Despite warnings to Blizzard employees such an act would be punishable by death (or a Bobby Kotick conference call), I got access to the Starcraft II beta.  And since I was “hired” to address the game’s issues, allow me to continue my burial of New Super Battle.net Steam.  I’ve already explained that the matchmaking system needs to prove me wrong before I embrace it.  Time to focus on chat.

In the quest to protect children from the pedophiles and liberals that inhabit the internet, Blizzard gridlocked their communication system.  It’s pretty clear why: World of Warcraft is a pay-to-play MMO and the audience expects pay-to-play support, a game where you can report people for swearing.  Thus, this audience expects Blizzard to deal with Starcraft’s most dangerous criminals.  And rather than slash budget to enforce conduct on a free-to-play online service, they’ll just make it impossible to get your opinion around.

Why can’t I chat with all the people I don’t want to!?

The problem?  Blizzard’s official, possibly-stretching-the-truth story is that Starcraft II was beta-ready last year; an extra year to push the “Battle.net 2.0 is so awesome you wouldn’t want to pirate it!” spiel.  And you’ve reinvented the way chat does business.  Good luck selling this to long-time Battle.net users, the demographic most likely to jailbreak the game.

The two-name system is the culprit, which I thought was there to prevent name-squatting.  You select a visible first name a private last name, which players will have to know in order to add you to their friends list.  Hated friend codes for the Wii?  Here’s an upgrade: You can select the one you want!  You now have a system where you can’t see the full name of the dude who beat your brains out (sans the awkward process of adding them to your friends list), and a nightmare for competitive gaming where replays only identify players by their first name.  (Yeah IdrA, that wasn’t you.  We believe you.)  All of which makes no sense, since players can be identified through league rankings anyway.

And open chat channels?  Confirmed absent, presumably because they’re a conduit for spam and butthurt.  Yes, invite-only clan channels will be there later.  The problem is that as Starcraft and Warcraft III matured, open clan channels became the open chat channels, the GGLs and X17s became the get-togethers.  And Arranged Team and Custom Game invites fed off those channels.  All far less awkward than a feigned “What’s up?  Wanna 2s?” directed towards a random member of your league.

Not that any of this will matter to cross-ocean buddies if region-locking remains.  Currently a “feature” in World of Warcraft, there’s no word on whether Americans can stomp Europeans or Koreans if they want.  Think there’s no reason for concern?  Blizzard was pretty mum on LAN as well, and we saw how that turned out.

If it means disabling a safety net in the options menu, I’m fine with compromise.  But omitting these features to protect your consumer base isn’t going to solve software piracy.  Someone will find a way to implement them, even if it means doing it without your support.

This is going to be a legendary game.  I’d just like to be able to tell everyone that.  Through Battle.net 2.0.

The second Golden Age of Video Games in the late nineties wasn’t limited to legendary titles; it was an era where companies won fans by empowering them.  In Starcraft’s case, Blizzard dangled a free-to-play gaming service alongside a “spawn” function where potential buyers could beat the crap out of each other with a friend’s copy of the game.  The corporatization of game development has caused this empowerment to regress.  Hey, why would Sony want a backwards-compatible Playstation 3 when they can charge for digitally-downloaded Playstation 2 software?

In addition to the removal of true local area play and the increase of digital restrictions management, Blizzard Entertainment’s current platform for Starcraft II online play is “one game, one account, one name”.  Why?  Yeah, this approach is about making money.  But it’s coming from more angles than you’d think.

At BlizzCon, Blizzard employees affirmed this decision was to prevent smurfing (talented players “resetting” their record by creating a new account).  Smurfing has two purposes: To experiment with new strategies without tainting their “real record”, or to ego trip through the ranks of mediocrity.  Neither situation addresses the Warcraft III matchmaking system that forces good players to make new accounts in order to find games, and it doesn’t address that bad players will complain anyway because that’s what bad players do.

It’s really a public relations ploy.  Blizzard has plugged three strategy games into Battle.net since smurfing entered the culture, and only decided to hard-line the approach when “millions of World of Warcraft players” came into play.  And since the MMORPG is predicated on making time and effort the most important assets for overcoming challenges, Blizzard is going to make every concession in making sure these players don’t become frustrated.

So, you’ve stripped functionality by convincing new gamers that experts won’t ruin your party.  And thus, Blizzard can to grant that functionality back for a price.

