Blizzard CEO'S Message to Starcraft 2 Players

The chat patch is finally here I believe, I can hardly believe it, the mute Battle.net 2.0 for Starcraft 2 is no more. I will be one of the first ones in the new channels just saying hello to everyone. Ah, the good old days of Starcraft 1 and the sense you are not flying a battlecruiser by yourself in a dark galaxy far far away is finally gone, or will be gone soon! Can't wait!

The full letter is as follows:
Greetings StarCraft II community,

Blizzard has always been proud of the success that the StarCraft series has achieved globally, and we've been especially grateful for the passionate support of our Korean players. When we set out to create StarCraft II, we knew we were taking on a monumental task: we had to not only deliver a fun and balanced game, but we also had to create something that could live up to the legacy of its predecessor in Korea and thrive in the unique gaming culture that's evolved here over the past decade. Which brings me to why I wanted to write this letter to you today: to address some of the questions you've had about our decisions, our plans, and our goals for StarCraft II.

First, I'd like to touch upon the evolution of StarCraft II and Battle.net. Both are bigger, more ambitious, and more complex than their predecessors, and we're committed to providing new features, great new content, and outstanding support for years to come. You've started to see some improvements already. We've enhanced how custom maps are sorted and viewed, and we have more upgrades planned to make it easier to enjoy a wider variety of game types. Our development teams are hard at work on developing new ladder and custom maps, and we'll soon be unveiling several custom games made by the StarCraft II team that we think will surprise you. And while we're confident that we've released one of the most balanced RTS games ever, perfect balance is a never-ending battle -- and something we will continue to strive for. We've constructed the new Battle.net to make it easier for us to monitor how players are playing, collect and analyze feedback, and ensure that StarCraft II remains the ultimate competitive real-time strategy game.

We've heard your feedback regarding public and private chat channels as well and will be adding them in an upcoming patch. We'll also soon be introducing seasons to the StarCraft II ladder; as seasons progress, players will be able to access records of past accomplishments. Around the same time, we'll be introducing new pro and semi-pro leagues. In addition, Battle.net's social benefits will continue to become more evident as we add new games to the service. Players can already connect and communicate with friends across World of Warcraft and StarCraft II, and in the future, they'll be able to do the same in Diablo III.

We realized from the start that players would want to access and use StarCraft II and Battle.net in different ways. That's why we created a variety of access options to suit different play styles and levels of commitment. Players can choose from multiple time-based passes if they know they'll play intermittently, or they can choose an unlimited-access pass. In addition, Korea is the only region where World of Warcraft players can play StarCraft II for free!

Finally, I hope many of you were able to watch the finals for the first season of the Global StarCraft II League this past weekend. I'd like to personally congratulate FruitDealer for his hard-won victory and thank all of the participants for making this first season so successful and memorable. The GSL is just getting started -- the Season 2 preliminaries begin on October 9, and matches will be broadcast beginning October 18. We'll be welcoming a new batch of players, including some very familiar faces, and we're looking forward to seeing what strategies and surprises they all have in store. Gom TV is hard at work ensuring this season will be more epic and accessible than the last; you can visit www.gomtv.com for details or to catch any of the GSL matches you might have missed. I'd also like to mention that we are actively encouraging the creation of amateur StarCraft II tournaments as well, and we look forward to supporting more community tournaments at that level.

We continue to receive questions about the status of the negotiations between GomTV and organizations such as KeSPA, OGN, and MBC. We recognize many of you are interested to continue watching StarCraft I matches on TV, and as long as there is interest, we would like to see that continue as well. As GomTV is our exclusive tournament and broadcasting licensee in Korea, I cannot provide too many details about their ongoing negotiations other than to say that I am aware of the status of the negotiations and remain optimistic that these parties will be able to reach agreements that allow this to happen. Contrary to what you may have heard, it would make us very happy to see both StarCraft and StarCraft II matches continue to be televised at the professional level. These are both Blizzard games, after all.

I hope I've addressed some of the questions you've had over the past couple of months. As always, we appreciate the continued feedback from our Korean players, and we look forward to hearing more from you as StarCraft II and Battle.net evolve. See you online.

