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.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 7th, 2010 at 6:51 pm and is filed under Blizzard Entertainment, Online Play, Starcraft II. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.