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I’m opposed to outright predictions.  The last time I made one, I reneged on my promise to eat a hat-shaped object.  Who knew Blizzard would significantly delay one of their products, anyway!?  So uh, let’s try this again.

Activision’s standing as gaming’s biggest publisher is prime to burn.

I’m not arguing the quality of their products; I’m arguing we’ll wake up the morning of an Activision-Blizzard earnings report and discover Bobby Kotick isn’t the genius the mainstream claims.  You know, where Forbes incredulously wonders how “a chief executive blind to the beauty of videogames developed an unmatched eye for spotting hits”, and his company “owns a peerless collection of widely beloved and extremely profitable games.”

It’s a delicious setup.  Activision was founded by game developers disgruntled with Atari’s corporate culture.  Thirty years later, they’re synonymous with paper-pushing.  They recently merged with Blizzard, a company notorious for delaying franchises in the name of quality control.  Their alliance is hogtied to a shareholder market and corporate culture that demands immediate returns on their investment.  In the name of meeting those quarterly expectations, six bad months can destroy the company.

Their safety net?  Acquire “the next big thing”.  The problem?  When Activision and Blizzard merged, Kotick dumped properties that lacked the now-infamous “potential to be exploited across every platform every year”. The man has created a dangerous situation where they have bet the farm on Call of Duty and Guitar Hero.  Find me an empire that went beyond their means and lived to place their eggs in a single basket.

Are we forgetting that in April of 2007, THQ’s stock price peaked above thirty-six dollars? Thirty-one months later, they’re sporting a stock price below five dollars and a catalog of Nickelodeon stowaways.  Their lone hope is that a larger company acquires their mountain of trash in order to obtain the Ultimate Fighting Championship license.  Place Blizzard’s financial capita aside, and what’s to assume that Activision may not suffer the same calamity?

They’re like locusts. They’re moving from game to game…their whole business. After they’ve consumed every natural resource they move on…and something else is next.

Even Activision’s own history suggests it.  In 1999, the Tony Hawk franchise was an affirmation that extreme sports weren’t a fad.  If Tony Hawk Ride is as dreadful as reviews paint it, the series is dead.  In 2007, Guitar Hero outstold Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 on way to becoming the best-selling core title of the year.  Guitar Hero is now the head of a genre whose sales are down sixty percent from 2008 to 2009.  And here we are, heralding “teh awesome salze!!” of Modern Warfare 2, the awesomest fuck-awesome to ever balls in your ass.  Did you see how the stock market reacted to “the biggest entertainment launch of all-time”?

They didn’t give two shits.  Call of Duty is undergoing the Michael Jordan treatment, where the product is so exceptional we’ve become numb to it. And if Activision’s only sure thing is keeping the seas neutral, your company’s long-term future is no guarantee.

Note: I chose not to consider the Blizzard side of things because I cannot find current World of Warcraft subscription data.  Should I find it, I’ll supply an update.

It’s moments like these that make one fear for the well-being of Blizzard’s product quality.

I receive a lot of flak for defending the company’s business practices, but sans a few awesome individuals, I’ve never been keen on their community relations.  That’s not going to continue today.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Battle.net forums, it is one of the greatest video games of all-time.  It’s the bastard child of Final Fantasy VI, a world where ninety percent of the characters assumed Kefka’s personality disorder.  The goal of the game is to make people HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE you.

Over the last two weeks, a regular poster on the Starcraft II General Discussion Forum insisted a Blizzard employee was spilling the Starcraft II release cycle on his Twitter page.  But without a Twitter page from one “Joe Lowland”, this proved difficult to corroborate.  So naturally, another member of the forum filled in the blanks and carved out the newest member of my blogroll.

Hilarity ensued.  In the same way that Michael Jordan matured to trust his teammates, the S2GDF gathered to debate the Battle Report that currently doesn’t exist.  Thanks to their efforts, the greater Starcraft community came together to debate the veracity of Joe Lowland’s Twitter.

Naturally, Blizzard would need to address this misinformation.  They were responsible for this.  During BlizzCon, some asshole at Blizzard constructed a dam in the flow of information.  It was up to Karune (whose name is now interchangable with “The people who tell Karune what to post”) help ease the community and its sentiments.

Do you now understand why Blizzard’s community relations team launches customers into rage?  I understand corporate cultures are dictated by “the book”.  In this “the book”, everything must be done by “the book”.  In some twisted manner, “the book” indicated the best way to respond to a well-conceived troll is to justify it.