Sincerely,
Mike Morhaime
CEO and Cofounder, Blizzard Entertainment

Important point, this is Mike Morhaime to the Korean Public.. not to the Global public. This is in response to the uncertainty that is the Korean perception of the Kespa Blizzard Gom negociations.

It's basically everything we've heard in the beta. Bunch of empty promises. Where's the straight talk.

I don't know if I'd call it empty promises.

1. It makes COMPLETE sense that they would still want StarCraft: Brood Wars to run as long as it's sanctioned by the appropriate company who holds rights (GOM) and therefore setting a precedent for these two games and any E-Sports game that comes out in the future for them. Think about it, they still get money from giving power to GOMtv... no matter what game at this point. The more Blizzard games in rotation, the better Blizzard is.

2. They will continue to balance the game over time. This is no different than StarCraft which took years, not months, to get to where we are today in StarCraft II. It will take them further time and expansions to balance it out rather well.

3. The many different cost options in Korea are very amiable to their gaming society and needs... which if you are unaware, is the way ALL games are over there, not just Blizzard games or MMOs.

4. Chat Channels, Pro Leagues and Seasons (Tournament) patches have been confirmed since before beta, it's just a matter of finishing them.

5. GOM TV GSL is coming out again soon, so he's not lying about that.. though the price cost was something that surprised people... but for a prize pool justified they had to take a different angle to ensure enough of a "pull" to this tournament as there is nothing "prestigious" set yet by tradition which the MSL and OSL have established (for example)

6. While it may look stupid and annoying right now, I see no fault in saying "I'm optomistic that we'll find an agreement with all parties". Let's face it, he didn't say next week, and in the whole scheme of 10-15 years, this will be a blip in the radar.. or rather, a footnote in the history of E-Sports.

I see NOTHING empty about this letter... in fact, I felt it was pretty straightforward. In 2-3 years when we look back on this thread, we'll be able to say "Yup! Everything happened". That's my thought.

Not really a fan of seasons. If my ladder ranking gets reset I fear it'll destroy all ambition to play ladder games. One of my goals right now is to get full diamonds, and I'll not want to go through the hassle of doing this again if my record gets wiped.

Source plz?

~LoA

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Originally Posted by LordofAscension

Source plz?

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Bam.
http://www.fomos.kr/board/board.php?...1&field=&kwrd=
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/view...opic_id=158765
http://www.gosugamers.net/starcraft2...n-sc-community

And the biggest Korean unease is the possibility of losing TV-broadcasted games, considering GOMtv is online.

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Originally Posted by Blazur

Not really a fan of seasons. If my ladder ranking gets reset I fear it'll destroy all ambition to play ladder games. One of my goals right now is to get full diamonds, and I'll not want to go through the hassle of doing this again if my record gets wiped.

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Yeah, what's the point, anyways? Isn't the matchmaker supposed to move people around continuously to find their place? Unless it doesn't works as it's supposed, i don't see why there's a need to reset anything.

Which sport does NOT have seasons? If you watch any sports at all do you brag "my favorite team has not lost this year" or "my team has over 9000 wins since 1908". Not only that, but the reset will get rid of all the players who did their placement matches and never played again, so the ranks will be more compact and accurate since there are less placeholders. There will be some people who do the same thing, but there will be far less just because of the fact they didn't like multiplayer and will never play again. You will still be able to check where you were in the past seasons, but you need to play to keep where you are at. Seasons make the game feel more competitive because if someone comes in months later, they can come in at the beginning of a season and be able to be on top instead of being 3000 points down when they start and never have a chance to catch up.

I don't know. Lack of chat channels hasn't affected me. Brought enough friends to, and met enough friends on, that it hasn't been some sort of Battlestar Galactica, but without the people to create drama with, like you're implying.

Good job either way. It's a nice module for e-sports and for those who haven't been as lucky as I.

