What can we as a community do to improve StarCraft - Page 7

One of the most important aspects of BW which has suffered quite a bit (and there's been very little discussion about this) since the release of SCR is the social aspect of the game.

1) The foreign scene has been split into 3 different servers and imo we don't have the player base to support 3 servers worth of pub games (team games/ums's etc.). This is a non issue for koreans because they have a centralized server and a massive player base.

Having a consolidated server like ICCup did wonders for the foreign scene because it connected everyone and gave people a sense of community. It allowed them to have an active scene for 6-7 years post SC2 which is quite a feat for a 20 year old game with no dev support. What makes BW such a fun game is being able to join channels like ladder 1x1 or ladder 2x2 (on ICCup) and chatting with other players (as well as being able to play pub games etc.).

Sadly the player base is now split into 3 servers, can you imagine being a new player and trying to host or play a UMS game? It takes so long to find enough players to start a game, i don't think that's the type of 1st time experience we want newer BW players to have.

When someone logs into b.net they just sit in their regional channel, why can't we update the default channels (better options, maybe give it a new look) under the channel section to enhance the users social experience?

With the new ladder system coming out wouldn't it be neat to have different chat channels for w/e ladder rank you are (and lock the channels in order to incentivize people to rank up, make it feel like an achievement) in order to help players find other people to talk to and friend add? That's just 1 example of what we could be doing to help players connect with one another.

Tie the matchmaking system to a ladder channel, this would make laddering a more enjoyable (and less isolating) experience.

2) Segregated regional friend list. Not being able to stay in touch with your friends from EU (or your NA friends if you're European) is another big blow to the social aspect of the game. The BW scene is a niche community so a lot of the players have known each other for a long time. NA players have a lot of EU/KR friends and vice versa.

Not being able to stay in touch with your cross region friends via bnet makes for a more isolating gaming experience. We also lost cool features like friend notifications, whenever someone used to come online or join a game bnet would give you a notification.

I love the new friend tab and having the ability to follow friends into a game but those old features made you feel more connected to your friends. Friend message (/f m) was another really useful feature but i remember reading that the dev team was working on bringing it back, i'm not 100% sure about that tho.

Those are just a few things that i wanted to bring to light. In my opinion the social experience of a player is what ties him to a game so we should always look for ways of improving it.