What Blizzard is Doing That is Making Me Doubt in Their Quality.

[minerals]

Disclaimer: I have been playing blizz games for about the past 8 years starcraft being my first. I am basically pooling information in this post and adding my own OPINION to it. If any of the cold hard facts I have posted are wrong and you can back it up with reliable than I will change it in my original post.

1. No LAN in Bnet 2.0

This has been an often discussed topic and I know it is old news. I myself am over it but I am still unhappy with this fact. If you are any sort of competitive gamer you have gone to a LAN party. And let me tell you it is one of the most fun things EVER. Sure I can go to a LAN party with a sc2 game but remember: there will almost always be lag when you go to one single area with 50-500 people all using the internet connection.

And if Sc2 has an unscheduled maintenance on that same day we will have to either go home or play another game. A game that probably won't be a blizz game.

2. Map Making Issues

Currently you can only have 3 maps published at a time. Each one of these maps may not exceed 20mb and may not have words like "blow" or "black". So if you have an RPG and one of the texts is "watch out its gonna blow!" or if you have a evolve game and your instructions are "step on the black circle to choose your monster" guess what? You won't be able to publish it!these are just 2 examples taken out of a large list of examples

Furthermore lets say you want to play a big game hunters game but you want to make it a specific type of big game hunter like.... only carriers. You cannot name the game. Or lets say you want to make a tournament that will be heavily publicized and a lot of people know your id or email. These people will be able to join any game you decide to make because you cannot assign it a password.

3. No General Chat Rooms

Now I know there is some speculation on clan/guild chat rooms and what-not but currently blizz has stated that there will be no general chat rooms because of SPAM. Thats right guys the spammers have WON. They have made a difference in a game. All of their spamming has paid off. Now lets say you meet someone in a custom game (which do not show the endgame analysis) and you think this guy is pretty cool. You want to talk strategy with him. How the hell will you be able to?

Different scenario. Your the clan recruiter. You want to look for some people to put into your clan. The only way NOT using a third party source (TL,SCL, etc.) will be to go play ladders till you drop. And if you find someone good you try to convince them by chatting in a 1v1 chat. That is going to make this 100% more difficult to find people to add in your clan.

A game many of us might hate or play and made by blizz is WoW (World of Warcraft). Most people have played it. Imagine wow without Genneral chat. So all chat that is a beige color. You still have guild chat (maybe) and whispering and party chat. Now you want to sell and item. If noone in your guild wants it how are you going to sell it? Now back to sc2 replace this idea of "selling items" to "discussing ideas". All your clan mates are in a game. Who are you going to discuss it to?

4. No Cross Realm Playing

Another heavily discussed issue is the idea that you can no longer play with any other server than your own. Blizz's explaination for this is lag. Granted that could be an issue but an easilly solvable one. You play with people that have your same ping. If you live in America this means anyone you play with in the ladders will be american which solves any language barriers and lag related issues. What will this solve? You will be able to host custom games and custom melee and will be able to invite your foreign friends. Problem solved! The only reason I can think of that Blizz or should I say " Activision Blizzard " Would do this is for MONEY. My Brother lives in Germany. I will probably have to buy not just 1 but 2 copies of the game to play with him and anyone in America. Great huh? Cause the thing I want to do most is to waste money.

5. Activision Blizzard Merger

The last thing I want to end on is that both Blizzard and Activision are now merged together. This means that while they are separate and Activision has absolutely no impact on the game design itself blizz will talk to the same investors Activision has and it will be much more difficult for them to pull back a release date. So if for example Blizz has this problem that.... Bnet 2.0 sucks and fans are complaining and they go "huh maybe we should work on it a bit more" the investors will be like "hell no I want my money".



Eyecandy

Battle.net 2.0 is eye candy and that all. It has NOTHING different than Bnet than eyecandy. Wait no I remember what we have, achievments! and uhhhhh FACEBOOK INTREGRATION! Great Job! What is this focusing on? Not the casual players, no the people to stupid and with too much money. They hope people on facebook will go huh Joe and Bob play this game let me buy it. Huh it sucks. Lets go back to Farmville. Sc2 hurts the area between my ears where I should have a brain

[Kimera757]

Must be Blizzard hate week.

The only above issues that I think are in the least bit relevant are lack of LAN and map publishing limitations. And for the former, there's a fix in the works. You'll only need battle.net to authenticate, so at least the speed issue will be resolved.

[Dauntless]

Where did you get that information, Kimera757? I've never heard anything about a feature like that..

[Eligor]

The only above issues that I think are in the least bit relevant are lack of LAN .... there's a fix in the works. You'll only need battle.net to authenticate, so at least the speed issue will be resolved.

You mean they've officially confirmed they're working on that?
The only place I've seen it before is Edfishy's thread.

[TheEconomist]

The eye candy "point" was lacking Match making alone makes the new Battle.net a huge improvement in my opinion. Yes, there's problems but (I'm getting tired of saying this) this is beta and we're the beta testers. Of course we're going to have problems. It's our jobs to find them and report them.

I do agree about cross realm though. LAN, however, I think will be fine with the new Battle.net "LANish" feature.

[Todie]

You mean they've officially confirmed they're working on that?
The only place I've seen it before is Edfishy's thread.

i suspect its kimera that is confused on this matter.

[Eligor]

i suspect its kimera that is confused on this matter.

Maybe, but I would like to know whether Blizzard stated anything like that recently. They DID offer LAN quality connexion before the beginning of Beta. In fact, didn't they say that BattleNet 2.0 would operate on the principle of a P2P connexion between players in the early days of development? (now, that's one interview I'd like to hunt down!)

EDIT: OK, here we go, THIS is the interview, from back in August of 2009 no less! Does it mean that the current Battle.Net 2.0 infrastructure is not finished (if to judge by feedback)? Or did they ditch that plan altogether?

[minerals]

I believe I heard that Bnet 2.0 was broken in the first place for testing purposes....

[Dsceptor]

1) No LAN is disappointing, but I'm willing to wait to see what Blizzard comes up with as a substitute. Right now, I'm just holding my judgments until I see it myself.

2)Map Making Issues - It's beta. I've never seen a company release everything during beta's. Yes, your concerns are valid and these are annoying issues. Again, I'm willing to wait and see.

3)In the Clans that I have joined, I've received an invitation after playing a match, so I don't think its as big of a problem as you might foresee. I do agree there should be at least the option for general chat or something similar.

4)I can agree that I would like to have Cross Realm playing, but is it an indication of Blizzard's lack of quality? I don't think so. It's probably a cost/benefit issue coupled with a couple other complications.

5)Activision's agreement with Blizzard gives Blizzard a number more options to work with, given the size of Activision. As for the Investors, that's up to Blizzard and Activision to decide. I personally think Blizzard has leverage, considering their success with their previous games despite going long past the due date.

6)Battle 2.0 is Blizzard's way of combating pirating. They figure, "Yes, people are going to pirate the game no matter what. So what can we offer that will make buying the game more valuable than a pirated version?" It would have to be something that Blizzard can monitor and something that provides "value" to the buyer. And sadly, achievements DO provide value considering the success of many games that use achievements.

These are all issues that have been brought up, and they are valid. I'm not questioning Blizzard's quality just yet though. In my opinion, SC2 is the one of best quality product they've made thus far.

[Eligor]

I believe I heard that Bnet 2.0 was broken in the first place for testing purposes....

This is most curious. Where did they say that?