SC:L Article - Battle.net 2.0 Concerns

[newcomplex]

What has blizzard told us is being implemented? I dont want to hear Bashiok's quote I want to hear what you think is being implemented. I think you will be surprised just how little you know about what you think Blizzard has promised you.

We know nothing.

Archer you seem to be angry at the fact that Gifted isn't angry rather then any concrete position.

We know that something that is an attempt at an address at our problems is being implemented sometime between the games release and the games first expansion.

This thing can potentially be the most amazing thing ever and we'll all be so glad that it was delayed because its so awesome now. This is a possbility.

It can also be like most of b-net 2.0 and be a flawed, incomplete, gimped, and poorly formatted piece of crap.

Right now, while in your head one of these may be more likely, in actuality it is a complete indeterminate. Outside of your bias both outcomes have an indeterminate probability greater then zero and less then a hundred.

At this point in time, the only thing Blizzard can do is provide information to the fanbase to convince us it is good rather then crap, whether simply raw information about it, "PR garbage", or knowledge of internal steps made to help ensure it is awesome.

And sofar the direction, if nothing else, is a good one. Specifically, there has been the intention of providing something more then just "PR garbage", with the results coming out at some point in the undisclosed future. Maybe they will never come. But that isn't even the point of contention.

[SlickR]

From the perspective of marketing, StarCraft: Legacy relies on professionalism in articles to brand itself. Excluding the Legacy Weekly, which is an intensionally relaxed production, you should find some of the most formal tones in our articles and news coverage. Also, our organization has a closer connection traditionally to Blizzard Entertainment. This is why we are unable and unwilling to go for the proverbial jugular when discussing the company. However, we feel our concerns and criticisms have been voiced loudly and received.

I'm not saying you needed to put ***k bli** you ***** ******* a****.
I'm just saying you may have been a bit more critical on some of the features they've removed or didn't include.
For example things like including the rock vs bnet 2.0 picture and than saying it in words.
I mean its only the truth, it wouldn't be like you are making stuff up and rage-arguing with blizzard, the tone would have been more high if I may say it like that.


@newcomplex
That's completely not true. Whats in his head and most of us heads is that there will be no LAN, no chatrooms, no cross-server play, no way to get in touch with friends on other servers, stupid replay and custom games options, stupid and limiting map editor features and the publish feature is a complete suck. Its geared towards paying money for bigger space and that is the most ridiculous thing ever. If I had only 20mb for maps in WC3, I would not have released any map altogether, not to mention all the different versions I've put out and all of the melee maps I've made.

The facts are clear, and once again they say that there will be no lan, no chatrooms, no cross-server play, etc...
Maybe we'll get those things 6 months after release, maybe with the expansion and maybe with Starcraft 3, the pure, simple fact is that we are not getting them with SC2 when it launches next month.

[newcomplex]

I'm not saying you needed to put ***k bli** you ***** ******* a****.
I'm just saying you may have been a bit more critical on some of the features they've removed or didn't include.
For example things like including the rock vs bnet 2.0 picture and than saying it in words.
I mean its only the truth, it wouldn't be like you are making stuff up and rage-arguing with blizzard, the tone would have been more high if I may say it like that.

They did "say the [gist] of the rock picture in words".

[n00bonicPlague]

Yeah, they already conveyed that truth. A slap in the face like the rock comparison adds nothing to that truth. Besides, the only comparisons that really matter are those with other forms of social integration, most especially Bnet 1.0 and other gaming services.

[silencbank]

What has blizzard told us is being implemented? I dont want to hear Bashiok's quote I want to hear what you think is being implemented. I think you will be surprised just how little you know about what you think Blizzard has promised you.

Judging by all that you have said you know that Blizzard has said in many different posts that they will implement chat at some point after the initial release after the tournament patch. And it is safe to assume that you have read the Blizzard posts on what they are aiming for with their new chat: group/clan chat and chat rooms that are "focused" on certain subjects so people know what they are getting into when going there.

This being said it sounds like the real thing people are concerned about is not whether or not chat will be there, just that they do not know WHAT it will be like. And that is a totally different argument. You can not keep saying that Blizz has never said that there will never be a chat, when what you seem to really mean is that they have never said what the chat will BE. If that is the case then that is fine you are entitled to your pondering just be sure to articulate what is really upsetting you.