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Originally Posted by silencbank

Which sport does NOT have seasons? If you watch any sports at all do you brag "my favorite team has not lost this year" or "my team has over 9000 wins since 1908". Not only that, but the reset will get rid of all the players who did their placement matches and never played again, so the ranks will be more compact and accurate since there are less placeholders. There will be some people who do the same thing, but there will be far less just because of the fact they didn't like multiplayer and will never play again. You will still be able to check where you were in the past seasons, but you need to play to keep where you are at. Seasons make the game feel more competitive because if someone comes in months later, they can come in at the beginning of a season and be able to be on top instead of being 3000 points down when they start and never have a chance to catch up.

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Meh. Do XBOX 360 leader boards have seasons? What about other non-Blizzard games which offer persistent leader boards? I'd rather they implement a decaying point system, so players who don't get any games in in several months begin to lose points/rank. The longer they wait between games, the more games they'll have to play to stop their experience from decaying.

I just know the day I no longer see those precious metal icons on my account is the day my interest will wane considerably in this game. It would be like getting to the end of a game and losing your save point. I simply won't have the ambition to go through the effort climbing the ladder all over again.

Never played much WC3 so it never affected me there, and it never really bothered me in Diablo2. But getting my ladder record reset in this game would sap my desire to play ladder competitively.

From what I'm gathering, you will be able to see how you do in every season and have them for records. A new season will have a new "season" record as well as the "all time" record.

I don't believe it changes your league of skill, but resets your rank and points within your division.

Blazur: While you're example of Xbox isn't a bad one, it's just a different scope. Xbox involves games with leaderboards. StarCraft is being approached as an electronic sport. A better example would be comparing baseball or football to it. You may understand that the Minnesota Vikings are a Diamond League team, and the St. Paul Saints are a Platinum level team.. but at the end of a season the stats of win/losses are wiped clean but will always be accessable in records if you want to know how the 2009-2010 season went. If you went so far, I bet you can look up the franchise win/loss record of all of their games.

The Vikings shouldn't be doing placement matches to ensure they still deserve to be in the NFL league after the season's over.

Seasons for Arena works for WoW. Why can't seasons work for SC2?

BTW I was very surprised at the outcome of this league. A Zerg player taking home the prize was very surprising, considering Zerg are currently the underdog race. I got to watch it cuz my buddy at work subscribed to GomTV, and I watched it with him on a shared monitor. It was a pretty epic series, especially the TLO games.

Nope, still don't see what's the need for periodic resets.

If the system is well implemented, it would work continuously, and you wouldn't need to catch anyone, because if your skill improves, so will your position. If you don't play, your position would need to slowly get lower over time.

Periodic resets only serve to upset the matchmaking system, throwing away useful data for no reason, and to say "guy x won this season".

Team sports often trade players between seasons, causing a possibly large change in their effectiveness year after year. You are one person, so your skill level probably won't have a very wide variance, so why bother?

Unlike other games, Blizzard has a system of leagues and divisions. It would be a shame if people completed their placement matches once, never played another game, and then were left taking up space in a division for the rest of eternity. A decaying pints system wouldn't work, although you could reset someone's ladder rank if they don't play for a certain amount of time, and that would solve the problem.

Ultimately, I think the goal is to rotate people into different divisions, so they get a different group of people to compare themselves to.

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Originally Posted by MulletBen

Ultimately, I think the goal is to rotate people into different divisions, so they get a different group of people to compare themselves to.

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Ehhh... i think i never played against someone in my own division (guardian phi), so how does that make any difference?

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Originally Posted by Norfindel

Ehhh... i think i never played against someone in my own division (guardian phi), so how does that make any difference?

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You are ranked against the other people in your division. If you pay more attention to your rank than your points, you may end up in a division where you can't get above position 4 because the top 3 people are hundreds of points ahead of you. On the other hand, you might be 1 person hundreds of points above everyone else and have to look at your points in order to find other people to compare yourself to outside of your division.

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Originally Posted by MulletBen

You are ranked against the other people in your division. If you pay more attention to your rank than your points, you may end up in a division where you can't get above position 4 because the top 3 people are hundreds of points ahead of you. On the other hand, you might be 1 person hundreds of points above everyone else and have to look at your points in order to find other people to compare yourself to outside of your division.

