Chat confirmed, new identifier system, whiners; pow, right in the kisser

[Dragoonx]

@Hammy

Would be kind of hard to tell that they were happy when you have these crazed fanatics saying they are boycotting the game and have multiple friends on Steam ready to support the cause. (LolMW2/L4D2)

[JohnUcrazy]

I would love to have LAN, but it seems they are making it exclusive, which is as bad. A fee may be implemented to play cross region. The whole naming system seems interesting, but it may seem like there will be a tons of people with the same names. Guess I'll be John #over9000

[Hav0x]

Chat channels - I'm assuming the randomly assigned identifier is to track & isolate individuals for spam moderation, which i am all for.

No, it's so you can add people to your friends list without having to require 100% unique usernames. There can be 100 Killermofos on battle.net but you will have a unique number that your friends need to have to add you.

Also I can assure you 100% that they have some sort of user id column in their database that assigns each username a unique string or number.

[ArcherofAiur]

Anyone else feel like your name is allittle less fun if it is not unique?

[Triceron]

I am so making an ArcherofAiur account.

[Nicol Bolas]

Why you even need that silly random identifier? Why not just check if the damn username is already taken and offer to change it? Then, if you want to add ".1337", or whatever sillyness suits you to make it unique, at least you're the one choosing it.

Because this is better.

Users want to be able to use the name they want to use. Period. Blizzard needs you to have a unique identifier. This does both; players get the names they want, and they're still unique.

I don't understand what the downside is here.

Good job guys. This isnt everything we wanted but were slowly moving Blizzard in the right direction.

Except... they were doing this anyway. They had previously announced this. They're probably still on the exact same timetable.

Which means that the complaints meant nothing.

Anyone else feel like your name is allittle less fun if it is not unique?

... no.

[Hamshank]

This is the same information Blizzard has been circulating for awhile. We knew they would have these types of chat channels.

[ArcherofAiur]

I am so making an ArcherofAiur account.

LOL actually im thinking of changing my name back to my old broodwar account. ArcherofAiur has always been my penname anyway

[TheEconomist]

Great game is not at all up in the air. StarCraft 2 could stay exactly as it is now and it would be great. Granted, it would be far from Blizzard standards but going by the standard set by the average developer, it is legitimately great. The fact that people nitpick so much is a testament to how great Blizzard is at making games.

Also, again ...

I hate to say I told you--

No I don't.

[Gifted]

This is the same information Blizzard has been circulating for awhile. We knew they would have these types of chat channels.

Well, actually, I will have to say that while I assumed these types of chat channels would be coming along, I found in working for the b.net concerns editorial that the wording they used could have lead into other things that were communication based and not specifically channels to talk in. For example, the way they verbalized things before this involved the possibility of a "forum thread like Group" that facebook utilizies, and Blizzard could have assumed that the IM chat that's already integrated would have been able to flesh that out more. This set of quotes directly refute that idea.

It's nice to see they're returning to some sort of identifier, but I'm worried if this would repeat the same issues that the previous one entailed. I wonder what part of it deems it "unique".