I think people need to really think about why they are upset a little more instead of just raging. For instance, you realize that the reason you are upset is not that there will be no chat but that you are not sure if it will be what you like. And after this you realize the reason you are not sure what it will be like is because of the fact that Blizzard does not seem to be listening to the community on how they want it. So it is not the chat that makes you mad, it is Blizzard's seemingly lack of community acknowledgement and their lack of telling us what they are doing. Which boils down to you being mad cuz you just do not know how something you want to love will turn out.

We as a community are just flat out worried that SC2 will not be as good its predecessor because of the general lack of information that Blizzard is telling us. We want so bad to spend the next few years playing this game and with Blizzard not telling us what is going on a lot of us are worried. It is not a bad thing to be worried, alot of us have been enthralled with the Starcraft Universe since its inception. And some with Blizzard for even longer. We fear Blizzard will become like the rest of the gaming companies that care little about us and that makes us anxious. Some of us have literally grown up playing Blizzard's games and just don't want Blizzard to be like everyone else because it makes us think that nothing is "safe" if something that we always relied upon becomes something that we hate.

Im sorry for this long winded speech but I do feel that we are letting our emotions get in the way of what we really want. We want to KNOW. And until we know we will be anxious and worried about how things will turn out. We need to always remember to step back and try to see a bigger picture. We need to say to ourselves "I want this game to be this, and in the past Blizzard has tried as hard as they can to make games I love last as long as they can. They have said they are listening to us and are trying to improve the game to be better. I hope they do". Worry and hope do nothing by themselves except to give us a way to see the future. Be it rosy or cloudy, how we see the future will either heighten or lessen our worries. After all, it is not like this game or BNET 2.0 can be anywhere near as bad as E.T. for Atari.

[SlickR]

Judging by all that you have said you know that Blizzard has said in many different posts that they will implement chat at some point after the initial release after the tournament patch. And it is safe to assume that you have read the Blizzard posts on what they are aiming for with their new chat: group/clan chat and chat rooms that are "focused" on certain subjects so people know what they are getting into when going there.

This being said it sounds like the real thing people are concerned about is not whether or not chat will be there, just that they do not know WHAT it will be like. And that is a totally different argument. You can not keep saying that Blizz has never said that there will never be a chat, when what you seem to really mean is that they have never said what the chat will BE. If that is the case then that is fine you are entitled to your pondering just be sure to articulate what is really upsetting you.

I think people need to really think about why they are upset a little more instead of just raging. For instance, you realize that the reason you are upset is not that there will be no chat but that you are not sure if it will be what you like. And after this you realize the reason you are not sure what it will be like is because of the fact that Blizzard does not seem to be listening to the community on how they want it. So it is not the chat that makes you mad, it is Blizzard's seemingly lack of community acknowledgement and their lack of telling us what they are doing. Which boils down to you being mad cuz you just do not know how something you want to love will turn out.

We as a community are just flat out worried that SC2 will not be as good its predecessor because of the general lack of information that Blizzard is telling us. We want so bad to spend the next few years playing this game and with Blizzard not telling us what is going on a lot of us are worried. It is not a bad thing to be worried, alot of us have been enthralled with the Starcraft Universe since its inception. And some with Blizzard for even longer. We fear Blizzard will become like the rest of the gaming companies that care little about us and that makes us anxious. Some of us have literally grown up playing Blizzard's games and just don't want Blizzard to be like everyone else because it makes us think that nothing is "safe" if something that we always relied upon becomes something that we hate.

Im sorry for this long winded speech but I do feel that we are letting our emotions get in the way of what we really want. We want to KNOW. And until we know we will be anxious and worried about how things will turn out. We need to always remember to step back and try to see a bigger picture. We need to say to ourselves "I want this game to be this, and in the past Blizzard has tried as hard as they can to make games I love last as long as they can. They have said they are listening to us and are trying to improve the game to be better. I hope they do". Worry and hope do nothing by themselves except to give us a way to see the future. Be it rosy or cloudy, how we see the future will either heighten or lessen our worries. After all, it is not like this game or BNET 2.0 can be anywhere near as bad as E.T. for Atari.

You got a sixth sense? If not, for a normal person you seem to know a lot about other people feelings and thoughts, more so than themselves.
If someone was stupid enough to listen to you, about what you know he doesn't know he is feeling, he may just commit suicide.

I would replace the words "you" "they" "people" and add "me" since you don't know better how some1 feels and what he thinks better than that man himself.

Unless again you have a sixth sense.

[Gifted]

Silencbank said some solid stuff there, I was thinking about how or when was a good time to bring that up but it hasn't come up yet. I also was trying to find a way to not be long winded regarding it...