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To my knowledge, the system is totally undocumented, and i have no idea how it's supposed to work well if it compares "points" that depend on the people in your league, which you don't ever face, and the "points" are earned by winning games with people outside your league (because you never really play against your same league, unless it's a cosmic coincidence), where the top player maybe has half the amount of points of the top player in your league.

If it works like that, i'm not surprised it requires periodic resets, because it doesn't really works. Anyways, i think that the resets won't really make it work, just upset stuff still more and keep things in constant motion, in an attempt to hide how bad it is.

I did really got that right? It just looks too stupid to be real.

In this case, I can see pros and cons with tournaments and seasons. The question is if it aligns with what people will want or appreciate.

Having my account get constantly wiped in the beta was what destroyed my ambition to play then. That is, once I got past the novelty of playing a new game and getting some experimentation in. I play games to win, and when it's a modern competitive game I play to get a good record or rank up in whatever fashion that game offers. Having an online stats page or leaderboard is great for motivating me to continue playing and improve. But I just know having that wiped would destroy that same ambition.

I understand there's a reason to reset stats with the way the system was designed. Players who get constant games in will have unreachable scores that casuals will never be able to surpass. If they maintained history of our rankings over each season then I suppose it won't be as disheartening, and might even provide further motivation to play to improve your game over each season.

I second Blazur.

Haven't even thought about playing SC2 until chat channels are put in.

SC2 as of recent for me is the biggest letdown of any highly anticipated game.

1 step forward and 2 steps back. Over and over again it seems. Large game companies just can't do anything right anymore. Pathetic.

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Originally Posted by Nottoway

Haven't even thought about playing SC2 until chat channels are put in.

SC2 as of recent for me is the biggest letdown of any highly anticipated game.

1 step forward and 2 steps back. Over and over again it seems. Large game companies just can't do anything right anymore. Pathetic.

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I Lol'd.

See it's funny, because you generalize, hyperbolize, have no idea what makes a good game.

I think it will just be the specific ladder you're in that resets. Your career wins and past standings will be viewable, you'll just have to fight your way to the top of the ladder again.

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Originally Posted by MulletBen

I Lol'd.

See it's funny, because you generalize, hyperbolize, have no idea what makes a good game.

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And I LOL'd at your response to his comment, as he it got completely right!

This game wasn't amazing to start with. It certainly didnt meet the hype, but ok, hardly any game will. But now it's getting worse.

Now I LOL each time I see these patch updates. Where LOL = vomitting with rage at the pathetic 'balance' changes that are being made.

Personally, I get a huge thrill from the competition of the addictive laddering system. This game is obviously way more fun than SC: Brood War, but I guess not everybody values competition so much. Either way, I'm sure Blizzard is crestfallen that the game doesn't meet some of your guys' high standards. :P

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Blazur

Having my account get constantly wiped in the beta was what destroyed my ambition to play then. That is, once I got past the novelty of playing a new game and getting some experimentation in. I play games to win, and when it's a modern competitive game I play to get a good record or rank up in whatever fashion that game offers. Having an online stats page or leaderboard is great for motivating me to continue playing and improve. But I just know having that wiped would destroy that same ambition.

I understand there's a reason to reset stats with the way the system was designed. Players who get constant games in will have unreachable scores that casuals will never be able to surpass. If they maintained history of our rankings over each season then I suppose it won't be as disheartening, and might even provide further motivation to play to improve your game over each season.

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Regarding the beta wipes, I can completely agree with that style of wipe and it's demotivating effect.

They have clearly stated that we will be able to track our history/total stats aside from our current seasonal stats. (at least I believe so, that's how I read it) and that's something I like. I view it the same way that WoW Arena was. When you got to the top, you kinda just "sat there" and arena'd but had no way to really enjoy it all that much. When a reset happened, it was a fresh breath of air, a good jolt of enjoyment again. The same feeling worked on both the top and bottom end of the skill scale and breaks monotony/stagnancy.

I also will appreciate being able to wipe some of these 2v2/3v3 and 4v4 teams I will probably never play again.