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The same, but worse.
Only 2.0 million games, played by a little old ‘Tossy on her way to Khala meditation each week. Looks just like “classic” Battle.net, only sleeker, sexier, and made more for a mid-life crisis.
Handles…well…it handles like…sort of…imagine…
Did we mention it looks great?
This is the problem with the new Battle.net, or so says the Starcraft gaming community. After playing the Beta for lo these many months, we can’t help but agree. The thing looks like a chick magnet – smooth curves, clever gadgets and and simple new interface, but it’s lacking almost all of the under the hood action that made the first Battle.net such a success.
We’ve mentioned it before, and though it’s not something that bothers us, the lack of chat channels and LAN play has really riled some of the fans of the original Battle.net. As a member of the original Starcraft community “Incontrol” loudly proclaimed in a recent TeamLiquid interview, “Bnet2.0 is a pretty update to Battle.net but someone forgot to make it work. No channels? WHY? WHY? What reason could you POSSIBLY give for not wanting paid customers to be able to communicate randomly and en masse? WHAT POSSIBLE REASON?”
The caps, especially, show his sincerity.
Truth be told, we can understand why people want the chat channels, but they’re kidding themselves if they think they’re going to be used for anything other than random douchebaggery.
All of that aside, however, 2.0 has other issues as well. Apparently (though this is not something we’d ever have to worry about), the current Diamond league ranking system makes it possible to have multiple players all ranked at the top of the ladder. This is mostly due to the different “divisions” that exist, but when it comes to Starcraft, knowing you’re the best out of 100 people apparently isn’t as confidence-inspiring as knowing you’re better than 30,000. Now, if only you could go outside and actually talk to a real person.
The sunlight! It burrrrrrnns!
Not satisfied to stop there (gamers rarely are), they’ve also noted that one of the most recent patches destabilized the entire matrix, resulting in an overload of the quantum fluxometers, and nearly leading to a disastrous implersion.
Ok, none of that stuff is real, though “implersion” is a great word.
In truth, one of the last patches did make it very difficult to play a game for more than five minutes without one of the people being dropped.
In addition, the 2.0 iteration of Battle.net also limits the number of people that can connect from any single IP address, in what seems to be a shot taken directly at those who want to LAN. Not only will we not let you LAN, says Blizz, but just try connecting multiple rigs to the same main line. Suckas!
From our end, it’s mostly the little things that have been getting us down. The in-game chatting, for example, is poorly handled. You can be contacted by friends not playing with you while you’re in a match, but replying is cumbersome. A new chat window opens virtually every time you do something, like joining a party, but your old chat windows don’t disappear. All in all, the limited chat available is sluggish and confusing, which gamers find maddening.
But.
This is, as we’ve stated, and stated, and yes, stated, is a BETA. Blizzard has released a statement in response to these concerns, basically saying that they’re aware of the problems and are doing their very best to fix “most” of the problems before the game hits.
So long as the thing has a 3 light-year, 60,000 games warranty, we’ll be happy. Plus, we want an upgrade package. Heated seats would be nice.