What has blizzard told us is being implemented? I dont want to hear Bashiok's quote I want to hear what you think is being implemented. I think you will be surprised just how little you know about what you think Blizzard has promised you.

I know just as much as you know, flavored by the opinions of people who work there. Are they the people who can tell me the truth regarding what will chat channels be? No, they aren't. I haven't been able to get any information regarding groups or clans at all.

From what Blizzard has said, they can be anything from private chatrooms that associate with groups, basically friend list attachments that separate people whether you know them or not, or the equivelent of a forum thread facebook group or something else I can't deduce from their information.

At the end of the day though, how you approach the subject can be towards one of two paths... towards the solution or towards the problem. It's my belief that I can still show the exact same concerns as you without the need to belittle or paint the company as being the opposition. I firmly agree with those that believe that while Blizzard has made some drastic mistakes, focusing on them won't bring about the solution.

Archer, what do you think the chat channels (for groups at least) could be like?

Quotes referencing importance regarding it, that way any person can decide or deduce on their own:

In contrast to the campaign the new Battle.Net is probably a huge disappointment for a lot of the fans. That's on the one side because of the fact that features we know from the original Battle.Net won't be included and on the other side, we have to read news, that even the social networking website facebook will in some way be included. So what can you tell fans who say "Just give us chat channels now and leave it with the other stuff"?

Dustin Browder: Well, we're working on the chat channels but the reason they are delayed is that we have something, which we think is much better than what we had in the original games. In the original games the chat channels were used by some of our users but they were largely misused just for spam. It was kind of a mess that they weren't focused on only one particular topic. While we definitely feel the fans sort of enthusiasm to get them back, we don't want those chat channels back. We feel like those chat channels were not a huge success for us and we can do them much better. So we will be looking into chat channels down the road that are more focused on specific topics, that are better organized around different social structures. We could certainly just jam the old channels back in but we didn't feel like those were a huge success for us. But we really want this thing back, just much more interesting than before. So we're definitely working on it and we definitely hear the users' complains, but we think we can do better down the road.

I hear what you're saying but as you know there are already a lot of tournaments and other events run through the new Battle.Net and they all need some kind of place to meet without having to know the opponent's account first. So what about implementing just a kind of chat channel system now, maybe just for private channels and redo the other stuff later?

Dustin Browder: It's not gonna happen with the launch, it's just a production issue and we don't have the time to do it at this point. We disappointed our fans, that is a huge bummer, right, and that is never a goal we intentionally pursue, but it's not gonna happen for launch at this point. We simply got too much polish left to do on the rest of the game to also get that in. And we certainly hear that from some of the players but a lot of players are also enjoying Battle.Net quite a bit at this point. So, we surely hear the people's need for additional features that we don't have and we definitely keep working on those down the road. We've got what we've got for launch at this point and it doesn't include chat channels.

Chris Sigaty: So there's a couple of things. One of the biggest features that I'd like to see get in as soon as possible that won't be in there for launch is Groups. Groups is a concept of creating an entity like a map-making community so they can chat with each other and hang out. I don't have a date on that yet. It's past the tournament patch but its definitely one of the earlier features we'd like to see. Whether it happens in the patch or it happens in Expansion One, I don't know yet. There's a huge list of stuff on the Battle.net side that we really want to have happen but we don't have dates on it. Beyond that you're talking about actual constructions different than a group-like clan, I don't even have dates on that stuff, for now. I don't think that's in right now for the tournament patch.

Dustin Browder: So Groups we're viewing sort of as a social experience like if you want to get together with your friends or if you want to talk about anything. It's just sort of a group of friends or a casual group, just like Chris said. If its a mod-making group wanting to get together and discuss these things. It could be a hardcore Zerg strategy group. Whatever kind of groups you want to create. For clans, we're thinking more of a competitive construct. Something you would get together and compete with people in other clans. You would probably not have all of your friends, especially if they sucked, in your clan, but you could have anybody in your group and that would be fine. But those are all down the road.

Another thing I thought you'd promised was chat rooms within Battle.net...

Frank Pierce: Nope. No plans for specific chat rooms at this time. You'll be able to open up chats direct with your friends, and when we add clans and groups there'll be chats for your clans and groups, but no specific plans for chat rooms right now. Do you really want chat rooms?

Bashiok: 2) No chat rooms

There will be chat rooms, they're just not making launch. Probably.

[ed] So Frank was out for interviews in EU it seems (?) and said something to the effect of "no chat rooms" but there would be chat for guilds and groups. Which is more or less what was said before. That it would be more about getting people into focused discussions instead of just having free for all chat systems. In any case, I don't know a lot about it. Personally, chat rooms are soooooo 2002.

