free. What about the future? Are there any new features and will it cost something? Well, with the Battle.net we’re still doing a lot of work on it right now. we really want to do a lot of features and keep it like the premier gaming portal in PC-gaming. So, we’re not really annoucing anything yet but we’re hoping that around the StarCraft 2 Beta we will really start to talk about Battle.net features. |
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| Battle.net Bashiok: One thing that seems to be a fairly consistent experience for a lot of people when they first picked up Diablo II was their introduction to Battle.net. And it wasn’t generally a positive one. Most people, including myself, went home and installed the game and started playing. Over maybe a few weeks or months they’ve finished the game maybe a few times, they had a ton of fun, but they keep playing and trying to find more items. One day while loading up the game they notice the “Battle.net” button and decide to click it… and, their characters aren’t there. They have to start over. Any of us would have gladly played on Battle.net (in passworded games if necessary) just to have that online/trading option for their character available to them. It felt like a lot of wasted time to find the actual game, which was on Battle.net. While “starting over” is something almost every Diablo II player is going to do any way, the lack of on-screen instruction or indication as to what the different systems meant left a bad taste. To help avoid that type of situation we’re going to try to find ways to encourage Battle.net character creation first and foremost. |
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| MTV It’s basically a gamerscore. For now the points are just a ‘WoW’ character score. As we graduate to that Blizzard Account system, which is right on the horizon, it will switch over to a Blizzard Level. Your ‘WoW’ score would be just one factor that will go into your Blizzard Level. And rather than call it a ‘score,’ we just wanted it to be like you’re leveling up on Blizzard games… You’ll have this Blizzard identity, and you’ll be able to see things like ‘Oh, this guy was great at Diablo III, but he never played Starcraft and he was mediocre in WoW. That sort of thing. Eventually, our plans are for the [WoW] Achievement system to become an account-based system. |
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| Diablo 3 Wiki Q: One of the problems of playing on D2 on Battle.net is that there were so many power gamers who would crush everyone, or you’d get younger players who were tough to put up with. A: We’re looking at features and functionality to improve battle.net and to increase accountability online. Details to reveal in the future. Part of that is how you design your game. Foul language filters can be gotten around. If you make a game that encourages players to co-op and get along with each other you will encourage good play experience. |
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| Diablo 3 Wiki Q: In d2 many overpowered players on Battle.net. Any solution to that in D3? To stopping cheats? A: I can’t talk about specifics at this point, but in the new version of Battle.net security is a big priority. The security is much stronger. Being able to prevent cheats is one of our biggest focuses. We realize that those really hurt the community. |
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| StarcraftWire.net Chris: And we don’t really want to go into too much details about that but we are continuing to enhance the Warden. WarCraft has a lot of low level things that are going on to make sure that we can ensure security as best we can, and make sure there is no cheating going on. You know, it is a constant battle and we pay a lot of money to fight that constant battle. We intend to do exactly the same thing with StarCraft II. You know the game is basically client+router for games where it really counts, but if you want to go off and play on your own, you can basically play off the network. However, we definitely want the games count towards your record, to be controlled, so that we can see who is disconnecting and that sort of thing. And then… Ah, hopefully that answers your question. |
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| Source Wilson: We’re working on a new version of Battle.net, and there is a major revision in how it works. The goal is to simply provide the best online experience that you can find in any game. If you’re playing a Blizzard game, we want you to be part of the Blizzard community. We want people to find their friends quickly, to communicate with them, and to play together. And we focus on that, but I cannot be specific, that’s up to Battle.net to announce. |
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| Crispy Gamer: Diablo is more fun to play with friends, or in a party. You can solo it, but it’s so much more fun to play with friends. With the social communities like Xbox Live or Steam, having a community list within the UI is almost a needed staple now. What are your plans for Battle.Net?