Instead of paying me seven dollars an hour to kick the crap out of the Battle.net forums, I’ll continue to laugh at the embarassments your company concocts.  For free.

I’d like to clear up a misconception about Blizzard’s decision to “eliminate smurfing” from Starcraft II.  A number of web sites have gone out of their way to explain why I am a bitch.

Spoiler alert, douchebags: That is not why I smurf.

I wrote an entire dissertation explaining how Blizzard broke Warcraft III’s matchmaking system.  The old iteration of the service was damn good, good enough to become the groundwork for Halo 3’s ladder.  The flaw? Bad players were getting stomped by good players playing on new accounts.  And what do shitty players do when they get a raw deal?  They don’t get better, they bitch and complain.  And since they make up the majority, Blizzard caved to them.

Today, the company paints smurfing as an ego boost for elite Warcraft III players.  Here’s the dirty secret: Top-level Warcraft III players do not smurf because they enjoy it.  They smurf because in 2004, Blizzard pushed a set of matchmaking changes designed to eliminate smurfing.  They were configured for 2004’s player activity.  2004’s crappy Warcraft III players are now 2009’s crappy Defense of the Ancients players.  As a result of the diminished activity, top players cannot find games.

The Four vs. Four Random Team rankings tell the story.  The “cream” is dominated by posers.  Elite players cannot find enough games to max out their account’s experience level.  As of this writing, my primary Warcraft III account has a 55-39 Random Team record.  After 94 games, my search time averages thirty minutes to an hour.  And playing at night?  Forget about it.  When all I want to do is play the damn game, the easiest way to do this is to make a new account and start over.

You know that evil “pirate server” known as ICCUP?  I play Starcraft there.  My winning percentage looks like a solid batting average.  I don’t have qualms about getting my ass kicked.  And your employees stand up and say I smurf because I’m a pussy?  Fuck you.  I’ll see you at the top and let you know what it tastes like.

Many disagree with my opinion on the Great LAN Debate.  I’ve been a zealot in defending Blizzard’s decision to remove LAN from Starcraft II.  I would personally prefer that the game ships with it, but thanks to the widening globalization of piracy, companies have an excuse to protect their sales.  And honestly, I don’t consider Blizzard’s actions particularly intrusive.

But for once, I’d like to defend the pro-LAN audience.  Blizzard is the most financially-successful game developer of the modern era.  How did they do this with a public relations team that spends most of their time pissing themselves?  Does anyone in this organization know how to address the sentiments of your fans and detractors?

Admittedly, this is a very complicated issue.  In conjunction with third-party software, the inclusion of LAN would make it impossible for Blizzard to stymie piracy through legal measures.  The company can’t go after programs that use the internet as their “Local Area Network”.  However, they can drop the hammer on those who reverse-engineer the Battle.net service.  They did it to BnetD, they’ve postured themselves to deal with ICCUP, and will definitely clamp down on any attempts involving Starcraft II.  Quite simply, Blizzard is protecting their profits.  But in the populist climate of 2009, it takes a great deal of savvy to express that sentiment without becoming the bad guy.

(There’s also the matter of competitive gaming, but that’s a different story.)

That’s the story.  Because of Blizzard’s inability to articulate their point of view, we’ve ended up with the gaming equivalent of the American healthcare debate.

The pro-LAN argument is not “wrong”.  It has its merits.  The problem is, they’re being spearheaded by those who have no idea why they’re protesting this argument, and have no idea how Battle.net operates.  If you are playing somebody through Battle.net via a local network, you will have LAN latency, and you will not be disconnected from your local game if your internet connection dies on you.  There.  I just eased eighty percent of the concern.

On the other end, Blizzard is playing president, a president who has failed in shaping the discussion.  As a result, there are two lines of thought as to why Blizzard has ditched LAN: “I think it’s about piracy, but I don’t understand the issue entirely”, and “It’s because they’re fucking fascists!”  Case in-point, Blizzard’s most recent fuck-up:

Pardo, VP of game design at Blizzard, told IncGamers “piracy, historically, has not been that big of deal for us.” StarCraft II’s lead designer Dustin Browder added he thinks “the most powerful solution for piracy is to try to create a compelling experience so people don’t want to go elsewhere,” something Blizzard obviously have been pretty good at before.

…

Many have speculated the reasoning behind removing LAN, a quite controversial topic, and whether or not it’s excluded to combat piracy. Pardo told us “getting rid of LAN is not getting rid of piracy.” Browder explained that decision comes from Blizzard’s goal to bring everyone together on Battle.net, and to avoid double work, creating some features for both Battle.net and LAN separately.