[n00bonicPlague]

Judging by all that you have said you know that Blizzard has said in many different posts that they will implement chat at some point after the initial release after the tournament patch. And it is safe to assume that you have read the Blizzard posts on what they are aiming for with their new chat: group/clan chat and chat rooms that are "focused" on certain subjects so people know what they are getting into when going there.

This being said it sounds like the real thing people are concerned about is not whether or not chat will be there, just that they do not know WHAT it will be like. And that is a totally different argument. You can not keep saying that Blizz has never said that there will never be a chat, when what you seem to really mean is that they have never said what the chat will BE. If that is the case then that is fine you are entitled to your pondering just be sure to articulate what is really upsetting you.

I think people need to really think about why they are upset a little more instead of just raging. For instance, you realize that the reason you are upset is not that there will be no chat but that you are not sure if it will be what you like. And after this you realize the reason you are not sure what it will be like is because of the fact that Blizzard does not seem to be listening to the community on how they want it. So it is not the chat that makes you mad, it is Blizzard's seemingly lack of community acknowledgement and their lack of telling us what they are doing. Which boils down to you being mad cuz you just do not know how something you want to love will turn out.

We as a community are just flat out worried that SC2 will not be as good its predecessor because of the general lack of information that Blizzard is telling us. We want so bad to spend the next few years playing this game and with Blizzard not telling us what is going on a lot of us are worried. It is not a bad thing to be worried, alot of us have been enthralled with the Starcraft Universe since its inception. And some with Blizzard for even longer. We fear Blizzard will become like the rest of the gaming companies that care little about us and that makes us anxious. Some of us have literally grown up playing Blizzard's games and just don't want Blizzard to be like everyone else because it makes us think that nothing is "safe" if something that we always relied upon becomes something that we hate.

Im sorry for this long winded speech but I do feel that we are letting our emotions get in the way of what we really want. We want to KNOW. And until we know we will be anxious and worried about how things will turn out. We need to always remember to step back and try to see a bigger picture. We need to say to ourselves "I want this game to be this, and in the past Blizzard has tried as hard as they can to make games I love last as long as they can. They have said they are listening to us and are trying to improve the game to be better. I hope they do". Worry and hope do nothing by themselves except to give us a way to see the future. Be it rosy or cloudy, how we see the future will either heighten or lessen our worries. After all, it is not like this game or BNET 2.0 can be anywhere near as bad as E.T. for Atari.

Well said imo. Like I said, it's all of Blizzard's lack of clarity that is bothering us. They need to tell us straight what it is they're doing. We can't stand the idea that they might get it wrong for no reason, whether deliberately or accidentally. I'm not sure if they could afford to do it wrong at this point.

.

[Gifted]

Hey Archer, what do you think of the Article? I just looked back and not one comment you stated here really said your opinion of the article, you just enticed others into conversation It's amazing that I missed that

[silencbank]

You got a sixth sense? If not, for a normal person you seem to know a lot about other people feelings and thoughts, more so than themselves.
If someone was stupid enough to listen to you, about what you know he doesn't know he is feeling, he may just commit suicide.

I would replace the words "you" "they" "people" and add "me" since you don't know better how some1 feels and what he thinks better than that man himself.

Unless again you have a sixth sense.

First, I am not normal nor do I claim to be. All I said, to shrink it down to very basics is, very few people understand WHY they feel something. They do not take the time to rationalize the reason they feel the way the feel. And from what a whole bunch of psychologists and psychiatrists have told me about emotions I happen to think that what I said is pretty true about alot of people not knowing why they feel an emotion, not what emotion they are feeling. I don't have a sixth sense, I have just used what people have told me about how the feel about Blizzard, Starcraft and everything else.

And, hey it could be that some people will just be like "I don't like not having chat just cuz I want chat". And that too is fine, but until people use inward focus and really realize that that is all there really is no further progress can be made. I made my post to get people to think why they are angry about not having chat and my examples were just of the people I have talked to in this community and other communities about this subject. So go think why you are upset with how BNET 2.0 is going and get the emotions out of the way as much as possible. Maybe a few people will realize that the reason they are upset is pointless, or that they are justified. I just do not want there to be useless raging. When people do not get so emotional about the subject and instead get to the source of the reason we can truly discuss it with no one getting angry, hateful or want to go on a nerdrage rant. Which is the real way to get what we want.