New featuresThe changes that developers have in store for battle.net and therefore anyone who plays a Blizzard game are ambitious to say the least. For StarCraft Pardo said they intend for new players to start with the single player game most likely in offline mode, then advance to skirmish and challenge game modes online. The ladder system will be revamped and, as it will utilise your battle.net ID experienced players won't be able to cheat the system by simply creating new characters to stomp noobs.
The new ladder system is also partially designed to protect newer players as they enter multiplayer scenarios as well as be more useful to intermediate players, so it won't serve only the elite gamers. When entering multiplayer, players will be entered into a Practice League and after a certain number of games their skill level is calculated. Players can then move into different leagues up the ladder. Within each league a player would be rated against 100 fellow players of comparable skill. Tied to these ladder changes are what Pardo called more competitive arenas regardless of a player's skill level as well as improved automated matchmaking across all the new leagues.
Plus among all those other changes players will be able to utilise 'cloud storage'; so if you happen to play from multiple locations you will be able to save that character and play with them again when you get home. No need to start from scratch.
Party timeIn StarCraft II itself players will be able to form parties to join games together, and to exit the games back into battle.net as a group. They'll also be able to use a private game lobby to manage games and form groups. But one of the biggest changes to the new bnet is the implementation of social networking, not only in StarCraft but, ambitiously, across all Blizzard games. Players will be able to set up friends lists theoretically just the once and be able to see what their friends are playing, or use the IM-style chat in the portal interface to arrange games in any one of the franchises.
"We want to sure that we have an experience that makes logical sense if you have Real ID friends in another game. We want you to be able to navigate the interface across games consistently; you're able to manage your friends list consistently; you're able to get the same kinds of information like online status, what they're doing, they're able to get notifications the same way."
While World of Warcraft players have already been offered the account merge the system will properly launch with StarCraft II which is due for release in 2010.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012