See!  It’s not about piracy…even though several months earlier, it was.

“We don’t currently plan to support LAN play with StarCraft II, as we are building Battle.net to be the ideal destination for multiplayer gaming with StarCraft II and future Blizzard Entertainment games. While this was a difficult decision for us, we felt that moving away from LAN play and directing players to our upgraded Battle.net service was the best option to ensure a quality multiplayer experience with StarCraft II and safeguard against piracy.

“HAY GUYS LAN ISN’T ABUOT PIRACY IT’S ABOUT CREATEING THE GREATEST POSIBEL EXPERIENCE OF STARCRAFT TOO!!!” If Blizzard was concerned about ensuring “a quality multiplayer experience”, LAN would be present in the product.  They would be using the delay of the game’s release (ironically caused by Battle.net 2.0) in order to get LAN into the game.  And that is why people call you on your bullshit.  Starcraft message boards and social networking sites make third-grade classrooms look like MENSA get-togethers.  And for the last two years, you have done nothing to relax their paranoia, and everything to foster it.

Now get your shit together.  It makes it awfully difficult for me to defend your decisions when you’re not capable of doing so.

It’s ironic that distinct styles of any game (ala baseball and cricket) can emerge in the age of globalization, but the blood feud between Blizzard and the Korean E-Sport Association is primed for such an event.  It would be an understatement to say the next twenty-four months are critical in shaping professional gaming’s history.

Recap: At South Korea’s eStars 2009 gaming event, the top Warcraft III player (Jang Jae Ho, a.k.a. Spirit_Moon) and the most accomplished Starcraft player (Lee Yun-Yeol, a.k.a. NaDa) battled in Starcraft II; “The Fifth Race” versus a three-time Starleague champion, competing disciplines colliding in the game of the future.  Initially, KESPA merely prohibited under-contract talent (sans NaDa) from competing in the night’s exhibition matches.  Now, it turns out KESPA used their clout to keep the games off television.

Will the future of professional Starcraft include the founding father?

The prevailing sentiment is that KESPA needs to go fuck themselves, and that they need to keep their grubby hands out of the game.  It’s not that simple.

I originally believed Blizzard’s omission of LAN functionality was a shot at Garena and others, the heavy players in the piracy of Blizzard games.  After discussing the matter with e-friends, I’ve concluded Blizzard is thinking ahead: The removal of LAN is also designed to consolidate control of the professional Starcraft II scene.  We’re potentially looking at an era in competitive gaming where the inventor of the sport becomes the marketing machine for its own product.

(more…)

I wanted to bring this up on Monday, but I couldn’t find room for it.

Every month since April of ‘72, the Battle.net forums are struck by a variation of this complaint:

Dear Blizzard,

I recently learned that you are planning to [bullshit nitpick].  In your early days, you made awesome games.  When I was nine years old, I played [favorite Blizzard title] with all my friends.  Unfortunately, your company sucks now.  You sold out after making [favorite Blizzard title].  [Latest Blizzard title] was the worst game you’ve ever released.  As a result, I will only buy [number from one to ten] copies of [upcoming Blizzard game] to prove I do not care about your products anymore.

Sincerely,

[Shitty name lifted from popular Japanese cartoon]

Let’s go ahead.  Let’s assume Blizzard Entertainment built their empire on “service and a smile”.  Let’s assume their customer support has evaporated since 1998.  (While we do this, disregard the dozens of Warcraft III patches the company had no obligation to release.)  Want to know why Blizzard gave you “service and a smile”?  Because it made a lot of money!

Warcraft II and Starcraft allowed players to “spawn” copies of the game.  With one copy of Starcraft, a player could spearhead four-man multiplayer.  Why would Blizzard do this?  In order to play on Battle.net, those kids would need to buy the full version.  Blizzard wasn’t shooting goodwill flowers out of their ass, they didn’t think it made the game any more fun, they were doing it because it was a good financial decision.  The company hadn’t lit the world on fire yet.  Therefore, a spawn mode was free advertising for these games.

With help from their last six products (Warcraft II, Diablo, Starcraft, Diablo II, Warcraft III, World of Warcraft), Blizzard Entertainment is now a publicly-traded company that employs 2,700 workers.  And you’re surprised they no longer have the demeanor of a mom-and-pop programming mill?