Wilson: We have a new version of Battle.Net that we are planning on unveiling in the near future. I’m not allowed to steal its thunder by talking about specific features, but essentially our goal is to provide the best online experience to players that you’re going to find anywhere. At Blizzard, we know our fan base. We feel very close to our fan base—that’s one of the reasons we hold BlizzCon events and the WWI events—and we hope we give our fan base an unprecedented view into how we operate, and a really strong connection to us, so they know we’re one of them, and that we really love our fan base. We want to provide them with a way for them to stay together, for them to communicate with one another, and play together much more easily. And that’s what the new Battle.Net is all about. |
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| [An item in the beta appeared in player’s mail boxes. The message seems to indicate that WoW-accounts can be upgraded to Blizzard Accounts at a later date:]
Thank you for making the switch to a Blizzard Account! As a special gift of appreciation, we would like to present you with this small, frosty friend. May he lead you to new adventures across the face of Azeroth and beyond! (source) |
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| StarCraft 2 Wiki 1) Is it possible for replays to contain more in depth player statistics such as average clicks per minute, number of hotkeys used, etc.. ? Karune: Replays will have much more info available in them that will include more detailed stat tracking, as well as other useful eSports related features. |
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| Crispy Gamer: So what are you most excited for, and what makes you most nervous about bringing back such a highly-esteemed franchise?
Pearce: The basic RTS experience isn’t something that’s unfamiliar to us—right? We’re not worried about that. Some of the ambitious goals that we have in terms of the online experience and Battle.Net—bringing that to the next level, and contemplating the things that are going on in social networks and other online gaming services like Xbox Live—I think that’s where we’re going to have some of the biggest challenges. Crispy Gamer: Is the online community element something that you’re thinking about adding to Battle.Net? Pearce: It’s something we’re talking about. We’ve got such a big community surrounding StarCraft. There’s a big community surrounding World of Warcraft and there’s a big Blizzard community in general, and we would definitely like to do more with that. Crispy Gamer: Are you looking at Steam as something like—not just downloading games through Battle.Net—but the community as well? Pearce: It’s really interesting, and we’ve been looking at Steam even before they brought those features in. |
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| Speaking to VG247 at Games Convention, Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce said that Diablo III’s requirements from the major Battle.Net upgrade currently being worked on at the firm will be specific to the game itself.
“Diablo III will have its own unique needs in terms of what Battle.Net provides,” he said. Pearce also revealed that the team working on the new Battle.Net is a separate division within Blizzard. “The Battle.Net team is actually a separate group of engineers working on that functionality, he added. “So, they’re working with the StarCraft II team and they’ll be working pretty integrally with the Diablo III team as well.” No date’s been set for the release of the Battle.Net 2 upgrade as yet, but we do know it’s going to ship alongside StarCraft II. So that’s probably next year. |
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| Ausgamers.com The way we handle cheating is almost the same across all our games. Battle.net is the same group for all of us except WoW - but they have representation there as well. Can I give specific examples? Not really, because it’s kind of technical and I’m not very technical. But the same group that work on Diablo 2 worked on WoW; worked on StarCraft; worked on StarCraft 2 - Security is their obsession. I would hazard to say we have the most security conscious and experienced staff in the world at solving this problem and that’s what they will focus on. It’s one of the reasons why the online group is a common support group for all us - we all benefit from the experience of all the previous games. |
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| Blizzard Quote: |
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| Blizzard Blizzard Entertainment is currently looking for a director of user experience to join the team working on Battle.net, the online gaming service used by players of our Warcraft real-time strategy, StarCraft, and Diablo games. The advent of eSports has made Battle.net more important than ever in providing a service to match players, both individually and in groups, with opponents of the appropriate skill level. In addition to focusing on optimizing our matchmaking functionality, the director of user experience will help grow Battle.net into a more dynamic, interactive service for our online community. Responsibilities
Requirements
Pluses
To apply, please send a cover letter, resume, and salary history to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). |
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This is the last part of this series of articles. We’ll see more of what happens at BlizzCon. Take care, and remember to report news in the news submission, or send me an e-mail at leord[AT]incgamers[dot]com.