Blizzard now relies solely on the Pixar effect, a.k.a. the expectation of quality.  The company’s higher-ups have made the assumption that if one cannot obtain the game through illegal means, they will buy it.  As a result, they are designing a system intended to funnel all multiplayer through Battle.net.  In the gaming economy of 2009, this is a good financial decision for Blizzard Entertainment.

If you want to contest whether a lack of true LAN is better for the product, whatever. I’m just tired of people pretending that if 1998 Blizzard had 2009’s Blizzard’s resources, they would have released Starcraft for free.  “Good public relations” was not the offspring of a small development company that was compiling code for the love of the game.  They were (and still are) trying to make money.

Starcraft II’s beta invite process began today.  This is the critical testing phase where I am disqualified from playing the Starcraft II beta.  This will be the first new Blizzard game that uses Battle.net Accounts.  It’s Blizzard’s take on Steam, allowing players to attach Blizzard games to an e-mail account, and then play them from any computer they want to.

Blizzard pulled a clever ploy: When they announced the service, the company encouraged everyone to start uploading their CD-Keys.  “All’s peachy, just log your games into the service and everything will be fine.”  It worked very well.  As if there was any more reason to hate World of Warcraft, that game justified the Battle.net Account concept.  The use of a single account to track player content gave Blizzard a powerful way to centralize player conduct; if you were banned for swearing at a jackass, it was a strike against your account.  Want to take the risk of getting a bit edgy?  Don’t complain when you have no access to your gear and your character.

Currently, there is no option to remove a game from the Battle.net Account service.  This strikes me as interesting, because Blizzard left a critical question unanswered: If one was to get banned from one game on their Battle.net account, would they get banned from every game?  If this ends up being true, Blizzard pulled an underhanded move in the quest to gain autonomy over their player base.

Let me put it on the record: I’ve been playing Blizzard games for fourteen years, and never been banned from playing the game online.  Yes, this includes Mike Lowell’s adventures on World of Warcraft, and yes, this includes Sim City.  However, millions of World of Warcraft players will be buying Starcraft II.  They are used to enjoying customer service that honors their premium subscription.  They will want offensive players dealt with.  Will these newcomers go to the same levels in trying to get offensive players banned from Starcraft II?  If so, will Blizzard be active in dealing with the problem?  And if so, will it cost one his entire collection of Blizzard games?

Let’s find out if my paranoia holds water.

(more…)

The life cycle of Blizzard game support is as follows: Blizzard announces a game-breaking patch, the community donates feedback to the effort, the community complains the patch is behind schedule, Blizzard releases the combined efforts of a beginner computing class, the community whines, and the gaming media throws Blizzard a parade.  Weeks earlier, Blizzard announced a drive to get feedback for a final Diablo II balance patch.  This will be the final step in the game’s life cycle, where the company gives Barbarians an extra armor point and replaces Hardcore Mode with the Conficker Virus.

Mainstream gamers heard about Blizzard’s sendoff to Diablo II, and gave the company a blowjob.  “Blizzard is still updating the game?  They really know how to please their customers.”  Sell that with a straight face to the Warcraft III community.  I’ve already detailed the nightmare that was Patch 1.22.  It’s also worth noting I spent ninety minutes searching for a ladder game while writing this.  For several years, my brethren and I have been pulling an Oliver Twist, begging to get a new map pool.  In addressing (of all things) Guitar Hero, I surmised the problem many moons ago:

Until its removal last year, the Starcraft ladder system was an exploitable joke. When South Korea’s Starcraft scene flourished, the professional leagues became the “authority” as to what maps were played. As they rotated the maps on a yearly basis, amateur players did the same. Warcraft III’s spectacular ladder system turned Blizzard into the authority on which maps were played competitively. This placed the weight on the company to update their map pool regularly. Their inaction in doing this has led to a community without the unification to dictate a new map pool. So while players complain Turtle Rock is a tired map, they will play it anyway.

Enter Highperch, a downloadable melee map that was promoted to ladder status.  Its most compelling feature is a pair of Healing Fountains entrenched in the mountainsides.  With no Goblin Laboratories (and thus no air transports), the intended concept is for only air units to have access to these fountains.  Through the glorious nature of Warcraft III’s gameplay, certain racial combinations can circumvent this with a combination of Tiny Great Halls, Mass Teleport, Wardens, Tinkers, etc.  And through the glorious nature of the Warcraft III community, “Highperching” was born.

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